The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is attracting significant attention from governments and scholars. This study examines the evolution of the SCO as a regional security provider and a framework for cooperation, drawing on fieldwork interviews with officials and experts from its member-states.

Part 1: The SCO as Organization. - 1. Michael Fredholm, Too Many Plans for War, Too Few Common Values: Another Chapter in the History of the Great Game or the Guarantor of Central Asian Security? 3. - 2. Pan Guang, The Spirit of the Silk Road: The SCO and China's Relations with Central Asia 20. - 3. Yu Bin, The SCO Ten Years After: In Search of Its Own Identity 29. - 4. Mirzokhid Rakhimov, The Institutional and Political Transformation of the SCO in the Context of Geopolitical Changes in Central Asia 62. - Part 2: The SCO and the World. - 5. Alyson J. K. Bailes and Jóhanna M. Thórdisardóttir, The SCO and NATO 85. - 6. Zhao Weiming, Relations between the SCO and United States: Retrospect and Prospects 118. - 7. Yang Hongxi, The Evolution of the U.S. Attitude towards the SCO 132. - 8. Ingmar Oldberg, The Importance of the SCO in a Russian Perspective 141. - 9. Li Lifan, The SCO and How Chinese Foreign Policy Works: The Global Influence of its Central Asia Policy 152. - 10. Swaran Singh, India and the SCO: Better Late Than Never 162. - 11. Anita Sengupta, Rethinking Regional Organizations: Turkey and the SCO 176. - 12. Yang Cheng, The Shanghai Spirit and SCO Mechanisms: Beyond Geopolitics 199. - Part 3: The SCO and Central Asia. - 13. Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, Friendship with Moderation: The Central Asian Point of View on the SCO 229. - 14. Zhuldyz Tulibayeva and Aigerim Sadvokassova, The SCO and Prospects for Regional Economic Cooperation in Central Asia 253. - 15. Liu Junmei and Zheng Min, Financial Cooperation among SCO Member States: Review and Prospects from China's Perspective 264. - 16. Sreemati Ganguli, The SCO: An Energy Alliance in the Making 277. - 17. Marianne Laanatza, Central Asia, Energy, and Trade Policies from the SCO's Perspective 294.

China’s need for energy has become a driving factor in contemporary world politics and a precondition for sustaining China’s continuing high economic growth. Accordingly, Chinese energy policy has been a political and strategic rather than market-driven policy. This book focuses on the need of a stable and secure investment environment which is necessary for the energy provision of China from the Central Asian states. The author argues that the institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.), the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between Russia and China and Chinese bilateral agreements with individual Central Asian states present an avenue and a framework of stability in which pipeline construction can commence. With the backing of the US in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Chinese involvement in the region has now been expanding. However, in order to stabilize the region for Chinese investment in energy resources, the author states that the US needs to be present in the region and that a strategic framework of cooperation between Russia, China and the US has to be developed. The book will be of interest to academics working in the field of International Security, International Relations and Central Asian and Chinese politics.

Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese authorities have gradually come to embrace multilateralism to realize their basic foreign policy objectives in maintaining a peaceful international environment and enhancing China's international status and influence. This embrace is largely based on pragmatic considerations. There is no denial, however, that elements of liberalism and constructivism gradually enter into the considerations of Chinese leaders. They accept, for example, that non-traditional security issues can only be tackled through genuine multilateralism. This volume carefully examines China's increased participation in multilateral organizations and mechanisms and its efforts to initiate and develop its own discourses on global affairs straddling Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Latin American continents. China's presence in international multilateral organizations has been providing developing countries a better chance to maintain a balance of power. Since China has no ambitious plan to transform the existing international order, its increasing enthusiastic engagement of multilateralism is likely to be accepted by the international community.

The role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in regional politics and the significance of the organization for U.S. interests are widely misunderstood. The organization is emphatically not a military bloc, and yet engages in joint activities which resemble military cooperation to U.S. eyes. It is, in theory, open to new members; but at present is highly unlikely to accept any. Its rhetoric firmly opposes U.S. presence and activity on the territory of member states, and yet individual member states leverage basing agreements with the U.S. to their advantage. The author reviews SCO's history and stated aspirations, and measures these against actual achievements. He concludes that, with the notable exception of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure(RATS), the great majority of SCO accomplishments are of little significance other than to provide an additional multinational vehicle through which China and in particular Russia can seek to counter U.S. and Western activity in Central Asia.

This book examines, comprehensively, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, the regional organisation which consists of China, Russia and most of the Central Asian countries. It charts the development of the Organisation from the establishment of its precursor, the Shanghai Five, in 1996, through its own foundation in 2001 to the present. It considers the foreign policy of China and of the other member states, showing how the interests and power of the member states determine the Organisation’s institutions, functional development and relations with non-members. It explores the Organisation’s activities in the fields of politics and security co-operation, economic and energy co-operation, and in culture and education, and concludes with a discussion of how the Organisation is likely to develop in future. Throughout, the book sets the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in the context of China’s overall strategy towards Central Asia.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This book explores if and how Russian policies towards the Far East region of the country – and East Asia more broadly – have changed since the onset of the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Following the 2014 annexation and the subsequent enactment of a sanctions regime against the country, the Kremlin has emphasized the eastern vector in its external relations. But to what extent has Russia’s 'pivot to the East' intensified or changed in nature – domestically and internationally – since the onset of the current crisis in relations with the West? Rather than taking the declared 'pivot' as a fact and exploring the consequences of it, the contributors to this volume explore whether a pivot has indeed happened or if what we see today is the continuation of longer-duration trends, concerns and ambitions.