{"id":18405,"date":"2025-09-06T09:04:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=18405"},"modified":"2025-09-06T09:04:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:04:03","slug":"sco-builds-bridges-as-the-west-walls-its-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=18405","title":{"rendered":"SCO builds bridges as the West walls its \u2018garden\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
With nearly half the world\u2019s population and a quarter of global GDP, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has matured into a platform that challenges the very grammar of international politics, offering a vision that stands in stark contrast to the West\u2019s increasingly fenced-off, crisis-ridden order.<\/p>\n

At its recent summit in Tianjin \u2014 the largest in the bloc\u2019s history \u2014 President Xi Jinping described Asia and Europe as \u201ca garden of civilisations\u201d flourishing in mutual prosperity.<\/p>\n

His call for pluralism and shared universalism could not be more distinct from the insular worldview of the decaying Western elite. Just three years ago, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell laid bare this mentality when he declared that \u201cEurope is a garden\u201d and \u201cthe rest of the world is a jungle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Borrell\u2019s metaphor echoed the old imperial creed: wealth at the centre, insecurity at the periphery. \u201cThe gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means,\u201d he warned, not-so-ironically repeating the rationale behind centuries of Western interventions.<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s Renaissance, after all, was financed by the gold and silver of the Americas. Its Industrial Revolution by the forced labour and resources of Asia and Africa. The neat lawns of Europe\u2019s \u201cgarden\u201d were fertilised with blood.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Xi\u2019s counterpoint at Tianjin invoked bridges rather than walls. He called for shared platforms in energy transition, green industry, higher education, artificial intelligence, and even space exploration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast land of Asia and Europe, a cradle of ancient civilisations where the earliest exchanges between the East and the West took place, has been a driving force behind human progress,\u201d Xi noted. SCO members should \u201cjointly cultivate a garden of civilisations in which all cultures flourish in prosperity and harmony through mutual enlightenment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Unlike NATO, which expands through exclusion and militarisation, the SCO grows through inclusion, now embracing nearly half of humanity. With no headquarters or standing army, it remains a forum where governments openly champion negotiation over force, even in disputes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s Global Governance Initiative<\/p>\n

The Tianjin summit also revealed the substance behind Xi\u2019s Global Governance Initiative (GGI). Warning that \u201cGlobal governance has reached a new crossroads,\u201d he urged resistance to \u201chegemonism and power politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

Drawing on the founding of the UN in 1945, Xi outlined five principles: sovereign equality, strict adherence to international law, true multilateralism, people-centred development, and practical coordination.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll countries, regardless of size, strength and wealth, are equal participants, decision-makers and beneficiaries in global governance,\u201d he said, rejecting the \u201chouse rules of a few”.<\/p>\n

He stressed that \u201cinternational law and rules should be applied equally and uniformly. There should be no double standards,\u201d while decisions must emerge from \u201cextensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, Xi repeatedly invokes class-neutral language (\u201call countries\u201d, \u201ccommon interests\u201d) and opposes every form of unilateralism or racism.<\/p>\n

The summit\u2019s communique likewise declared itself on the \u201cright side of history and on the side of fairness and justice,\u201d signalling continuity with the anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Concrete measures followed. Leaders approved the long-discussed SCO Development Bank to finance infrastructure and regional projects, alongside six cooperation platforms: three China\u2013SCO platforms in energy, green industry, and the digital economy and three centres for tech innovation, higher education and vocational training.<\/p>\n

Planned projects include expanding renewable capacity by \u201ctens of gigawatts\u201d within five years, establishing an AI application centre, and sharing Chinese satellite navigation and lunar research with SCO partners.<\/p>\n

Beijing pledged \u00a52 billion in grants, \u00a510 billion in loans, and training programmes across the Global South. Xi also announced ten new \u201cLuban workshops\u201d to train workers in renewable energy, rail, and automotive technologies.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the SCO\u2019s economic weight is rising. In 2024, bilateral China-SCO trade reached $512.4 billion \u2014 nearly $900 billion if observers and dialogue partners are included \u2014 signalling a Eurasian supply chain increasingly shielded from Western sanctions and protectionism.<\/p>\n

Collapse of Western universality<\/p>\n

It would be safe to argue that the SCO\u2019s agenda embodies what might be called \u201cdialectical anti-imperialism\u201d: addressing the contradictions of capitalist globalisation not through ethnic or civilisational rhetoric, but through multilateral cooperation.<\/p>\n

The communique endorsed the WTO-based system, condemned protectionism, and rejected unilateral sanctions, calling instead for an \u201copen world economy\u201d.<\/p>\n

