“Regarding the identity of the organization, it can be noted that the economic direction can act as a consensus for the Central Asian participants, and the values in the form of the “Shanghai spirit” have already occupied a solid niche in the narratives about the SCO,” noted political scientists Nargiza Muratalieva (Kyrgyzstan) and Symbat Abisheva (Kazakhstan) in an article specifically for CABAR.asia.
As it is known, the countries of Central Asia are members of a number of international organizations, whose activities partly duplicate each other, and sometimes even compete with each other. For the effective development of any organization, an important issue is not only the setting of goals and objectives, but also the uncovering of its identity. Considering the long history of the SCO development since 2001, the expansion of its agenda, area of responsibility, as well as the member states, the question of its identity still looks uncertain.
The SCO gained special attention after the start of the war in Ukraine, drawing the attention of different countries to its agenda, declarations, and future projects. Does the SCO gravitate more toward issues of regional security or economic cooperation? Does the SCO lay the foundation for the emergence of a qualitatively new unique international organization, or is its activity of a universal nature and covers a wide range of issues?
Overview of the positions of the SCO member states
In more than 20 years of existence, the SCO, the vast region of member states, represents almost 44 percent of the world’s population and a quarter of global GDP, and unites the four nuclear powers into one major regional organization.
The SCO has shown significant dynamism in expansion, but so far not in its efficiency: at the Samarkand summit in 2022, Iran signed a memorandum on full membership in the SCO, the status of a dialogue partner was granted to Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and Belarus also expressed its readiness to join the organization. Thus, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is increasingly gravitating towards the Global South. It is obvious that over the years the SCO has been doing well the tasks of a major international forum, but not a beneficiary of multilateral projects.
Under such circumstances, the SCO is often portrayed in Western circles as an inherently anti-Western bloc dominated by China and Russia, an “anti-NATO” or anti-American regional collective security organization. The SCO is even seen as an “Eastern Bloc” that seeks confrontation with the West and will become a “New Warsaw Pact” or “Eastern NATO” made up of authoritarian regimes.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, this “anti-NATO” discourse has been reinforced by Russian officials, in part due to its Western isolation and sanctions. Russia has pushed for a stronger military aspect of the organization, offering to hold joint military exercises next year. Moreover, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev “repeatedly mentioned the global confrontation, in which, in his opinion, Moscow and its SCO partners are on the same side.” Some Central Asian experts saw in this speech Russia’s desire to make the SCO a center of resistance to the US and its allies.
At the 2022 SCO summit in Samarkand, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev reiterated that the SCO is not an anti-American or anti-NATO alliance. According to the Samarkand Declaration, the member states “reaffirmed their commitment to building a more representative, democratic, just and multipolar world order.”
For the countries of Central Asia, the SCO has always been important for the development of regional economic cooperation and the elimination of security risks and threats. According to Central Asian experts, the SCO is important for the region, first of all, due to economic development, and not only security issues.
Chinese experts also believe that SCO members should integrate more deeply with Belt and Road countries in order to accelerate their economic development and better protect their ecology and environment.
Methodology
Considering the fact that 4 Central Asian countries are members of the SCO, and therefore backbone for the organization, the article attempts to identify development trends and directions of the SCO identity through content analysis of the mass media from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
A total of 551 articles were processed using both manual and automated data collection methods. 80 articles were collected manually from Google search results for the query “SCO” (Kazakhstan: informburo.kz, exclusive.kz, forbes.kz, vlast.kz, globalnews.kz, Uzbekistan: anhor.uz, gazeta .uz, uzdaily.uz, review.uz, kun.uz, Kyrgyzstan: kaktus.media, akchabar.kg, 24.kg, and Tajikistan: avesta.tj, rus.ozodi.org, asiaplustj.info) for 2021-2022. 471 articles were automatically retrieved for the same period of time from 2021 to 2022 from such online resources as: 24.kz, akipress.org, avesta.tj, tengrinews.kz, uzdaily.uz and www.inform.kz using Python script.
The data was cleaned and sorted by title, date, and article content in a tabular format in Excel. Moreover, all sentences in the content of the articles containing keywords related to the problems or identity of the SCO were accordingly placed in separate tables.
What is mentioned more often in articles about the SCO?
