SCO Summit Begins, Leaders of 20 Countries Including Putin and Modi Attends

“No mountain or ocean can distance people who have shared aspirations,” China’s President Xi Jinping said in July 2024, addressing leaders from fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states and a few other nations, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

At the time, the ancient Chinese saying in Xi’s speech seemed over the top and divorced from reality: Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, one of the SCO’s major members, was not even attending the grouping’s summit, citing a parliament session – an apparent snub to the bloc long driven by Beijing and Moscow.

Yet a year later, the geopolitical landscape looks very different: As China prepares to host the annual SCO summit, starting on Sunday, it is expecting a fuller house than ever of leaders from the region and beyond. Modi will visit China for the first time since 2018, amid a rapprochement that began late last year but has been propelled further by United States President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Indian goods, which have forced New Delhi to seek stronger partnerships with Beijing and other players in Eurasia.

At a time when much of the world is grappling with the chaos unleashed by Trump’s tariffs and threats, analysts expect the SCO conclave to serve as a platform for Xi to project his country as a stabilising force, capable of uniting the Global South to counterbalance the West, particularly the US.

China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Bin told a news conference in Beijing last week that the summit would be “one of China’s most important head-of-state and home-court diplomatic events this year”.

This year’s summit is set to take place from August 31 to September 1 in Tianjin, a northern Chinese city on the Bohai Sea.

Liu told reporters that the summit will gather more than 20 foreign leaders and the heads of 10 international organisations.

They include leaders of SCO member states: India’s Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Krygyz President Sadyr Japarov and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Myanmar’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing, Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the Maldives’ President Mohamed Muizzu are among other leaders expected to attend.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn will also attend the Summit.