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SCO Summit Review: Xi, Modi & Putin Present a United Front

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Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s managing editor, Kobus Venstaden, in Cape Town, or are you still in Johannesburg?

No, I’m Cape Town.

Back in Cape Town. Beautiful, lovely Cape Town. And we’re coming to you today at the end of what’s been a very busy and eventful past couple of days here at the China Global South project, covering the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit that just wrapped up in the northeastern Chinese port city of Tianjin.

Kobus, I have to be honest with you. I didn’t really expect very much from the SCO Summit because this is a group that’s been around since 2001, really has very little to show for what it’s done.

In terms of branding, you’ve got the BRICS, you’ve got any number of organizations, you’ve got all these other Chinese initiatives that are going on, and the SCO just kind of languished out there. But this summit was actually quite eventful.

More than 20 heads of state and government were there. Also, 10 international organizations, including:

• the United Nations
• the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
• the CIS
• the SCO Secretariat
• and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Altogether, at the end of this two-day summit, this gathering, 24 documents were approved by the SCO.

The main one, of course, is the Tianjin Declaration. And there were three main points that were in that one. And Kobus, I’d love for you to reflect on some of this:

• Commitment to a more equitable, multipolar global order. That is Chinese for, we don’t like the U.S.
• Enhanced security cooperation and condemnation of terrorism. That satisfies a lot of the SCO members who are dealing with terrorism.
• Economic integration, financial independence, and institutional expansion.

So those were the three main tenets of the Tianjin Declaration.

Also, some very interesting side points in this massive declaration, focusing specifically on Israel. There was denunciation of what Israel is doing to Gaza. And let me just quote from this:

“Member states expressed deep concern over escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, strongly condemn acts causing civilian casualties and humanitarian disasters. Call for comprehensive, lasting ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian aid.”

Kobus, what makes the references to Gaza so interesting is, if you recall, back in June, the SCO tried to do a statement. Well, they did issue a statement, but they did it. This was on the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran.

And when they issued that statement, India was not in the room. And that was very surprising. The Indian External Affairs Ministry then had to issue a follow-up statement saying,

“Hey, guys, we weren’t in the room.”

Now, that was back in the day when India’s relationship with the United States was very different than it is today. Israel and India have had a close relationship. Things have changed now. India went along with these statements on Iran.

And there was also, just very quickly, an update to that statement on the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran. India joined other SCO members to strongly condemn those attacks. Again, maybe a reflection of the deterioration in U.S.-India relations that is having an impact on Israel.

Before we get into the details of what was done, let’s just start with your impressions of what you thought from the summit, your takeaways from it. And we, you know, again, and we’re talking also about the bilaterals between Putin, Xi, and Modi and Xi. Give us your big overview take.

You know, as you say, I think it’s a more significant gathering than a lot of people assumed. In the first place, the optics of it was very striking.

You know, it’s not only that all of this hugs and smiles and walking hand in hand and being in the same limo together and so on between Modi and Putin and kind of very warm receptions with Xi as well. All of this was happening as Western Twitter was melting down around a whole bunch of rumors around Donald Trump’s health. So it was an interesting moment for that.

But I think more substantially, it also really kind of moved forward, I think, China as the center of a vision of what a different form of global governance could look like. You know, and of course, that was just bolstered, of course, by the situation in Gaza, where, you know, kind of it’s not only a full genocide. It’s now also circulated by the White House, another kind of crazy AI prospectus of flying cars in futuristic cities on essentially ethnically cleansed land.

So it’s this kind of vision, very much a broken and limited kind of Western-centric order.

There was this laying out of an alternative non-Western vision, which was very striking timing for that.

That was one of the comments I made in some of the media interviews:

“We got a peek now at what a post-American-led international order is.”

When I posted that comment on LinkedIn, people asked, “What does that actually mean?”

It means that for the first time since the late 1950s, the United States is not setting the rules, standards, and frameworks for international economic security and global governance.

This is a very new and fascinating stage of history.

It’s not to say that Xi, Modi, Putin will completely take over, or that the West is dead and everything is going to hell. It’s just starting to change, and we’re seeing that right now.

