Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Sunday for a showpiece Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.
Chinese President Xi Jinping gathered the leaders of Russia and India, along with dignitaries from around 20 Eurasian countries Sunday. The summit is aimed at putting China at the center of regional relations, and takes place just days before a massive military parade in the capital, Beijing, to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
The SCO is composed of China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin on Sunday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.
China and Russia have sometimes touted the SCO as an alternative to the NATO military alliance. This year's summit is the first since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
As China's claim over Taiwan and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the United States and Europe, experts say that Beijing and Moscow are eager to use platforms such as the SCO to curry favour.
More than 20 leaders, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are attending what is the bloc's largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
Putin is expected to hold talks on Monday with Erdogan and Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Tehran's nuclear programme, respectively.
Turkey has hosted three rounds of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv this year that have failed to break the deadlock over how to end the conflict.
The Russian president needs “all the benefits of SCO as a player on the world stage and also the support of the second largest economy in the world,” said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan's Soka University.
“Russia is also keen to win over India, and India's trade friction with the United States presents this opportunity,” Lim told AFP.
The summit comes days after India was hit by a sharp bump up in U.S. tariffs on its goods as punishment for New Delhi's purchases of Russian oil.
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