"Ni hao, huan ying!" was how Kazakh President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev greeted his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as he arrived at the airport in the capital, Astana, to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The 71-year-old Tokayev is only one month older than Xi and speaks fluent Chinese. From 1985 to 1991, he served as a Soviet diplomat in Beijing.

It is not only linguistically that the two get on brilliantly. The Kazakh and Chinese heads of state also share common interests.

The SCO was founded in 2001 by Russia, China and authoritarian-ruled Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The club now also includes India, Iran and Pakistan.

Astana currently holds the bloc's presidency.

The foundational goals of the SCO were to strengthen mutual trust, promote cooperation and reduce regional tensions following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"The SCO was China's first multilateral initiative in 1996," said Eberhard Sandschneider, a partner at the Berlin Global Advisors think tank. "When it became clear that it was working well with three Central Asian states and the Russian Federation, it was institutionalized as the SCO in 2001."

China and Russia later expanded the club's mission to focus on combating terrorism in the region.

Beijing, for instance, has wanted to fight "terrorism, extremism........

© Deutsche Welle