Unlike other recent summits, the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, North China, produced more concrete results than expected. The Tianjin Declaration, instead of lofty goals, presented the world with a more practical agenda for global governance—one that privileges multipolar cooperation, sovereign equality, and the right of nations to pursue growth on their own terms. Coming amid Washington’s efforts to pressure parts of the Global South, Tianjin signaled that a critical mass of major non-Western powers are prepared to pool capacity and set rules rather than merely follow them. With this summit, the process for the creation of a fairer new world order has gained momentum like never before.
In Tianjin, member countries used the summit to table concrete institutional proposals: a development bank under the SCO umbrella, a global energy cooperation platform, and a multiyear lending window targeted at member needs. It also promoted technology interoperability—including encouragement to adopt China’s BeiDou satellite system—framed as reducing dependency on the Western bloc’s GPS. The mix of finance, energy security, and standards cooperation lifted the discussion above slogans and into institution-building.
Equally notable was the politics of inclusion. Leaders from across Eurasia converged in Tianjin, underlining that the SCO has evolved into a platform where countries with diverse alignments still have incentives to cooperate on security, infrastructure, and trade. The “SCO Plus” session explicitly linked the bloc’s agenda to improving global governance championed by the Chinese leader’s Global Governance Initiative—a phrase for turning rule-making and resource allocation more representative of today’s economic and demographic realities.
For India specifically, Tianjin yielded two concrete wins. First, the joint declaration and related summit documents incorporated New Delhi’s civilizational framing—“One Earth, One Family, One Future”—which India elevated during its G20 presidency. Adoption of that motif by SCO members gives India narrative leadership within a Eurasian forum and creates a shared vocabulary for "development-first” cooperation.
Second, the summit text explicitly condemned terrorist attacks including the Pahalgam incident, aligning the SCO’s security priorities more closely with India’s long-standing emphasis on zero tolerance for terrorism.
How does “new global governance” look after Tianjin? First, a proposed SCO development bank and coordinated lending, if structured smartly, can diversify options for low- and middle-income members coping with pro-cyclical capital flows and sanctions spillovers. Such a bank could have the potential to complement—not replace—existing MDBs, while tilting project selection toward cross-border connectivity that has been underfunded.
Second, the energy platform concept recognizes that developing economies must hedge price and supply risks, including through long-term contracts and mixed-currency settlements. India’s own push to simplify rupee-based trade settlement and to operationalize special rupee vostro accounts points to a wider menu of invoicing and payment tools. These are practical steps toward resilience rather than polemics about “de-dollarization.”
Third, encouraging adoption of BeiDou and cross-compatibility with other navigation systems will reduce single-provider risk in global operations and open space for local innovation in logistics, agriculture, and disaster response.
Tianjin unfolded against a hardening US posture toward the rest of the world. In August, the White House announced additional ad valorem duties on Indian goods—framed as a response to India’s purchases of discounted Russian crude. The move effectively weaponized tariffs as “secondary” sanctions, hitting a strategic partner of Washington.
In response to this illegal action, India stood firm. Policy follow-through matched the rhetoric of Indian political leaders. The Reserve Bank of India streamlined procedures for rupee-rouble settlement through special vostro accounts, reducing friction in trade with Russia and insulating transactions from extraterritorial disruptions. India also worked with partners in the SCO and elsewhere on local-currency mechanisms—not to exclude the dollar, but to avoid being trapped by it. The courage shown by India instilled new confidence in the Global South.
For much of the Global South, Tianjin will be remembered not just for what was signed, but for what was revealed: that attempts to arm-twist big emerging economies can be counterproductive. In this case, tariffs billed as leverage over Russia policy nudged India to demonstrate policy sovereignty.
Despite the success in setting the agenda for new global governance, the SCO may face serious challenges going forward. Diverse political systems and unresolved border and other disputes among member nations mean frictions persist. Institutional proposals floated in Tianjin need to be engineered with debt sustainability and open standards to gain broad legitimacy. And while denunciations of terrorism are welcome, meaningful intelligence cooperation and due process are the hard work ahead.
Another emerging challenge is that while the SCO was originally focused primarily on security, the expansion of membership risks diluting this focus by shifting attention to other areas. Non-security issues can be handled by other multilateral associations, but this region still lacks an organization dedicated exclusively to security. Current and future members may also differ in the nature and depth of their security priorities—for India the main concern is terrorism, while for the CIS countries it is Islamic indoctrination.
For India, the responsibility is heavier going forward: to convert summit optics into concrete, interest-driven projects—energy corridors, semiconductor supply-chain nodes, resilient payments plumbing—that tangibly improve the lives of the common man at home. Doing so while preserving a functional relationship with Washington will require steadiness and skilled diplomacy. The good news for India is that Tianjin suggested a coalition of countries is prepared to accept and even encourage India’s multi-alignment, provided it is purposeful and predictable.
Tianjin marks a much-needed positive reset of global politics. Led by China, the SCO has put realistic institutional ideas on the table; the Tianjin Declaration stitched principles to implementation; India gained narrative and security alignment within the SCO’s security language text; and the Global South glimpsed a governance agenda that is less about slogans and more about usable tools. That this happened as the United States tried to coerce India and the Global South with tariffs only sharpened the contrast: Coercion narrows choices; Tianjin widened them.
Let the push that started with Tianjin for a new world order go full speed ahead.
The author is director of peace and security studies at The Asia Institute, a think tank in South Korea. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
