The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, gathering over 20 foreign leaders and the heads of 10 international organizations, is more than just another meeting of the group. It is beginning to look like the culmination of a process that may hand Xi Jinping the role of de facto convener of a bloc stretching from Minsk to Mumbai, from Moscow to Tehran.
The presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Central Asian presidents is not a mere coincidence of scheduling; it is the product of a geopolitical realignment that raises the question: has history simply delivered Xi an opportunity, or has Beijing itself carefully engineered the conditions for this moment?
It is tempting to argue that fortune has been on China’s side. The war in Ukraine, which has driven Russia into Beijing’s embrace, was launched by Moscow, not Beijing – despite being launched days after Putin visited Beijing. India’s tense relations with Washington, exacerbated by trade disputes and differing views on global order, are the product of many factors beyond Chinese control. However, there are Chinese fingerprints on the Pahalgam terrorist attack and proxy war through Pakistan, which led India into the Trump trap.
The rise of Islamic solidarity around the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has its own historical momentum, which China appears to be riding rather than creating, though China did unite Palestinian groups, including Hamas, to issue an anti-Israel Beijing declaration. It did assist Iran militarily and has kept the Iranian regime afloat with Russia. Xi, in this telling, is a beneficiary of circumstance, collecting the pieces of a fractured international system.
Evidence of intentional design
Yet the evidence increasingly suggests design rather than accident. China has consistently shielded Moscow from isolation, offering diplomatic cover, expanded trade, and a narrative of multipolarity that turns Russia’s open aggression in Ukraine into a broader struggle against Western hegemony. Far from being a bystander, Beijing has acted as the enabler that has allowed Putin to wage war despite sanctions, and probably was the only country aware of it before the attack. It has funded the war, buying billions of dollars of oil and gas from Moscow, constructing pipelines to eventually reduce its dependence on the Malacca Strait.
With India, the picture is subtler but no less deliberate. China has long probed the fissures in the US-India partnership, playing on New Delhi’s sensitivity to sovereignty, its desire for strategic autonomy, and its resistance to being cast as a junior partner in the American Indo-Pacific strategy. It first baited India through Pakistan’s attack on Pahalgam; it was clear that Modi would have to respond, given the sensitivity of the Kashmir issue and his no-nonsense position on terrorism.
Turkey provided support to Pakistan during India’s attack, not only providing weapons, intelligence, but also a global influence war to weaken the Indian position internationally and Modi’s position at home. It put into play all its assets, direct ones, as well as other anti-Modi assets such as Qatar-funded, Turkey-backed, and Muslim Brotherhood-led entities worldwide. No democracy came to India’s rescue against this Chinese attack, while Russia, now a Chinese vassal, remained silent.
By playing to US President Donald Trump’s ego, using Pakistani Chief of Staff Asim Munir as their own Trojan horse in Washington, Beijing managed to not only create a division between India and the US, get India sanctioned on tariffs while consolidating its own trade position with the US, but also managed to pull India closer, using Russia at Kazan. By combining confrontation on the Himalayan border with offers of economic partnership through the SCO and BRICS, Beijing has sought to pull India closer into its orbit, or at least away from firm alignment with the United States.
It has thus far managed to scuttle the Quad with rumors of Trump calling off his visit to India for the Quad summit. It got Field Marshall Munir to offer the US rare earths in Pakistan, aware of the futility of the same rare earths it has been trying to mine in Balochistan, Waziristan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been the failure of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Isolating Israel and the US
The effort to isolate Israel follows the same logic. By positioning itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause and a partner to the Muslim world, Beijing is not only scoring diplomatic points in the OIC but also seeking to weaken Israel’s deepening links with India, the Gulf, and the West. It supports Hamas, the Houthis, and the whole list of Iranian proxies, through Iran and directly.
Wherever there is a US-led grouping, I2U2 (India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States), Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) or otherwise, Beijing will break it and try to lure them to the Sinosphere. The signal is clear: China intends to stand at the center of a coalition that is both anti-Western and geographically vast, offering a home to powers that feel constrained or disrespected by the US-led order.
In Israel’s case, it has chosen to isolate Israel; in India’s case, it has pulled India closer and increased its dependence on China. The focus has been the same since the Indian G20 in 2023 and the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel destabilized the India-Middle East-Europe Economic corridor (IMEC). The cotton route can never replace the silk route.
Despite militarily being more well-equipped and powerful than India, Xi agrees with what Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, foresaw in 2007. China’s Achilles heel is its land border with India, and co-opting India and keeping it engaged on other fronts will allow China the bandwidth to expand globally. Keep your enemies closer. A chief ploy in the strategy was the coup in Bangladesh and the replacement of India’s ally, former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, with a mix of Islamists and academics, superficially acceptable to the West.
What emerges, then, is less the story of a fortunate accident and more the picture of a long campaign. Xi Jinping has sought to build an alternative pole of power by weaving together Russia’s desperation, India’s caution, and the Islamic world’s grievances. The Tianjin summit will be presented as a triumph of multipolarity and cultural diversity. Still, the underlying reality is that it represents the culmination of years of Chinese effort to exploit divisions, nurture discontent, and slowly gather disparate states beneath Beijing’s umbrella.
History may have provided the raw materials, but it is Xi’s deliberate construction that now binds them together. The question facing the world is whether this new bloc will prove durable – or whether it is merely a fragile coalition built on resentment of the West rather than a shared vision for the future. The ball is in Trump’s court.
The writer is the founder of the Indo-Mediterranean Initiative (cnky.in) and president of Global Cities. He is the chief representative for Italy in the Indian Chamber of Commerce.