Armenia, China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Navigating Between Poles

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Armenia’s foreign policy, once largely reactive and reliant on Russia, began shifting in mid-2022 toward a proactive dual-track strategy of deterrence and diversification. The goal was to reinforce national resilience while reducing dependence on any single actor. By 2024, this reorientation sparked debates over whether Yerevan was pivoting toward the West, simply diversifying its partnerships, or hedging from Russia. These debates unfolded amid profound changes in the international environment: the rise of multipolarity, the recalibration of U.S. foreign policy, growing transatlantic tensions, intra-European divisions, and the broader crisis of the liberal international order.

In early 2025, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan defined Armenia’s evolving course as “balanced and balancing.” In practice, this has meant cultivating ties with both Western and non-Western partners amid increasingly transformational global processes and in a complex regional setting. Positioned at the crossroads of Eastern Europe, Western Asia and the Middle East, Armenia seeks to turn its location into an asset. The strategy reflects an effort to broaden and deepen partnerships, mitigate risks and tensions, and balance regional engagement with long-term European aspirations and wider global alignments. Within this framework, Armenia has recently elevated its relations with China and applied for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), building on earlier initiatives to deepen ties with Iran and India.

Armenia–China Bilateral Relations: From Modest Cooperation to Strategic Partnership

Until recently, Armenia and China maintained a pragmatic but modest relationship that was largely economic in nature. Bilateral trade expanded steadily, with Armenian exports to China reaching $425 million in 2023—mainly copper and molybdenum—while overall trade reached $2.13 billion, placing Armenia among China’s top ten trading partners in the region. Yet despite joining the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015, Armenia did not attract major Chinese infrastructure projects. Beijing’s engagement remained limited to soft power tools such as language programs, Confucius Institutes, and cultural exchanges, rather than large-scale investment.

Armenia’s neighbors moved earlier to elevate their ties with China. Georgia upgraded its relationship to a Strategic Partnership in July 2023 during Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s visit to Beijing. Azerbaijan signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in April 2025 during President Ilham Aliyev’s state visit. Armenia entered the strategic partnership track later than its neighbors. This reflects both its cautious diplomacy with Beijing and structural constraints—closed borders with Türkiye and Azerbaijan limited the feasibility of Chinese infrastructure projects. Yerevan also had to carefully weigh the implications of closer ties with Beijing for its relations with Western partners, making it more reluctant than Georgia or Azerbaijan to move quickly. 

Against this backdrop, Armenia’s 2025 decision to elevate relations with China marked a significant policy shift. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s visit to China in July signaled Armenia’s readiness to expand cooperation with Beijing beyond economics. This momentum culminated on August 31, when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Xi Jinping formally established an Armenia-China strategic partnership during their meeting in Tianjin. The agreement pledged deeper cooperation across political, economic, cultural and international affairs. It included Armenia’s support for the “one-China” principle, China’s endorsement of Yerevan’s Crossroads of Peace initiative, and commitments to strengthen ties in trade, infrastructure, technology and investment.

Prospects and Constraints of the New Partnership 

This step opened new channels for Armenia to align with China’s Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative and Digital Silk Road programs. Smaller states across Eurasia have used these to improve logistics, expand market access, and build digital capacity—from satellite navigation to e-commerce and financial technology. 

According to the World Bank, China’s BRI connectivity framework creates practical opportunities for small states to modernize infrastructure and digital systems while diversifying external partnerships. The Digital Silk Road (DSR), part of the broader BRI, focuses on investments in fiber-optic cables, satellites, 5G networks, and digital trade platforms. Scholar Mher Sahakyan notes that the DSR allows Eurasian Economic Union states to modernize infrastructure, access Chinese digital platforms (such as satellite navigation, fintech, e-commerce), and deepen technology cooperation without binding themselves politically to Beijing. 

The partnership text also outlines principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and cooperation in international affairs. For Yerevan, the strategic partnership with China offers both opportunities and constraints. It enables engagement with Beijing on concrete economic, technological, and connectivity projects. However, it also requires avoiding political alignment and ensuring such cooperation remains compatible with Armenia’s EU and U.S. partnerships. So far, there are no indications of political influence by China in Armenia; the cooperation has remained largely pragmatic and economy-driven.

The partnership with China gives Armenia a chance to align its Crossroads of Peace initiative with China’s Belt and Road network, including the Middle Corridor—a transport route linking China through Central Asia and the South Caucasus to Europe. New transport options are emerging in the region. Cargo is already moving via the China-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Armenia route, giving Armenia access to the Khorgos gateway at the Kazakh-Chinese border. First raised at a Kazakhstan-Armenia business forum, several companies have successfully tested the corridor, with transit times ranging from nine to 20 days, compared to up to 45 days on existing routes. A Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Armenia multimodal logistics route is also under consideration. These two routes expand Armenia’s options for east-west connectivity with Central Asia and China, opening new opportunities for exports and transit. 

