Leaders from China, Russia and countries in the global south are gathering in Kazakhstan for the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group that has been described as the “anti-Nato”.
The summit is part of China’s efforts to establish what it calls a “multilateral” world order that is not dominated by the US. But it is also a forum in which China and Russia’s “strategic partnership” will be tested by their competing desires to wield influence in central Asia.
