Russo-Chinese Counterterrorism Partnership Within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The Russo-Chinese cooperation is aimed at fighting international terrorism. It is important because terrorist organizations are expanding their sphere of influence in many Eurasian countries. Today the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are adopting and implementing measures to support law and order while international terrorist groups are active in various growth areas of these countries. Given a relatively short historical period within which some independent states, members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, have existed, they find it vital to deal with matters related to fighting international crime, which makes them combine their efforts so as to reduce the degree of terrorist threats and take actions to improve the criminogenic situation in society. Striving for progress when handling the problem of opposition to terrorist organizations, the member states have elaborated a number of international regulatory documents valid in the territories of all or some of these countries, which has a positive impact on the performance of the counterterrorism programmes in which the leading countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization participate. This research is aimed at identifying the most promising areas for cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation in fighting terrorism as part of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In order to attain this aim, formal legal, analytical, and comparative legal methods are used. As a result, it has been found out that the Organization plays an important role and has great potential in fighting terrorism. However, some drawbacks have been detected in the legal framework built for the interaction of the states, which made us look for areas where consistent measures must be taken to ensure elaboration and introduction of detailed legal documents that must become the basis for joint actions of the law enforcement agencies to fight international terrorism and improve their anti-terrorism mechanisms.