The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will once again be a Chinese host. As one of the rotating chairmanship countries of the SCO, China will hold the first summit—Qingdao Summit—in June this year after the SCO has expanded its membership.

Since its establishment in June 2001 in China, the SCO has gone through 17 years of development and has grown into an internationally influential regional cooperation organization. Boasting the largest population, the broadest area and greatest economic influence, the SCO is determined to increase cohesion, boost execution and enhance influence of its member countries in the hope of building a community with a shared future and achieving multi-dimensional development. The Qingdao Summit is sure to be a new milestone in the history of the SCO and will open a new era for it.

In retrospect, the ancient Silk Road stretched for thousands of miles and lasted for thousands of years. It symbolizes the “Silk Road Spirit” which promotes peaceful cooperation, open-mindedness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and win-win results, and serves as a bridge for collaboration between different nations and civilizations. On the other hand, the “Shanghai Spirit”, with its central task of negotiating in mutual trust and benefit, equality, respect for diversity and a pursuit of common progress is exactly where the original aspiration of the SCO lies.

Shandong Peninsula is situated at the meeting point of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” which makes it an important area along the economic corridor of the New Eurasian Land Bridge and a pivot area of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. In recent years, guided by the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind and the Belt and Road Initiative, the SCO has fostered the integration and promotion of the Silk Road Spirit and Shanghai Spirit. In light of this, Shandong has adopted a more proactive opening-up policy by advancing the degree of openness from south to north with a gradient development strategy implemented from east to west. As a result, Shandong has been taking a leading role in creating a new pattern of all-round opening-up that aims at interconnected and balanced development within different regions; therefore the open economy in Shandong has been developing steadily.

Kazakhstan is the first destination of Creat Group’s going global strategy. The group has established project departments in Almaty, Atyrau, Aktobe and other places to export domestic technology, products and services, which has contributed to petroleum prospecting in Kazakhstan. In this way, Creat Group has been constantly expanding its international market westwards along the ancient Silk Road and has reached Central Asian countries such as Turkmenistan, Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan and European countries such as Turkey and Russia.