Xi Jinping says SCO’s international appeal growing, calls for accelerating creation of development bank

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday urged the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states to accelerate the creation of a development bank, considering the growing appeal of the 10-nation bloc.

China has been pushing the grouping to set up a development bank on the lines of the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS and the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), in which India is the second largest shareholder.

Both banks, based in China, which were initially regarded as competitors to the IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are now working with them with a co-financing pattern.

The SCO has grown into the world’s largest regional organisation, with the participation of 26 countries, cooperation covering more than 50 areas, and a combined economic output of nearly $30 trillion, Xi said in his inaugural address of the 25th summit here attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others.

Founded in 2001 in Shanghai, the SCO now includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus. Afghanistan and Mongolia are observer states, and 14 other countries serve as dialogue partners.

SCO’s “international influence and appeal are increasing day by day,” Xi told the gathering of 20 foreign leaders who converged here to take part in the SCO Plus summit, stated to be the largest held by the grouping so far.

Xi spoke twice at the SCO Summit and later addressed the SCO Plus summit, where he announced more initiatives from China to benefit the member states.

On the political and strategic challenges faced by SCO, Xi said the member states are “all friends and partners.” They should respect their differences, maintain strategic communication, build up consensus, and strengthen solidarity and collaboration, he added.

Speaking at the SCO Plus summit, Xi proposed a Global Governance Initiative (GGI) in addition to his previous initiatives, the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Cultural Initiative (GCI), which became part of China’s foreign policy initiatives.

Xi said the member states should leverage the strengths of their mega-sized markets and economic complementarity between them, and improve trade and investment facilitation.

He expected cooperation to be enhanced in areas such as energy, infrastructure, green industry, digital economy, sci-tech innovation and artificial intelligence.

Xi urged putting into use the SCO Universal Centre for Countering Security Threats and Challenges and the SCO Anti-drug Centre.

He said China plans to implement 100 “small and beautiful” livelihood projects in member states with such need and announced RMB two billion ($280 million) funding and additional RMB 10 billion ($1.3 billion) in loans to the member banks of the SCO Interbank Consortium over the next three years.

Starting from next year, China will double the current number of SCO-specific scholarships and launch an SCO innovative PhD programme to jointly train high-calibre talent in academic as well as scientific and technological research.

In the next five years, China will establish 10 Luban Workshops in SCO member states and provide 10,000 human resources training opportunities.

China is ready to build with all sides the artificial intelligence application cooperation centre, and share the dividends of progress in AI, he said.