China-Russia Partnership and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is the first international organization established by China with an attempt to keep peace and stability in the border areas and advance economic cooperation and trade with the Republics of former Soviet Union. The research objectives of the chapter are to explore SCO from a Chinese perspective and its motivations, methods, and outcomes. It contributes to the scholarly discussion by analyzing SCO in the greater picture of China-Russia strategic partnership and China’s rise at the systemic (global) level and examining it in a political economy way. The chapter finds that China has adopted an economic diplomacy toward the member states of SCO, and SCO provides China an avenue to increasing its economic cooperation with and, by extension, political influence in Central Asia. The chapter concludes that China’s economic diplomacy is an integral part of a new foreign policy framework whose purpose is to ensure that with its economic rise, China will also ascend at the systemic (global) level by virtue of its rapidly gained wealth, power, and the expansion of political influence.