At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, leaders representing over half of humanity signaled the rise of a multipolar world order. As China, Russia, India, and Central Asia push new financial and trade systems, the West risks being left on the sidelines.
When the leaders of China, Russia, India, and several Central Asian states gathered in Tianjin last week for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, the world should have paid far closer attention. Collectively, the countries represented at the table account for more than half of humanity, command immense reserves of natural resources, and increasingly drive a larger share of global GDP. This is not a peripheral coalition but a core pillar of the international system in the making.
Yet much of the Western press treated the gathering as little more than a diplomatic sideshow, overshadowed by domestic political debates or the latest updates from NATO. That was a mistake. What unfolded in Tianjin was not just another regional summit. It was the clearest indication yet that the unipolar world of U.S. primacy, which dominated the decades after the Cold War, is giving way to a new and contested multipolar order.
The symbolism was unmistakable. Beijing positioned the SCO as a platform for “equal partnership,” implicitly contrasting it with Western alliances built around hierarchy and U.S. leadership. Moscow emphasized strategic coordination in the face of sanctions and military pressure from the West. India, while carefully balancing its ties with Washington, underscored its role as a civilizational power charting an independent path. The Central Asian republics, long seen as geopolitical battlegrounds between outside powers, asserted their relevance as connectors of trade, energy, and security across Eurasia.
Beyond symbolism, the summit carried substance. Agreements on energy cooperation, cross-border infrastructure, digital technology, and security coordination point toward an increasingly institutionalized bloc. Taken together, they signal that the SCO is evolving from a loose forum into a framework capable of shaping the rules of the 21st-century world.
For policymakers in Washington and European capitals, the lesson is sobering. Ignoring the SCO or dismissing it as a talking shop risks overlooking the consolidation of an alternative power center that is steadily building legitimacy outside of Western institutions. For the rest of the world, particularly in the Global South, Tianjin served as a reminder that power is no longer concentrated in a single pole, but dispersed across multiple capitals with diverging visions of order.
The summit was therefore more than a diplomatic calendar entry. It was a milestone in the slow but unmistakable rebalancing of global power and a process that will define international politics for decades to come.