Liu Zongyi: India’s Disruptive Role Threatens the SCO’s Future

"To many observers of international affairs, India has already become an internal cancer [内部毒瘤] threatening the healthy development of the SCO."

Today's edition opens with an introduction by Andrew Small, Senior Transatlantic Fellow with GMF’s Indo-Pacific Programme. He recently served as the inaugural China Fellow at IDEA, the advisory hub reporting directly to the President of the European Commission. Andrew is also the author of The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future and The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics. Very grateful to him for his contribution to this newsletter. — Thomas

In recent years, SCO meetings at various levels have taken the form of diplomatic hand-to-hand combat, with Indian officials refusing to support Beijing’s pet initiatives, and pushing back forcefully against Chinese efforts to intensify the use of the organisation as an anti-western vehicle. While China knew that the simultaneous admission of India and Pakistan would bring many of the two sides’ tensions to the table, it is the impact of the fraught Sino-Indian dynamics that has been far more damaging to Beijing’s agenda.

Thi…