Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Global South leaders to leverage their "mega-scale market" and strive for a new equalitarian multipolar world order at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin on September 1.

The SCO had set a model for a “new type of international relations,” Xi said in opening remarks to 26 assembled leaders from emerging markets in Eurasia and beyond. He urged the assembled countries to find common ground and “oppose hegemony and power politics.”

"We should advocate for equal and orderly multipolarisation of the world, inclusive economic globalisation and promote the construction of a more just and equitable global governance system," he said, as cited by Reuters.

"We must take advantage of the mega-scale market... to improve the level of trade and investment facilitation," said Xi, urging the bloc to boost cooperation in fields including energy, infrastructure, science and technology, and artificial intelligence.

Putin echoed the same "genuine multilateralism", highlighting the multipolar world order he has been championing with Xi for years to replace what they called the unipolar order dominated by the US.

Putin also pointed to the growing settlement of trade deals in national currencies increasingly used in mutual settlements as concrete progress towards breaking up the old system.

"This, in turn, lays the political and socio-economic groundwork for the formation of a new system of stability and security in Eurasia," he said.

"This security system, unlike Euro-centric and Euro-Atlantic models, would genuinely consider the interests of a broad range of countries, be truly balanced, and would not allow one country to ensure its own security at the expense of others.”

Putin and Xi have gone beyond the pragmatic “marriage of convenience” their relation was described as in the early days and are becoming increasingly ideologically aligned. Payment systems to undermine the leading role of the US dollar in international trade deals was also a key feature of the BRICS Kazan summit held in Russia last September, the last time Putin and Xi met in person.

The Dragon, the Bear and the Elephant 

The SCO has come of age. Among the concrete initiatives floated at the SCO summit is a Chinese proposal to set up a SCO development bank to work in parallel with the China-based New Development Bank (NDB, formerly known as the BRICS Bank). Xi said China will provide CYN2bn ($280mn) to capitalise the new bank and another CYN10bn of loans to get it started. China has already invested $84bn in member countries and would provide another $1.4bn in loans over the next three years, he said.

Far from looking isolated, despite extreme international sanctions on Russia and an issued an arrest warrant for Putin personally, Putin was Xi’s guest of honour, standing next to the Chinese leader in the photo call and sitting next to him at the gala dinner.

Amongst the other prominent guests was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as other leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Modi was in China for the first time in seven years and was hoping to improve ties with China. The two countries have suffered from prickly relations for years, but Modi, like Putin, is increasingly being driven into China’s arms, by the aggressive tariff policy followed by the Trump administration. New Delhi and Beijing are seeking a reset in their relations as the leading Emerging Markets increasingly circle their wagons in the face of US pressure.

Amongst the other meetings, Xi also pledged to support Myanmar to “unify all domestic political forces as much as possible and restore stability” in a meeting with Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the country’s military. Myanmar's brutal military dictatorship is under sanctions by the West and counts China and Russia as amongst its few friends. 

China is offering a new deal based on mutual respect and strict non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs that is very appealing to Global South governments that have grown tired of lecturing by the G7 nations and punishments with missiles or sanctions when they don’t comply.

Xi called his partners to "oppose Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation" and to support “multilateral” free trade systems as he rallied the delegates in what has emerged as an anti-Trump alliance in the short-term and an alternative to the Western-dominated institutions of the international system in the long-term, although this very much remains a work in progress.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is one of the few Western guests, said China played a "fundamental" role in upholding global multilateralism.

A huge military parade is schdeuled for September 3 in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II by China over the Japanese. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite not attending in Tianjin, is expected to join Putin and Xi on the rostrum overlooking Tiananmen Square for the parade

In a follow up meeting the Brazilian government has announced that it will organize an extraordinary BRICS summit in Kazakh  soon, Valor Econômico writes. During the event, the country's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva plans to discuss and develop a joint response by the association's members to threats to cooperation from the US.