Putin & Modi in China for summit hosted by Xi

AFP/APP

Tianjin, China: President Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and leaders from around 20 Eurasian nations on Sunday at a high-profile summit designed to highlight China’s central role in regional diplomacy.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit is taking place in the northern port city of Tianjin under tight security and will continue until Monday. 

The meeting comes just days before Beijing stages a major military parade to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

The SCO includes China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, with 16 other countries affiliated as observers or dialogue partners.

President Putin arrived in Tianjin on Sunday accompanied by senior officials and business leaders. Xi also held a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Moscow. He later met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to Xinhua news agency.

Alternative to NATO?

China and Russia have frequently presented the SCO as a counterweight to Western alliances such as NATO. This year’s summit is the first since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

In remarks published by Xinhua on Saturday, Putin said the gathering would “strengthen the SCO’s capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats, and consolidate solidarity across the shared Eurasian space.” 

He added that it would help promote “a fairer multipolar world order.”

Analysts say Beijing and Moscow, both at odds with the West over Taiwan and Ukraine respectively, view the SCO as a platform to strengthen ties with non-Western states.

“China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which, it claims, is more democratic,” said Dylan Loh, assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

More than 20 leaders, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are attending what is the largest SCO meeting since its founding in 2001.

“The large-scale participation indicates China’s growing influence and the SCO’s appeal as a platform for non-Western countries,” Loh added.

Through the SCO, Beijing seeks to “project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game,” said Lizzi Lee of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

 “It is framed as something different, built around sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity, which the Chinese tout as a model,” she added.