SCO meet highlights China’s growing role in inner Asia

NEWS: C Raja Mohan writes: SCO meet highlights China’s growing role in inner Asia, India’s challenge

Context: Chinese and Russian defence ministers are attending a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Delhi this week. Also, India will chair the Eurasian regional forum this year.

About SCO: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) (est. 2001; HQ: Beijing) is a Eurasian political, economic, international security and defence organization. 

India’s challenges in dealing with SCO:

⦁ Challenge	⦁ Description
⦁ Differences between India and Pakistan	⦁ Differences on cross-border terrorism, geopolitics, Kashmir dispute.
⦁ Differences between India and China	⦁ India’s concern over China’s BRI initiative and Chinese expansionist policy on India’s borders.
⦁ Intelligence sharing	⦁ India may be hesitant to share intelligence with Pakistan and China within the SCO’s anti-terrorism structures.
⦁ SCO’s Stance on Kashmir	⦁ The SCO may not take a firm stance on the Kashmir dispute that India would like. China is likely to take Pakistan’s side, creating tensions.
⦁ Limited support for the India-China border dispute	⦁ The SCO’s other members may not have the capability to stand up to China in any border dispute between India and China, limiting the SCO’s ability to help India.
⦁ Containing China’s rise	⦁ India wants to contain China’s influence in the region, but joint containment efforts may not happen within the confines of the SCO.
⦁ Afghanistan is not part of SCO	⦁ Cooperation with Central Asian states is important for India in combating terrorism in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not part of the SCO.

Conclusion:

While the SCO has been successful in attracting a growing number of regional states, its internal contradictions are casting a shadow over its strategic coherence.

Practice Questions for Prelims

In which of the following groups are all the three countries members of SCO?
a) China, Turkmenistan, Russia
b) India, Azerbaijan, Pakistan
c) Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, India
d) Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China

Ans. d)

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