How Xi cements neighborly bonds with SCO friends

BOND OF GOOD-NEIGHBORLINESS, PARTNERSHIP

Xi has made three overseas trips so far this year. Two of the destinations, Russia and Kazakhstan, are both SCO member states.

Upon his arrival at the airport in Astana during the June visit for the second China-Central Asia Summit, Xi was warmly greeted by an old friend, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. It was Xi's sixth visit to the neighboring country since he became Chinese president.

The China-Central Asia Summit is designed to cement China's bond with its landlocked neighbors along the ancient Silk Road.

"A Central Asian proverb compares harmony and unity to happiness and wealth," Xi said at the gathering. "We always wish our neighbors well."

China is one of the countries with the most neighbors in the world. For decades, fostering closer partnerships with its neighboring countries has been a ballast in the layout of Beijing's foreign policy. Xi has taken particular attention to cultivating a peaceful and friendly neighborhood.

Back in 2013 when he was first elected China's head of state, Xi put forward the principle of "amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness" at a meeting on China's neighborhood diplomacy, the first such conference held since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

At the central conference on work related to neighboring countries held in Beijing in April, Xi called for building a community with a shared future with neighboring countries.

Good-neighborliness has been a constant theme in Xi's agenda on the SCO stage. During his SCO debut at the Bishkek Summit in 2013, he proposed an earnest implementation of the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation among the SCO member states. Xi has described both the treaty and the SCO Charter as two documents that "lay down the principles and give guidance to SCO member states in their work."

In subsequent years, the Chinese leader proposed an action plan for 2018-2022 to implement the established SCO good-neighborliness treaty, and pushed for its adoption at the landmark Qingdao Summit in 2018, which was the first time Xi hosted an SCO summit in China. A comprehensive plan for 2023-2027 on the implementation of the Treaty was adopted in 2022 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.