Page 1 - ON BUILDING A HUMAN COMMUNITY WITH A SHARED FUTURE

CARRYING FORWARD THE SHANGHAI SPIRIT

TO BUILD A COMMUNITY
WITH A SHARED FUTURE

June 10, 2018

Colleagues,

In this lovely season of June, I am delighted to welcome all of you
to the picturesque city of Qingdao for the 18th Meeting of the Council
of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO). Over 2,500 years ago, Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher,
declared: “What a joy it is to have friends coming from afar!” It is
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therefore of special significance that I host my distinguished guests in
Shandong, the home province of Confucius, where we will discuss the
future course of the SCO.
In five days, the SCO will celebrate its 17th birthday. This offers us
an opportunity to take stock of our organization’s remarkable journey
and the important achievements it has made along the way.
Over the past 17 years, guided by the SCO Charter and the Treaty
on Long-Term Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation
between the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
we have forged a constructive partnership characterized by non-
alliance, non-confrontation, and the non-targeting of any third party.
This represents a major breakthrough in the theories and practices
of international relations, and has offered a new model for regional
cooperation that can contribute to regional peace and development.
Today, the SCO is the world’s largest comprehensive regional
cooperation organization in terms of the land area and population it
covers. Its members account for about 20 percent of the global economy

Speech at the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Qingdao, Shandong Province.

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