Building SCO home of solidarity, prosperity and fairness answers the call of the times

The Meeting of the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Member States, held in Tianjin on Tuesday, provides foreign ministers of the SCO member states and the heads of the SCO's permanent bodies with a platform to exchange views on SCO cooperation in various fields and major international and regional issues.

A major objective of the meeting is to make preparations for the SCO Summit that China is due to host in Tianjin this autumn. The members of the organization are expected to strengthen their cooperation and further synergize and coordinate their actions in the summit to help address the global security, development and governance deficits.

As the rotating chair of the SCO from 2024 to 2025, China is taking Tuesday's meeting as an opportunity to try and gather more consensus among the participating parties. It seeks to promote practical cooperation and improve strategic coordination in areas where the SCO members have shared interests and common concerns.

At present, changes of historical significance are unfolding across the world, transforming the international landscape in ways that directly or indirectly affect almost all SCO member countries. How they collectively respond to the changes and how they resolve their differences concern the future of not only the SCO but also the world at large.

To cope with the transformation that is underway, the key is to have the wisdom to see the changes, the ability to deal with the changes, and the courage to make changes, as Chinese President Xi Jinping said while attending the expanded meeting of the SCO in Astana, Kazakhstan, in July last year.

It was at that Astana meeting that President Xi called for building a common SCO home. A community featuring solidarity and mutual trust, peace and tranquility, prosperity and development, good-neighborliness and friendship, as well as fairness and justice.

Since its establishment, the SCO, through the concerted efforts of all the member states, has grown to be an important means for regional countries to realize common security and stability, and shared development and prosperity. The organization enables the member countries to pool their wisdom, properly settle their differences, and synergize their endeavors for their common good.

The SCO's unique strength as an open multilateral mechanism is its pragmatism and efficiency. No matter how the international landscape changes, the SCO must hold the bottom line of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and enhance cooperation in such areas as connectivity, the economy, trade and investment, green development and people-to-people exchanges.

It is good to see India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is attending the meeting in Tianjin, his first visit to China in five years. This highlights the SCO's important role in fostering good neighborly relations. Beijing and New Delhi have made evident progress in improving their bilateral ties. And as Jaishankar told the media in Beijing on Monday, the continued normalization of relations between India and China can produce "mutually beneficial" results.

By bridging their differences, the SCO member countries can build more consensus, enhance mutual trust and support each other in safeguarding their core interests and respective development paths. It is under the auspices of the Shanghai Spirit that the SCO has not only expanded into a big family but also established itself as an important security shield, bridge for cooperation and constructive force in the region since its founding in 2001.

The more turbulent the world becomes, the more the SCO members should uphold the Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for the diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development. By adhering to the Shanghai Spirit that eschews outdated concepts such as clash of civilizations, bloc confrontation, cold wars and a zero-sum mentality, the SCO member countries can consolidate the vitality and momentum of their cooperation that have become the hallmarks of the organization.

The SCO family has great potential to tap in the fields of agriculture, poverty reduction, innovation and entrepreneurship, green development, trade facilitation, local currency settlement, and the construction of a financing mechanism.

By working together to build an even closer SCO community with a shared future, the SCO member countries can also better contribute to the building of an equal and orderly multipolar world.