Xi Jinping backs Kazakhstan's bid to join BRICS
Chinese president expected to meet Russia's Putin at SCO summit in Astana
TOKYO -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that Beijing welcomes Kazakhstan's bid to join the BRICS group of emerging countries.
Xi expressed his support while visiting Astana for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China's state news agency Xinhua reported after the president met his Kazakh counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
The meeting came ahead of expected bilateral talks between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is also attending the SCO summit. Russian media reported that the two would meet, less than two months after Putin visited Beijing in mid-May, as the "no limit" partners close ranks amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and Beijing's confrontation with the West.
The membership of BRICS -- which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- already expanded earlier this year to include Global South countries Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Malaysia and Thailand recently expressed interest in joining as well.
Hailing their bilateral ties, Xi told Tokayev that China and Kazakhstan are "companions on the path to modernization." On Wednesday, the two leaders witnessed the inauguration of an express China-Europe freight route across the Caspian Sea, signifying the completion of diversified land, sea and air connections.
The SCO leaders' summit is scheduled for Thursday. Besides China and Russia, which dominate the grouping, other members include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan and 2023 entrant Iran.
Groups like BRICS and the SCO are widely seen as part of a strategy by China and Russia to promote a "multipolar" world as an alternative to the U.S.-led post-World War II order.
China's state-run Global Times on Tuesday wrote that "the flourishing ties between China and Kazakhstan, as well as the Central Asian region, set a model for building a new type of international relations championed by SCO cooperation, that is respect for diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development, discarding geopolitical thinking." This, it claimed, is in "sharp contrast to certain Western countries' geopolitical zero-sum mindset."