The Council of National Coordinators of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states held a regular meeting in Beijing from Tuesday to Friday.
Representatives from all 10 member states, the SCO Secretariat, and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) Executive Committee were in attendance.
Chaired by China, the meeting covered over 20 topics related to political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural cooperation within the SCO framework. The discussions also included preparations for the upcoming SCO Summit.
During their stay, participants visited the Museum of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Beijing.
The Council of National Coordinators is a key consultative mechanism within the SCO, tasked with implementing leaders' consensus and coordinating cooperation across various sectors.
Representatives expressed strong support for China's role as the rotating chair, pledging to collaborate in implementing leadership directives and advancing SCO cooperation.
"Besides our cooperation in security issues, we are also concentrating on economy, on trade, on industry. We see that it is playing a very active role in introducing new documents, in organizing new sessions and events. It shows that we are moving in the right direction," said Mehrdad Kiaei, Iran's national coordinator in the SCO Secretariat.
Enshrined in the SCO Charter is the concept of the Shanghai Spirit -- the set of values that underpins the organization and inspires solidarity toward the pursuit of a "community of shared future."
Sohail Khan, Deputy Secretary General of the SCO, said the concept has continued to guide discussions at the meeting.
"Shanghai Spirit means mutual equal ranks, mutual consultation, mutual respect, mutual thinking of each other to take into account, and this means that with the Shanghai Spirit, the integration will be more firm. The SCO will provide certainty, and it will also help to bring Global South together more and more," he said.
China officially assumed the rotating presidency of the organization for the 2024–2025 term at the SCO Summit in Astana in July last year.
As the chair, China will host the 25th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State as well as over 100 meetings and events within the SCO framework. How China collaborates with member states to lead the organization into a new phase of high-quality development is a topic of great interest and anticipation.
"In a world fraught with turbulence and change, and after more than 20 years of development, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is undergoing a period of growth and transition. Ensuring the organization's sustainable development involves clarifying its functional positioning, expanding its membership, and reforming its institutional structure. At the upcoming summit, China is expected to propose more initiatives and recommendations to promote the SCO's sustainable growth. Concrete actions will be taken to foster regional development and strengthen cooperation among member states," said Ding Xiaoxing, Deputy Secretary-General of the Academic Committee at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.
The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization established on June 15, 2001 in Shanghai by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its membership has since expanded to include India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus.
SCO national coordinators discuss cooperation, visit CPC museum in Beijing
SCO national coordinators discuss cooperation, visit CPC museum in Beijing
