The Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) poses a challenge to the liberal world order, albeit a subtle one, The Economist argues:
China itself is building all sorts of institutions: the SCO, CICA, the “BRICS” (grouping China with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa), a Trilateral Commission (at present languishing) with South Korea and Japan and a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Their shared characteristics are that China has a big and sometimes dominant role and that the United States is not a member—and indeed was rebuffed when it sought to join the SCO as an observer.
“China is not just challenging the existing world order,” The Economist suggests. “Slowly, messily and, apparently with no clear end in view, it is building a new one.”
