International Symposium on 20 Years of Shanghai Cooperation Organization Held in Shanghai

On June 24, an international symposium on “20 Years of Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Retrospect and Prospect” was held in Shanghai. The meeting was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, co-held by the China Center for Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies, CIIS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Secretariat, and organized by the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law and the China-sco Training Base for International Judicial Exchanges and Cooperation. The symposium was attended by nearly 200 people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, the SCO Secretariat, the embassies and consulates of SCO member states in China, scholars from SCO member states, and media representatives. The 2021 SCO Blue Book, edited by CIIS President Xu Bu, was launched at the opening ceremony.

In his opening remarks, Xu said that practice has proved and will continue to show that the establishment of the SCO is a milestone event in the 21st century for creating a new type of state-to-state relations and international organization. After two decades of rapid development and continuous enlargement, the SCO has entered a critical stage with multiple challenges to test the capacity of its transformation under the new circumstances.

SCO Secretary-general Vladimir Norov noted that the SCO today functions efficiently with a solid institutional basis. Previous SCO Secretaries-general Zhang Deguang (China), Kenzhegali Nurgaliyev (Kazakhstan), Muratbek Imanaliyev (Kyrgyzstan), Dmitry Mezentsev (Russia), and Rashid Alimov (Tajikistan) fondly recalled the history of SCO development and expressed their good wishes, calling the SCO an example of innovative cooperation in multilateral diplomacy. Scholars conducted in-depth discussions on SCO experience over the past two decades and prospects for the organization in the current international landscape.