Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Global South strategic cooperation

Abominable said:

The reason Bolsanaro was elected was more because of his anti-corruption and anti establishment position.

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"Anti-corruption" is just typical US propaganda. They use that meme everywhere. Navalny, Bolsonaro, Guaido, etc. If you examine things closer, when those US sponsored politicians label something as corruption, it is always when there is an attempt by the US corporates to privatize local controlled businesses in those countries. To open them up so the resources of that nation can be exploited by Western capital. Be it Brazil's state oil company, Venezuela's state oil company, Ukrainian large farmers, Russian state natural gas and oil companies, you name it.

Bolsonaro was incredibly corrupt and heavily influenced by foreign US interests. For example he wanted to sell Embraer to Boeing. Likely leading to the dismantling of the hard earned Brazilian aviation industry in the long term.

Boeing ended up pulling out of the deal afterwards because of financial troubles. But Boeing opened up an office in Brazil right next to Embraer's and have been offering Embraer's engineers higher salaries. Causing a massive brain drain at Embraer to a point where it is causing impacts on their ongoing projects. Which right now are the military KC-390 and Gripen-NG fighter projects.

The only reason Bolsonaro ended up dealing with Russia and China was because he still was somewhat connected to the Brazilian large farmer lobby. So he needed Russian fertilizer and a client for Brazilian agricultural products like soybeans i.e. China.

Abominable said:

It certainly wasn't his foreign policy. Most Brazilians don't think Israel or America is Brazil's number one ally and as long as that's the case it'll be very difficult for an anti-Chinese position to come out of Brazil.

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Brazilians, like the rest of Latin America, have a built in distaste for US imperialism. It is just that a lot of them have figured out it is more lucrative for them personally to do the bidding of the US even to the detriment of the interests of their own country. Until that changes their situation won't significantly improve.

Abominable said:

When he was in power he was pro-China, pro-Russia and even pro-Arab.

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Bolsonaro was installed into power with the US financing his campaign. And he is hugely tied to Israeli interests. It is just that his position is not completely one dimensional 100% controlled by foreign interests unlike a lot of us assumed. He does have ties to at least some local economic interest groups.

Abominable said:

Speaking of Latin America as a whole, I think the next major goal for China would be to get Mexico to join BRICS. That'll be a bigger blow to America than getting Iran and Saudi Arabia to cooperate.

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I think there are better choices at this point to be honest. I think that Indonesia should definitively join for example. Argentina and Egypt or Libya could also be interesting for several reasons I think but they are economic and/or political basket cases. So having someone in the Gulf like the UAE could be a less troublesome pick.

The recent summit in Xi'an has really focused something for me. I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone here that Russia was conspicuous by its absence, and as we all know, Russia is quite preoccupied at the moment and is not in its best shape. I've noticed that Russia has been more accommodating lately.

This Central Asian summit is only the first of its kind; there will be one biannually between the Stans and China with a rotating host. There's been nary a peep from Russia about this, and I can't imagine this summit taking place without some slight twinge of discomfort in Moscow. Russia has also been uncharacteristically trusting in allowing Chinese shipping companies to use the port of Vladivostok as they please.

I don't want to come off as being anti-Russia; to be truthful I'm quite saddened that its plans for Ukraine have gone so awry. But the opportunity this presents China cannot be overlooked, and if we're being completely honest, Russia has been annoying. It's brought India into the SCO to blunt China's influence, negotiations over the purchase of Russian military technology (back when China needed it) have always been fraught, and I'm willing to bet a goodly sum that Russia was involved in fomenting anti-China sentiment in Central Asia. Of course, there's also the unfortunate, outdated (and racist) Russian attitude toward the quality and standards of Chinese industry.

All of that is changing. The war has forced Russia to confront its conception of itself and its place in the world, to embrace China more tightly and welcome the opportunities China's rise provides instead of viewing it with its habitual apprehension. This is excellent for China, excellent for Central Asia, and excellent for Russia itself. The narrow-minded security conception that compelled Russia to hedge its growing closeness to China, drag its foot and cause a bit mischief where it can is now entirely done away with. Russia will recoup enormous benefit from adopting a broader and more inclusive conception of its security in Asia.

ZeEa5KPul said:

The recent summit in Xi'an has really focused something for me. I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone here that Russia was conspicuous by its absence, and as we all know, Russia is quite preoccupied at the moment and is not in its best shape. I've noticed that Russia has been more accommodating lately.

This Central Asian summit is only the first of its kind; there will be one biannually between the Stans and China with a rotating host. There's been nary a peep from Russia about this, and I can't imagine this summit taking place without some slight twinge of discomfort in Moscow. Russia has also been uncharacteristically trusting in allowing Chinese shipping companies to use the port of Vladivostok as they please.