One of the other big takeaways, Kobus, is the presence of more than 20 countries, particularly Southeast Asian countries, showing up for the first time.

• Prabowo Subianto canceled last minute due to massive unrest in Indonesia.
• We had Vietnamese Prime Minister Chin.
• Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar was there.

This is significant because when you look at the map of member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), they basically ring all around China.

The member states cover:

• Southeast Asia
• South Asia, including India and Pakistan
• The Afghan-Iran corridor leading into Central Asia and Russia

It’s interesting to compare that against a map distributed last year showing the latticework of U.S. security partnerships also surrounding China.

Xi Jinping expressed frustration that China feels surrounded.

So comparing the new map of the SCO with U.S. security relationships that encircle China is quite revealing.

What’s your sense about this expanded presence of Southeast Asia and the observer states that came along?

It seems to me that, in the first place, it’s a form of insurance policy.

A lot of these countries can’t afford not to have a friendly relationship with China.

Countries positioned as part of a U.S. alliance network, acting as a frontline bulwark against China-such as the Philippines-are increasingly feeling isolated.

The Philippines’ positioning hasn’t even bought it an exemption from tariffs, which is notable.

We’re seeing possible shifts in India too. India is a very complicated actor, so who can say what’s happening internally?

From the outside, a similar shift seems to be on the Indian side.

While strengthening relationships at the SCO in Tianjin, India was also potentially shoring up anti-China relationships with Japan in the same week.

That’s always India’s MO, playing all sides simultaneously.

At the same time, what’s clear is that China cannot be neglected; relations with China must come first as an insurance policy.

I like that framing of an insurance policy, because many analysts from India, Vietnam, and the United States have told me:

“Don’t read too much into the optics of what we’re seeing.”

These are still intensely complex relationships.

The smiles and hugs among leaders on the floor and on social media were largely for the cameras.

Beneath the surface, relationships with China are far more complex than they appear.

Certainly, this applies to India, Vietnam, and Russia.

We want to be careful not to overinterpret these developments.

Nonetheless, several themes emerged against the backdrop of the changing relationship the United States has with the world. Particularly, a lot of the member states of the SCO have very contentious relationships with the United States, Iran being one of them, India now, China certainly, Russia.

Pakistan, interestingly, Kobus, is not one that has a rather contentious relationship for a change. While the U.S.-Pakistan relationship for a lot of the past 10 years has been very rocky, to say the least, Trump seems to like Pakistan right now. So, again, these are strange times that we live in.

Let’s talk a little bit about the big speeches that took place, and we’re going to play some soundbites from Xi Jinping’s keynote address that he gave. He, of course, focused on the United States, but as is typical with Xi, he never says the U.S. by name.

Let’s take a listen to his remarks about global governance, and that was a major theme.

“We were the first to put forth the vision of global governance, featuring extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit, as an effort to practice true multilateralism. We deepened cooperation with the United Nations and other international organizations, and played a constructive role in international and regional affairs. We always stand on the side of international fairness and justice, champion inclusiveness and mutual learning between civilizations, and oppose hegemonism and power politics. We should uphold fairness and justice; we must promote a correct historical perspective on World War II, and oppose the Cold War mentality, block confrontation, and bullying practices. We should safeguard the UN-centered international system, and support the multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core; we should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world, and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and make the global governance system more just and equitable.”

So that sounded pretty bland and boring, but there is a lot of coded language in there that is specifically directed at the United States; so the references to the multipolar system, that is in opposition to what the Chinese feel is unipolarity from the United States; the reference to, you know, hegemony that the Chinese long accused the United States of doing and engaging, and also the reference to supporting the United Nations and multilateral systems like the WTO.

That’s a little bit of a stretch, frankly, when they call out supporting the WTO, given that China has been in violation of any number of WTO rules; but we’ll shelve that for another discussion.

Nonetheless, Kobus, what did you hear in that address, where he’s kind of coded his criticism of the United States?

It was interesting for me that China is now the strongest defender of this kind of rules-based multilateral order, you know, after years of the U.S. positioning itself as a defender of that order.

