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.

Some real gems here, even in just the first section of the article.

For the past few years, the West has been trying to break China’s grip on minerals that are critical for defense and green technologies. Despite their efforts, Chinese companies are becoming more dominant, not less.

They are expanding operations, supercharging supply and causing prices to drop. Their challengers can’t compete. “China is not just standing still waiting for us to catch up,” said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “They are making investments on top of their already massive investments in all aspects of the critical-minerals supply chain.”

Take nickel, which is needed for electric-vehicle batteries. Chinese processing plants that dot the Indonesian archipelago are pumping out vast quantities of the mineral from new and expanding facilities, jolting the market.

Meanwhile, Switzerland-based mining giant Glencore is suspending operations at its nickel plant in New Caledonia, a French territory, concluding it can’t survive despite offers of financial help from Paris. [Eat shit, Macron.] The U.K.’s Horizonte Minerals, whose new Brazilian mine was expected to become a major Western source, said last month that investors had bailed, citing oversupply in the market.

At least four nickel mines in Western Australia are winding down. Lithium projects in the U.S. and Australia have been postponed or suspended after a surge in Chinese production at home and in sub-Saharan Africa.

The only dedicated cobalt mine in the U.S. also suspended operations last year, five months after local dignitaries attended its opening ceremony. Its owners say they are struggling against a flood of Chinese-produced cobalt from Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last year, non-Chinese production of refined cobalt declined to its lowest level in 15 years, according to Darton Commodities. The share of lithium mining done within China or by Chinese companies abroad has grown from 14% in 2018 to 35% this year, according to Fastmarkets, a commodities information provider. Over the same time, lithium processing done within China has risen from 63% in 2018 to 70%, according to Fastmarkets.

The breakneck expansion has assailed Western producers, who say China’s domestic economy can’t always absorb the flood of minerals its firms bring to market. Slower-than-expected electric-car sales growth in China last year meant there were fewer takers for China’s mineral surge, contributing to the crash in global prices.

What’s more worrying for Western producers is that there is little sign of a letup. “It’s just the way China does things. They have tended to build more capacity whether it’s in aluminum, or cement, or nickel,” said William Adams, head of base metals research for Fastmarkets. Chinese companies “all gun for market share, and the consequence for that is you get oversupply.”

Western officials, too, are sounding the alarm. In response to a question last month about China’s dominance in nickel, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the market had been flooded, making businesses in free-market democracies uneconomic.

“It is our belief that that behavior can be intentional, can be happening with the purpose of driving companies in our country, in those of our allies, out of business,” she said. Freeland didn’t provide further details or any evidence for the claim.

The US has been looking more and more like a snarling, wet chihuahua.

The internal contradictions are sharpening.

I'm cackling in public...

How tf is "israel" not Very Problematic? It honestly should be in it's own category. There can't be a worse place to be a reporter.

After BRICS, Japan is now dumping U.S. bonds and mitigating the losses it incurred from adverse interest rate bets. The latest data shows Japan has offloaded $63 billion worth of U.S. and European sovereign bonds by March 2024. The U.S. bonds sale represents nearly one-sixth of the Central Bank of Japan’s portfolio.

Japan is following in the footsteps of the BRICS alliance, which has been dumping U.S. Treasury bonds for more than a year. Offloading the bonds was the only way for Japan to reduce their losses on the interest rate cut bets.

Freakin emphasis freakin added.

What has led to “the relative decline in U.S. standing,” as the report asks? The opening chapter explains America’s problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”

This decline is “accelerating,” warns the study. ...

What causes national decline? The Rand authors cite triggers that are all too familiar in 2024. “Addiction to luxury and decadence,” “failure to keep pace with … technological demands,” “ossified” bureaucracy, “loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,” “self-interested and warring elites,” “unsustainable environmental practices.” Does that sound like any country you know?

The challenge is “anticipatory national renewal,” argue the authors — in other words, tackling the problems before they tackle us. Their survey of historical and sociological literature identifies essential tools for renewal, such as recognizing the problem; adopting a problem-solving attitude rather than an ideological one; having good governance structures; and, perhaps most elusive, maintaining “elite commitment to the common good.”

No chance in hell on that last one, so here's hoping the rest of their analysis is right.

Sure, but have you considered China bad?

Here's a link from PBS for the libs.