Judging by the publications in the online mass media, in the countries of Central Asia there is a high demand for the SCO for the implementation of economic projects and programs. Words such as economy, development and trade were in the top mentions with an indicator of several hundred times. The direction related to regional security turned out to be conditionally the second possible option for the development of the SCO, considering the structures created to strengthen regional security such as RATS, exercises, and exchange of information.
It is noteworthy that the phrase “Shanghai spirit” occurs about 75 times, which indicates that China is quite successful in promoting Sino-centric narratives within the SCO, and they not only come from the lips of politicians but are also actively replicated in Central Asian sources of information. In particular, according to the Chinese vision, the “Shanghai spirit” is expressed in mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, mutual consultation, respect for cultural diversity and the pursuit of common development. As can be seen, the “Shanghai spirit” narrative has taken root as a characteristic of the values and norms of the SCO member states, which indicates the success of China’s policy and role in the organization.
The third important area for the development of the SCO, according to content analysis, is digitalization projects with 67 mentions. This is higher than the mentions of humanitarian cooperation and other projects in the information sphere.
The data that the word “bloc” is quite rare confirms the thesis that the Central Asian countries are not interested in the image of the SCO as a bloc organization and the desire to give it a constructive character. Thus, the most frequent words that reflect the essence of the SCO are “organization”, “assosiation”, “forum”, “cooperation”, “dialogue” and the like. The SCO was never mentioned as “anti-NATO” and only once was it written as a “club”, which indicates a desire to distance itself from the associations of the “club of authoritarian countries”.
In the words characterizing the SCO, there is a trend towards the perception of the organization as unique and strategically important for the countries of Central Asia. Focusing on the capabilities of the SCO and on the interconnectedness of its member countries also correlates with the fairly frequent mention of the word “multilateral” by 24 times. This indicates the request of the countries of our region for multilateral projects that will contribute to the interconnectedness of Eurasia.
The regionality of the organization is confirmed by the frequency of mentioning the term region in 131 times. If we analyze the geographical directions, then the following picture emerges.
Although it is believed that China and Russia are the backbone member states of the SCO, there is more frequent mention of China and its initiatives, statements, compared to references to Russia and Russian political figures. Eurasia is mentioned quite often, considering the space of the organization, and also quite often, they write about Central Asia, in comparison with mentions of the EAEU. The frequency of references to Afghanistan indicates the concern of the Central Asian countries with the situation in the region, which is important from the point of view of security. In addition, this indicates the potential of the SCO in resolving the problems of Afghanistan.
Such data is interesting from the point of view of the organization’s focus on certain spatial and geographical indicators. Although the SCO has long since expanded to include India and Pakistan, in Central Asia, in the context of the SCO, South Asia is rarely mentioned.
Conclusion
It can be noted that important attention is paid to the development of the SCO in the mass media in the countries of Central Asia. As the content analysis of publications in the countries of Central Asia showed, the SCO is perceived as a platform for expressing one’s economic aspirations and promoting economic projects that have not yet been implemented within the organization. In addition, the 2022 summit showed a trend in the transformation of the SCO into an organization with clear economic and infrastructural goals. These goals include promoting new transport routes, diversifying communication channels, ensuring the stability of supply chains, and expanding opportunities for production growth.
Regarding the identity of the organization, it can be noted that the economic direction can act as a consensus for the Central Asian participants, and the values in the form of the “Shanghai spirit” have already taken a solid niche in the narratives about the SCO. In the same connection, content analysis showed that China and Asia are mentioned more often than Russia in publications about the SCO. In addition, it is important to note that the principles of non-alignment against third countries, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, have acquired a new meaning within the SCO, which demonstrates the interest in promoting the SCO as a strategically important organization that contributes to the connectivity of Eurasia, and not its fragmentation. Also, perhaps in connection with the pandemic, there is a trend for interest in the implementation of projects in the field of digitalization and new infrastructure projects.
The frequency of using words about the uniqueness of the SCO confirms its special role in Eurasia. At the same time, such a “feature” and “dissimilarity” to other organizations gives it a certain potential. As it is known, the SCO has the potential to change the geopolitical balance of power on the Eurasian continent. However, this is possible under the condition of the implementation of specific projects, and not focusing on the PR component in the form of a discussion club during the summits. The request for a qualitative reform of the SCO in depth has not received its development, in contrast to the movement in breadth. So far, after 21 years since the founding of the SCO, one has to say that the organization is still in the process of its formation.