SCO Summit: Why Modi, Xi, Putin together would make Trump nervous

China’s President Xi Jinping is hosting 20 world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the northern port city of Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. Billed as the largest since the founding of the regional security bloc in 2001, the gathering comes at a crucial time in geopolitics.

On Sunday (August 31), PM Modi held bilateral talks with President Xi on the sidelines of the SCO summit, with the aim of resetting relations. The meeting comes in the backdrop of New Delhi’s souring ties with the United States as Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs on Indian exports come into effect.

The American president would be keenly watching the SCO summit being held from August 31 to September 1.

Here’s why.

Why Trump is warily watching SCO Summit

The presence of Modi, Xi and Putin at the SCO ummit in China could ruffle feathers in Washington.

US President Trump, whose trade war has upended Washington’s relations with India, would not be too happy as Xi will attempt to portray China as an alternative leader and reshape the global order.

Trump is already miffed with the Brics grouping, which has India, China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa as the founding members, and has threatened to slap additional tariffs on group members.

“Xi will want to use the summit as an opportunity to showcase what a post-American-led international order begins to look like and that all White House efforts since January to counter China, Iran, Russia, and now India have not had the intended effect,” Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency, told Reuters.

“Just look at how much Brics has rattled Donald Trump, which is precisely what these groups are designed to do.”

The US’ 50 per cent tariffs on India, of which the additional 25 per cent is a “penalty” for buying Russian oil, have driven a wedge between the two partners. The trade war has raised concerns in New Delhi about relying too much on Washington.

“India was putting too many eggs in the American basket considering its geostrategic and political interests. It is now, after Trump’s tariffs, trying to balance that out by putting more eggs on the Chinese basket,” Sanjay K Bhardwaj, professor at the Centre for South Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said to Financial Times (FT).

Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Indian goods have brought New Delhi and Beijing closer, with the two sides improving relations recently after friction occurred following the 2020 Galwan Valley clash.

India and China are also willing to reset bilateral ties and resolve the border dispute. During his talks with Xi, PM Modi said New Delhi is committed to taking forward ties with China based on “mutual trust, respect and sensitivity”, as per PTI.

Experts say Modi’s trip to China, the first in seven years, reflects the deep frustration in New Delhi with Trump’s tariffs. The Indian leader had skipped last year’s summit in Kazakhstan.

“This is a group of countries that have been significantly antagonised by the West, especially by the US,” Yun Sun, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think-tank, told FT.

“China is bringing them together and making a statement about global governance and the global order . . . It will be saying that we, the SCO, have a very different vision.”

Besides Modi and Putin, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and UN Secretary-General António Guterres are also attending this year’s SCO Summit in Tianjin .

As the American foreign policy under Trump creates cracks between the US and some of these countries, all eyes will be on any joint declaration by the SCO grouping, which, even if indirectly, mentions the global trade war.

“If India lines up behind the joint statement in the end, it suggests more willingness to stand alongside the SCO — and implicitly against Washington,” Jeremy Chan, a former US diplomat in China and Japan, said to Bloomberg. 

Chan added that “any language directly critical of the US would also be an important signal of a more meaningful pivot by Delhi toward Beijing and Moscow.”

Can SCO change the global order?

Experts say the SCO Summit is a big opportunity for Chinese President Xi to project Beijing as a counterbalance to the US, as Trump’s antics lead to discord between the US and several countries in Asia and Europe.

The Chinese leader is expected to approve the SCO’s development strategy for the next ten years and lay out his ambitious vision for global governance, reported Bloomberg.

“China is putting in a lot of effort and using its influence to make it one of the biggest SCO Summits ever,” Dylan Loh, assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said to the news agency. “This is also a statement of intent and demonstration of China’s growing profile and power — particularly in the context of US-China competition and suggestions of domestic economic malaise.”

The SCO Summit is significant as it shows Global South solidarity amid Trump’s global trade war.

“Beijing wants to signal that China is the indispensable convener in Eurasia, capable of seating rivals at the same table and translating great-power competition into managed interdependence,” Rabia Akhtar, director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research at the University of Lahore in Pakistan, was quoted as saying by CNN.

“The optics are straightforward: China is not just a participant in regional order-making – it is a primary architect and host.”

SCO has its limits, but…

While Xi will try to reshape a global order that has long been dominated by the US, the distrust between some SCO members, such as India and Pakistan, remains.

The SCO, which was established as a group of six Eurasian nations, has expanded to 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue and observer countries in recent years.

The grouping defines its “main goals” as “strengthening mutual confidence and good-neighbourly relations among the member countries.”

However, the security-focused bloc has failed to back its member countries. This was witnessed during border clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and when the US and Israel attacked Iran.

India and Pakistan engaged in a brief conflict in May, with China supplying weapons, including fighter jets, to Islamabad, raising tensions with New Delhi. These issues persist even as India and China work to normalise ties.

“Recent history has shown that when a security crisis arises that affects a card-carrying member of the SCO — or an adjacent one — the SCO as an organisation is nowhere to be found. When the going gets tough, China is absent even for its friends, whether on a bilateral or multilateral basis,” Chan told Bloomberg.

Speaking to Reuters, Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme at the Takshashila Institution think-tank in Bangalore, said, “What is the precise vision that the SCO represents and its practical implementation are rather fuzzy. It is a platform that has increasing convening power, which helps in narrative projection.”

“But the SCO’s effectiveness in addressing substantial security issues remains very limited.”

Although substantive policy announcements are unlikely at the summit, the optics of this year’s SCO meeting are strong.

“This summit is about optics, really powerful optics,” Olander told Reuters. Experts say the bloc’s appeal to the Global South cannot be ignored.

Analysts will also be eyeing the possible resumption of a trilateral dialogue between India, China and Russia that halted after the 2020 border clashes between India and China.

While Modi is expected to depart after the SCO Summit, Putin will stay and head to Beijing with Xi for a World War Two military parade later in the week. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also slated to mark his presence at the parade, where Beijing will showcase its newest missiles and warplanes.

With inputs from agencies