While Armenia’s partnership with China is so far evolving within the areas of economic cooperation and connectivity, it also has the potential to acquire a modest defense dimension. Armenia–China defense cooperation remains limited but gradually expanding within the framework of their newly established strategic partnership. Defense Minister Suren Papikyan’s visit to Beijing in mid-September 2025 within the framework of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing and his meetings with the high-level Chinese defense officials reflected a shared interest in deepening dialogue and professional exchanges. While no major defense agreements or procurement deals have been announced, both sides emphasized military education, training, and institutional cooperation, with a number of Armenian officers studying in Chinese military academies. It is important to note Azerbaijan’s recent acquisition of 40 JF-17C Block III multirole fighter jets—jointly produced by Pakistan and China—under a $4.6 billion deal concluded earlier in 2025. Against this backdrop, Armenia’s evolving defense dialogue with Beijing has the potential to extend to selective technological cooperation or procurement of dual-use systems. If materialized, such cooperation would remain strictly technical and pragmatic in nature—focused on defense modernization rather than any alignment with China’s broader political or security posture.

The partnership comes amid escalating U.S.–China rivalry, where Washington increasingly frames Chinese global initiatives as instruments of geopolitical competition. The European Union, however, maintains a strategic dialogue and cooperation framework with China, anchored in the “EU–China 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation”, which focuses on trade, climate, and connectivity while emphasizing “de-risking” rather than decoupling.

For Yerevan, the key lies in engaging selectively: leveraging investment and logistics opportunities while preserving strategic autonomy and balance among its diverse partners. The partnership with China embodies Armenia’s broader foreign policy of diversification and multi-alignment—a strategy designed to balance geopolitical sensitivities.

BRICS and the SCO: Convergence Without Equivalence

Armenia participated as an observer at the 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, signaling its pragmatic pursuit of multipolar diplomacy and economic diversification. Some domestic voices have suggested BRICS as a preferable alternative to EU membership, prioritizing regionalization over EU integration. However, the Armenian government views regional cooperation and EU integration—formally declared as an official policy objective—as complementary dimensions of its multi-alignment strategy, not contradictory ones. Aspiring for BRICS membership would be problematic for Armenia. The bloc is widely regarded as an ideological counterweight to the Euro-Atlantic order, challenging Western dominance and comprising largely illiberal and autocratic states. 

Moreover, Armenia’s modest economic weight and BRICS’s accession criteria—centered primarily on economic power—make full membership unrealistic. Since the 2024 expansion round, the organization has received a surge of new applications and has temporarily paused the admission of additional members while revisiting its enlargement criteria and considering the introduction of a “partner countries” category. This development further limits Armenia’s prospects for membership but may increase the likelihood that it could seek a partner status if such a format is formally established and if its criteria don’t contradict Armenia’s EU integration aspirations. 

In July 2025, Armenia formally applied for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and a month later, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attended the SCO Summit in Tianjin, China, held from August 31 to September 1. Founded in 2001, the SCO has grown into one of Eurasia’s significant political and economic groupings. By late 2024, it had ten member states—Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—bringing together much of Eurasia, including some of the world’s largest populations and fastest-growing economies. Turkey has been an SCO “dialogue partner” since 2012, the first NATO member with that status. President Erdoğan has floated the idea of full Turkish membership on multiple occasions.

The SCO’s official mandate, as defined in its Charter, is to strengthen mutual trust and good relations among member states, promote regional peace and stability, and expand cooperation in politics, economy, infrastructure, science, culture, and other fields. These efforts are based on sovereignty, equality, and non-interference. The Charter also explicitly addresses security, joint efforts to combat terrorism and transnational crime, and defense cooperation—mainly through confidence-building measures, consultations among defense ministries, and joint exercises. 

At the 2025 Tianjin Summit, China and Russia sought to present the SCO as an alternative to Western-led institutions, emphasizing sovereignty, non-interference, and rejection of military-political blocs. Yet, as Michel Duclos from Institute Montaigne observes, beyond the symbolism and rhetoric, the organization’s impact remains limited. It serves more as a signaling platform than a cohesive alliance. This exposes a contradiction: the SCO  rejects bloc politics while China and Russia use it to project an alternative pole and present their vision of the new world. The adversarial relationship between India and Pakistan, along with the strategic rivalry between India and China, further undermines the SCO’s cohesion and effectiveness. 

Armenia’s participation in BRICS events reflected an exploratory phase of multipolar engagement. Its application for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization marked a shift toward a more regionally focused form of diversification. The SCO parallels BRICS in several respects—overlapping membership and a shared emphasis on non-Western cooperation. Yet the two differ in orientation. The SCO focuses primarily on regional security, connectivity, and practical economic coordination. BRICS is centered on global financial influence and reforming international economic governance. For Armenia, this shift from observing BRICS to pursuing SCO membership marks a transition from symbolic participation in a global multipolar forum to engagement in a platform offering more tangible, realistic, and less ideological avenues for cooperation and diversification.

