The summit marking the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization opened in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, running from August 31 to September 1. The questions hovering over this summit are many, and the reckoning of a quarter century's developments is being watched from global quarters, Western ones in particular. Everyone is asking: is this a summit of particular importance? And then, more importantly: does it count as a step toward building a world that is multilateral and pluralist, without any inevitable need for us to be looking at a military alliance that deals only in iron and fire?
This summit does indeed appear to be an important event, especially as it marks the anniversary of the emergence and rise of a platform for regional cooperation that has grown in strength and influence on the world stage quietly and without clamor.
Let us begin by looking at the structural makeup of the member states, which together represent a large share of the world's population, its land area, and its economic output, granting the organization growing influence in regional and global affairs.
Numbers neither lie nor flatter, and among them is that the member states' populations represent 42 percent of the world's population, and 36 percent of global gross domestic product measured at purchasing power parity. If a comparison is drawn between these figures and their counterparts in the Group of Seven, the equivalent proportions would be 10 percent and 28 percent respectively. Even so, the Group of Seven meeting in France this past June drew wide global attention, whereas the Bishkek meeting is likely to draw very little.
Is there anyone in the traditional Western circles of influence who fears the rise of the Shanghai organization's star? There does indeed appear to be a fear that the Shanghai organization may turn from a merely quasi-regional body into a wider and more enticing framework for the many states that want to see a new world order, broad in its spectrum and multilateral in its arrangements.
What makes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization a compelling and perhaps a dangerous entity is that China is its nucleus and its dynamic operating center, and China has played an important role in formulating its principles, its mechanisms of cooperation, and its development programs.
In 2001, at the organization's first summit, China proposed a formulation that still stands with great success: the Shanghai spirit. It is a spirit that calls for mutual trust, for benefit running in two directions or more, alongside respect for cultural diversity and equality, consultation, and the pursuit of common development. Over the years, the Shanghai spirit has become a guiding principle for cooperation among the organization's members.
Here the Confucian spiritual emanations are strongly apparent: they view existence as an ontological whole in whose courses differences may run, but not ones that necessarily call for summoning Mars, the god of war among the ancient Romans.
Looking at the member states, we find China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, and the Central Asian republics, with other states attached as observers and dialogue partners. Among them are powers competing in various fields, but all are encompassed by a single confirmed desire: to be rid of the yoke of the post-Second World War order and the rules of Bretton Woods. Indeed, there is a push for radical changes within the United Nations, which has become incapable of representing the world's states as the third decade of the 21st century nears its end.
The best example of what we are saying is the Chinese-Indian scene, and after it the Indian-Pakistani one. Here, despite indications of improvement in relations between Beijing and New Delhi, the Bishkek summit may serve as a strategic station for managing rational competition between the two countries without the inevitability of war. The same applies to India and Pakistan, which in May 2025 came within a hair's breadth of a war between two nuclear powers.
Among the marks of the Shanghai summit is the attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which means that Russia is present as a state loved and wanted by states that are internationally accomplished, rather than as the state NATO is wary of, particularly amid recent fears of a military spillover in the Baltic region.
The Bishkek summit appears to be a serious attempt to draw the maps of a visionary international political platform, without turning into a military alliance that NATO might at some given moment regard as a successor to the Warsaw Pact: a platform for the redistribution of international power, without any pursuit of quixotic conflicts whose costs the world has paid, and goes on paying, high and dear.
The Asian spirit is best distinguished by its effort to read reality and deal with it without the least condescension, and this is why energy, the digital economy, artificial intelligence, green industry, science, technology, and education appear among the most important files under discussion. Is the Bishkek summit a step on the road to redefining the meaning and the structure of a new international order that has not yet been born?