So, you know, I think it was interesting, both this speech and then the larger comments about the global governance initiative we will get to, I think was an acknowledgment that the UN system both is fully dysfunctional, and yet it still remains the only real kind of global democratic institution.

There is no other space in which the opinions of global South countries actually get a vote or where their opinions are actually even heard. No, there is no other such space.

So, in that sense, I think what I read from this is a kind of an illustration of a point that I’ve been making more, like more often recently, that I don’t think the future of geopolitics is a U.S.-China split. I don’t think it’s an East-West split.

I think that the East-West split is embedded within a much more fundamental, much larger North-South split, you know, and there I think that China is, to a certain extent, simply articulating a wave of anger and resentment, I think, coming from the global South, about the mismanagement of global governance under Western leadership.

And so, China, I think, is to a certain extent a lucky bystander, kind of like riding that wave and positioning itself as the articulator of, but I think the position is much more widespread.

And I think there is growing disgust, I think, with kind of where the West has ended up, you know, on:

• climate
• human rights
• global governance
• corruption

on every single metric, the West has failed.

But the combination of leadership, “quote-unquote,” and or hegemony, you know, as it’s kind of lived out in this kind of global system, I think, is reaching a kind of a crisis point.

And, you know, so I think there’s going to be, this is an early example, I think, of what is going to become a much broader kind of pushback, I think, right across the world.

Yeah, it’s interesting what you say, because last year at this time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was traipsing around the world, talking about how the U.S. is the guardian of the rules-based international order, and it’s China that wants to mess everything up. Remember that? And that was his selling point. And then Ursula von der Leyen saying the same thing, that it’s Europe and the U.S. and the West that want to preserve the rules-based international order.

So we’ve had a flip here. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio today saying that the rules-based international order has not served the United States well. And so that’s why the U.S. is abandoning it outright.

There were some notable developments there that, again, these SCO gatherings up until now have been rather just filled with lots of happy talk and rhetoric and lots of maybe discussions about how they don’t like the U.S. and there’s unfairness in the system, blah, blah. We’ve heard all this.

This speech, though, from Xi did change something this time because this is the first time that I can recall that he’s actually put cash on the table for the SCO, lots of cash.

Xi Jinping proposed:

• The creation of a new SCO development bank
• A new energy cooperation forum
• $1.4 billion in loans over the next three years
• $280 million in aid that will be given between now and the end of the year

Let’s take a listen to the proposal that Xi is addressing in terms of development finance:

“China has always focused on taking real actions to ensure better development of the SCO. Going forward, China plans to implement 100 small and beautiful livelihood projects in member states with such need. It will provide $2 billion in grant to SCO member states within this year and will issue an additional $10 billion in loan to the member banks of the SCO interbank consortium over the next three years. Starting from next year, China will double the current number of SCO-specific scholarships.”

Interesting contrast, again, with the United States, that as the U.S. is closing itself off to international students, is cutting foreign aid, is cutting development assistance, here are the Chinese kind of stepping up.

Interesting, though, Kobus, that the numbers that the Chinese are putting out are vastly smaller than what they used to put out. Remember, $50 billion is what they used to put out for the forum on China-Africa cooperation packages. And here we have $1 billion for a group that covers significantly more people. Nonetheless, this is the first time that I can recall that the SCO has cash on the table from the Chinese and is putting some proverbial meat on the bones to bring some substance to the group.

Yeah, it’s interesting. There hasn’t been, as you were saying, major funding proposals or funding initiatives from China in this group yet. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what this translates to, what the funding will actually be used for.

As you say, there’s a certain amount of grants and then a certain amount of loans. The number of loans is much larger. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how this then fits into Belt and Road projects, for example, and so on. What specifically they’ll end up using for you.

And something just to be a little bit cautious about is oftentimes these grants and these loans, as we’ve seen in some of the FOCAC and other initiatives, tend to benefit Chinese entities.

• There are loans for Huawei to go out and install telecom networks in other countries.
• And while that’s important for other countries, at the end of the day, like a lot of aid, it’s a jobs program or a development finance program or corporate welfare for domestic interest.

