China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressed their case on Thursday for closer security, political and economic cooperation between countries of the vast Eurasian region as a counterweight to Western alliances. They were speaking on the second and final day of a summit in the Kazakh capital Astana of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a club launched in 2001 by Russia, China and Central Asian states and now including India, Iran and Pakistan.