China, for its part, is pitching itself as a redistributor of global surplus, not as an extractor. Its state-owned firms build infrastructure in Africa and Latin America, relying on local labour rather than forced relocations or land grabs. Its vast trade surpluses are recycled into global finance, with $750\u2013800 billion in US Treasuries effectively subsidising Western consumption \u2014 the opposite of imperial rent-extraction.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, China fails to meet the classic criteria of imperialism: no territorial conquest, no puppet regimes, no concentration of global capital in a financial oligarchy. Scholars argue that as long as state ownership and planning remain central, China will not evolve into an imperial power. Instead, it functions as a sui generis state-led economy, prioritising domestic stability and development over foreign domination.<\/p>\n

China thus fails the core criteria of an imperialist state: it does not concentrate global capital in a financial oligarchy, divide the world for super-profits, or subjugate clients. With dominant public ownership, state banks and planning, its foreign policy pressures differ from capitalist empires. Beijing\u2019s domestic focus on employment and stability reduces incentives for conquest, consistent with its stated rejection of hegemony.<\/p>\n

The writing is on the wall: a \u201cgarden\u201d fenced against a \u201cjungle\u201d encodes hierarchy, siege and paranoia, and in doing so writes its own obituary. The Shanghai Spirit has demonstrated that the contest between two models of order \u2014 one rooted in imperial nostalgia, the other in post-colonial possibility \u2014 is no longer abstract.<\/p>\n

In a cruel irony, Europe\u2019s elites, tethered to an increasingly irrelevant transatlantic alliance, risk missing the emergence of a Eurasian order. The second line of Ukraine\u2019s anthem \u2014 \u201cfate still smiles on us, fellow Ukrainians\u201d \u2014 now rings painfully hollow. One could say fate no longer smiles on Europe itself.<\/p>\n

A continent once imagined as history\u2019s vanguard has become a stage for decline, disorientation and crisis. Europe, the clockmaker of modernity, no longer keeps time. All the powers of \u201cold Europe\u201d, in holy alliance with their transatlantic partners, fight to preserve the illusion that their waning order still defines the future.<\/p>\n

However, history is moving elsewhere. The arrogance of Western elites collides with a simple fact: another civilisation, with deeper roots and broader horizons, has tabled a new proposal for world order. China\u2019s Global Civilisation Initiative directly negates Eurocentric universalism. It imagines plurality without domination, cooperation without hierarchy \u2014 principles resonating across the Global South.<\/p>\n

As Karl Marx once wondered, would Europe\u2019s reactionaries, reaching the Great Wall, find inscribed: \u201cR\u00e9publique chinoise \u2014 Libert\u00e9, \u00c9galit\u00e9, Fraternit\u00e9\u201d? The irony today is stark: while Europe retreats behind walls and fears of invasion, it is China, along with its partners, that invokes fraternity, equality and liberty not as abstractions, but as the material basis of multipolar development.<\/p>\n

The spectre haunting the world is no longer communism in its narrow European sense, but the collapse of Western universality itself. Against it rises a vision rooted in the long memory of civilisations, where the future is co-authored across continents.<\/p>\n

The substance behind the \u201cgarden vs jungle\u201d talk is alarming. Western powers routinely wage economic warfare, with the US and EU imposing unilateral sanctions on dozens of countries, often in defiance of the UN. A Lancet study found such sanctions \u201cas deadly as war itself”.<\/p>\n

Today, the US alone has sanctioned roughly 40% of all nations, cutting off trade and finance without UN approval.<\/p>\n

Economists Francisco Rodr\u00edguez, Silvio Rend\u00f3n, and Mark Weisbrot estimate that sanctions kill around 500,000 civilians annually. As they note, while commonly called \u201cinternational sanctions,\u201d \u201cthere is nothing international about them\u201d \u2013 they are unilateral acts serving powerful states, not global law or decency.<\/p>\n

In practice, China\u2019s \u201cdialectical\u201d anti-imperialism prioritises shared material interests over identity politics.<\/p>\n

The Tianjin Summit showcased pragmatic projects \u2013 a development bank, linked power grids, clean technology \u2013 with a narrative of civilisation serving diversity and cooperation. Civilisations were treated not as camps in conflict but as communities working on equal footing.<\/p>\n

As Foreign Minister Wang Yi summarised, the SCO will \u201cuphold the Shanghai Spirit\u2026 [and] make more contributions to building a multipolar world\u201d.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With nearly half the world\u2019s population and a quarter of global GDP, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has matured into a platform that challenges the very grammar of international politics, offering a vision that stands in stark contrast to the West\u2019s increasingly fenced-off, crisis-ridden order. At its recent summit in Tianjin \u2014 the largest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}