So, we will not be able to figure out what actually happens. The Chinese are notoriously opaque about the performance of these commitments. So, we don’t know how much of the lending will occur. They don’t issue reports. There’s no visibility or transparency into this. We just have to kind of take their word that this is going to happen.

But nonetheless, interesting contrast given the times that we’re in.

Kobus, let’s talk about something else that he addressed during the gathering. And he did this to the SEO Plus group.

Okay, and this is interesting because just like the BRICS is expanding, so is the SCO. Let me just walk you through these concentric circles so you can kind of see where they are:

• At the core are the founding members:
  • China
  • Russia
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Tajikistan
  • Uzbekistan

For the bulk of the history, those were the main members. And this was a Central Asian organization. They then added:

• Belarus
• Iran
• Pakistan
• India as member states.

Now, they’re going to expand this circle, and it’s a large group, and I won’t go through all of it. But it includes:

• Azerbaijan
• Laos
• Cambodia
• Turkey
• Saudi Arabia
• Egypt
• Qatar
• Bahrain
• The Maldives
• Myanmar

These are all dialogue partners, and a lot of these countries were there.

The Egyptian prime minister was there. Hun Manet of Cambodia, the prime minister, was there. Erdogan, the Turkish president, was there for the first time in five years. Now, in this dialogue of what they’re calling the SCO Plus, Xi talked about something called the Global Governance Initiative, GGI. If you’re keeping score at home, this is the latest G, okay? So work with me here, Kobus.

Now we have the Global Governance Initiative. We have Global Security Initiative, Development Initiative, Civilization Initiative, and the AI Initiative, okay? So this is all part of the infrastructure of policy under the framework or the Rubicon of the Community for Common Destiny. This is the CCD. That’s Xi’s overarching domestic and foreign policy. These Gs, these five Gs, are all part of that.

The Global Governance Initiative has five elements to it:

• Sovereign equality
• International rule of law
• Multilateralism
• People-centered approach
• Real results

What are we to make of this? I think this is quite significant. It is one of these kind of global initiatives, but I think it provides an underlying structure into which some of the other global initiatives fit.

So I think it provides the first kind of glimpse of what the kind of plan is for how all of these different initiatives are supposed to link together towards some form of global governance system. So it still is really focused on the UN. It’s still, you know, it’s essentially, from what my understanding is, essentially, the idea is a kind of a supercharged and more empowered UN where sovereign states have fully equally treated.

So it seems that it would then call for significant UN reform, you know, particularly to increase kind of global self-voices. It’s explicitly global self-focused. So that’s the other interesting thing is that, you know, kind of it puts global self-empowerment in the global system kind of at the center of all of this.

And then development, security, kind of digital governance and kind of conversations between civilizations, you know, are then these kind of like these systems, like sectors that fit into this wider kind of view of a reformed global governance system.

So it’s all very vague, it’s all very kind of broad strokes, but at the same time, it becomes essentially the only, you know, kind of other, you know, competing vision of what a post-reform global governance system would look like.

Considering that, you know, what’s essentially coming out of beyond general kind of lip service to Africa being the future, you know, kind of there’s like, you know, nothing of the kind is coming out of any kind of like real development or like, I mean, real reform vision is coming out of Western circles.

The, I think, Western circles essentially happy with hegemony, right? Kind of that’s, that’s how they like it. So, in this sense, this is a, this is a very interesting kind of like counter vision, albeit quite vague. So we’ll have to see kind of how that actually shakes out.

This focus on governance, I thought was interesting. And now I said, in one of my comments to the press, I said that they’re “saying the quiet part out loud.”

For a long time, China was creating this parallel international governance architecture. The AIIB, that was a new development finance institution, the BRICS bank, the BRICS itself. We have the 4Gs and now the 5Gs that were there.

Again, this whole structure that was not necessarily meant to rival or replace the U.S. and European-led system, but just to create more room for the Chinese to maneuver within a system. And also the Russians kind of buy into this as well. But they never explicitly talked about governance the way that they are now.

And I think that they sense the opportunity that there is such a deficit of trust in the United States and in many respects in Europe as well. As you pointed out, there just are zero ideas coming from the U.S. and Europe today about the future of governance. There’s nothing forward-looking.

