President Xi Jinping Attends the 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Delivers Important Remarks
On the morning of September 1, 2026 local time, President Xi Jinping attended the 26th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek.
The meeting was chaired by President Sadyr Zhaparov of Kyrgyzstan, the current holder of the rotating presidency of the SCO, and attended by leaders of SCO member states, including President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, and Secretary General Nurlan Yermekbayev of the SCO.
President Xi had a group photo with leaders of SCO member states. He then attended the meeting of the Council of Heads of State and delivered important remarks titled “Toward Higher Quality Development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”
President Xi pointed out that this year is the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Twenty-five years ago, reckoning with the hard lessons of the Cold War, confronting the real threats from terrorist, separatist and extremist forces, and heeding the earnest aspirations of the world for peace and development, countries in our region came to a prevailing consensus on upholding sovereignty, security, and development interests. The SCO was founded in this context, and it has shown increasingly stronger vigor and vitality. Over the past 25 years, the SCO has traveled an extraordinary journey. Its biggest achievement is that it has steadily grown into a new type of regional cooperation organization with the largest land area and population and enormous development potential. Its most valuable spiritual asset is that it pioneered, and has since followed invariably, the Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development. Its most important experience for cooperation is that it has found the right way of coexistence featuring non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party, enabling regional countries to build a common home together. Twenty-five years later today, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe. The rivalry is intensifying between dialogue and confrontation, win-win and zero-sum, and multilateralism and unilateralism. The shadow of war continues to haunt the world. At such a crossroads with humanity’s future at stake, the SCO should step forward to shoulder its historical responsibility and steer the course for the future.
For this, President Xi put forth four points:
First, staying committed to putting development first, and opening up the prospects for shared prosperity. We should advocate a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, consolidate cooperation in traditional areas such as trade, investment, connectivity, energy and resources, and expand cooperation in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, digital economy, green industry and green mining. We should do all this in order to deepen, substantiate and upgrade regional cooperation. China takes the SCO as a priority area for promoting high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and implementing the Global Development Initiative. China will continue to ensure the success of the SCO Digital Economy Forum, the SCO Agricultural Expo, and other events. It will develop an international AI application cooperation center with fellow SCO countries, establish a China-SCO port economic cooperation center in Tianjin, and implement 100 technological cooperation projects with other SCO countries in the next three years.
Second, staying committed to taking security as a key goal, and fostering an environment of common security. We should pursue coordinated measures to tackle traditional and non-traditional security threats. We should crack down on the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism, transnational organized crime, drug trafficking, and telecom fraud. We should strengthen cooperation on information security, bio-security, and outer space security. We must prevent external forces from interfering in our internal affairs, endangering our political security, and undermining regional stability. China stands ready to work with all parties to act on the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security, and make the SCO an important platform for implementing the Global Security Initiative. China supports the early opening of the SCO’s four security centers so as to upgrade the capacity of member states in responding to security threats and challenges.
Third, staying committed to a people-centered approach, and cementing the foundation for everlasting friendship. We should fully appreciate the distinctiveness of every country in its history, culture, social system, and development stage, and build cooperation networks between legislatures, political parties, institutions of education, think tanks, businesses, and the media, so as to promote nongovernmental exchanges and invigorate good-neighborliness and friendship among member states. China stands ready to work with all parties to implement the Global Civilization Initiative and supports a bigger role by nongovernmental friendship institutions such as the SCO Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation Commission. China will establish a China-SCO basic education cooperation center, and continue to build bridges for exchanges, mutual learning and people-to-people connectivity through Confucius Institutes, Luban Workshops and other programs.
Fourth, staying committed to dialogue and consultation, and striving for more equitable and orderly governance. We should always advocate that all countries, regardless of their size, are equal, and that regional affairs should be discussed by all countries to bridge differences and build consensus, properly handle differences through dialogue and consultation, and meet common challenges through multilateral collaboration. China supports the model cooperation by the SCO on practicing the Global Governance Initiative, and calls on continuous institutional improvement of the SCO to boost its efficiency in making and executing decisions. China welcomes more like-minded countries to be partners in our joint efforts to improve regional and global governance.
President Xi noted that China will work with all parties to continue to hold high the banner of the Shanghai Spirit, implement the development strategy of the SCO for the next decade, and pursue development with higher quality, so as to make greater contributions to a community with a shared future for humanity.
Leaders of the SCO member states fully affirmed the achievements the Organization has made in the past 25 years, and recognized that the SCO has provided important guarantee for regional security and prosperity and has become one of the cornerstones of global stability and economic development. All parties expressed appreciation for China’s important contribution to the organization’s development as a founding member, and agreed to actively implement the strategic vision set out at the 2025 Tianjin Summit, continue to uphold the Shanghai Spirit, promote institution-building, enhance political mutual trust, deepen cooperation in areas including trade, investment, science and technology, energy, finance, industrial and supply chains, and connectivity, strengthen people-to-people bonds, and jointly respond to new types of security challenges, with a view to writing a new chapter of lasting peace and common development. In the face of a complex and volatile international situation, SCO member states should embrace solidarity and cooperation, enhance the influence of SCO, promote the building of a more just and equitable global governance system, and play a greater role in safeguarding peace, stability and prosperity in the region and beyond.
Leaders of the SCO member states signed and issued the Bishkek Declaration of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, approved the Protocol on Amending and Supplementing the Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Regulations on the SCO Universal Center for Countering Security Challenges and Threats, and the Regulations on the SCO Anti-drug Center, and adopted 28 outcome documents covering security, economic, people-to-people and cultural cooperation, and organizational development.
The meeting decided that Pakistan will assume the rotating presidency of the SCO for 2026-2027.
Cai Qi and Wang Yi, among others, attended the above events.
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