Southeast Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: Edging Closer in an Era of Geopolitical Churn

INTRODUCTION

In 2026, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will celebrate its 30^th anniversary. Founded in 1996 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and known then as the Shanghai Five, the organisation’s remit was firmly centred on Central Asia and a common commitment to improve cross-border security and combat transnational threats. In 2001, the group added a sixth member, Uzbekistan, and formally changed its name to the SCO. However, its geographical footprint and mandate remained largely unchanged.

Over the next two decades, however, the SCO inducted new members and extended participation in the forum to observers and dialogue partners. Moreover, as geopolitical tensions between China and Russia and the West intensified in the 2010s, the organisation emerged as a building block in Beijing and Moscow’s efforts to create an alternative global governance structure to counter the Western-led international order. The SCO also began to promote greater economic connectivity among its member states and dialogue partners.

Southeast Asia’s engagement with the SCO has been slow to develop, primarily due to the organisation’s focus on Central Asia, which is not a priority region for the ASEAN member states, and the limited opportunities for interaction with the SCO until the option of dialogue partnership became available in 2008. The SCO and ASEAN only established institutional linkages in 2005, while just three of its member states, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, became dialogue partners between 2015 and 2025.

In September 2025, the SCO held its 25^th summit in Tianjin, China. This event marked a strengthening of ties between the Eurasian bloc and Southeast Asia. Six regional states attended the meetings, as well as the ASEAN secretary-general. The Tianjin Summit was a clear demonstration of Southeast Asia’s increasing interest in closer cooperation with the SCO due to intensifying global geopolitical churn and especially US President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to foreign relations, including the imposition of trade tariffs. Despite its institutional shortcomings, the SCO is viewed by some Southeast Asian countries as a useful additional hedging option in an era of major power competition. It also provides opportunities for closer trade and investment ties between Southeast Asian countries and SCO member states, especially China and India. Other Southeast Asian countries, however, have refrained from pursuing closer ties with the SCO due to frayed relations with China, negative perceptions of the organisation or because it is not perceived as providing opportunities for advancing their national interests. This article  provides a brief overview of the evolution of the SCO, followed by a more detailed examination of Southeast Asia’s engagement with the organisation.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCO

Five years after the demise of the Soviet Union, the leaders of China, Russia and three of the newly independent states of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – established the Shanghai Five. Its primary role was to improve the five states’ collective security by tackling the so-called “three evils”: separatism, terrorism and extremism. In 2001, Uzbekistan became the sixth member, and the organisation formally became known as the SCO. Mongolia became an observer in 2004, followed by Afghanistan in 2012. In 2008, the SCO invited applications for dialogue partners. In 2017, it inducted its first new members since 2001, India and Pakistan, followed by Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024 (see Table 1).

Table 1: The Expansion of the Shanghai-Five / SCO

Country	Year Joined
Members
China	1996
Russia	1996
Kazakhstan	1996
Kyrgyzstan	1996
Tajikistan	1996
Uzbekistan	2001
India	2017
Pakistan	2017
Iran	2023
Belarus	2024
Observers
Mongolia	2004
Afghanistan	2012
Dialogue Partners
Sri Lanka	2010
Turkey	2013
Cambodia	2015
Nepal	2016
Azerbaijan	2016
Armenia	2016
Egypt	2022
Saudi Arabia	2022
Qatar	2022
Bahrain	2023
Kuwait	2023
Myanmar	2023
Maldives	2023
United Arab Emirates	2023
Laos	2025

As with other multilateral forums, the expansion of the SCO’s membership created challenges. The organisation’s geographical focus expanded beyond Central Asia to include countries with disparate interests in South Asia, the Caucasus, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Rivalries between member states, such as India and Pakistan, and India and China, made consensus decision-making more difficult. Rivalries also existed among the dialogue partners, especially Iran and the Gulf States. As the SCO’s membership expanded, its institutional capacities and financial resources remained limited. Accordingly, Western countries tended to write off the SCO as an ineffectual talk shop composed of autocratic countries. More substantively, because it included members such as Russia, China, Iran and Belarus, it was often considered to be anti-Western and especially anti-American. Although the reality was more complex – several members do have tense relations with the West but most do not – some countries have been reluctant to pursue closer relations with the SCO for fear of offending their Western partners.