When U.S. and European diplomats sit down with their counterparts in Namibia and in Laos and in other parts of the world, and they say,

“Well, what’s your vision? What do you want to do?”

There’s really nothing on the table coming out of these countries. As you talked about, they want to preserve the way that things were.

I don’t know, and I’d be interested to get your take about how many, say, African countries look to these governance initiatives and say:

• “We want to be a part of that.”
• “We want to model part of our systems on what the Chinese are putting forward.”

But at least it’s a forward-looking vision. It’s something. It’s optimistic. And maybe they don’t sign up for the whole thing, but at least they buy on with the idea that there’s an idea on the table. What’s your take on that?

I think on the African side, the repeated language of sovereignty and state sovereignty brings some comfort, because that is always, on the African side, always a kind of an obsession. I think because they’ve been-

Why is it an obsession, just out of curiosity? I mean, it’s an obsession with everybody. I mean, all countries value their sovereignty, but why specifically, you’re saying, in Africa? Because African countries have endured many more risks to their sovereignty, I think, over time. So it was a very hard one in the post-colonial liberalization-I mean, the liberation era, I mean. And since then, the states have been badly treated by the international system. So there’s been lots of loss of sovereignty as well. So that, I think, would be important for them.

I think the kind of specific reforms are still at such a vague level that I think, like, people-countries who sign up will mostly sign up around the kind of spirit of international reform, rather than-and the very specific kind of specific reforms are relatively down, still down the line, I think. You know, the way it’s been framed also emphasizes that they would have a voice in the reforms, so-you know, which is another thing that they would want. So, you know, so I think, I think, in general, I think at the moment it’s, you know, it’s a relatively low-cost thing to sign up to, I think, for global South countries.

I think, you know, it also comes against the-I think the larger messaging-like, I think the kind of Western support of Israel in Gaza is sending a larger message, I think, to the global South.

And I think that has been, you know, kind of a lot of set of messages around the limits of Western human rights thinking, about the limits of their opposition to genocide. So I think beyond the specifics of the Gaza crisis, I think the larger impact has been:

• A very rapid erosion of any kind of, you know, bona fides on the Western side.

You know, so I think de-risking from Western power, you know, kind of is an increasingly, you know, kind of, like, urgent kind of, like, issue in the rest of the global South, far outside of the Middle East. And, you know, and so this kind of talk about global governance reform, global systemic reform, and so on, you know, fits, like, lands in, you know, kind of in that kind of space where the idea that the West has any kind of, like, universal kind of, like, human rights agenda at all,

I think it’s largely kind of, like, falling off the table, you know, because of the larger implications of Gaza.

But how do you reconcile, and I’m not asking you to defend the SCO here, but you’re obviously a very big critic of Israel for what it’s doing in Gaza, understandably. But at the same time, the SCO, silent on what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And it just seems a little bit hypocritical. And, of course, South Africa comes under very similar criticism as well for calling out Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, but staying silent on what Putin is doing in Ukraine. How are we supposed to reconcile those two?

I think it shows, as you frequently say,

“principles are subject to circumstance.”

And I think that certainly the Ukraine crisis and the UAE’s involvement in the Sudan genocide are very significant complications of this view and raises very significant questions about, you know, about whether a group like the SCO is able to really push, you know, a form of reform, like global governance reform.

At the same time, and this is a kind of a difficult needle to thread, but I think the Gaza, I think, has an interesting kind of devaluing effect, not only on Western bona fides, but on the entire language of Western rights and international law governance, you know, from the Second World War to now. So, I think in that sense, there’s no comparing of atrocities. They’re all horrifying. But in some ways, I think Gaza has a larger kind of systemic knock-on effect in terms of forcing a systemic rethink of what global governance is going to look like. Because the language of post-World War II governance has been so damaged, I think, in the process.

Yeah, which I think Ukraine and Russia has contributed to as well. I mean, remember, the UN has, it’s all part of a bigger problem.

So, in addition to everything that was going on with the SCO as a multilateral group, which was the Monday sessions on Sunday, was really a day reserved for bilateral meetings. And in typical Chinese fashion, whether it’s Xi Jinping or Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, they like to do this kind of speed-dating type of bilateral gatherings.

