67Received 02.12.2025. Revised 09.02.2026. Accepted 23.02.2026.
Abstract. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been developing formal contacts since 2022, and have agreed on priority areas and plans for ongoing cooperation. However, their cooperation has not yet found its own specific formula in the context of the world order. The Russian idea of reformatting the “Greater Eurasia” is unattractive for small and medium-size ASEAN countries, which are not interested in combining the security problems of Asia and Europe into one node. Moscow’s promotion of the rhetoric of the “non-Western” nature of alliances, such as the SCO, ASEAN, and the EAEU, is completely counterproductive in the context of ASEAN, which in the ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+6 formats is closely linked to Western-oriented countries and builds partnership relations with the United States. The main geopolitical and geo-economic contradiction in the ASEAN region is the desire of the U.S. to involve the Association member countries in an anti-Chinese alliance, which the region resists due to its maximum economic ties with China. The development of trade and economic projects between the SCO and ASEAN, although it seems natural, is actually hampered by the fact that China has previously built a system of dozens of direct agreements with ASEAN, shifted its focus to cooperation with this organization in the format of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and completes the formation of the ASEAN–China Free Trade Area (ACFTA). As a result, Beijing is not interested in duplicating these same advances through the SCO channels. SCO–ASEAN relations are also complicated by India’s accession to the SCO, which is blocking some of the Chinese initiatives. However, Beijing’s support for the promotion of SCO–ASEAN cooperation can be achieved if this promotion is “packaged” in the context of the implementation of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) macro-project. The critical attitude towards the concept of the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) is also a field where Russia and ASEAN could find common ground. It is necessary to overcome the parallelism in connecting the potentials of the EAEU, SCO, ASEAN, as well as the RCEP, APEC and other relatively similar or interfacing formats.
Keywords: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Association of the South East Asia Nations, partnership, China, integration, cooperation, Indo-China Region, South-East Asia
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