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://medium.com/areas-producers/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.