Between Opportunity and Constraint: Armenia’s SCO Membership Aspirations

Pashinyan noted that Armenia had long held observer status in the SCO, but the organization’s evolution and growing importance made full membership a logical next step. The move reflects Yerevan’s intention to position itself as an “expected partner in the north, south, east, and west.” The membership application is thus a practical expression of Armenia’s multi-alignment and diversification in an increasingly multipolar world.

Some critics in Armenia argue that instead of moving toward withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the government is deepening its involvement in Eurasian structures, thereby undermining the credibility of its EU integration agenda. Armenia has frozen its participation in the CSTO but continues to share membership in the EAEU with several SCO states, creating another layer of interaction. Relations with Russia, its formal ally, have been strained since 2022, though Yerevan has recently sought a more balanced approach to manage economic interdependence and mitigate hybrid threats. Ties with Belarus have also deteriorated and were officially downgraded due to Minsk’s explicit support for Azerbaijan. Among Central Asian states, Armenia has advanced bilateral relations with Kazakhstan in recent years, while its ties with Uzbekistan remain minimal, constrained by Tashkent’s strategic partnership with Baku.

Yet the Shanghai Cooperation Organization differs markedly from both the CSTO and the EAEU, despite partially overlapping membership. Unlike the CSTO, it imposes no collective defense obligations, and unlike the EAEU, it is not a customs or economic union with binding commitments. Instead, the SCO operates as a loose framework for political dialogue, regional security cooperation, and technical coordination—serving more as a platform for connectivity, finance, and diplomatic engagement than as a mechanism of institutional integration.

The SCO lacks supranational institutions or binding mechanisms, functioning instead through consensus and flexible cooperation. For Armenia, this distinction is significant: participation in the SCO would not entail obligations comparable to those of the EAEU, enabling pragmatic engagement without undermining its diversification and EU integration goals. At the same time, engagement with the SCO offers Armenia a means to broaden its foreign policy outreach, attract investment, and embed itself more deeply in Asia’s connectivity networks—consistent with its parallel effort to strengthen ties with India and China. 

Armenia’s membership bid also reflects its desire to use the SCO to advance regional connectivity through its Crossroads of Peace initiative. In his Tianjin speech, Aliyev referred to the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) project as the “Zangezur corridor,” terminology that Armenian PM Pashinyan rejected as misleading and unacceptable. Both leaders, however, sought to align their competing visions with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Aliyev framed the so-called “Zangezur Corridor” as part of the Middle Corridor, while Pashinyan presented Armenia’s Crossroads of Peace as a complementary connectivity project. Beijing endorsed the Crossroads of Peace in the Armenia–China strategic partnership.

For Yerevan, the SCO matters not only because of China’s leadership but also due to the participation of India, now a key defense partner, and Iran, a vital neighbor and transit link. Armenia, Iran, and India have committed to deepening trilateral cooperation on regional connectivity, particularly through the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and Armenia’s Crossroads of Peace project. 

The failure of Armenia’s membership application exposed the internal rivalries within SCO. Reportedly, China was supportive of Armenia’s bid. However, Azerbaijan’s backing of Pakistan prompted India to veto Baku’s application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Pakistan retaliated by vetoing Armenia’s application. Just one day earlier, Yerevan and Islamabad had established diplomatic relations, a move likely linked to Armenia’s SCO bid and its broader effort to normalize relations in all directions. Belarus reportedly abstained from the vote on Armenia’s application.

Armenia’s application for SCO membership—and its subsequent failure—has sparked mixed reactions domestically. Eurasian-oriented circles advocating regionalism view it as a pragmatic step toward diversification. Pro-European actors, however, warn that it could undermine Armenia’s European trajectory, and some have even welcomed the outcome in Tianjin. There is still no clarity or public discussion on whether Yerevan plans to continue pursuing membership. Meanwhile, Armenian authorities have recently reiterated that EU accession remains an official long-term policy objective.

Conclusions

Armenia’s SCO application and its failure in Tianjin illustrates Yerevan’s broader strategy of multi-alignment under constraint in a volatile regional and global environment. Whether or not Armenia ultimately secures SCO membership, its engagement with the organization will likely remain selective and pragmatic, deliberately avoiding ideological alignment to preserve its partnership with the U.S. and maintain its long-term objective of EU integration.

Unlike the Eurasian Economic Union, the SCO functions as a loose framework for political and technical cooperation rather than a binding integration structure. For Armenia, membership would represent a largely tactical and pragmatic move—focused on cooperation and diversification—while maintaining its strategic intent to combine regional engagement with EU integration.

If carefully managed, this dual approach of deterrence and diversification can strengthen sovereignty. Yet a multivector policy in today’s unsettled world carries inherent risks and requires careful navigation to avoid crossing partners’ red lines. Sustained and credible support from the U.S. and the EU remains indispensable for Armenia’s democratic resilience, defense capacity, and reaching lasting peace. 

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