Heads of state and delegations from across Asia and the Middle East will meet from Sunday in the Chinese port city of Tianjin for the two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security grouping that has emerged as a cornerstone of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to rebalance global power in their favor.

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

Chinese officials have billed the summit as the SCO’s largest yet, with the diplomacy and pageantry setting the stage for Xi to tout his country as a stable and powerful alternative leader at a time when the world’s leading superpower the United States under President Donald Trump is shaking up its alliances and waging a global trade war.

The military displays will highlight China’s rapidly developing military might, and will host Indian President Modi, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing alongside Putin and Russia-friendly European leaders Victor Orban of Hungary, Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia and Slovakia’s Robert Fico as well as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye.

The summit also gifts Russia’s Putin an additional international spotlight, just two weeks after his Alaska summit with Trump (a major diplomatic error on the part of the US - though it did give the presidents some private space to chit-chat about old times).

While our administration is showing great friendship towards Russia by not putting tariffs or additional sanctions into place (despite piling them on India as punishment for buying Russian oil), it is obvious that Russia considers itselef the enemy of the United States and, in conjunction with China, is doing its best to create a competing trade structure.

Jeff