SCO Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

At 25, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has grown from six founding members into a partnership of 27 countries, making it a new type of regional cooperation organization with the largest land area and population and enormous development potential. Its journey reflects not only institutional resilience, but also a distinctive approach to regional cooperation.

At the 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, President Xi Jinping pointed out that the SCO's most valuable spiritual asset is the pioneering proposal and steadfast adherence to the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development. 

As Xi further noted, the SCO has found the right way of coexistence featuring non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party. This approach allows countries with divergent interests to remain at the same table and pursue practical cooperation. 

Such flexibility is particularly valuable for Central Asian states, which seek diversified partnerships, stronger connectivity and sufficient space to pursue balanced foreign policies. The next step is to translate this enduring consensus into higher-quality development and tangible results. 

Xi's four-point proposal at the Bishkek summit provides a clear direction for the SCO's next stage. He called on the SCO to put development first and open up new prospects for shared prosperity, while championing a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, consolidating cooperation in traditional areas such as trade and investment, connectivity, energy and resources, and expanding cooperation in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, digital economy, green industry and green mining.

For Central Asian countries, where the SCO was founded, this development agenda is particularly significant. The next phase of SCO cooperation can place greater emphasis on connectivity projects that deliver visible and lasting benefits. Railways, roads and dry ports can strengthen connectivity, while new corridors can support local manufacturing, agricultural processing, logistics services and market access for small and medium-sized businesses. Digital customs documents, compatible standards, predictable tariffs and more efficient border procedures can further turn connectivity into broader economic opportunities. 

In this way, the SCO can help Central Asia move beyond being a transit corridor and become an important hub for trade, production, innovation and regional cooperation.

Xi's speech also helps put the SCO's recent evolution into perspective. Contrary to earlier skepticism among outside observers that the SCO could become a forum for empty rhetoric, strategies and declarations, its recent summits have increasingly demonstrated that political consensus can be translated into practical mechanisms and action. What began as a regional organization focused primarily on security and stability is evolving into a broader platform for economic cooperation, connectivity and shared development. 

The 2024 Astana summit adopted the SCO Development Strategy until 2035, an energy cooperation strategy through 2030, programs against terrorism and drug trafficking, and an initiative on world unity for a just peace, harmony and development. The first SCO+ meeting broadened engagement with partner countries and institutions, while Belarus became the organization's 10th member, showing that enlargement can go hand in hand with a practical agenda.

The 2025 Tianjin summit carried this momentum. Its outcomes included a 10-year development strategy, stronger mechanisms to combat transnational crime, cyber threats and narcotics, support for multilateral trade, and greater attention to sustainable development and investment. The message was clear: The SCO should increasingly be judged by implementation.

The Bishkek summit offers another opportunity to consolidate this trajectory. The leaders adopted 28 outcome documents covering security, economic cooperation, people-to-people exchanges and institutional development, while approving amendments to the SCO Charter and regulations related to new mechanisms for addressing security challenges and combating drugs. 

China's proposals to establish an SCO AI application cooperation center, a China-SCO port economy cooperation center in Tianjin and 100 technological cooperation projects over three years further add a practical dimension to the agenda.

The direction is therefore increasingly clear: The SCO is moving from consensus to mechanisms, and from mechanisms to implementation. For Central Asia, this means greater opportunities to shape the organization's agenda and translate regional cooperation into visible development gains. For the wider Global South, the SCO offers a model of cooperation based not on uniformity or confrontation, but on mutual respect, negotiated interests and shared development.

This is ultimately the significance of the "Shanghai Spirit." Its value lies not only in helping countries with different systems coexist, but also in providing a foundation for them to build together. 

As the SCO enters its next quarter-century, there is every expectation that it will implement the development strategy of the SCO for the next decade, and pursue development with higher quality, while translating the "Shanghai Spirit" into concrete projects, measurable results and shared prosperity. This will be the clearest demonstration of the organization's continued relevance - for Eurasia and for the wider Global South.

The author is a chief research fellow of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn