GUIDE SCO DEVELOPMENT
This year marks the 16th anniversary of the founding of the SCO. Experts say that although its members harbor a strong desire for national security, stability and economic growth, the bloc is facing mounting uncertainties and threats.
The most prominent highlights of this year's summit will be the formal accession of India and Pakistan to the SCO and China's takeover of the bloc's presidency after the meeting, according to Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary-general of the SCO Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
The joining of New Delhi and Islamabad, the first ever expansion of the SCO, will make it an eight-member cross-continent regional organization that covers the largest population and widest area in the world.
SCO Secretary-General Rashid Alimov said earlier that the membership of India and Pakistan, both regional heavyweights, will enhance the SCO's role in combating cross-border terrorism and promoting free trade.
"There is no wonder that India and Pakistan want to join in and take a share," said Alexey Maslov, head of the Oriental Studies Department at the Russian Higher School of Economics Research University.
"The SCO's founding principles, featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, respect for cultural diversity and common development, have received wide recognition. In fact, far more countries have expressed readiness to join in than we expected," he added.
Speaking of China's upcoming presidency, Sun said, "All member states pin high hopes on President Xi's statements to enhance the SCO's role and his country's work in this regard in the coming year."
"China has become the first or second largest trading partner of most SCO members, and offered key proposals to set the legal and operational basis of the SCO. All such efforts have made the bloc more influential in regional political, economic, cultural and security arrangements," he added.
The Belt and Road Initiative will be another keyword of the Astana summit. "The SCO eyes members' cooperation not only in security, which was indeed the top priority when the bloc was founded more than a decade ago, but also in such areas as economic and trade, culture and people-to-people exchanges," said Sun.
"The Belt and Road Initiative will further highlight China's constructive role within the SCO," he said.
"Comprehensive cooperation at all levels based on mutual trust is indispensable for regional integration. It is also the general direction of the SCO's future work," said Sheng Shiliang, a researcher at the Xinhua Center for World Affairs Studies.
"The Belt and Road Initiative has offered a timely and convenient framework for SCO members to facilitate regional inter-connectivity and achieve free flows of goods, capital, service and technology in the end," he noted.
PROMOTE CLEAN ENERGY COOPERATION
The Chinese pavilion at Astana Expo 2017, under the theme of "future energy," was the first to start construction and the first one put into test operations. Covering around 1,000 square meters, it is also among the largest at the expo.
All these moves show the importance the Chinese leadership attaches to the expo and to the development of clean energy and the battle against climate change, said Sun, the CASS researcher.
The gesture is in line with Xi's proposal to build "a community of shared future for all mankind," and is highly symbolic especially when the global efforts in this regard are encountering the sudden headwind of U.S.withdrawal last week from the hard-won Paris climate deal, said Sheng.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said earlier this month that China will continue its implementation of the Paris agreement and actively participate in the multilateral process of global climate governance.
Noting that climate change is a global challenge and no country can remove itself from the issue, Hua said that even if other countries change their positions, China will continue its plan of green development.
Ruslan Bultrikov, a former Kazakh vice minister of environmental protection, said last month that Xi's proposal to build a community of shared future for all mankind accords with "the Chinese culture to foresee and plan for generations ahead, and not just for the five to 10 years to come."
"We therefore understand why the Chinese leader has made pledges which are directed to future generations," he said. "I believe that with political will from other countries and from China, of course, these ideas can be implemented and we will share the future together peacefully."
