Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Global South strategic cooperation

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. Why isn’t China buying?​

• The Land Bridge project, a proposed route for shipping that could bypass the Malacca Strait, is being shopped by the Thai government as it seeks financing
• If built, the bridge could reshape the economy of Southeast Asia – but China has not shown a willingness to put up the cash

“China is not convinced [of what] it can expect from the project,” said Lu Xiang, a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

"It doesn’t look like an alternative route,” he said, adding offloading and reloading would be complex and may not cut costs to a significant degree.



The Thai government is hoping to roll out roadshows for promotional and fundraising purposes in the coming months, transport minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit was quoted as saying.


"China is already quite busy on the Kunming-Kuala Lumpur railway (completed to Vientiane),” he added, “so they may not want to take on another project".

coolgod said:

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Pakistan applies for BRICS membership – envoy​

The country expects to be accepted next year during Russia’s chairmanship




Let's see India stop Pakistan now, Pakistan already has everyone else's approval.

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That is one interesting thing to watch. BRICS is a gathering, it does not have a coded rule of accepting new members like SCO does. It works on consensus. What if all other members decide to strongarm India to accept Pakistan? What if Russia invite Pakistan to join the next meeting when Russia is the chair? Is India going to boycot the meeting while everybody else and Pakistan attend? In that case, India is expelling itself out of BRICS (not BRICS anymore, some new name is needed).

So the end result is that India will have to concent to Pakistan's membership (un)happiely unless it want to leave.

resistance said:

What do India offer though? I don't see the pros of India membership than cons we gain right now.

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What about preventing or delaying India being an outright US puppet/proxy/collabrator as long as possible? Isn't it the similar reason of "putting the differences aside" when establishing diplomatic relationship with Japan (Diaoyu island), and US (Taiwan weapons sale), and all SCS related countries?

The bottom line is that one can not have everything even one is justified if one don't have the power to strongarm every opponent. So far I haven't seen any country in history having that kind of power.

taxiya said:

What about preventing or delaying India being an outright US puppet/proxy/collabrator as long as possible? Isn't it the similar reason of "putting the differences aside" when establishing diplomatic relationship with Japan (Diaoyu island), and US (Taiwan weapons sale), and all SCS related countries?

The bottom line is that one can not have everything even one is justified if one don't have the power to strongarm every opponent. So far I haven't seen any country in history having that kind of power.

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There's no use for that, what India doing is antagonizing china weather being puppet or not. I think kick india out and making another puppet of US is far better than keep India sabotage security of other SCO members.

China "Put different aside" at that time did gaining benefits a lots like technology and market to get industrialize. Can't compare to India.

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The Taliban government’s new ambassador to China arrived in Beijing on Friday — the first time Afghanistan’s rulers have officially sent an ambassador to another country since returning to power more than two years ago.






Some excitement happening over in the LAC.

, Brazil sends reinforcements to its northern border, Venezuela holds a referendum on whether to annex the region and Guyana mulls hosting US military bases.


The move is largely seen as a response to Guyana’s increasingly close military ties with the US.

The US and Guyana an agreement in 2020 to undertake joint military patrols in the Essequibo region, ostensibly for “drug interdiction” and to provide “greater security” to the South American country. Southcom has signed similar agreements with the governments of Ecuador and Peru in recent months (as we have covered , and ) and is looking to do the same with Uruguay.

It appears that US Southern Command is about to set up a new forward operating base, or bases, in the disputed territory. That territory is not only rich in oil and gas but also boasts other mineral deposits, including Gold and Bauxite, as well as huge fish stocks and fresh water supplies.

January this year, Southcom Commander Laura Richardson explained, with disarming frankness, US’ strategic interest in Guyanese oil in a to the Atlantic Council:

This region, why this region matters, with all of its rich resources and rare earth minerals: you’ve got the Lithium Triangle which is needed for technology today; 60% of the world’s lithium is in the Lithium Triangle, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile. You just had the largest oil reserves, light sweet crude discovered off of Guyana over a year ago. You have Venezuela’s resources as well with oil, copper, gold. China gets 36% of its food source from this region. We have the Amazon, lungs of the world. We have 31% of the world’s fresh water in this region too.

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China will set the new standards for ecological urbanization and rewrite the very idea of "the city" itself in the Global South.

The intended scope of the BRI suggests that China’s experiments in rapid urban growth and connectivity could eventually form the basis for a successor to the liberal globalized city. The very fabric of cities in regions from East Asia to East Africa are already coming under the BRI’s influence. Beijing has invested in highway-building projects that connect cities in Central Asia via high-speed railways that integrate Chinese cities with European terminals such as London, and a “digital silk road” that, among other goals, links western China through Pakistan and down to cities in East Africa. As these infrastructures coalesce, they are transforming cities. Khorgos, once a sleepy town on the Chinese-Kazakh border, is now a busy logistics center, with blocks of stacked containers emerging from the Eurasian steppes into a bustling free-trade and duty-free zone. A “dry port” through which new high-speed freight trains pass on their way to different regions the BRI targets, Khorgos now connects almost 100 Chinese cities to nearly 200 cities in Europe and more than a dozen in Central, East, and Southeast Asia.

