Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to host world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from Sunday for a summit before a huge military parade as he seeks to showcase a non-Western style of regional collaboration.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit is to be held on Sunday and Monday next week, before a military parade on Wednesday next week in Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II, which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is to attend.
The parade would be Kim’s first visit to China in six years and would bring him together with a group of world leaders for the first time since taking office in late 2011.
Photo: AP
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.” China and Russia have used the organization — sometimes touted as a counter to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance — to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
As China’s claim over Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the US and Europe, analysts said the SCO is one forum where they are trying to win influence.
More than 20 leaders, including Iranian and Turkish presidents Masoud Pezeshkian and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would attend the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
Hosting that many leaders gives Beijing a chance to “demonstrate convening power,” Asia Society Policy Institute fellow Lizzi Lee (李其) said.
However, substantial outcomes are not expected as the summit would be more about optics and agenda-setting, she said.
“The SCO runs by consensus, and when you have countries deeply divided on core issues like India and Pakistan, or China and India, in the same room, that naturally limits ambition,” Lee said.
Beijing wants to show it can bring diverse leaders together and reinforce the idea that global governance is “not Western-dominated,” she added.
Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Bin (劉彬) on Friday said that the summit would bring stability in the face of “hegemonism and power politics,” a veiled reference to the US.
Putin at the SCO summit would likely seek to demonstrate Russia’s continued support from non-Western partners to promote its narratives of the cause of its invasion of Ukraine and “how the ‘just’ end of the war will look like,” said Dylan Loh (駱明輝), an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“With Putin in the room, the war will hang over the proceedings,” but the topic of Ukraine would not be “front and center” of the summit, Lee said.
“The SCO avoids topics that divide members, and this one obviously does,” she said.
However, Putin would want to show that he “is not isolated, reaffirming the partnership with Xi, and keeping Russia visible in Eurasia,” she added.
Modi’s visit is his first to China since 2018.
The world’s two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began in October last year when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
Caught in geopolitical turbulence triggered by Trump’s tariff war, they have moved to mend ties.
“China will try its very best to pull out all stops to woo India, particularly capitalizing on India’s trade issues with the US,” said Lim Tai Wei (林大偉), a professor and East Asia expert at Japan’s Soka University.
However, fundamental differences between the countries cannot be resolved easily, he added.
“Temporary respite or temperature-cooling, however, may be possible,” Lim said.
Modi was not on a list of attendees for the parade published by Chinese state media yesterday that included Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Burmese junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
Modi did not attend Beijing’s 2015 parade.
Additional reporting by AP
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