SCO opens the door for South Asia to become a global engine

Al Mamun Harun Ur Rashid :

For South Asia, often sidelined in Western forums, the SCO offers a stronger voice to demand fair trade, more climate finance, and global reforms alongside Central Asia and China.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), founded in 2001, has grown into the world’s largest regional body of mutual cooperation, encompassing over 3.4 billion people, about 42% of the global population, and a combined $30 trillion economy.

Unlike NATO, the SCO, comprising 27 countries and cooperation across more than 50 areas, is not a military alliance. It focuses on trade, energy, technology, and tackling security challenges such as drugs, terrorism, and cybercrime.

At the Tianjin Summit in China on September 1, the SCO adopted a 2026–2035 Development Strategy, created new centers on anti-drug cooperation and cyber security, endorsed the idea of an SCO development bank, and streamlined membership rules with a new “partner status” that Laos has already joined this time.

SCO leaders pledged cooperation on AI, green energy, infrastructure, and governance reforms, stressing that no country can face today’s challenges alone amid rising protectionism and bloc politics.

For South Asia, the SCO’s message is urgent. This region, home to nearly two billion people across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, stands at a critical crossroads.

Collectively, South Asia’s GDP is about $4.5 trillion, and growth remains strong at around 6% in 2024, easing slightly to 5.8 percent in 2025. India alone contributes more than $3.7 trillion, but smaller economies like Bhutan or Maldives still hover below $6 billion. This imbalance shows both the region’s potential and its risks for its huge, youthful population but weak regional integration and poor cooperation.

South Asia, with its diverse geography, faces a host of problems that no single country can solve alone. Despite strong growth, more than 200 million people remain in extreme poverty and youth unemployment is high.

Climate change is making things worse: heat waves, cyclones, and floods are more severe, with Pakistan losing $30 billion in the 2022 floods, Bangladesh threatened by rising seas, and India recording unprecedented heat. Beyond these three, Sri Lanka struggles with debt and drought, Nepal with remittance dependence and landslides, Bhutan with volatile hydropower and migration, the Maldives with rising seas and debt, and Afghanistan with conflict, drought, and food insecurity. These overlapping crises show that only regional cooperation can offer real solutions.

Energy insecurity adds to the strain. India alone is projected to drive a quarter of global energy demand growth by 2040, while Pakistan and Bangladesh rely heavily on imports.

Shared rivers like the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra carry the risk of water conflicts, yet regional institutions such as SAARC remain paralysed by India-Pakistan tensions. The truth is, all these problems spill across borders, and no matter how strong one country becomes, it cannot wall itself off from its neighbours.

SAARC founded in 1985 has failed to provide output for narrow politics overlooking bigger interests of the people, whereas SCO brings India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran, and Central Asia under one umbrella. Through SCO, China has projected a world of multi-polarity rather than narrow unipolar or bi-polar world.

If India keeps chasing regional hegemony, it gains little, while China builds cooperation that lifts others and itself. Strengthening people-to-people ties, China envisions the Global South as one family of diverse civilizations.

Over the past five years, trade between China and SCO members has reached a record $512.4 billion, and China’s cumulative trade with the bloc since its founding has crossed $2.3 trillion. Nearly 14,000 kilometers of land transport routes now connect member states, while the China-Europe Railway has run over 110,000 trains.

For South Asia, the potential benefits of SCO membership are significant though Bangladesh and Bhutan are no partners of it yet. Trade and connectivity could improve dramatically: intra-regional trade is under 5 percent, far below the EU’s 60 percent or ASEAN’s 35 percent, and high logistics costs of 13 to 15 percent of GDP could be reduced through corridors like the International North-South Transport Corridor.

Energy security is another gain, as SCO members such as Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan hold large oil and gas reserves, and pipelines like Iran–Pakistan could reduce import costs.

South Asia cannot advance if India as bigger country remains stuck in rivalries. As the region’s biggest economy and market, India’s hostile ties with Pakistan, tensions with Nepal and Sri Lanka, and mistrust with Bangladesh over water and migration have left SAARC defunct.

In the SCO, India cannot dominate the way it does in SAARC because it is a platform for mutual commitment to cooperation. If India wants to benefit from Eurasian corridors, energy pipelines, or financial institutions, it will have to find common ground with its neighbours.

As President Xi Jinping reminded delegates in Tianjin, the Shanghai Spirit rests on mutual trust, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilization and pursuit of common development. Forgetting old rivalries, India should take this seriously and focus on joint prosperity and cooperation to counter common challenges.

The SCO also has significant geopolitical importance. Unlike Western initiatives, it provides a platform that is open to developing countries, focusing on cooperation rather than confrontation.

By contrast, SCO, BRICS, and the Belt and Road now engage over 160 countries, offering financing and development projects. Critics say China seeks influence, but many Global South states see real gains—roads, ports, and energy grids the West never funded.

Unlike the West’s quest for hegemony, China guides partners toward shared growth and prosperity.

For South Asia, often sidelined in Western forums, the SCO offers a stronger voice to demand fair trade, more climate finance, and global reforms alongside Central Asia and China.

The Tianjin Summit laid out the roadmap: rivalry will turn South Asia’s demographic dividend into disaster; cooperation could make it the world’s next growth engine.

(The Writer is a Diplomatic Correspondent of The New Nation).