Chinese President Xi Jinping gathered the leaders of Russia and India among dignitaries from around 20 Eurasian countries on Sunday for a showpiece summit aimed at putting China front and center of regional relations.
Security was tight in the northern port city of Tianjin, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit is being held until Monday, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or "dialogue partners."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived in Tianjin on Saturday evening after a trip to Japan for his first visit to China since 2018, said New Delhi was committed to improving ties with Beijing during a key meeting with Xi on Sunday, as both countries resolved to put aside differences from a yearslong border standoff.
"We are committed to progressing our relations based on mutual respect, trust and sensitivities," Modi told Xi during the meeting on the sidelines of the summit, according to a video clip posted on the Indian leader's official X account.
The bilateral meeting took place five days after Washington imposed punishing 50% tariffs on Indian goods due to New Delhi's purchases of Russian oil. Analysts say Xi and Modi are looking to present a united front against Western pressure.
Modi said an atmosphere of "peace and stability" has been created on their disputed Himalayan border, the site of a prolonged military standoff after deadly troop clashes in 2020, which froze most areas of cooperation between the nuclear-armed strategic rivals.
He added that an agreement had been reached between both nations regarding border management, without giving details.
"We must ... not let the border issue define the overall China-India relationship," China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Xi as saying. China-India ties could be "stable and far-reaching" if both sides focused on viewing each other as partners instead of rivals, Xi added.
Both leaders had a breakthrough meeting in Russia last year after reaching a border patrol agreement, setting off a tentative thaw in ties that has accelerated in recent weeks as New Delhi seeks to hedge against renewed tariff threats from Washington.
Direct flights between both nations, which have been suspended since 2020, are "being resumed," Modi added, without providing a time frame.
Earlier Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.
Meanwhile, Xi held a flurry of bilateral meetings with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and one of Putin's staunch allies, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
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.
In an interview published by Xinhua on Saturday, Putin said the summit will "strengthen the SCO's capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats, and consolidate solidarity across the shared Eurasian space."
"All this will help shape a fairer multipolar world order," Xinhua quoted Putin as saying.
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 like the SCO to curry influence.
"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," said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"In short it offers a Chinese-inflected multilateral order that is distinct from the Western-dominated ones in international politics," Loh said.
Iranian and Turkish Presidents Masoud Pezeshkian and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were also attending the bloc's largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
"The large-scale participation indicates China's growing influence and the SCO's appeal as a platform for non-Western countries," Loh added.
Beijing, through the SCO, will try to "project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game," said Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy Institute.
"It is framed as something different, built around sovereignty, noninterference, and multipolarity, which the Chinese tout as a model," Lee said.
Xi met leaders including Egyptian Premier Moustafa Madbouly and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet in Tianjin on Saturday.
Other bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit will be organized.
Putin is expected to hold talks on Monday with Turkey's Erdogan and Iran's Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Tehran's nuclear program, respectively.
Putin 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 frictions with the United States presents this opportunity," Lim said.
Modi was not on a list of attendees for the Beijing parade published by Chinese state media on Thursday that included Myanmar's junta chief Min Aung Hlaing and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto cancelled his trip as the country was hit by widespread demonstrations.
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