Areas: SCO Summit 2023 Held Virtually With India’s PM Modi As Host To Member Countries

While the news about China’s export restrictions of two metals used for semicondutors and hi-tech products, gallium and germanium, were the subject of heated discussion and debate throughout the week, it has been widely viewed as a response from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a jab at the Biden Administration ahead of US Treasury Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing.

As these events unfolded, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit (SCO) 2023 was being held simultaneously. As usual, much of the SCO Summit was ignored by the American mainstream media, with the exception of a few statements from Xi Jinping about shared responsiblity and the ongoing spats over US-China decoupling. CNBC

The summit was held virtually this year, with all of the member countries tuning in together through a video conference platform on 4 July 2023. You can view photos of the virtual summit in the link; it looks like certain leaders had their microphones turned off while India’s Prime Minister Modi was speaking, right next to Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.

The latter note is an important one, because one of the key results from this year’s summit was that Iran became the ninth member to join the SCO.

Of course China and Russia were the two countries everyone was listening to with anticipation — and fear? — but this year’s summit also put India back in the spotlight, as it was the host and had just wrapped up a historically significant meeting with US President Joe Biden from June 19–23.

It was a big event for American and Indian relations, and also set the stage for a stronger partnership between the two countries in the Indo-Pacific. Read more about the meeting between Biden and Modi in the publication Areas & Producers: https://readmedium.com/areas-overview-india-3703136c9514

According to CNN’s report on the summit, the opening statement was like this: “Vladimir Putin sought to project an image of strength in front of a virtual gathering of Moscow-friendly leaders…” CNN

Indeed the SCO is made up of a group of former Soviet Union countries, but also countries that China deems part of its own sphere of influence during its rise as a economic and military power in Asia. We’ll have to save this topic for another day.

I was most pleased with the mainstream Indian media’s coverage of SCO Summit 2023. A report by the Times of India focused on all of the key events and meticulously highlighted statements from Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, respectively.

I then searched for any content about the summit on Youtube. I was not surprised to find very little information about in from video streaming media, but another one of the India media outlets based in New Delhi did come up: it’s called WION — The World is One News.

I think the reporting in WION is just right for anyone who wants to stream more content about the SCO Summit 2023.

In Areas & Producers, we are always wanting to put the global commodities in perspective, and for what it means to the geopolitical trends in any given regional context around the world. That’s why I’m offering this previous update from the publication about Sinopec’s green hydrogen plant in Xijiang, as well as content about China’s push into Central Asia markets via closer cooperation with Kazakhstan. It’s important to know the role of Russia and China within the wider geopolitical trends of the Central Asia region.

Areas: Kazakhstan-China Relations Are Growing For Energy Exports and Industrial Policies

• Upstream published an in-depth report about Kazakhstan’s increased interest in developing partnerships with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) on 7 June 2023.
• This signals two parallel developments: 1.) Kazakhstan is not giving up on the economy power of its oil and gas trade; 2.) China is becoming the top player as opposed to Russia in the country’s oil and gas business.
• I say this because the CNPC is China’s largest investment firm in the country’s oil and gas sector. It will undoubtedly be prepared to invest a lot of money in Kazkahstan’s oil and gas, and thus it will be a critical player in Kazakhstan’s energy exports, making the industrial policy more favorable to China’s geopolitical objectives.

Producers: Sinopec to Begin Production at Green Hydrogen Plant in Xinjiang

On 30 June 2023 it was reported by Reuters that China’s oil and gas producer SinoPec is now beginning the production at its first green hydrogen plant located in Xinjiang.

According to the report this green hydrogen plant could produce up to 20,000 metric tons of hydrogen per year. Reuters

Although China intends to increase its domestic use of renewable energies, such as hydrogen, for reducing carbon emissions from industrial production. Chinese producers also have the capability to export clean energy as demand for sustainable energy is steadily increasing on global markets.

Writing for the publication Areas & Producers, Yury Erofeev recently published some report findings about how the hydrogen market will be larger than the LNG market by 2030.

But he’s also been following China’s clean energy exports, like in this content piece published early in the year about how China exported about 155 GW of solar modules in 2022.

In fact, renewable energies are now part of the structural debates around ensuring energy security, especially for emerging markets.

But in my personal point of view, oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) are two of the main reasons why China is on the radar of oil and gas producers.

Please let me take your attention here so that I can explain further. Read the full story in Areas & Producers: Sinopec to Begin Production at Green Hydrogen Plant in Xinjiang.