Nice! In case you’re just hearing about the SCO for the first time as well, here’s how it describes itself:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a permanent intergovernmental international organization established on June 15, 2001 in Shanghai (PRC) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan. Its predecessor was the mechanism of the Shanghai Five.

In 2002, the Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was signed at the meeting of the Council of Heads of States in St. Petersburg, which entered into force on September 19, 2003. It is a statute that stipulates the goals, principles, structure and major areas of activities of the organization.

The goals of the SCO are:
• to strengthen mutual trust, friendship and good-neighborliness between the Member States;
• to encourage the effective cooperation between the Member States in such spheres as politics, trade, economy, science and technology, culture, education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, etc;
• to jointly ensure and maintain peace, security and stability in the region; and
• to promote a new democratic, fair and rational international political and economic international order.

Internally, the SCO adheres to the “Shanghai spirit”, namely, mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development; and externally, it upholds non-alignment, non-targeting at other countries or regions and the principle of openness.