Despite its institutional shortcomings, the SCO is viewed by some Southeast Asian countries as a useful additional hedging option in an era of major power competition.

In September 2025, China’s President Xi Jinping hosted the SCO’s annual summit in Tianjin. The meeting was attended by over 20 world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At a time of heightened geoeconomic tensions triggered by the Trump administration’s levying of trade tariffs against many countries, the meeting provided a timely opportunity for Xi to project an image of China as a champion of globalisation and a force for stability. In a swipe at the US, for instance, Beijing declared that in the face of “unilateral bullying”, it fully supported the multilateral trading system and called for “eliminating unilateral practices” and for fairness instead of “hegemony”. In his speech, Xi announced China’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI), which promotes sovereign equality, international rule of law and multilateralism. In response to criticisms of the SCO’s institutional weaknesses, Xi called for “real results”, including the establishment of an SCO Development Bank and closer cooperation among the members in energy, green industry and the digital economy. Xi also hosted the inaugural SCO Plus meeting, which was attended by members, observers, dialogue partners and guests (including Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam). At this meeting, the tiered structure of observer and dialogue partner statuses was simplified by creating a unified SCO Partner category. The Tianjin Summit garnered more international attention than any previous SCO meeting.

SOUTHEAST ASIA’S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE SCO

Southeast Asia’s engagement with the SCO has been slow to develop, for obvious reasons. While ASEAN and its member states have long-standing ties with both China and Russia, the same cannot be said about their relations with the states of Central Asia. In addition, it was not until 2008 that Southeast Asian countries could apply for a dialogue partnership. Only three countries have done so, all of them in mainland Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. Those countries’ desire to interact with the SCO is mainly a reflection of their close relations with Russia and China rather than burgeoning diplomatic or trade links with Central Asia. The other two mainland Southeast Asian states, Thailand and Vietnam, have not applied to become SCO partners, preferring instead to become partners of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa), which is more trade- and investment-focused.

In maritime Southeast Asia, the links with the SCO are tenuous. While Indonesia and Malaysia are both keen to promote the interests of the Global South and attended the Tianjin Summit, neither has applied for SCO partnership. The Philippines (because of its fractious relationship with China over the South China Sea dispute) and Singapore (which imposed financial sanctions on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022) are unlikely to apply either.

ASEAN

ASEAN’s institutional engagement with the SCO has been distant, consisting primarily of pro forma meetings between the two organisation’s secretary-generals. The first formal contact between the two organisations was in October 2002 when President Putin’s special representative to the SCO visited the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta. Two years later, when ASEAN’s then-Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong met his counterpart Zhang Deguang at the SCO secretariat in Beijing, they agreed to establish formal institutional ties. A 2005 Memorandum of Understanding called for the two organisations to cooperate to address transnational crime, including terrorism and illegal trafficking in people, arms and drugs. However, little practical cooperation on tackling these issues has occurred. Since 2004, the secretary-generals of ASEAN and the SCO have regularly attended each other’s summits. Most recently, ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn participated in the 2025 SCO Plus meeting in Tianjin.

Several reasons account for the thin institutional links between the two organisations. First, although China is Southeast Asia’s most important trade partner, the economic footprint of the five Central Asian countries in the region is tiny, and vice versa. Second, the security dynamics of Central Asia do not directly impinge on those of Southeast Asia, unlike security issues in Northeast Asia and, to a lesser extent, South Asia and the Middle East. Third, the Central Asian states themselves have demonstrated little interest in closer ties with ASEAN. Only Uzbekistan has acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC). Accession to the TAC is a prerequisite for a more substantive relationship with ASEAN. In comparison, all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which held a summit with ASEAN (and China) in May 2025, have signed the TAC. Fourth, the SCO’s two official languages, Russian and Chinese, are a barrier to communication as ASEAN relies almost exclusively on English. Fifth, and most importantly, is ASEAN’s reluctance to dilute its centrality in the Indo-Pacific region by having a closer association with institutions dominated by Russia and China. This explains why ASEAN has not endorsed Putin’s 2016 Greater Eurasian Partnership, which calls for closer integration among ASEAN, the Eurasian Economic Union (the Russian-led customs union) and the SCO.  It is for this reason that institutional links between ASEAN and the SCO are unlikely to grow beyond perfunctory meetings between the two secretaries-general. 

