SCO builds bridges as the West walls its ‘garden’

With nearly half the world’s population and a quarter of global GDP, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has matured into a platform that challenges the very grammar of international politics, offering a vision that stands in stark contrast to the West’s increasingly fenced-off, crisis-ridden order.

At its recent summit in Tianjin — the largest in the bloc’s history — President Xi Jinping described Asia and Europe as “a garden of civilisations” flourishing in mutual prosperity.

His call for pluralism and shared universalism could not be more distinct from the insular worldview of the decaying Western elite. Just three years ago, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell laid bare this mentality when he declared that “Europe is a garden” and “the rest of the world is a jungle”.

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