On 11 September 2024, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming took part in the SCO Women’s Forum in Qingdao, China’s Shandong Province.
The forum titled Women's Economic Empowerment through Digitalisation was organised by the All-China Women’s Federation together with the SCO Secretariat, the Chinese Committee for Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation and the Government of Shandong Province.
Shen Yiqin, Member of China’s State Council and Chair of the All-China Women’s Federation, read out a message of greetings from the President of China Xi Jinping and set forth China’s priorities in the sphere of the women’s agenda. She outlined key points aiming to achieve gender equality, including that in the SCO space. High-ranking delegates from Iran, Uzbekistan, Cambodia and Armenia also spoke at the forum’s opening ceremony. Female delegates from all member states, as well as Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Egypt, Cambodia, Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates, took part in the plenary session.
Over 200 guests, including heads of agencies for women’s affairs, representatives of women’s organisations and members of the diplomatic corps in China, took part in the forum.
In his opening remarks, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming thanked the President of the PRC Xi Jinping for supporting and paying attention to SCO cooperation on women’s affairs and evaluated SCO efforts and achievements to facilitate the development of women. He expressed confidence that SCO countries boasted an impressive potential and highlighted broad prospects in facilitating the involvement of women in digital economic collaboration. He noted that SCO member states would pool their efforts for implementing an initiative regarding cooperation in the field of women’s development, put forwards by the President of China. Our goal is to promote science and technological innovations and the development of women by expanding digital capabilities, so that the people of region’s countries, especially women, would be able to appreciate the dividends of intra-SCO cooperation.