#304: Challenging the West? The 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Summit in Tianjin

China presided over a big meeting in Tianjin with a large military parade. Many countries attended. What does this mean? Should we all now be panicking? No.

I’ve heard from some people that they were really disconcerted about what just happened in Tianjin, that China really showed they’re building an alternative to the Western system. We had President Putin—or rather dictator Putin—of Russia show up. We had President Modi of India show up. Eventually Kim Jong-Un showed up for the parade. We even had some Europeans show up.

What does this mean? Is this a new alliance of strength? Let’s look at this in more detail.

Who Attended?

This was basically a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and some of the people participating were indeed members. Some are former Soviet states that are neighbors to either Russia or China or both, or they’re neighbors of China or somehow in the vicinity of China and may have to yield to China’s influence occasionally.

The “CRINKS” Alliance

First, we have the so-called CRINKS: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This alliance of dictators has been around for a while. It is disconcerting, of course—it’s not what we would like to see, but there it is.

China is not at its best right now, or let’s say Communist China. They’re still trying to claim that they want to invade Taiwan, which is why the United States has to play this unfortunate double game between Russia and China, and why Europe has to be on its toes when it comes to Russia and the US when it comes to China.

But China has seen its real estate giants like Evergrande and Country Garden have real problems. There are rumors about it having much fewer people than alleged—I can’t comment on that as I’m not a specialist. We’ve seen protests in China recently. Of course, they are quickly suppressed, but they’re there. It seems to me that China is not on its best game. This is not the China before Xi Jinping. This is not the China that’s going to dominate the world with innovation and real alliances.

Russia is economically declining. It is fighting a losing war and trying to pretend it’s relevant because it has nukes—that’s all it is. Russia is completely dependent on the West economically, and so actually is China, because it’s the West that consumes goods. It’s American consumers mostly, but also European consumers that China relies on. It’s European and other recipients that Russia wants to sell its oil and gas to, but without the West, these nations don’t have the market.

China may support Russia as a fellow autocratic partner, but there’s no love lost. We all know that, or we should know that. That’s always been the case—that’s not new. Even in Soviet times, which I remember very well, China and Russia were two different camps within the communist alliance.

Iran has been severely weakened recently because Israel has diminished Hamas and Hezbollah. Hopefully the Houthis will also be diminished further. Syria has fallen, Assad has fallen. Iran is fighting to maintain its relevance. Tehran has run out of water—that’s a completely different thing, but it has to do also with government corruption and inaction, and its influence is less than it used to be.

North Korea can send soldiers to Russia, but the North Korean economy is not in any way relevant.

All these four nations can only posture militarily and be a military threat. But there’s not the economic power behind it. If China were determined to wage war against the West, it would not win and would basically shoot itself in the foot, just like Russia is doing right now. There’s no logical, hard economic or political purpose to what Russia is doing.

If the CRINKS see themselves as an alliance, they’re severely underestimating the West.

Other Shanghai Cooperation Organization Members

• Belarus: Occupied by Russia, another victim of Putin
• Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan: All within the Russian sphere of influence and trying to get loose from it, but they can’t really because geography is geography
• Cambodia: Just a dialogue partner, as is Armenia and Azerbaijan
• India: India and China aren’t friends, no matter what you saw there. Modi was signaling basically to Donald Trump to cut it out—to not antagonize India. This is an unfortunate development, but I think eventually China will not be able to help itself as it tries to gain more territory and antagonize India. So I don’t see this going anywhere. We should calm down about that.
• Pakistan: China has tried to get territory from Pakistan too. Some of these members are probably members because they believe in pacifying China by being part of it.

Other dialogue partners include Myanmar and Nepal (also under Chinese threat), Egypt (which has had a complicated relationship between West and East), the Maldives (strategic location), and Turkey (trying to figure out where it stands but still a member of NATO, trying to be neutral).

Then you see a number of countries that are simply, through their position of being neighbors, unable to not be somehow involved with China.

Who Came to the Parade?

Economic heavyweights like Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Serbia (Russia’s last outpost within Europe, but let’s see how that goes eventually), Slovakia (dependent on Russian oil—I’m actually surprised, and maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe Hungary sent somebody, but I’m surprised Hungary didn’t send a representative).

But when you look at this list, with the exception of China and India to a certain degree, and Turkey, none of these are heavyweights. None of these have the economic power of most Western nations. And India, I think, is on this list just strategically—playing this game of “if you don’t respect me, I can always go to the other side.”

What Does This Mean?

We should probably not be obsessing too much about this. It also means that yes, there is in principle competition to the West, and that’s good. Economic cooperation is always good. Economic cooperation ideally means the furtherance of peace—that’s what economic cooperation ideally creates.

But only if you don’t deal with an irrational lunatic or with a person that dominates a country whose rationality is just based on their own self-interest as a person (basically Putin) or as a party like the Chinese Communist Party or quasi-party like the mullahs.

If you have selfish leaders that don’t care about their country, of course economics is different. But in the long term, such positioning will not be useful to these countries.

Nevertheless, it is important not to drop the ball here. While we shouldn’t be too disconcerted by this meeting, even by the military parade—I mean, there’s nothing lamer and more ridiculous than a fancy military parade. It’s embarrassing, really. All you do is show that you’ve trained your soldiers unnecessarily, endlessly for some idiotic parade.

This has nothing to do with actual military power. All these soldiers know how to do is march. I served in the Bundeswehr for my military service. Yeah, we marched a little bit, but only the guard battalion whose job really is to be representative—these guys know how to march and how to present. All the others, well, the point of marching is not to step on the feet of the person walking behind you. That’s why you have to synchronize the walking. That’s what I learned to do. We didn’t learn how to look like perfect Nazis or communists all in a row.

Now, the military infrastructure—we got to see the weaponry. Yeah, some of this we need to look at. Should we be afraid? Only if we drop the ball.

So this was actually helpful to see that we can’t give up on ourselves. We can’t keep talking ourselves down. We can’t keep destroying our own strength. There’s really still one show in town—that’s the West. And whatever CRINKS wants to do, whatever the Shanghai Cooperation Organization wants to do, they’re economically dependent on the West.

The Lesson

Keep going strong. Keep supporting your democracy, keep supporting your economy, keep supporting your alliances. Don’t alienate your allies. Do make sure that all the allies are supporting each other.

But unless the West lets itself be fractured by this group, we shouldn’t be too afraid. Concerned? Yes, always—concerned is always good. But fear? No.

This was a big show in order to make us feel less than. All we need to do is carry on, defeat Russia, put stops toward China and Iran and North Korea, and show the world that the West is still the voice for economic development, democracy, freedom, and all those things that none of these CRINKS can deliver on. They can’t deliver on anything relevant to people.

Let’s just see. Thank you very much.

[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]