The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and China's Vision of International Relations

by Eva Seiwert

Overview

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is the first and most established regional organization initiated by China. This book investigates China’s use of the SCO to shape global norms and argues that self-created regional organizations constitute ideal platforms for emerging powers to promote their normative views internationally.

Based on original Chinese-language documents and interviews, the book illustrates how China has used the SCO as a regional platform that both represents and promotes China’s core normative views and concepts internationally. The analysis offers crucial insights into the Chinese government’s ambitions for norms and rules of contemporary international relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529246926
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	06/17/2025
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eva Seiwert is Senior Analyst in the Foreign Relations team of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on China’s foreign and security policy, with a special interest in China– Russia and China– Central Asia relations, as well as China’s behaviour in international organizations.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Conceptual framework: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an international society

2. The emergence and nature of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

3. Conceptualizing a new international society: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization's flagship concepts

4. Targeting global international society: China as a norm entrepreneur

5. Response to regional security crises

6. Response to security crises outside the immediate orbit

7. Enlargement of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s ‘circle of friends’

Conclusion