Policy Alert #250 | September 21, 2022
The 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, which took place from September 15th to 16th, was much anticipated by international media, as it would provide the opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the first time since the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine. As such, their encounters were heavily scrutinized, especially to assess the extent to which China and India would support Russia. Both China and India shared circumspection about the war and did not provide unconditional assurances of support. In fact, Prime Minister Modi spoke out in a rare public rebuke of Russia, while President Xi shared his concerns. Both China and India played a balancing act of not endorsing Russian actions while also not outwardly condemning them, with Chinese media criticizing the US for trying to seed dissent within the SCO while some Indian media saw this as a premise to nurturing India’s “growing ties with the US.” Russian media minimized the dissent within the SCO, and President Putin deflected criticism about the war in Ukraine, blaming continued hostilities on Ukrainian intransigeance. The most striking contrast in analysis of the SCO summit was between Russian and Chinese officials. Indeed, while Russian officials and state media argued that the SCO gave its member states tools to resist Western sanctions as a united bloc, and that the Samarkand summit contributed to building a new world architecture, Chinese officials resisted the notion of “China and Russia as a political and military bloc.”
Read the full Policy Alert here.
