China hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting on Sunday and Monday with a record attendance of about 20 heads of state and government, along with officials from several international and regional organizations. Among the attendees were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian Masoud Pezeshkian, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The presence of the Indian Prime Minister alone reflected a significant shift in Sino-Indian relations, which have been tense in recent years.

This summit is the largest in the organization’s history since its establishment and comes amid a sensitive international context and major crises affecting its members, including the trade confrontation between China and India with the United States, as well as other issues such as the Iranian nuclear file and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was founded in 2001 as a political alliance including 10 members: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus. The member states attach great political importance to the success of the current session, considering this bloc a key expression of their rejection of the unipolar system and the dictates of the liberal Western countries that continue to treat the Global South condescendingly. This political bloc also represents a fundamental expression of the comprehensive Global South movement, which has become a key factor in international relations.

Participants in this summit emphasized the importance of “strengthening cooperation among countries and overcoming Cold War mentalities, bloc confrontations, and intimidation policies” practiced by some Western countries, primarily the United States. They stressed the need to establish a balanced and organized multipolar world, comprehensive economic globalization, and to promote a more just and equitable global governance system that enhances “true multipolarity.” These themes were particularly highlighted by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the opening of the SCO summit in Tianjin, northern China, aiming to reach a shared vision for building a new multipolar world order.

It is increasingly evident that this multipolar world has become an unavoidable reality for several reasons: first, liberal Western countries, led by the United States, are experiencing severe economic, social, and political crises that have affected their budgets and prevented them from funding their leading global roles; second, the intensification of contradictions among these countries, mainly manifested in the tariff wars between the United States and Europe; and third, fundamentally, the “uprising” of the comprehensive Global South against continued Western dominance and their relentless attempts to impose political, value-based, and civilizational models that do not necessarily align with the agendas and national cultures of these countries. These attempts are, in all cases, desperate efforts to revive colonial legacies.

Liberal democracy is considered one of the most problematic concepts, as it has historically been the primary standard for classifying nations and peoples and assessing their integration into the Western human civilization. Moreover, it has been the main justification used by Western countries for intervening in the internal affairs of Global South countries outside the framework of international law and legitimacy decisions, under the banner of “democratic legitimacy.”

Western liberal policies overlook that all civilizations and peoples have known some form of democratic organization, albeit varied and diverse in names. Conversely, they insist that the only legitimate form of democratic practice is its Western liberal content, a notion that most Global South countries no longer accept.

Economic globalization under the unipolar system seems to have reached its limit, and there is growing awareness that cultural and civilizational particularities do not prevent nations and states from building economic and political partnerships that do not exploit the interests of peoples. This may lead to the conclusion that liberal democracy has lost its luster and prominence in today’s world and is no longer the common denominator among humanity.