Shanghai Spirit for Eurasia's future

By Alexey Kan

According to the results of a survey published this month by Russian research center Public Opinion, 48 percent of Russians believe their country needs to develop their economic relations with China. In the ranking of Russia's most valuable economic partners, China was seen as being almost twice as important as Belarus (26 percent) and Germany (23 percent). Respondents were also asked, "Which of these countries is the most necessary, most valuable partner for Russia, which of them is especially important to maintain good relations with?" China got 33 percent, Belarus 13 percent, and the United States 8 percent, while Germany, Kazakhstan, Japan, Turkey and Ukraine scored from 2 to 5 percent.

These results largely reflect the current global geopolitical situation, as Russia focuses increasingly on China as opposed to Europe and the United States. It is hard to imagine, but twenty years ago, China was on the periphery of Russian public opinion, and ordinary Russians thought of the huge neighbor on their southern border more as a potential rival than a valuable partner.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (4th L) attends the 16th meeting of the Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of Government in Sochi, Russia, Dec. 1, 2017.[Photo: Xinhua]

Over the last five years, Moscow and Beijing have been calling their bilateral relations the best in their history. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union, after helping free China's northeast from the Japanese invaders, contributed to the newly founded People's Republic of China to rebuild its industrial base that had been destroyed by wars. That short period of friendship, known at the time by the motto "Russians and Chinese are brothers forever" soon ended with a sharp cooling of relations that lasted for 30 years. The reasons for this were partially ideological differences. Having rethought this approach, Moscow and Beijing are now building a new type of relationship based on equality and practical cooperation. This principle, once called the Shanghai Spirit, is the basis for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that united Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in 2001.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the soon-to-be SCO member states faced a need to resolve their border issues. The border negotiations in the 1990s contributed a lot to the growth in mutual trust and political rapprochement among the countries. This cooperation led to the development of the Shanghai Five in 1996, which turned into the Shanghai Six in 2001 after Uzbekistan joined the group. The same year, the two largest member states – Russia and China — resolved all their border disputes and signed a border agreement, and after that the Shanghai Six became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

A year ago, most Western observers were skeptical about the news that India and Pakistan were joining the organization. It is well known that the old border dispute between the two Asian countries is one of the main geopolitical problems in the region. Moreover, there is a long-standing border issue between China and India. But if Beijing and Moscow, with a shared border more than four thousand kilometers long and a history that includes armed conflict on the border in 1969, were able to solve their disputes, why wouldn't Islamabad and New Delhi be able to solve theirs?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was initially established for security cooperation. This is not a collective security system, and the member countries constantly emphasize they are not seeking to form a NATO-like military bloc. However, security cooperation is a necessary condition for the growth of mutual trust, and mutual trust, in turn, is the basis for all other kinds of cooperation. All of the organization's member states have their own vision for the Eurasian continent's future, as expressed in their national development programs: Russia has the Eurasian Economic Union project, Kazakhstan has its Bright Path program, and China is promoting its One Belt One Road initiative. This shows that Eurasia has already developed a wide understanding of the continent's common destiny. Many Eurasian countries have to struggle with a complicated historical legacy, as well as the contemporary threats of terrorism and extremism, civil conflicts, and poverty. If the Shanghai Spirit helped them to cope with these problems, then the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will definitely be able to become a unifying center for Eurasia.

(Alexey Kan is a veteran Russian editor based in China)