I don't want to come off as being anti-Russia; to be truthful I'm quite saddened that its plans for Ukraine have gone so awry. But the opportunity this presents China cannot be overlooked, and if we're being completely honest, Russia has been annoying. It's brought India into the SCO to blunt China's influence, negotiations over the purchase of Russian military technology (back when China needed it) have always been fraught, and I'm willing to bet a goodly sum that Russia was involved in fomenting anti-China sentiment in Central Asia. Of course, there's also the unfortunate, outdated (and racist) Russian attitude toward the quality and standards of Chinese industry.

All of that is changing. The war has forced Russia to confront its conception of itself and its place in the world, to embrace China more tightly and welcome the opportunities China's rise provides instead of viewing it with its habitual apprehension. This is excellent for China, excellent for Central Asia, and excellent for Russia itself. The narrow-minded security conception that compelled Russia to hedge its growing closeness to China, drag its foot and cause a bit mischief where it can is now entirely done away with. Russia will recoup enormous benefit from adopting a broader and more inclusive conception of its security in Asia.

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Russia should prioritize Eastern Europe and I suspect they understand this as well. Russia being a player in central Asia is inevitable, but them being the sole player is historically unrealistic. Chinese emperors were also considered Great Khans since even the Tang Dynasty when Rus was a minor principality.

ZeEa5KPul said:

The recent summit in Xi'an has really focused something for me. I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone here that Russia was conspicuous by its absence, and as we all know, Russia is quite preoccupied at the moment and is not in its best shape. I've noticed that Russia has been more accommodating lately.

This Central Asian summit is only the first of its kind; there will be one biannually between the Stans and China with a rotating host. There's been nary a peep from Russia about this, and I can't imagine this summit taking place without some slight twinge of discomfort in Moscow. Russia has also been uncharacteristically trusting in allowing Chinese shipping companies to use the port of Vladivostok as they please.

I don't want to come off as being anti-Russia; to be truthful I'm quite saddened that its plans for Ukraine have gone so awry. But the opportunity this presents China cannot be overlooked, and if we're being completely honest, Russia has been annoying. It's brought India into the SCO to blunt China's influence, negotiations over the purchase of Russian military technology (back when China needed it) have always been fraught, and I'm willing to bet a goodly sum that Russia was involved in fomenting anti-China sentiment in Central Asia. Of course, there's also the unfortunate, outdated (and racist) Russian attitude toward the quality and standards of Chinese industry.

All of that is changing. The war has forced Russia to confront its conception of itself and its place in the world, to embrace China more tightly and welcome the opportunities China's rise provides instead of viewing it with its habitual apprehension. This is excellent for China, excellent for Central Asia, and excellent for Russia itself. The narrow-minded security conception that compelled Russia to hedge its growing closeness to China, drag its foot and cause a bit mischief where it can is now entirely done away with. Russia will recoup enormous benefit from adopting a broader and more inclusive conception of its security in Asia.

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You are kicking the can down the road.
If you can't grasp that the West (USA, EU, Canada, Australia) will focus on the very old time honoured strategy:
Divide and Conquer.

It is how Britain gained its Empire, and how the USA conquered the vast territories it controls.
I know, because I live with the results.
No rocket science involved.

Today Russia.
Tomorrow China.

They have openly stated their intentions at the G7 summit.
I believe Moscow understands this is existential and about subjugation.
I think Beijing is slightly behind the curve on this realisation... because of the good times.
Not by much, but enough.

As we speak, the West are putting pressure on BRICS members South Africa and India.
Thus far, both countries have resisted this pressure.

Make absolutely no mistake on what follows.

gelgoog said:

"Anti-corruption" is just typical US propaganda. They use that meme everywhere. Navalny, Bolsonaro, Guaido, etc. If you examine things closer, when those US sponsored politicians label something as corruption, it is always when there is an attempt by the US corporates to privatize local controlled businesses in those countries. To open them up so the resources of that nation can be exploited by Western capital. Be it Brazil's state oil company, Venezuela's state oil company, Ukrainian large farmers, Russian state natural gas and oil companies, you name it.

Bolsonaro was incredibly corrupt and heavily influenced by foreign US interests. For example he wanted to sell Embraer to Boeing. Likely leading to the dismantling of the hard earned Brazilian aviation industry in the long term.

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Boeing ended up pulling out of the deal afterwards because of financial troubles. But Boeing opened up an office in Brazil right next to Embraer's and have been offering Embraer's engineers higher salaries. Causing a massive brain drain at Embraer to a point where it is causing impacts on their ongoing projects. Which right now are the military KC-390 and Gripen-NG fighter projects.