So, on Sunday alone, Xi met with more than a dozen leaders from:

• Maldives
• Nepal
• Kyrgyzstan
• Azerbaijan
• Belarus
• Cambodia
• Egypt
• Kazakhstan
• Turkey
• Vietnam
• Armenia

And, of course, the big one on Sunday, the one that everybody was anticipating and expecting, was the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is something that has been in the works for weeks.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi went to New Delhi to coordinate this meeting. We all expected it. It was, again, a big step forward in the reconciliation that’s been underway between these two countries for the better part of a year.

A lot of the coverage in the United States, predictably, where main character syndrome is a problem, said it’s because of Donald Trump and the implosion of the U.S.-India relationship that Xi and Modi are getting together. Most India analysts and China analysts would disagree with that, saying it certainly is a factor. But at the end of the day, both countries have a vested interest in de-escalating their relationship.

This was very big.

They agreed to very vague promises to de-escalate and demilitarize parts of the border. They didn’t give any specific details on that. Modi did announce that direct flights are going to resume, something that we also had expected. And it looks like, and the way the Indian media was framing it, this is a reset of the India-China relationship.

What was your takeaway from the Modi-Xi meeting? I would agree. I think it’s oversimplifying to say that the U.S. pushed India into China’s embrace. Obviously, India and China have been moving towards normalizing their relationships for more than a year. It’s part of that evolution.

Did Donald Trump smooth the way? Certainly, I think. I think, you know, kind of like we may have seen more ambiguity from India around this. We may not have seen a person-to-person meeting. We may have seen a whole different set of optics. And that’s true, not only around India-China, but also India-Russia.

But that said, I think it’s part of a much larger story, of course, which is the normalization of the relationship between two Asian superpowers, which I think ends up being very bad news for Western power, right?

Kind of like in the larger sense is that cooperation and the closer coordination, albeit always fractious, but the little bit of closer coordination we’ve seen earlier this year between South Korea, Japan, and China. That was even more notable in some cases than, you know. So, these are all signs that Asia is shifting, that they’re trying to find ways of working stuff out between them without involving Western involvement. And, you know, so that is all very notable, I think.

Yeah, so she also held a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin, and I didn’t think that was very interesting. They kind of stuck to their prepared scripts.

• The U.S. is bad.
• We are the best partners we’ve ever been.

It was many of the same talking points that we’ve heard from Putin and Xi in the past. Nothing near the, again, the importance of what we saw from the Modi-Xi relationship.

Apparently, whatever happened in Tianjin did get under the skin, predictably, of U.S. President Donald Trump. He took to Truth Social. I don’t know if you saw this, but let me read you some of his post:

“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India. It’s about $100 billion each way, I think. But they do a tremendous amount of business with us.”

In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest quote-unquote client, but we sell them very little. Until now, a totally one-sided relationship that has been for many decades. And then he goes off to say it has been a totally one-sided disaster. So, that relationship doesn’t look like it’s going to repair anytime soon.

We have to talk about the video. Okay? You know what I’m talking about. I posted this thing up. Okay.

So, there was a video of one of the reception rooms. Try and picture all of the leaders with their translators. No press, as far as I could see, were there. So, it was not a public event.

There was a camera, from what we best can deduce, from Chinese state media that was there. Modi and Putin come walking down, beaming with a smile. Modi is holding Putin’s hand, okay? And they walk straight up to Xi. And the three of them, in view of the camera, have this kind of laughing, joyful talk.

Again, was this choreographed or was it improvised? Who knows? Does it really matter?

The message that I took away from this was, and I wrote this in my column,

“F you, Donald Trump.”

That’s what the message was. That’s the only thing I could think that, I mean, it was literally to kind of say, if you thought you could pressure us into submission, either through these Truth Social posts or through your tariffs.

Remember, India now has the second highest tariffs behind only China:

China: 55%
India: 50%

And Modi seemed to say, “F you,” complete F you. And if you wanted me to back away from Russian oil, I’m holding this guy’s hand. That’s what, I mean, the optics were just stunning.

