Chinese dictator Xi Jinping made a pitch for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation (SCO) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Tuesday, at a time of growing discontent with the heavy debt loads, environmental impact, and challenges to sovereignty from Communist China’s signature infrastructure initiative.
“China takes the SCO as a priority area for promoting high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and implementing the Global Development Initiative,” Xi said at the Bishkek forum on Tuesday.
The Chinese dictator promised to “develop an international AI application cooperation center with fellow SCO countries, continue to work with fellow SCO countries to increase the installed capacity of photovoltaic and wind power each by 10 million kilowatts, implement 100 technological cooperation projects with other SCO countries in the next three years, and nurture more green industry talents through China-SCO cooperation.”
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Xi said China supports major rail and port projects in Central Asia and seeks to “foster an environment of common security” by cracking down on “terrorism, separatism, and extremism,” as well as “transnational organized crime, drug trafficking, and telecom fraud.”
“We must prevent external forces from interfering in our internal affairs, endangering our political security, and undermining regional stability,” he said.
The regime in Beijing has long pushed the idea that the SCO is all but fated to become a major part of BRI, but several SCO member states are among the BRI clients who had troubling experiences with the program in recent years, including Kyrgyzstan.
Protests have appeared across the region against the huge debt loads China expects BRI clients to incur, infringements against their sovereignty (especially if they fall behind on those massive loan payments to Chinese banks) and Chinese workers flooding into client nations to take most of the best jobs for BRI construction projects.
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In May 2025, the Lowy Institute published a report on BRI that found “soaring debt repayments and a sharp reduction in lending have transformed China’s role in developing country finances from capital provider to debt collector.”
The report found “the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries” making “record high debt repayments totaling $22 billion to China.” One of the problems noted by analysts was that Western nations understandably became reluctant to offer large amounts of foreign aid, financial bailouts, or low-interest financing to countries that become part of BRI — but those countries needed the Western money to make their loan payments to China.
SCO’s biggest member after China is India, and India has become strongly opposed to BRI, especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. India has argued that BRI violates the SCO Charter because it compromises the sovereignty and territorial integrity of client nations.
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On balance, the SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan came out fairly well for China and its anti-Western partner Russia. The joint statement issued by the summit was highly critical of U.S. action against Iran, which is an SCO member, and Israel’s actions in Gaza. The members seemed nervous about recent U.S. threats of secondary sanctions against countries that continue doing business with Iran.
As they have often done in the past, India and Pakistan accused each other of sponsoring terrorism — a squabble that might have tipped slightly to India’s favor this time around, as the joint statement included Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s admonition to avoid “double standards” on the subject.
“We must send a strong message to countries that use terrorism as an instrument of policy and provide safe haven and support to terrorists that terrorism can never be a strategic asset for anyone,” Modi said.
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