Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Predicaments And Future Developments

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a new regional cooperation regime as well as a multilateral regional organization developed in the post Cold War international environment. The SCO has withstood severe historical tests in its initial development phase and has achieved satisfying achievements in forming the basic regime framework and firmly establishing the cooperation concept. Nevertheless, with its development, the predicaments facing the SCO are beginning to emerge, and have become a critical and urgent issue that is to constrain its long-term substantial development. Those predicaments include unclear strategic positioning, ambiguous and weak cultural concepts and collective identity, difficult reconciliation of conflicting interests, unwarranted implementation of most of its agreements and policies as well as that of roles assigned to member states in the SCO. Seen from the perspective of external environment, the SCO is confronted with the difficult strategic choice of whether to expand or maintain the present size as well as numerous intricate relationships of the SCO itself as a regional organization and its member states with the U.S. and other regional organizations in Central Asia.The SCO is faced with a great number of dilemmas in its future development. Thus how to overcome those dilemmas, both internal and external, has become a significant test to the organization itself. This paper, based on theories of regional public good, attempts to analyze the supply and demand of public good within the area of SCO as well as the possibility of overcoming its predicaments.To open up a new and practical road to its future development, the SCO should, based on laws and shared values, integrate itself to react to non-conventional security challenges and make new endeavors in energy cooperation to yield branded cooperation results within the SCO framework so as to expand and deepen cooperation in other fields; to allow a leading role for China to play in the organization to strengthen its internal capability of internal governance and international action; to institute a kind of "concentric circle" diplomatic relations so as to normalize and straighten out the current intricate external relations of the SCO and its member states in operation mechanism.