According to an article from Asia Times on September 9, the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in Tianjin, China, sends a highly significant signal that China is steadily building a new multilateral order model distinct from the West.

The article points out that the SCO's membership is complex, with some member states having conflicts, yet it maintains a high level of sustainability. The key lies in its institutional design emphasizing inclusiveness rather than enforceability and normativity.

Through this platform, China has constructed a new logic of international relations widely accepted.

The SCO accommodates adversaries and absorbs contradictions, achieving mutual benefits through a mechanism without barriers, shaping a strong discourse field within a weak institutional framework. This strategy has been increasingly recognized and accepted by non-Western countries.

Site of the SCO Summit

The article points out that reviewing China's diplomatic trajectory over the past few decades reveals a clear strategic shift from compliance to leadership.

In its early years, China adhered to a policy of concealing its capabilities, emphasizing integration into Western-dominated systems such as the United Nations and WTO, to avoid direct confrontation and gain space for development.

Now, however, China is no longer content with being a rule-abiding power but actively takes the initiative, establishing and leading a series of institutional platforms, including the SCO, BRICS+, AIIB, and the three major initiatives of global development, security, and civilization.

More importantly, China does not build influence through value exports or ideological alliances, but through a new syntax for organizing international cooperation: weak obligations, low thresholds, and soft binding.

This syntax allows member states to have conflicts or even hostility, such as the highly tense relationship between India and Pakistan, yet they can still coexist peacefully within one framework.

This syntax does not emphasize consistency but participation, and does not pursue value convergence but focuses on mutual benefit.

Through such a institutional framework, China builds its own circle of friends while also providing an alternative option to the Western-led order, especially welcomed by Global South countries. In this regard, China has quietly completed a strategic transformation from an order adapter to a rule setter.

SCO

The reason why the SCO is seen as a model is precisely because it breaks the conventional logic of Western multilateral mechanisms.

The three most notable advantages are: extremely high inclusiveness, strong resilience, and non-coerciveness.

Firstly, inclusiveness. On the SCO platform, countries like India and Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, as well as Russia and some Central Asian countries have historical grievances and current conflicts, yet they can still participate in discussions, security cooperation, and issue joint statements, indicating the mechanism's strong inclusiveness towards members' background conflicts.

Secondly, resilience. Despite the lack of a unified value system and a mandatory decision-making mechanism, the SCO has not seen any member state exit over the years, and instead has continued to expand, showing that its low-pressure structure actually enhances the stability of the institution.

Finally, non-coerciveness. The SCO does not have NATO-style collective defense clauses or EU-style legal binding force; any country can remain with their differences without bearing political costs.

In essence, it creates the most tolerant and flexible geopolitical platform.

These advantages collectively form a consensus that does not rely on coercion, which is the wisdom of China's institutional design, and also explains why more developing countries are willing to integrate into China-led mechanisms.

Site of the SCO Summit

This year's SCO summit can be considered an important turning point in China's soft power shift.

This shift is not about cultural exports or media campaigns, but a deeper restructuring of the discourse structure.

China is constructing an order framework that does not require coercive power but can gain broad recognition through dual paths of institutional design and diplomatic language.

China directly provides a narrative space for a shared order, indicating that China indeed does not seek hegemony, unlike the United States, which, once powerful, demands the world to submit. Instead, China uses semantics to make the world praise it.

If in the past China was actively adapting to the Western-led order, now it is time for the West to learn the new syntax created by China.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7548297412889838123/

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