How media and think tanks play a strategic role within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

An aerial drone photo shows the Central Business District (CBD) in Zhengdong New District of Zhengzhou, central China's Henan Province on July 19, 2025. [Xinhua] The media and think tanks play a strategic role within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Kanatbek Aziz, director of the Research Institute of Geopolitics and Strategy of Kyrgyzstan, told Xinhua in a recent interview. "In a time of intensifying geopolitical turbulence ... the role and responsibility of media and think tanks within the SCO framework takes on strategic dimensions -- transcending information support," Aziz said. He said that media and think tanks within the SCO framework perform a dual function. First, they serve as relays -- broadcasting the Shanghai Spirit to national and international audiences and forming a coherent image of the SCO as a responsible global actor. Second, they serve as conceptual engines by generating new meanings, setting strategic directions, and providing intellectual guidance for integration processes. "Their responsibility is institutional: not only to support political messaging, but also to substantiate it with well-reasoned analysis rooted in civilizational codes, regional specificities and the principles of justice, sovereignty, balance of interests and collective security," the expert said. In today's fragmented information landscape, their task is not only to inform but to generate trust, defend the SCO's narrative space from external distortion, and facilitate the emergence of a new model of multilateralism, he said. "The synergy between media and think tanks can provide the intellectual foundation for multipolar solidarity and transform the expert-informational dimension into a strategic pillar of the SCO's regional and global role," he said. Aziz will participate in the SCO Media and Think Tank Summit, which is held in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, from July 23 to 27. He said the summit should be viewed not merely as a platform for exchanging opinions, but as a potential starting point for building a new systemic architecture of cooperation between the media and analytical communities of SCO member states. Amid the growing fragmentation of the global information landscape and intensifying competition over narratives, "the creation of a common intellectual and media space within the SCO is a strategic imperative," the expert said. The expert believes that the summit may lay the groundwork for a new model of institutional interaction -- aimed at consolidating a unified discourse, coordinating strategic narratives, and integrating informational, educational and analytical tools. "These elements -- convergence, trust, multilateralism and civilizational connectivity -- form the institutional basis of the SCO as a subject of the emerging global configuration," Aziz said.

How media and think tanks play a strategic role within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

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How media and think tanks play a strategic role within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

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