Xi spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday, their fifth meeting this year.
Putin, who has been shunned by the West since the invasion of Ukraine, hailed the “golden era of China-Russia relations” at the meeting and said the relationship was “built on the principles of equality, mutual benefit and respect for each other’s sovereignty,” according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
Xi Jinping warned on Thursday that members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization face “threats, risks and challenges” stemming from a “Cold War mentality,” without naming specific countries, and repeated other coded references Beijing favors to criticize the United States.
He also urged member states to “protect the security baseline.” [and] “Preserving the right to development and promoting solidarity.”
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Why might Russia welcome a Chinese presence in Central Asia?
Why might Russia welcome a Chinese presence in Central Asia?
In addition to security, the Chinese leader also pledged to boost economic and scientific cooperation among members, urging them to support innovation, maintain stable supply chains, boost regional growth and “advance the achievement of our common development goals.”
Today, its members account for more than 40% of the world’s population and about 20% of global GDP, a figure that is likely to expand further, driven by the twin engines of China and India.
The bloc was initially created to address the common security challenges faced by China, Russia and the Central Asian republics in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
From an original membership of six countries in 2001, the number of member states has since expanded to 10, including India and Pakistan in 2017. Most recently, Iran and Belarus joined, with the latter’s full membership confirmed at this year’s summit.
Several Arab states allied with the United States, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, have also become “dialogue partners” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in recent years, a move widely seen as an attempt to avoid dependence on the United States.
The membership of Iran and Belarus has fueled suspicions among the United States and its allies that the bloc will champion an anti-Western agenda, even as India has drawn closer to Washington in recent years amid an ongoing border dispute with China.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was conspicuously absent from this year’s summit in the Kazakh capital Astana, where he was instead represented by Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. However, the Kremlin said Modi would visit Russia next week for talks with Putin.
The perception that the group is “anti-Western” is “not new,” said Li Lifan, deputy director of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
He described it as “a narrative that has long been implanted in the West throughout the development of the SCO… It was called the ‘Eastern NATO’ when the organization was founded.”
“Expanding to full membership,” he added. [status] “It often takes a long time to process membership applications, for example Iran, whose full membership process has been stalled several times due to its nuclear issues.”
According to Lee, the union’s current functions include “politics, economics, security and culture,” and it remains to be seen how far Belarus will participate in the bloc, given its great distance from its central Eurasian heartland.
The SCO “cannot be compared to Western organizations such as NATO or the G7,” said Zhou Yongbiao, a professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at Lanzhou University.
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Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin hold talks on sidelines of SCO summit in Kazakhstan
Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin hold talks on sidelines of SCO summit in Kazakhstan
But he claimed that the organization had achieved its goals, saying: “The position and goals of the SCO are clearly different from those of political and military organizations such as NATO. The nature of its functions was completely different from the very beginning.”
Zhou added that the bloc will continue to expand and develop despite pressure from Washington.
“The SCO needs to expand, because in the process of expansion it has developed and grown. Some of the problems that the SCO usually faces, such as the inability to implement policies, cannot be solved without expansion,” he said.
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