Full text: Xi's speech at 26th SCO Council of Heads of State meeting

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday delivered a speech at the 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.

Here is the full text of his speech.

Toward Higher-Quality Development of The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Your Excellency President Sadyr Japarov, Colleagues, It is a great pleasure to join you in Bishkek.

I would like to thank President Japarov for the thoughtful arrangements for our meeting.

Since assuming the chairmanship, Kyrgyzstan has, under the theme "Together Toward Sustainable Peace, Development, and Prosperity," held a variety of activities with remarkable success.

China highly commends all this.

August 31 and September 1 mark the 35th anniversaries of the independence of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

I wish to extend our heartfelt congratulations to President Japarov, President Mirziyoyev, and to the friendly people of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Twenty-five years ago, reckoning with the hard lessons of the Cold War, confronting the real threats from terrorist, separatist and extremist forces, and heeding the earnest aspirations of the world for peace and development, countries in our region came to a prevailing consensus on working together to uphold sovereignty, security, and development interests.

Our organization was founded in this context, and it has shown increasingly stronger vigor and vitality.

Over the past 25 years, the SCO has traveled an extraordinary journey.

Its biggest achievement is that it has steadily grown into a new type of regional cooperation organization with the largest land area and population and enormous development potential.

Its most valuable spiritual asset is that it pioneered, and has since followed invariably, the Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development.