TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the northern city of China on Sunday, August 31, 2025, to attend summit hosted by President Xi Jinping along with around 20 other world leaders.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit will be held in the port city of Tianjin until Monday, September 1, 2025, just days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
SCO's members include China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus, with 16 other countries affiliated as observers or "dialogue partners."
Russian and Chinese state media reported, as cited by CNA, that Putin landed in Tianjin at around 09:30 a.m. local time.
NATO Alternative
China and Russia sometimes refer to the SCO as an alternative to the NATO military alliance.
In an interview published by the Xinhua news agency in China on Saturday, Putin said that the upcoming summit would "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," Putin was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
With China's claims on Taiwan and Russia's invasion of Ukraine putting them at odds with the United States and Europe, experts say Beijing and Moscow are keen to use platforms like the SCO to gain 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 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
"In short it offers a Chinese-inflected multilateral order that is distinct from the western-dominated ones in international politics," Loh added.
Over 20 leaders, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will attend its largest meeting since its establishment in 2001.
Through the SCO, Beijing seeks to "project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game," said Lizzi Lee of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
"It is framed as something different, built around sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity, which the Chinese tout as a model," Lee stated.
Talks on the Sidelines of the Summit
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with world leaders, including Egyptian Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, in Tianjin on Saturday.
Other bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit will also be held.
Putin is expected to hold talks on Monday with Erdogan and Pezeshkian regarding the Ukraine conflict and Tehran's nuclear program.
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 Soka University in Japan.
"Russia is also keen to win over India, and India's trade frictions with the United States presents this opportunity," he added.
The summit comes just days after India faced a sharp increase in US tariffs on its goods as punishment for New Delhi's purchase of Russian oil.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Tianjin on Saturday night after a visit to Japan, marking his first visit to China since 2018.
The two most populous countries in the world are fierce rivals vying for influence across South Asia and were involved in a deadly border clash in 2020.
The thaw in relations began last October when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
Modi is not on the list of Beijing parade participants published by the Chinese government media on Thursday, which includes Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Meanwhile, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto canceled his visit because the country was engulfed in widespread demonstrations.
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