As the previous chapter has shown, China uses the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a regional international society serving as a testing ground for establishing new normative concepts in interstate relations. Assuming that China's ambitions as a normative power go beyond the SCO, this chapter gives examples of how China, with the help of the SCO, attempts to institute specific interpretations of existing norms and infuse its own concepts into the discourse of global international society.

The first section outlines the SCO's codification of China's interpretation of the universally accepted ‘principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states’. Following, I turn to the organization's changed interpretation of a major norm of liberal international society, ‘democracy’. Third, the SCO's institutionalization of the ‘Community of Common Destiny’ is discussed, which is a concept China has created and strives to promote globally. The analysis reveals that China has been able to use the SCO as a multilateral platform to institutionalize its interpretation of existing international norms and support the promotion of a flagship concept of its foreign policy. The last part of the chapter highlights the ambiguity and overlap of norms championed by China to explain the connections between the concepts.

The principle of non-interference: a foundational norm of international relations

The ‘principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states’ (hereafter: ‘principle of non-interference’) is one of the foundational norms of international relations.