Cambodia

In 2015, Cambodia became the first Southeast Asian country to become an SCO dialogue partner. Cambodia’s entry into the SCO occurred during Prime Minister Hun Sen’s premiership (1998-2023), a period in which China became the country’s closest trade, aid and investment partner. Membership of the SCO also signalled to Western countries, which had criticised Hun Sen’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies, that Cambodia had alternative diplomatic options. In the main, however, Phnom Penh views the SCO as an important venue at which to promote the country’s development through closer trade and investment ties with its members, especially China.

Hun Sen’s son and successor, Prime Minister Hun Manet, attended the Tianjin Summit. In his remarks at the summit, Hun Manet praised the SCO as “a vital multilateral platform guided by the Shanghai Spirit, which strengthens cooperation, respect for sovereignty, and the protection of territorial integrity”. He reaffirmed Cambodia’s “firm commitment to actively engage in the SCO to safeguard regional security, promote sustainable growth, and shape a future of peace and cooperation that benefits all.” Rhetoric aside, Cambodia clearly values its association with the SCO, particularly its economic potential.

Laos

Despite Laos’ close ties with both China and Russia, it was not until 2024 that it applied to be a dialogue partner of the SCO. Laos’ application was accepted at the Tianjin Summit, making it the 15^th partner of the organisation and the third Southeast Asian country to join. Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith led his country’s delegation at the summit. Laos is keen to take advantage of the trade and investment networks provided by the SCO to reduce its economic dependence on China and mitigate the impact of the Trump administration’s 40 per cent tariff rate on Lao imports.

Myanmar

Among the Southeast Asian attendees to the SCO Plus meeting, Myanmar gained the most. Since the military seized power in February 2021, Myanmar has been shunned by the international community and suspended from attending high-level ASEAN meetings. To break out of its diplomatic isolation, the junta, led by coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has strengthened economic and military ties with Russia. Although China initially disapproved of the military takeover, it has now accepted the results of the coup to protect its economic and strategic interests in Myanmar. President Xi has given the junta his support for the widely discredited general elections held in December 2025 and January 2026. More importantly, Beijing has intervened on behalf of the junta in the country’s ongoing civil war to broker ceasefires between the military and ethnic armed groups. Myanmar is pushing China to restart Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects suspended during civilian rule, including the Myitsone Dam.

Min Aung Hlaing attended the SCO Plus meeting. In another sign of improved relations between Myanmar and China, for the first time ever, China’s Foreign Ministry referred to him as “acting president”. In addition, Xi endorsed Myanmar’s bid for full membership of the organisation. SCO membership expands Myanmar’s diplomatic options beyond ASEAN and, in the future, opens the door to loans from the proposed SCO Development Bank. Myanmar’s attendance at the SCO is another example of how China and Russia have thrown the country’s military regime a diplomatic and financial lifeline.

Indonesia

Since taking office in October 2024, President Prabowo Subianto has pursued a hands-on, proactive foreign policy aimed at boosting Indonesia’s role as a global rather than just a regional player. In addition, Prabowo has pledged to “rebalance” Indonesia’s “independent and active” foreign policy, which he believes has become too pro-Western over the past few decades. In pursuit of that goal, Prabowo has strengthened ties with both Russia and China. Just a few days after he was sworn in, Prabowo sent newly appointed Foreign Minister Sugiono to attend the BRICS Summit in Kazan and applied for partnership status. Not only was Indonesia’s application immediately accepted, but its position was also elevated to full membership in January 2025.

