SCO to safeguard Pak strategic interests

BEIJING: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will benefit Pakistan and other regional countries to safeguard their strategic interest, as well as giving boost to their socio-economic development.

According to the official sources in Beijing, the SCO is being developed as an effective regional platform to promote peace and stability. This will be a source of common development.

Taking over the rotating presidency, China will hold this year's SCO summit in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong Province in June.

After the admission of India and Pakistan in 2017, the SCO has become a comprehensive regional organization with the largest geographic and demographic coverage, with 44 percent of the world's population. "It will surely play a more positive role in the regional and international affairs," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying.

The SCO foreign ministers agreed at a meeting that they will "enhance solidarity and mutual trust, deepen cooperation across the board, and build a new type of international relations featuring mutual trust, equity, justice and win-win cooperation and a community with a shared future for all mankind," according to Hua.

As a founding member of the SCO, China has consistently promoted practical cooperation and proposed initiatives conducive to all parties, such as the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, which has generated numerous tangible benefits to SCO member states.

According to the sources, China-proposed initiatives "bear profound strategic character," SCO Secretary-General Rashid Alimov told Xinhua in a recent interview, stressing the importance of aligning the Initiative with the development strategies of each SCO member.

Over the past four years, a batch of major joint projects have been completed in SCO member states under the framework of B&R, including highways, railways, tunnels and electric power plants, which improve the cross-border logistics conditions and promotes the development capacity of the SCO countries.

In October 2017, in Kashgar of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a fleet of 50 trucks of a joint trade convoy carrying large containers started to roll along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The containers carried by the fleet were shipped to the United Arab Emirates and other countries, marking the Gwadar port's first export of containers to foreign destinations, and showing that the port has achieved the designated handling capacity.