ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one of the major aspects of the cooperation amongst the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); namely, economic and related functional areas including trade, investment, energy, transportation, telecommunications, technology and agriculture. Economic and functional cooperation amongst the SCO members predated the organisation; some initiatives were already raised and discussed, mostly at the top level of state leadership, in the 'Shanghai Five' period. At the first meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in September 2001, the SCO prime ministers agreed to begin multilateral economic and trade cooperation by signing the SCO's intergovernmental memorandum of understanding on main goals and directions of regional economic cooperation and by facilitating trade and investment. To encourage the SCO's expansion into economic and functional cooperation, China must take the lead in defining the scope, direction, principles and strategies as a basis for implementation of concrete measures. China has also taken several specific initiatives, for example, the SCO Inter-bank Consortium and the Shanghai Forum.
