BEIJING: China's president and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has warned members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) against foreign interference and popular uprisings.
"We must prevent foreign forces from instigating 'colour revolutions'" the Chinese president said at the group's summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on Friday.
Together, SCO members must oppose "interference in internal affairs under any pretext," he said.
The term "colour revolutions" is used to describe political movements that have brought down autocratic systems in recent decades.
Democratic transformations in several countries in the 2000s were often named after colours or even plants and were often supported by foreign democracies.
The world is dealing with a "new phase of turbulence and change," Xi told participants. "The fog of the pandemic of the century has not yet cleared, the smoke of local conflicts is rising again, the Cold War mentality and bloc politics have returned."
"Humanity is at a crossroads," he said.
He also called on SCO members to fight against drug smuggling and other cross-border crimes, as well as the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.
China, he said, is ready to train 2,000 law enforcement officers from SCO member states over the next five years and set up a training centre for the fight against terrorism.
The SCO Heads of State Council, Putin is due to deliver a speech about his vision for the future of the organisation and how to strengthen the Eurasian bloc.
It is the SCO's first in-person leaders' summit since 2019.
The Shanghai group of eight states led by China and Russia has set its sights on security and cooperation and wants to create an alternative to what it sees as a Western-dominated world order. -- dpa
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