In August 2025, President Prabowo accepted an invitation from President Xi to attend the SCO Plus meeting. However, due to civil unrest in Indonesia, Prabowo cancelled his participation and sent Sugiono instead (though Prabowo did attend the Victory Day Parade marking the end of World War Two in Beijing a few days after the summit). In his short remarks at the summit, Sugiono said Indonesia recognised the strategic importance of the SCO, welcomed the GGI, and reiterated his country’s commitment to multilateralism and non-alignment as well as “willingness to cooperate with SCO to amplify the collective voice of the Global South and reinforce the multilateral order”. Yet despite Sugiono’s endorsement of the SCO’s goals, Indonesia has not applied for either partnership or full membership status. Nevertheless, given Prabowo’s ambitions for Indonesia to play a more active role in multilateral institutions and be an advocate for the Global South, its application to join the SCO cannot be ruled out. 

Malaysia

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was also a guest of President Xi at the SCO Plus meeting. Despite Malaysia’s long-standing support for the Global South agenda and its successful application for BRICS partnership in 2024, this was the country’s first formal interaction with the SCO. Anwar delivered a characteristically strident speech which lavished praise on his host while criticising the current liberal international order. He lauded the SCO’s positive achievements and praised the GGI as a welcome response to the “failed” multilateral system. He bemoaned the failure to reform the United Nations and the “deficit of trust in the international system”, including in trade, finance and climate change. Anwar also referenced the atrocities committed in the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza and lamented how the international community had been “helpless” to prevent them.

As with Indonesia, Malaysia has not applied to become an SCO partner. In Tianjin, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, who accompanied Anwar, told the media that, for the time being, Kuala Lumpur did not see any need to join the organisation as Malaysia accorded priority to strengthening ASEAN. However, while ASEAN is clearly at the centre of Malaysia’s regional diplomatic framework, this does not preclude the country from joining other multilateral forums in the future, including the SCO.

However, the SCO’s importance to Southeast Asia should not be exaggerated. The bloc’s institutional weaknesses, disparate membership and perceived anti-Western bias will act as barriers to closer engagement.

Vietnam

Faced with an increasingly contested international environment, Vietnam has adopted a multidirectional foreign policy known as “bamboo diplomacy”. Vietnam seeks to preserve its strategic autonomy and advance its national interests by balancing its relations with the major powers to avoid taking sides. Hanoi’s engagement with both BRICS and the SCO has therefore been cautious, and complicated by its relationship with China, which is often strained by the two countries’ competing territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea. In 2024, during its close partner Russia’s chairmanship of BRICS, Vietnam successfully applied to be a BRICS partner, though this was not formalised until mid-2025. Unlike Indonesia, Vietnam does not seek full membership of BRICS, perhaps due to negative Western perceptions of the organisation.

Vietnam’s approach to the SCO has been even more cautious. In July 2025, in response to a suggestion by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that Vietnam join the SCO, a Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson was guarded, highlighting Vietnam’s commitment to multilateral organisations in general, such as ASEAN. APEC and the UN. Tellingly, the spokesperson added that Vietnam’s engagement with multilateral organisations was “based on the country’s foreign policy, conditions and capabilities”. Reading between the lines, this suggested Vietnam’s hesitancy to become an SCO Partner. Nevertheless, as part of its bamboo diplomacy, Vietnam accepted China’s invitation to attend the SCO Plus meeting in Tianjin. In his speech, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh called for a stronger multilateral response and greater international cooperation to address traditional and non-traditional security threats, as well as greater cooperation between ASEAN and the SCO. However, while he said it was necessary to enhance global governance, he stopped short of endorsing Xi’s GGI.

CONCLUSION

Intensifying major power rivalry, the Trump administration’s hard power approach to foreign policy, and dissatisfaction with the current international order have led some Southeast Asian countries to pay the SCO more attention. Closer engagement with the organisation by those states is driven by the wider Global South’s frustration with the perceived inequalities of the Western-dominated world order and a recognition of the emergence of a multipolar system in which China, India and Russia occupy key nodes. Moreover, at a time of economic decoupling and deglobalisation, the SCO is seen as an additional and potentially lucrative economic network.

However, the SCO’s importance to Southeast Asia should not be exaggerated. The bloc’s institutional weaknesses, disparate membership and perceived anti-Western bias will act as barriers to closer engagement. Aside from Myanmar, all regional states will continue to prioritise membership of ASEAN, as well as other multilateral fora such as the UN and APEC.

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This is an adapted version of ISEAS Perspective 2026/15 published on 3 March 2026. The paper and its references can be accessed at this link.