Leaders in China for summit hosted by Xi

TIANJIN

President Xi Jinping gathered the leaders of Türkiye, Russia and India among dignitaries from around 20 Eurasian countries on Sunday for a showpiece summit aimed at putting China front and center of regional relations.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit is being held in the northern port city of Tianjin today, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, with 16 more countries, including Türkiye, affiliated as observers or "dialogue partners."

Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin yesterday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.

Meanwhile, Xi held a flurry of bilateral meetings with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and one of Putin's staunch allies, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Xi also met India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday, who arrived the evening before, in his first visit to China since 2018.

Modi told Xi that India was committed to taking "forward our ties on the basis of mutual trust, dignity and sensitivity," according to a video the Indian leader posted on X.

The two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.

A thaw began last October, when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.

"The interests of 2.8 billion people of both countries are linked to our cooperation. This will also pave the way for the welfare of the entire humanity," Modi told Xi.

The bilateral talks were held at the Tianjin Guest House, an intimate venue surrounded by lush greenery.

Security guards positioned themselves around and inside the venue, their eyes scanning reporters and guests carefully, as Chinese diplomats hurried through the halls.

Large sections of Tianjin were closed to traffic, with a significant police presence deployed around the city.

Official posters promoting the SCO lined the streets, displaying words such as "mutual benefit" and "equality" written in Chinese and Russian.

China and Russia have sometimes touted the SCO as an alternative to the NATO military alliance. This year's summit is the first since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

As China's claim over Taiwan and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the United States and Europe, experts say that Beijing and Moscow are eager to use platforms such as the SCO to curry favor.

"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, an assistant professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Putin is expected to hold talks today with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Tehran's nuclear program, respectively.