President of China Xi Jinping has attended a successful 26th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek.
At that meeting, President Xi pointed out that “this year is the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and that twenty-five years ago, reckoning with the hard lessons of the Cold War, confronting the real threats from terrorist, separatist and extremist forces, and heeding the earnest aspirations of the world for peace and development, countries in our region came to a prevailing consensus on upholding sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
He explained that the SCO was founded in this context, and it has shown increasingly stronger vigor and vitality. Over the past 25 years, the SCO has traveled an extraordinary journey.
“Its biggest achievement is that it has steadily grown into a new type of regional cooperation organization with the largest land area and population and enormous development potential. Its most valuable spiritual asset is that it pioneered, and has since followed invariably, the Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development. Its most important experience for cooperation is that it has found the right way of coexistence featuring non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party, enabling regional countries to build a common home together,” he said.
“Twenty-five years later today, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe. The rivalry is intensifying between dialogue and confrontation, win-win and zero-sum, and multilateralism and unilateralism. The shadow of war continues to haunt the world. At such a crossroads with humanity’s future at stake, the SCO should step forward to shoulder its historical responsibility and steer the course for the future.”
In his address, President Xi Jinping told his audience, that staying committed to putting development first, and opening up the prospects for shared prosperity. “We should advocate a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, consolidate cooperation in traditional areas such as trade, investment, connectivity, energy and resources, and expand cooperation in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, digital economy, green industry and green mining. We should do all this in order to deepen, substantiate and upgrade regional cooperation,” he said.
He continued, “staying committed to taking security as a key goal, and fostering an environment of common security…they should pursue coordinated measures to tackle traditional and non-traditional security threats.”
“We should crack down on the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism, transnational organized crime, drug trafficking, and telecom fraud. We should strengthen cooperation on information security, bio-security, and outer space security. We must prevent external forces from interfering in our internal affairs, endangering our political security, and undermining regional stability,” he stated.
President Xi noted that China will work with all parties to continue to hold high the banner of the Shanghai Spirit, implement the development strategy of the SCO for the next decade, and pursue development with higher quality, so as to make greater contributions to a community with a shared future for humanity.
Leaders of the SCO member states fully affirmed the achievements the Organization has made in the past 25 years, and recognized that the SCO has provided important guarantee for regional security and prosperity and has become one of the cornerstones of global stability and economic development.
All parties expressed appreciation for China’s important contribution to the organization’s development as a founding member, and agreed to actively implement the strategic vision set out at the 2025 Tianjin Summit, continue to uphold the Shanghai Spirit, promote institution-building, enhance political mutual trust, deepen cooperation in areas including trade, investment, science and technology, energy, finance, industrial and supply chains, and connectivity, strengthen people-to-people bonds, and jointly respond to new types of security challenges, with a view to writing a new chapter of lasting peace and common development.
In the face of a complex and volatile international situation, SCO member states should embrace solidarity and cooperation, enhance the influence of SCO, promote the building of a more just and equitable global governance system, and play a greater role in safeguarding peace, stability and prosperity in the region and beyond.
Leaders of the SCO member states signed and issued the Bishkek Declaration on the 25th Anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, approved the Protocol on Amending and Supplementing the Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Regulations on the SCO Universal Center for Countering Security Challenges and Threats, and the Regulations on the SCO Anti-drug Center, and adopted 28 outcome documents covering security, economic, people-to-people and cultural cooperation, and organizational development.
The meeting decided that Pakistan will assume the rotating presidency of the SCO for 2026-2027.
The meeting was chaired by President Sadyr Zhaparov of Kyrgyzstan, the current holder of the rotating presidency of the SCO, and attended by leaders of SCO member states, including President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, and Secretary General Nurlan Yermekbayev of the SCO.