Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Regional Identity Formation from the Perspective of the Central Asia States

This paper reviews the perceptions of the CA states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and conceptualises the CA states' motivations and concerns in engaging in cooperation within the SCO vis-à-vis China. The message that this paper aims to deliver is that, for the majority of the CA leadership and public, China within the SCO represents the CA states' ‘other’, with decolonising but increasingly dominating features. These perceptions of China in the CA region elucidate the ways in which China's involvement in Central Asia has a paradoxical and contradictory impact on the potential for the SCO to move beyond functionalism and towards the creation of a broader SCO identity. Consequently, the future of the SCO may be more limited than the West fears and Central Asia hopes.