South China Morning Post ran an article by British journalist Anthony Rowley tilted, “Shanghai Spirit for New World Order Needs To Be Matched by the West,” with this kicker: “SCO summit’s vision can’t be implemented without the requisite monetary and financial systems in place. The West must play a role if the world is not to fragment into blocs.”
Rowley draws a parallel between the 1945 Yalta Conference of FDR, Churchill and Stalin, and today’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, where Xi, Putin, and Modi considered a non-U.S.-dominated order. The challenge, he notes, is creating Bretton Woods-level institutions to manage trade, tariffs, and finance. Without Western participation, the world risks deeper fragmentation.
“Putting in place new Bretton Woods-type monetary and economic development institutions as well as trade and tariff regimes of the complexity of the World Trade Organization is a huge task. Yet it will be needed if the world is not to fragment further into blocs. What is needed is a new initiative by Western powers, led by the United States, to match the statesmanship that Xi and others are displaying, via the SCO and the BRICS group of Global South nations, to bolster and improve upon the existing architecture of multilateral institutions.”
He argues Western reluctance stems from resentment that Global South powers, especially China, are now leading infrastructure and monetary initiatives. A Bretton Woods-type meeting, redesigning the international monetary system, is needed for genuine cooperation.”
