Key points
- SCO leaders gather in Tianjin
- Xi urges following “Shanghai spirit”
- Forum bears greater security responsibility: President Xi
ISLAMABAD: China’s President Xi Jinping blasted “bullying behaviour” in the world order as he gathered Eurasian leaders Monday for a summit aimed at putting Beijing front and centre of regional relations.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, comprising China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, is branded as a non-Western style of collaboration and seeks to be an alternative to traditional alliances, according to the AFP.
Xi told the SCO leaders, including Russian and Belarusian presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, that the global international situation was becoming more “chaotic and intertwined”.
The Chinese leader also slammed “bullying behaviour” from certain countries — a veiled reference to the United States.
“Shanghai spirit”
“The security and development tasks facing member states have become even more challenging,” he added in his address to all the gathered dignitaries in the northern port city of Tianjin.
“Looking to the future, with the world undergoing turbulence and transformation, we must continue to follow the Shanghai spirit… and better perform the functions of the organisation,” Xi said.
“Greater responsibility”
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation security forum now bears “greater responsibility” for safeguarding regional peace and stability, as well as promoting the development and prosperity of its member states, Xi Jinping said.
The ongoing SCO Summit shoulders the important mission of building consensus among all parties and stimulating momentum in cooperation, Xi was cited as telling a welcome banquet, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
Leaders from the ten SCO countries including Putin, Lukashenko and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived earlier on a red carpet and posed for a group photo.
The SCO summit, which also involves 16 more countries as observers or “dialogue partners”, kicked off on Sunday, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
Putin, Modi
Putin touched down in Tianjin on Sunday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.
Xi held a flurry of back-to-back bilateral meetings with leaders including Lukashenko — one of Putin’s staunch allies — and Modi who is on his first visit to China since 2018.
Modi told Xi that India was committed to taking “forward our ties on the basis of mutual trust, dignity and sensitivity”.
The two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began last October, when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
Their rapprochement deepened as US President Donald Trump pressured both Asian economic giants with trade tariffs.
