Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the 17th summit meeting of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan. During the summit, the member states signed the SCO Convention on Combating Extremism, and issued a declaration to jointly fight international terrorism. India and Pakistan were officially accepted as member states at the summit, taking the number of SCO members from the previous six – China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – to eight. The move made the SCO one of the biggest regional organizations, covering nearly half of the world’s population. and Kazakhstan plan to further upgrade their bilateral investment agreement to promote more trade and investment deals in the key areas of energy, agriculture and infrastructure, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. Sino-Kazakh trade exceeded USD4.91 billion between January and April, up 45.6% compared with the same period last year. Kazakhstan is also China’s largest investment destination among Belt and Road economies.