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THE JUBILEE SUMMIT OF THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION
ALEXANDR SALITSKY,
Leading researcher of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
In the 5-year evolution of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) the question whether the economic cooperation could become one of the priorities in the interaction of the SCO member states has been examined for a long time.
I suppose that the economic component in the interaction of the SCO member states is becoming a new stage of the SCO development. The Organization starts to include the economic issues in its agenda.
I believe that it is quite logical since the SCO member states have much in common in the development of their economies. All of the SCO participants are the developing countries. So, they meet the challenges that are quite different from those the developed countries meet.
Here one of the key challenges, or tasks, is the development of infrastructure in the region. In other words, there is a task to build an advanced system of communications between the countries.
It is a positive process. The question is how those economic mechanisms will work. The problem is the private sector is not ready to invest in the infrastructure projects. The states' support is needed. In this situation, the SCO may assume the implementation of the common infrastructure projects.
In terms of the infrastructure development in Eurasia, it is indicative that Iran has become the SCO observer. Russia is extremely interested in carrying out the joint projects with this country.
So, Iran’s participation in the SCO is very promising.
As regards the talks about Russia and China’s competition for the SCO leadership, it is fairer to speak about the two countries’ partnership. First of all, Russia and China are interested in the infrastructure development in Eurasia. The other SCO member states, which are landlocked, look upon Russia as the transit country to the European markets, and upon China – to the Asian ones. Besides, Russia can facilitate the Chinese goods access to Europe, and China can favor the Russian commodities access to the Asia-Pacific Region.
Russia and China occupy different niches in the world economy: China is oriented to the labor-intensive production, Russia – to the resource-intensive one. In this respect both countries complement each other.
The Chinese experts speak about another interesting point. They say that China can help the Central Asian countries in the industrial development, since these countries and China have much in common – particularly, excess of labor resources. But it is not Kazakhstan whose economic system is closer to Russia.
The Russian language diffusion in the Central Asian countries is Russia’s advantage. The Chinese researchers suppose that China could focus on the economic cooperation with the Central Asian countries, which would remain under Russia’s political and cultural influence.
So, Russia and China’s partnership prevails over their competition, though this element is partly present. But it is not crucial.
It is important that with the development of the economic cooperation within the framework of the SCO, the political component will be less significant, and taking the SCO as the element of recurrence of the bloc confrontation between the world powers will be less important.
June 15, 2006
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