The pandemic has had a far-reaching effect on the world. Nowhere is this more visible than in China's relations with the world, where the pandemic has become a supercharged bell weather for the state of Beijing's relations. This is equally true within Central Asia where the pandemic has accelerated already existing trends of dependency and linkage that already existed between China and the region. What has been particularly interesting to observe is how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has used the context of the pandemic to advance ideas and strategies that had been maturing prior to COVID's outbreak. Particularly notable are the SCO's advances into the digital commerce and connectivity space, which both build on a long institutional track record towards the region, but also appear to be the realization of a longer-term vision for the SCO that Beijing has long-sought (and failed) to realise.

Raffaello Pantucci will draw on ongoing research he is undertaking for a paper with Niva Yau, a Junior Researcher at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, to discuss how the SCO's role has developed during the pandemic. Raffaello is currently a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. Prior to his current institutional affiliations he was based in China for almost four years as a Visiting Scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), and he has also worked at IISS and ECFR in London, as well as CSIS in Washington. His work has been published in Survival, The National Interest, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Current History, and RUSI Journal amongst others, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, CNN, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, South China Morning Post, and more. He is currently completing a book project under contract on China in Central Asia which draws on almost a decade's travel and research around the region.