The only reason Bolsonaro ended up dealing with Russia and China was because he still was somewhat connected to the Brazilian large farmer lobby. So he needed Russian fertilizer and a client for Brazilian agricultural products like soybeans i.e. China.


Brazilians, like the rest of Latin America, have a built in distaste for US imperialism. It is just that a lot of them have figured out it is more lucrative for them personally to do the bidding of the US even to the detriment of the interests of their own country. Until that changes their situation won't significantly improve.


Bolsonaro was installed into power with the US financing his campaign. And he is hugely tied to Israeli interests. It is just that his position is not completely one dimensional 100% controlled by foreign interests unlike a lot of us assumed. He does have ties to at least some local economic interest groups.

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Most of Bolsonaro's funding came from evangelical groups. He definitely wasn't an American puppet, look how the Americans treated him once he was in power. He wanted to be an American puppet, that's an important distinction.

I view him as no different to the current Polish/Hungarian governments. They both really want to be American puppets, but want to Faustian bargain on certain things (e.g. mass immigration, LGBT). They want to play with the tip in the hope they don't have to do anything more. It doesn't work that way, American puppets get the full shaft...

gelgoog said:

I think there are better choices at this point to be honest. I think that Indonesia should definitively join for example. Argentina and Egypt or Libya could also be interesting for several reasons I think but they are economic and/or political basket cases. So having someone in the Gulf like the UAE could be a less troublesome pick.

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Lots of countries will join BRICS before Mexico, but none of them will be considered a big deal. When Mexico joins it'll be just as much as a shock as the Iran-Saudi deal.

ZeEa5KPul said:

This Central Asian summit is only the first of its kind; there will be one biannually between the Stans and China with a rotating host. There's been nary a peep from Russia about this, and I can't imagine this summit taking place without some slight twinge of discomfort in Moscow. Russia has also been uncharacteristically trusting in allowing Chinese shipping companies to use the port of Vladivostok as they please.

Click to expand...

China should take care not to bite more than they can chew here. Right now they are delegating the defense matters to Russia and they are focusing on the economic aspect in Central Asia. While it remains like that and existing Russian interests in there are not disturbed too much then there won't be friction. But the US and Turkey persistently try to destabilize the region and the coup in Kazakhstan is just one example. An even better example would be Kyrgyzstan which had a color revolution in 2005. Or Turkey egging on Azerbaijian in their conflict with Armenia.

ZeEa5KPul said:

I'm willing to bet a goodly sum that Russia was involved in fomenting anti-China sentiment in Central Asia.

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To a much greater extent that has been done with US sponsorship. Just look at Mongolia for example. The US tries to detach these countries from outside the Russian sphere of influence by making them receptive to Chinese funding, but at the same time they finance nationalist and "anti-corruption" opposition in these countries to attack Chinese and Russian interests. They do the same thing in Pakistan.

Abominable said:

Painting a target on the Mexican back is sort of the point, you're saying to America that Mexico is China's ally and there's nothing you can do about it. Any American hostility or aggression towards Mexico will likely lead to an upgrading of relations to SCO, maybe even the presence of a Chinese military base in Mexico.

If officials were purely concerned about what Americans would do the Saudi Arabia-Iran deal wouldn't have happened. Cooperating with Iran is definitely putting the Saudi government in American crosshairs, but with the way the world is right now there isn't much the Americans can do about it.

I agree it's soon now, but I think it'll be the next big milestone of Chinese foreign policy, and will be a much bigger win than Afghanistan, Iran & the GCC. Diplomacy in Asia has all sorts of baggage that doesn't exist in Latin America.

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Abominable said:

Lots of countries will join BRICS before Mexico, but none of them will be considered a big deal. When Mexico joins it'll be just as much as a shock as the Iran-Saudi deal.

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China is waiting to see who gets elected after AMLO, who is finishing his last term.

If the ruling party is reelected and the new president is also a big anti-imperialist, then it can be one of China's most powerful allies in joining BRICS, breaking US reshoring plans, and directly threatening one of the US's only two land borders.

The foundation of China's power comes from it's industrial and economic and trade strength. This will hopefully step into accelerators with central asia after this week

this one is mostly focused from Kazakh perspective, but I'd imagine this gets extended across to other 4 countries (i need to read up on their local media also)

Given the Central Asian countries’ competitive position, Kazakhstan advocated taking advantage of China’s largest marketplaces, such as Alibaba Group and JD.com, to jointly promote products. Tokayev emphasized the country’s efforts to build new customs warehouses to reduce delivery time. According to him, this venture can be coordinated with the launch of a C5 + China unified electronic trading platform.

