It was a relatively subdued Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He departed the host city Bishkek having made few attention-grabbing headlines. 

There were no big announcements or the viral moments unlike at 2025’s SCO summit on Xi’s home turf in the Chinese city of Tianjin. In Bishkek, there were no photos of Xi, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cutting up together sans interpreters, nor Putin and Xi caught on hot mics discussing how to live for 150 years, nor a visit from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the day after.

“Nothing special happened this time [in Bishkek],” said Jildiz Nicharapova, a professor of international relations at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek.

Hundreds of journalists, starved of anything to report, and parked in a tent several walls and fences from the action, took to interviewing some of the women providing traditional beverages in national costume. Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened on the jumbo-screens beaming the summit’s proceedings to the press was when a delegation staff member took to spinning around in one of the leaders’ extra-plush swivel chairs during the lunch break.

But boredom was perhaps the point. The optics and the contrast they drew might have been the most significant outcome of the summit. Xi seemed intent on crafting an image for China as a steady guardian of global stability, juxtaposing Beijing as a reliable alternative to US foreign-policy fickleness.

The West’s cohesion seems to be fraying: the United States is involved in a trade war with Canada, has cut short military drills with South Korea, and has stoked tensions with European allies over a variety of issues, including the Iran war and US efforts to acquire Greenland.

“Everything that Trump does these days, it essentially, ultimately benefits China," said Eva Seiwert, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin who has written a book about the SCO. "His whole erratic behaviour, his unpredictability in world politics, that’s something that’s really easy for China to present itself as the more responsible and credible global player.”

At the SCO gathering, some of the world’s leading autocrats and illiberals, as well as a smattering of more democratically minded leaders, hailed, at least rhetorically, international norms while lamenting the decline of the of the organisation charged with guaranteeing those norms, the United Nations. Their stance was intended to offer a sharp contrast to what they portray as the erratic nature of the Trump administration’s conduct, especially his on-again, off-again war against Iran.

In addition, all sides in Bishkek seemed eager to show they’re smoothing out their rough edges. 

Putin and Xi met the day before, where Xi said the future prospects for bilateral relations are “even brighter.” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan sat next to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization-Plus meeting, underscoring their ongoing efforts to forge a lasting peace in the South Caucasus. And Modi entreated Putin to stop the war in Ukraine during a bilateral meeting.

China’s power both to shape global narratives and to quietly prop up its friends and allies of convenience was on display at the summit. 

Given China’s economic dominance, smaller states seized on any opportunity to be “in the picture” with Xi, even if they didn’t get a bilateral meeting, Seiwert told Eurasianet.

China’s purchases of Russian oil and gas have played a big role in keeping the Russian economy afloat. And with Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries jeopardising Russian petroleum supplies to Central Asian states, China has stepped in to help plug the supply gap. Kyrgyzstan’s first imports of Chinese fuel oil arrived in July, and Tajikistan has also said it is in talks with Xi’s government. 

As the summit’s host, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov gave Xi and his Central Asian counterparts their turn to deliver statements. They all sounded similar notes, showing just how closely the region is in tune with Beijing. In a bilateral meeting with Xi, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirzoyoyev hailed “Chinese-style modernisation.”

The summit brought more attention to Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, which are already basking in it thanks rising global interest in the region’s reserves of critical minerals, as well as Kyrgyzstan’s selection for a two-year term on the UN Security Council. But the gathering produced few tangible gains.

Japarov touted a new SCO anti-organised crime centre to be based in Bishkek — mirroring the anti-terror centre in Tashkent and the anti-drug trafficking center in Dushanbe — and lauded progress on the creation of a SCO development bank. 

But the bank has not actually become operational, and the organised crime centre’s main responsibility is data collection, Nicharapova pointed out. “The Bishkek summit was useful for countries’ leaders to speak to each other informally in such an uncertain time,” she told Eurasianet.

Despite the smiles and warm words, deep divides are evident. Pashinyan and Putin, for example, had a tense bilateral meeting, their first since Armenia’s June elections. And none of the powers offered much in the way of substantive relief for Iran, the subject of growing economic pressure from the West. 

“Many of those countries that are part of the SCO still have very close relations to the United States or are dependent on the United States, so I think many of them try to be as low key or low profile as possible,” Seiwert said.

For some, their mere presence at the summit was enough to send a message. “Russia and Iran for example, they can of course use it primarily to show they are much less isolated than, for example, European leaders often say or think,” Seiwert said.

But the relative silence on conflicts at the centre of global affairs, including Iran and Gaza, gave rise to a least a hint of discontent over the SCO’s restrained posture among some summit participants. After a fiery denunciation of the United States, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian argued that increasing multipolarity via a more robust SCO posture in global affairs could lead a greater respect for state sovereignty.

 “The countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization-Plus format possess significant political, economic, demographic and geographic potential and can play an important role in the formation a such a world,” he said.

But it was Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko who highlighted what Pezeshkian had left hanging. The SCO isn’t doing as much as it could to exert influence over global affairs, said Lukashenko, the only SCO leader other than Pezeshkian to say the word “Iran” out loud at the summit.

“[We] say we’ve got this spirit and all the like, but that’s not enough. People expect some concrete actions from us regarding multipolarity,” Lukashenko said, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres listened on. 

“After all, we’ve got to acknowledge that we’ve got here three of the mightiest countries, the People’s Republic of China, India, the Russian Federation,” he said. “Above all we’re expecting initiatives from them. But so far there aren’t any.”

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.