The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Dr Moonis Ahmar’s article ‘Can SCO promote connectivity within the three Asias’ published in the portal thefridaytimes.com reveals his fatuity and superficial understanding about the SCO.

https://www.thefridaytimes.com/2023/05/06/can-sco-promote-connectivity-within-three-asias-moonis-ahmar/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation

To understand the real purpose of creating SCO one must bear in mind the dictum that politics is concentrated economics.

Today the real conflict in the world is between USA and China ( which has emerged as a super power after the collapse of the Soviet Union ), though this conflict is not going on militarily but economically.

I submit (1) the SCO is really dominated and largely controlled by China, and (2) it is being used by China as a tool for expansionism in Asia and for its conflict with the USA.

To substantiate this I must explain certain things in some detail.

After their Revolution in 1949 the Chinese built up a massive industry in China. After a country reaches a certain level of industrialisation it usually turns imperialist. This is because its domestic market is saturated with its own industrial goods, and for further expansion of its industry it must seek foreign markets and foreign sources of raw materials, in other words, it must encroach into other countries. The same has happened to China, which though calling itself socialist is really imperialist.

In the 1930s and 1940s Nazi German imperialism was the real danger to the world, and not British or French imperialism. This was because German imperialism was rising and expanding, and hence aggressive imperialism, while British and French imperialism were only defensive. While the latter only wanted to hold on to their colonies, the Nazis wanted to conquer and enslave other countries. Hence at that time the Nazis were the real danger to the world.

Similarly, today the danger to the world is not from America but from China, because the Chinese are on the road of aggressive expansionism in the world. With their massive industry hungrily seeking markets for its goods and raw materials, and with their huge 3.2 trillion dollar foreign exchange reserve seeking avenues for profitable investment, the Chinese are today aggressive imperialists, and the greatest danger to the world. It is true they are not presently expanding militarily like Nazi Germany, but they are aggressively expanding economically by penetrating and undermining the economies of many countries of the world.

In the last decade Chinese overseas investment has skyrocketed. Today the Chinese are almost everywhere, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and of course USA and Europe. Their Belt and Road Initiative is a network of roads, railways, oil pipelines, power grids, ports and other infrastructure projects connecting China with the world. It aims at improving infrastructure and connectivity between China and the rest of Eurasia in order to dominate it. China’s focus is often on vital infrastructure like ports e.g. Gwadar in Pakistan, Piraeus in Greece, and Hambantota in Sri Lanka, the aim being to get a strategic foothold in these countries.

By selling goods at less than half the price at which the American or European manufacturers can afford to sell ( in view of their higher labour cost ), the Chinese have destroyed many American and European industries. Now the Chinese are seeking to capture the markets and raw materials in underdeveloped countries by dumping goods at very low prices so as to make the local product uncompetitive. Pakistan, for instance, is flooded with cheap Chinese goods.

The Chinese have, to a certain extent, penetrated the Indian market at the expense of our domestic industries. An article entitled ‘ How Chinese companies are beating India in its own backyard ‘ published on 12.12.2017 in The Economic Times gives some interesting details. Indo-Chinese trade is heavily skewed in favour of the Chinese. Indian exports to China are of 16 billion dollars, mainly of raw materials. But its imports from China are of 68 billion dollars, mainly of value added goods like mobile phones, plastics, electrical goods, machinery and its parts. This is typical of the relation between a colony and an imperialist country.

Chinese companies use aggressive pricing, state subsidies, protectionist policies and cheap financing. In certain sectors Chinese companies dominate the Indian market e.g. in the telecom sector, 51% of which has been captured by the Chinese. Indian homes are full of Chinese goods e.g. fittings, lampshades, tubelights, etc.

Similar examples can be given of Chinese penetration of markets and capturing raw materials in other parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well in the developed countries.

Chinese imperialism is thus the greatest danger in the world today. To ignore this danger will be behaving like an ostrich, like Neville Chamberlain who kept thinking Hitler was no danger until it was almost too late.

The SCO, like the Belt and Road Initiative, was created by China for aiding their expansionism in Asia, and for combating its principal rival, the USA.

The SCO is really dominated by the Chinese. No doubt it has other big countries like Russia and India in it, but these are really junior partners. The headquarters of the SCO is in Shanghai in China, and it is from there that it is principally controlled. The exclusion of USA, as well as its European allies, indicates that one of the principal objectives of SCO is to use it as a tool to combat USA.

But its other objective is to help China in its imperialist expansion in Asia ( like the Japanese ‘Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’, which was a euphemism for Japanese expansionism in East Asia ).

This is the real purpose of creating the SCO, something which Dr Moonis Ahmar in his inanity fails to understand.

All this talk of cooperation between its members and enhancement of trade is just dissimulation and a camouflage for the real intent