On August 27, 2026, as China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, prepared to make a trip to Kyrgyzstan and Egypt for the 26^th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the official People’s Daily newspaper argued that the “Shanghai Spirit” (上海精神) offered a welcome foundational value at a time when “the international landscape is fraught with upheaval and turmoil.”

In recent years, the “Shanghai Spirit” has come to encompass a set of interrelated concepts and values that China has advanced internationally to redefine the global order — at least narratively — in ways critical of the West. In its official formulation, the “Shanghai Spirit” is a composite of six core concepts: mutual trust (互信), mutual advantage (互利), equality (平等), mutual consultations (协商), respect for diverse civilizations (尊重多样文明), and the pursuit of common development (谋求共同发展). These concepts all emerge from a centralist view of the role of the state, with primary respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity over the rights of the individual.

The SCO is the successor to the “Shanghai Five,” a grouping formed in 1996 by China and Russia, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which at that time were newly independent Central Asia states. Originally established as a mechanism to resolve border disputes and maintain Eurasian regional stability in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the organization’s primary concern has long been security, particularly focusing on joint counterterrorism and drug trafficking initiatives through bodies like the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) established in 2004.

Since 2001, however, the SCO’s interests and scope have expanded greatly to encompass trade, development, and people-to-people exchange, and since 2017 it has grown substantially — with Iran added as a full member in 2023, and Belarus the year after. As of March 2026, the organization comprises 10 full members, two states with observer status, and 15 dialogue partners, making it the largest regional organization in the world.

The phrase “Shanghai spirit” emerged amid the 2001 summit in Shanghai, bringing together the heads of six states, and was codified in the SCO charter the following year as “[the] spirit of mutual trust, mutual advantage, equality, mutual consultations, respect for cultural diversity and aspiration for joint development.” It should be noted that the original Chinese rendering of the phrase “cultural diversity” here was “diverse civilizations” (多样文明), rather than the more generic word “culture” (文化), a fact that from the vantage point of 2026 threads the “Shanghai Spirit” more tightly together with the grandiose civilizational politics that emerged in China under Xi Jinping in 2021 — and which the state-run Global Times once termed in English “Xivilization.”

China has asserted that the “Shanghai Spirit” represents a “new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation.” At a summit in 2018, in a definition of the “Shanghai Spirit” that again anticipated the civilizational politics that came fully into play from 2021, Xi Jinping proposed “civilizational exchange as a way to transcend civilizational barriers, and mutual learning among civilizations as a way to overcome the clash of civilizations.”

China presents this “new type” of relations as a counterbalance to what it calls the “zero-sum games” and “competitive economic strategies” of Western-led institutions. The August 27, 2026, article in the People’s Daily ahead of Xi’s attendance of the SCO summit decried “unilateralism” (单边主义) and “power politics”(强权政治), potshots aimed at the United States that far predate the second Trump administration — and position China as a champion of the developing world. Given the role of the “Shanghai Spirit” in China’s supposed reframing of international relations, it is not surprising that Chinese leaders have courted comparisons with the “Bandung Spirit,” referring to the 1955 conference that strengthened Mao-era China’s solidarity with the nations now collectively labeled — with notable criticism by some — as the “Global South.” This is a label, it should be noted, that China’s state media now use frequently to mark the country’s claimed global leadership.

What benefits does the “Shanghai Spirit” bring in practical terms? There are certainly doubts about how much can really be accomplished within the SCO, an organization whose parameters are broad, with participating states (in differing capacities) whose goals and beliefs are often sharply at odds — as, for example, in the case of India and Pakistan. Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, has said that while the organization may talk a big game and signal lofty ambitions for the world, it can rarely deliver. He notes that in more than 20 years, the SCO’s Business Council has “not once” facilitated an important business deal between member states.

“Today,” he writes, “the bloated SCO has become little more than a talking club for leaders of friendly countries.”