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Beyond the Chinese border, since 2018, the BRI has reshaped Astana, the Kazakh capital, into a regional international finance hub, financing the construction of a new central business district anchored by the Astana International Finance Center and the striking Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center. Translucent and shaped like a tent, the entertainment center’s architecture is futuristic while recalling the Silk Road nomadic empires. In East Africa, the BRI is funding railway construction and a new deep-water port project on the Kenyan coast to create a new transnational economic corridor connecting Kenya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

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China intends to unite urban corridors on different continents by investing in what it calls “Maritime Silk Road” port cities. China’s existing major seaports will be linked to a string of ports outside of China in strategic locations: Piraeus in Greece, Kyaukphyu in Myanmar, Gwadar in Pakistan, and Colombo and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. China hopes its investment in Mediterranean ports in particular can begin to draw trade away from the traditional dominance of northern European ports such as Rotterdam, London, Hamburg, and Antwerp. Alongside these more traditional infrastructure investments, the BRI aims to offer new forms of digital connectivity: Chinese companies such as Huawei are building new submarine cables, data centers, and smart-city platforms in places as diverse as Pakistan, East Africa, and South America.

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Since the BRI was launched, Chinese companies have sold “safe city” solutions to major metropolises in Malaysia, Pakistan, Ecuador, and Kenya. Starting in 2019, Serbia installed thousands of Chinese-made cameras with advanced facial- and license-plate-recognition software in 800 locations in Belgrade and 40 other cities around the country.

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The Belt and Road Initiative already offers tantalizing glimpses of a world that could better tackle climate change.

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“Ecological cities” across Southeast Asia, such the $100 billion Forest City under construction on four islands between Malaysia and Singapore; this city aims to create sustainable urban living for up to a million people by 2035. At the 2019 China-ASEAN Summit, China and the ASEAN member states launched the Smart City Cooperation Initiative, which laid out a commitment to further develop a smart-cities ecosystem in Asia combining digital innovation and sustainability.

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If the BRI is successful in the way that China hopes, it could usher in a new kind of city, one that may form the basis for a new international order. Africa and Eurasia could become much more urbanized, with sprawling, transnational urban corridors connected by high-speed transit and integrated more fully into China’s immense and increasingly sophisticated market. Small cities may be transformed into thriving logistics hubs that would direct the movement of goods around a new supercontinent. Chinese expatriates and the soft-power influence of Chinese culture and language may become commonplace in hundreds of cities worldwide, and urban spaces may become increasingly efficient, safe, and sustainable. These BRI-influenced cities may knit forests and green spaces into the urban fabric in the service of ecological principles.

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ficker22 said:

This is so stupid, that it makes THE LINE and Al-Mukaab look like good ideas.

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The big elephant in the room is the actual terrain that this canal is supposed to traverse,


The points at which the canal turns is situated on that 20-30km stretch of the Negev mountains that elevates 800 - 1200 meters above sea level. That elevation will need to be leveled to 0m.

Off topic: you can see from this topography why low-flying Houthi missiles/drones aimed at Eilat can be difficult to detect, track and intercept. Eilat is the southern tip of Israel at 8m, surrounded by major elevations.

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The 1,525km line will connect five states along the Yucatan peninsula

Connecting the city of Campeche to Cancun, the first section of the railway line will shortly be followed by a section between Cancun and Palenque, with the entire 1,525km track expected to be ready by February 2024.

Honestly, I think the idea of Russia facilitating the BRI, new Artic or land trade routes between Europe and China, and overall pro-Eurasian integration, are overplayed ideas, likely Russian propaganda pandering to the central Asians and Chinese, and actually counterintuitive to their national interest. Even though they are geographically poised to take advantage of these growing trends, the problem is in their mindset.

They have the problematic mindset of wanting to return to the time when they had a Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia. This clashes with the idea of becoming a middleman / mercantile power bridging Europe, like how the Middle East has done for thousands of years, even though the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. I'm sure they also have fears of over-developing the Russian Far East and losing control of it to China due to Moscow's geographical distance and other internal ethnic factors.

My conclusion here is that it is likely we will see Russia be a proponent of Eurasian integration on a political front only, and that the Arctic sea route will remain only a minor component of Chinese trade with Europe into the future. Eurasian integration benefits the smaller nations the most, and they are the primary target of Chinese foreign policy.

The Russians will never fully leave Central Asia. The steppes are a major weakness and entry point to invade the Russian industrial areas beyond the Urals where most of their military industrial capacity is located. Try looking at a map at where Chelyabinsk and Omsk are for example.

There are iron and coal mines at Magnitogorsk and Kuzbass respectively. Major aluminum refining facilities like the Khakhas Aluminium Smelter at Sayanogorsk. All of these are close to the Kazakh border.

If you read what a lot of Russian nationalists say, they think that northern Kazahkstan, which has a majority Russian population, should be part of the Russian Federation. The only reason these people don't get their way is because Kazakhstan is part of the CSTO and has good relations with Russia.



There used to be even more ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan when the Soviet Union collapsed. They used to be 38% of the total population. That only changed because most of them migrated back into Russia for better economic opportunities. But Russians are still 15% of the total population of Kazakhstan.