Shanghai Cooperation Organization Economic Cooperation

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an intergovernmental international organization originated by China and established in Shanghai. It is a regular practice of SCO's predecessor, the Shanghai Five mechanism started in 1996. The original aim of SCO and its predecessor is to seek border security and good neighborly friendship between the member countries of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzatan, Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2005, this remarkable regional cooperation organization has entered its fourth year. In the past four years, it has increasingly improved its regional cooperation functions and expanded its profound impacts in Eurasia, even in the whole world and hence it has become one of the most important regional cooperation organizations in international political and economic life.With the security cooperation on the right track, regional economic cooperation has been placed on the agenda. The member states of SCO cover an area of over 30 million km , or about three fifths of Eurasia, with a population of 1.51 billion, about a quarter of the world's total, with the GDP of 2300 billion dollars. In the long run, SCO has an enormous potential to promote regional economic cooperation. If this region can achieve economic integration successfully, that means it will have held about 30% of the GDP in the world before 2020. However, because of its short history and the generally low economic levels, the regional economic cooperation of SCO is still at its early stage.The paper studies systematically the economic cooperation of SCO, analyzes and forecasts the prospect of the regional economic cooperation of SCO.The paper falls into three parts.The first part briefly states the establishment, the development process, the general situation and the significance to China of SCO. First, taking Central Asia as reference, the paper analyzes the international background of the establishment of...