In his speech at the 25th Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, President of China Xi Jinping summed up the organization’s 24-year journey and outlined priorities for its further development.
Mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development – these principles serve as the basis of the “Shanghai Spirit”. “The member states have since acted in this spirit to share opportunities and seek common development. They have brought about groundbreaking and historic achievements in SCO development and cooperation,” Xi Jinping stressed.
The SCO’s historical achievements
Xi Jinping noted that since its establishment in 2001, the SCO has achieved significant success. The organization has become the world’s largest regional structure, uniting 26 countries with a combined economic volume of almost US $ 30 trillion. Among the key achievements:
• Security and stability. The SCO was the first to introduce a confidence-building mechanism on the border areas, turning thousands of kilometers of borders into a symbol of friendship and cooperation.
• Economic cooperation. Many significant and socially significant projects have been implemented within the framework of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. China’s total trade volume with other SCO countries has exceeded US $ 2.3 trillion, and the network of transport routes includes 14,000 km of roads and more than 110,000 China—Europe train flights.
• Humanitarian relations. The conclusion of the Treaty on long-term good-neighborliness, friendship and cooperation has strengthened the eternal friendship between the two countries. The creation of mechanisms such as the the SCO Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation Commission has helped bring peoples closer together through exchanges in the fields of media, think tanks, youth, and women’s organizations.
Five priorities for the future
Xi Jinping proposed five key areas for further development of the SCO in the face of global challenges:
“First, we should seek common ground while putting aside differences. Shared aspirations are the source of strength and advantage, and the will to seek commonality while shelving differences reflects vision and wisdom. SCO member states are all friends and partners. We should respect our differences, maintain strategic communication, build up consensus, and strengthen solidarity and collaboration. We should make the pie of cooperation bigger, and fully utilize the endowment of every country, so that we can fulfill our responsibility for peace, stability, development and prosperity in the region.
Second, we should pursue mutual benefit and win-win results. We need to better align our development strategies and promote the high-quality implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, so that in planning and building relevant projects together and benefiting from them together we can strengthen the momentum of regional development and improve the well-being of the people. We should leverage the strengths of our mega-sized markets and economic complementarity between member states, and improve trade and investment facilitation. We should enhance cooperation in such areas as energy, infrastructure, green industry, the digital economy, scientific and technological innovation, and artificial intelligence. We should march toward modernization hand in hand by bringing out the best in one another and working together for a shared future.
Third, we should champion openness and inclusiveness. The vast land of Asia and Europe, a cradle of ancient civilizations where the earliest exchanges between the East and the West took place, has been a driving force behind human progress. Since ancient times, people of different countries have bartered and traded for mutual benefit and learned from each other. SCO member states need to enhance mutual understanding and friendship through people-to-people exchanges, firmly support one another in economic cooperation, and jointly cultivate a garden of civilizations in which all cultures flourish in prosperity and harmony through mutual enlightenment.
Fourth, we should uphold fairness and justice. We must promote a correct historical perspective on World War II, and oppose the Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation and bullying practices. We should safeguard the U.N.-centered international system, and support the multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core. We should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and make the global governance system more just and equitable.
Fifth, we should strive for real results and high efficiency. We should continuously promote SCO reform, increase resources input and enhance capacity building to improve its institutional structure and make its decision-making more scientific and its actions more efficient. We should put into use the SCO Universal Center for Countering Security Challenges and Threats and the SCO Anti-drug Center and set up an SCO development bank as soon as possible to provide stronger underpinnings for security and economic cooperation among member states.
Chinese contribution to the SCO
China remains a key driver of the SCO’s development. The volume of Chinese investments in the organization’s countries exceeded US $ 84 billion, and bilateral trade reached US $ 500 billion dollars per year.
Xi Jinping announced new initiatives:
• China plans to to implement 100 “small and beautiful” livelihood projects in member states with such need;
• This year, China will provide RMB 2 billion yuan in grant to SCO member states;
• Over the next three years, China will allocate an additional RMB 10 billion yuan in loan to the member banks of the SCO Interbank Consortium;
• Starting next year, China will double the current number of SCO-specific scholarships, and launch an SCO innovative PhD program to jointly train highly qualified specialists.
• Over the next five years, China will open 10 Luban workshops in the SCO member states and provide 10,000 human resources training opportunities.
A look into the future
“As a Chinese saying goes, “Where will prevails, no boundary holds,” Xi Jinping said, calling on the SCO countries to remain faithful to their founding mission, step up to undertake our duties, promote the sound and sustained development of the SCO with greater resolve and more practical measures, and march steadily toward a brighter tomorrow of a community with a shared future for humanity.///nCa, 1 September 2025