Russia, China leaders to meet at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit

Published On 31 Aug 202631 Aug 2026.

Key points

• Though Turkiye is not a member of the organisation, additionally anticipated to be in attendance are Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
• Alongside the SCO's 10 permanent members, another 15 states are connected as "dialogue partners", including Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
• Iran joined the bloc in 2023 and maintains close military ties to Russia and energy links with China.
• The bloc claims to represent some 40 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of global GDP.
• Pezeshkian is projected to hold bilateral negotiations with Putin at this year's SCO in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping and more than a dozen other leaders are set to gather in Kyrgyzstan on Monday for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

Notably, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has historically focused on economic problems, but President Putin and President Xi have additionally applied the summit to promote their vision of a multipolar world and to present a united front against the West.

In practice, the SCO's founding declaration notes the group is "not an alliance directed against other states". While Xi denounced "acts of intimidation", referring to US-Chinese tensions, nevertheless, at last year's gathering, Putin accused Western countries of provoking the Ukraine war.

Pezeshkian is projected to hold bilateral negotiations with Putin at this year's SCO in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. The foreign ministers of both countries met in July during the SCO's Council of Foreign Ministers session.

In practice, the leaders of India and Pakistan, both of which are full members of the SCO, are additionally anticipated to attend.

Notably, the bloc claims to represent some 40 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of global GDP. This year marks 25 years since the SCO was founded.

Notably, the session comes shortly after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated he would encourage G20 members to re-examine terms of trade with China, denouncing Beijing's $1.2 trillion global trade surplus as unsustainable.

"The world cannot have a China with a US$1.2 trillion (HK$9.36 trillion) trade surplus, " Bessent informed the Reuters news agency on Sunday, ahead of a G20 finance leaders gathering in the United States.

"In China, the economy is quite weak, and they are trying to export their way out of it, and they need to rebalance their economy, " he continued.

According to The US Treasury chief additionally, he planned to hold a bilateral session during the G20 conference with People's Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng, but declined to discuss details.

Taken together, the developments around russia, China leaders to meet at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.