Xi Jinping warns SCO against outside interference, latest veiled attack on US

Xi Jinping held talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday on the sidelines of the summit, their fifth meeting of the year.

Putin, who has been shunned by the West since his invasion of Ukraine, hailed a golden age of China-Russia relations at the meeting and said the relationship is built on the principles of equality, mutual benefit and respect for each other's sovereignty, according to Russian news agency Tass.

Without naming specific countries, Xi warned Thursday that SCO members face threats, risks and challenges stemming from the Cold War mentality and repeated other coded references favored by Beijing to criticize the United States.

He also urged member states to preserve security bases [and] preserve the right to development and consolidate solidarity.

Besides security, the Chinese leader also pledged to strengthen economic and scientific cooperation among members, urging them to support innovation, maintain stable supply chains, boost regional growth and promote the realization of our common development goals.

Currently, its members represent more than 40% of the world's population and around 20% of global GDP, a figure likely to grow further, driven by the twin engines of China and India.

The bloc was initially created to address common security challenges faced by China, Russia and the Central Asian republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From an initial six members in 2001, its number has since expanded to ten, welcoming India and Pakistan in 2017. More recently, Iran and Belarus, the latter having its full membership confirmed at this year's summit.

Several US-allied Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, have also become SCO dialogue partners in recent years, a move widely seen as an attempt to avoid dependence on the United States.

The accession of Iran and Belarus has fueled suspicions in the United States and its allies that the bloc is pushing an anti-Western agenda, even as India has moved closer to Washington in recent years amid its ongoing border dispute with China.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was absent from this year's summit in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. He was represented by his foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. However, the Kremlin said Modi would travel to Russia next week for talks with Putin.

Li Lifan, deputy director of the SCO center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the perception that the group is anti-Western is nothing new.

He described it as a narrative that has long been implanted in the West throughout the process of the SCO's development. It was called the NATO of the East when the organization was created.

He added: Enlargement to full membership [status] The accession process often takes a long time, as is the case with Iran, whose full membership process has been interrupted several times due to its nuclear problems.

According to Li, his current duties cover politics, economy, security and culture and it remains to be seen to what extent Belarus will be involved in the bloc, given that it is far removed from its Eurasian core.

Zhu Yongbiao, a professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at Lanzhou University, said the SCO cannot be compared with Western organizations such as NATO or the Group of 7.

He nevertheless asserted that the organization had achieved its goals, saying that the position and objectives of the SCO are significantly different from those of political and military organizations such as NATO. The nature of its functions was, from the very beginning, very different.

Zhu added that the bloc will continue to expand and develop despite pressure from Washington.

The SCO must expand, because during its expansion it has grown and developed, he said. Some of the problems the SCO usually faces, such as the inability to implement policies, cannot be solved without expansion.