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TIANJIN, China -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would accelerate the building of a SCO development bank at the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin on Monday, as he seeks to expand the organization's influence and scope.
“Currently, as the global situation becomes more complex and turbulent, member states are facing more arduous safety and development responsibilities,” Xi said in opening remarks to the forum. Xi pledged $1.4 billion in loans in the next three years for members of the SCO, not specifically designated for this new bank.
Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and leaders of a few dozen nations are meeting as part of the SCO. The group, originally seen as a foil to U.S. influence in Central Asia, has grown in size and influence over the years, but remains largely a security forum.
With the addition of the bank and an emphasis on providing loans, Xi is attempting to expand the scope of the organization.
“He wants to provide an alternate world order, because the US led-world order is very much in decline. This is the main narrative,” said Alfred Wu, a professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
Xi also said states should “oppose the Cold War mentality, bloc-based confrontation and bullying, and safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core” while “advocating for an equal and orderly multipolar world, an inclusive economic globalization, and promote the building of a more just and reasonable global governance system.”
Xi’s messaging did not stray far from China’s past comments, as opposition to a Cold War mentality is a reference to the U.S.' opposition of China, as well as its withdrawal of funding from some U.N. agencies. But at this moment in time, its consistency is the message, Wu said.
Founded in 2001, the SCO's membership now includes Russia, Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan and Mongolia are observer states, and 14 other countries, mostly from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, serve as “dialogue partners.”
The summit comes days ahead of a planned military parade that Beijing will host, and the country is taking the opportunity to invite its allies and neighbors.
On Sunday, Xi met with Modi where they vowed to resolve their differences about the border dispute, which had led to a freeze in relations in 2020. The disputes revolve around three points in their vast border in India’s northern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh regions as well as near Bhutan.
Putin, who arrived Sunday in China, will also attend a major military parade in Beijing on Wednesday for the 80th anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who is not attending the SCO summit, will be present for the military parade, along with Myanmar’s junta chief Min Au Hlaing.
Putin spoke to Xi on Sunday, ahead of the bilateral talks the two were scheduled to hold Tuesday, where he updated him about the Russia-U.S. talks on the Ukraine war in Alaska last month.
"I would like to note that the understandings reached at the recent high-level Russian-American summit in Alaska are also, I hope, moving in this direction, opening the way to peace in Ukraine,” Putin said.
Development has been a large part of the messaging in recent days. Putin said Russia and China were jointly "against discriminatory sanctions” that hurt the socioeconomic development of the world at large in a written interview released by the Chinese official news agency Xinhua on Saturday.
He said Russia, alongside its Chinese partners, supports the reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
“It is essential to end the use of finance as an instrument of neo-colonialism, which runs counter to the interests of the Global Majority,” he said.
While China is eager for the SCO to take a growing role on the global stage, it remains to be seen how effective the organization will be. Its focus in the past has always been on propping up the security initiatives of its member states, including China which said the SCO was effective in combating what it refers to as the three forces: terrorism, separatism and extremism.
Those threats are what Beijing cited after it swept more than 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and members of other largely Muslim minorities into camps, prisons, and other detention facilities in 2018.
“Their anti-terrorism exercises are more about countering threats to authoritarian regimes rather than countering terrorism in its own right,” said Derek Grossman, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
“There’s competing organizations,” said Grossman. “If anything, BRICS might have much more luck in competing against the West because there are major economies involved.”
Even if the SCO summit’s reach and influence is ultimately limited, one thing is clear, he said: “China is on a diplomatic uptick and the U.S. is self destructing.”
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AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing and AP writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
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