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See, this is integrating C5 to China's entire ecosystem without firing a bullet, through natural economic/national interest engagement

Kazakhstan plans to systematically increase the

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(TITR) capacity connecting China-Central Asia-Europe’s key corridor by introducing digital solutions and infrastructure upgrades.

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this needs to be increased to increase the middle corridor traffic

Tokayev stressed the

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railway’s potential unveils excellent prospects for Central Asian countries as one of the shortest routes from East Asia to the countries of the Persian Gulf.

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I'm not a huge fan of this one, they need to watch out for giving too much to Iran.

“The agreements were signed yesterday on the launch of small-node assembly of top Chinese cars in our country. Work is underway on the appropriate infrastructure for electric charging stations in Kazakhstan,” he said.

Tokayev invited Chinese companies to create automotive clusters in those Kazakh regions that proceeded in the top Chinese brands’ production.

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sounds like Kazakh's are getting EV factory also in exchange for building electric chargin stations

“The development of gas processing capacity and the gas transmission system are top priorities for Kazakhstan. In this regard, the construction of the second string of the Beineu-Bozoy-Shymkent gas pipeline and a gas processing plant at the Kashagan field with a capacity of four billion cubic meters per year is paramount,” Tokayev said.

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gas pipeline with Kazakhstan is mostly about energy security in the event of a westpac conflict

Tokayev expressed concern about climate change that poses severe risks to Central Asia, leading to potential freshwater scarcity. He proposed creating a program to bring new technology into the water management industry to utilize water resources efficiently.

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never thought about this, but countries around China are dependent on China for water resources, huge implications

canonicalsadhu said:

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This will perhaps sound controversial but I'm very disappointed to see China sacrificing an opportunity to better relations with India in order to appease Pakistan. At this point, Pakistan is a failed state. China has been sinking tens of billions of investment of BRI into the sinkhole that is Pakistan and yet its economy and political stability continue to worsen. Yes, I know that dumping allies is not a good move given that China is now building a new world order but honestly propping up failed allies who refuse to improve is not a good signal to send either. Get your shit together or get dumped should be the message China is sending.

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No, China of 2023 has fewer allies than China of 1960 because it hadn't stood up for its friends since 1980. What message would dumping one of the few countries it has deep relations with send? More of the same. And China would be doing that for India, which is a country that has been less than friendly to China for 70 years. In fact, India has been the consistent adversary of PRC since its founding. 70+ years of uninterrupted hostility.

Bad comment

ZeEa5KPul said:

The recent summit in Xi'an has really focused something for me. I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone here that Russia was conspicuous by its absence, and as we all know, Russia is quite preoccupied at the moment and is not in its best shape. I've noticed that Russia has been more accommodating lately.

This Central Asian summit is only the first of its kind; there will be one biannually between the Stans and China with a rotating host. There's been nary a peep from Russia about this, and I can't imagine this summit taking place without some slight twinge of discomfort in Moscow. Russia has also been uncharacteristically trusting in allowing Chinese shipping companies to use the port of Vladivostok as they please.

I don't want to come off as being anti-Russia; to be truthful I'm quite saddened that its plans for Ukraine have gone so awry. But the opportunity this presents China cannot be overlooked, and if we're being completely honest, Russia has been annoying. It's brought India into the SCO to blunt China's influence, negotiations over the purchase of Russian military technology (back when China needed it) have always been fraught, and I'm willing to bet a goodly sum that Russia was involved in fomenting anti-China sentiment in Central Asia. Of course, there's also the unfortunate, outdated (and racist) Russian attitude toward the quality and standards of Chinese industry.

All of that is changing. The war has forced Russia to confront its conception of itself and its place in the world, to embrace China more tightly and welcome the opportunities China's rise provides instead of viewing it with its habitual apprehension. This is excellent for China, excellent for Central Asia, and excellent for Russia itself. The narrow-minded security conception that compelled Russia to hedge its growing closeness to China, drag its foot and cause a bit mischief where it can is now entirely done away with. Russia will recoup enormous benefit from adopting a broader and more inclusive conception of its security in Asia.

Click to expand...

The Central Asian states were definitely used by the USSR to foment unrest in Xinjiang, most of it backfired though.

In the times of the USSR the Central Asian states were considered a burden rather than a benefit. I'm not sure how true that is, but the sentiment is common among Russians today. I doubt there's much interest from either Russia or China to rule over a bunch of Kazakhstanis, I certainly don't see the benefit. They have resources, but they can be obtained through trade.

Mongolia on the other hand is culturally a part of China, and the separation of a portion of it as an independent state is largely because of historical Soviet actions. If Russia wants Chinese assistance to recover their former territories in eastern Europe I would expect them to cede control over Mongolia to China.