Russian President, Putin, arrives at Tianjin for a summit arranged by China
Russia and India Seek to Strengthen Ties at SCO Summit Amid US Trade Tensions
Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Tianjin, China, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, where he is expected to hold talks with several world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The summit, which runs until tomorrow, comes at a time when India's trade frictions with the United States present an opportunity for Russia to win over India.
Modi's visit to China marks his first visit since 2018. The Indian Prime Minister arrived in Tianjin yesterday evening, following a trip to Japan. The SCO summit offers a platform for bilateral meetings on the sidelines, with other meetings scheduled to take place.
The SCO, comprising China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus, aims to strengthen the organization's capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats. China, through the SCO, seeks to project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game.
China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which it claims is more democratic. Experts say that China and Russia are eager to use platforms like the SCO to curry influence.
India and China, the two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia. The two nations fought a deadly border clash in 2020. However, a thaw began last October when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
The SCO offers a Chinese-inflected multilateral order that is distinct from the western-dominated ones in international politics. More than 20 leaders, including the Iranian and Turkish presidents, will attend the SCO's largest meeting since its founding in 2001. 16 more countries are affiliated with the SCO as observers or "dialogue partners".
During the summit, Putin is also expected to hold talks with Turkey's Erdogan and Iran's Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Iran's nuclear program respectively. Chinese President Xi met with Egyptian Premier Moustafa Madbouly and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet in Tianjin yesterday.
The summit comes days after India was hit by a sharp bump up in US tariffs on its goods as punishment for India's purchases of Russian oil. Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan's Soka University, stated that Russia needs the benefits of the SCO as a player on the world stage and the support of the second largest economy in the world.
Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto cancelled his trip to the SCO summit due to widespread demonstrations in his country. The SCO summit in Tianjin will strengthen the organization's capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats, and provide a platform for world leaders to discuss geopolitical unity against Western domination, peace, stability, development in the region, and coordinated responses to global conflicts and trade disputes.
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