Russia valuing organization facilitates tangible collaboration: expert
The BRICS Summit and a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Russia between Wednesday and Friday are projected to yield pragmatic results including a new development bank and the two organizations will evolve into practical co-operation from mere discussions, experts said.
China expected that the BRICS group of emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will make progress in putting into operation the BRICS New Development Bank and emergency reserve arrangement at the BRICS Summit held in Ufa, Russia from Wednesday to Thursday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping told a press conference on Monday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the seventh leaders meeting of the BRICS and the 15th Meeting of the Council of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Member States.
"Advancing the new development bank is the foremost goal since it can help shift the cooperation from mere view-exchanging to more practical one," said Zhu Jiejin, an associate professor at the Center for BRICS Studies of Fudan University. The five member countries will cooperate on different projects through investing in the bank, he added.
Besides, the summit will deepen consensus on major initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, while serving as a platform to voice a uniform stance on major international agendas, such as climate change and IMF reform, Cheng said.
Following the conclusion of the summit, the SCO meeting will be held on Thursday and Friday, during which the drafting of its development strategy up until 2025 and the admission standard to the SCO were believed by experts to be given priority.
The development strategy will be approved and a border defense cooperation agreement will be signed by the SCO member states - China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - Chen was quoted by the China News Service as saying on Monday.
With a specific development strategy, the SCO can play a more pragmatic role than before when their agreements were more of slogans, said Xia Yishan, a research fellow of Central Asian studies at the China Institutes of International Studies. Since Russia, which used to attach less importance to the organization, has been pressured to turn to the organization to develop its economy against the backdrop of EU-US sanctions, the SCO can become more united to discuss practical issues such as regional economic integration and security enhancement, he said.
Rivals Pakistan and India will start the process of joining the SCO, according to Chen.
"Granting membership to more countries in South Asia and the Middle East, which had been long impeded, will further expand the SCO's influence," Xia said.
