The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

This volume presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of the 2001-founded Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) from a genuinely international law perspective. It dwells mainly on Chinese sources and aptly links the wider historical and political setting of this organisation with the national predispositions and peculiarities of China, offering the audience a genuine understanding of China’s practice in international law in a field that has evolved completely outside Western influence. The expectation that a legal analysis of the SCO would expose Chinese positions in international law in a clear fashion has been fulfilled. The three parts of this study present the historical and political context of the SCO, analyse its institutions and structure, and critically assess interstate cooperation under the SCO framework.