India and Pakistan had their first joint Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference in Qingdao, China, after they became members states of the SCO, extending the total number of countries to eight.

The meeting was held in an overall friendly atmosphere. The two countries, that have long disputed problems with land sovereignty and terrorism, appearing in the same cooperative organization has attracted a lot of attention.

Some experts saw it as a major breakthrough that could help these two countries repair relationships, but others remained skeptical about if these two countries would resolve their deadlock in the face of economic benefits.

Wang Peng, a researcher in the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, told CGTN that he saw plenty of opportunities arising from the SCO that could help India and Pakistan build their relationship.

He suggested that under this framework, they can interact more by doing things like having joint military exercises, and promoting trade in the form of aid. “This practice in what we call the non-traditional security field may promote political mutual trust in a higher level of politics among those states,” said Peng, “so that’s a great opportunity for all of us.”

Giving the examples of past territorial disputes, Peng also suggested that these two countries can learn from the experiences of China and Russia who had similar problems before.

However, other experts expressed their skepticism to CGTN about the sanguine assumption. They argued that it is still the first meeting with India and Pakistan attending together. There are too many uncertainties ahead that need to be calculated towards the possibility of easing the tensions.

Shuja Nawaz, a distinguished fellow in the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, said that multiple South Asian countries in the SCO would be under “throws of election fever” in the near future, that might supersede their obligations as SCO countries. 

“So whether you are looking at Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and possibly India this year if the elections are brought forward,” said Nawaz. “If not, certainly next year, it’s going to be very tough for the leadership in these countries to be able to take any bold initiatives and to follow up.” 

In a worse scenario, Nawaz and Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research think tank, even warned that the thing could go to the opposite direction—freezing the movement of SCO. 

Dhume added that India is now putting territorial sovereignty ahead of the economic gains and it might be very difficult for the SCO to change the priority.

At the same time, he said, while India is having summits with China and Russia, it is also deepening relations with the US by reaffirming the existence of the quad: The US, Japan, Australia and India.

“India is kind of unique in kind of having a foot in each of these and at some point, you’ve got a sort of, you know, India has this old tradition of non-alignment and thinking a lot of its own strategic autonomy and so on,” he said. “But it will be very interesting to see how sustainable this is over time. Can you really deepen your relations with the SCO and at the same time, deepen your military relations with the US in the current environment.” 

The Heat with Anand Naidoo is a 30-minute political talk show on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 7:00 a.m. BJT and 7:00 p.m. Eastern in the United States.