That video, and just last interesting points here - that video must have been shot by Chinese state media because nobody else would have been in the room in that circumstance. Chinese state media did not broadcast that video anywhere. I looked up and down Chinese media. I looked on broadcasts. I looked on Weibo, on WeChat. Nowhere did I see it.

However, the Kremlin put their watermark on it, and Narendra Modi put it on his official YouTube channel. So, clearly, it was distributed to those two administrations to disseminate. Interesting media messaging that’s going on here.

Again, hard to tell. Improvised, intentional, strategic, accidental. Whatever it was, I think it was very powerful.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t but compare it to those pictures of Ursula von der Leyen and Macron and so on, sitting in the hallway, waiting, as if in a doctor’s waiting room, waiting for Trump. You know, the point that I think that it made, like, who knows how much real fun was had at the SCO, but then no one has fun while spending time with Donald Trump.

So, as you say, it was this kind of very friendly, warm, you know, BFFs forever kind of optics. You know, like, someone on Twitter said that it reminded them of three uncles at an Indian wedding that already have kind of, like, property disputes lodged with the local court, but here they are all hugging anyway. That was kind of the vibe it gave me.

It was very performative, clearly papered over some of the very real disputes between them, but who cares, because here they are anyway. And we are at a moment of peak optics. We’re at a moment where facts have officially been devalued. They’re not even in the conversation anymore, right?

Kind of like, it’s all optics and narratives. And others can play the narrative game too, right? Kind of, it’s not only Trump. Now it’ll be interesting to see how the Trump administration responds. I assume more tariffs, probably. Well, maybe, yeah.

One other of the major optics was Modi, separate from this video, so hugged. And there were pictures of this, and the best tweet that I saw on this, or post on X, whatever you call it today, was from one of India’s most famous TV presenters, TV anchors. And she said, showing the picture of Putin and Modi hugging,

“Somewhere in Washington, a think tank submitted a funding proposal,”

which I thought was a great kind of caption for that. And that’s where we are. So the optics, very powerful.

I think for me, when we reflect on the takeaways from the SCO, the substance, who knows? I think, you know, a billion dollars of loans across 20 countries from the Chinese, not so much.

The optics, the narratives that you talk about, we are in this age of memes now, very powerful. Very, very powerful. And this was, to me, a much more substantive SCO because of the optics than the substance, even though the substance was more important this time than it has been in the past.

What’s your final thoughts?

I think it’s easy to get hung up on the optics, because, you know, we know why the optics are important. But I think the way that, like, just tracking the announcement of these global initiatives over time, and, you know, just seeing how the different ones are positioned in the larger context of the GGI now being announced.

I think this is a lot more substantial than I think a lot of people would assume, because it’s very easy to kind of glaze over when you read, when you read these documents, right? Because they all sound alike, you know, and who knows what will happen.

But I think even if no actual reforms happen along the lines of the GGI, I think it’s China putting it out there as a kind of a global, as a global plan is already significant. It already kind of like shifts China into this kind of like architect role that it kind of like sees itself in.

And I think in the context really kind of like really exposes the limits of Western kind of governance vision, which really is very centered in the global north and has very little to offer to the global south.

You know, so in this sense of the fact that China is kind of like setting an actual global self-inclusive kind of governance plan out there, albeit extremely vague, is a real significant thing. I think that people who are interested in this stuff will have to grapple with, I think.

Well, we’re going to bring you a lot of expert analysis on this. Let me just give you a preview of some of the guests that we’ve booked just over the next three to four weeks:

• Jevin Jacobs, one of the top India-China scholars, who’s going to be with us next week.
• Two other India-China scholars coming up.
• Dylan Lowe from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who’s an expert on Chinese foreign policy.
• Brian Wong from Hong Kong University, also an expert on Chinese foreign policy and international relations.

So we’re going to be bringing you this analysis from a lot of different perspectives here in Asia about the SCO and all these different things that Kobus and I talked about today. Kobus, thank you again for your time today.

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So that’ll do it for this edition of the China Global South podcast with Kobus Venstaden in Cape Town. I’m Eric Olander. We’ll be back again next week with another episode.

Until then, thank you for listening and for watching.

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