Ⅲ. Major cultural exchange activities in the SCO framework for this year and next year

1 In the middle of this year, the opening ceremony of the Art Festival of SCO member states will be held in Yekaterinburg, Russia as the celebration of the summit. China will send an art troupe to the festival.

2 China will invite SCO member states to the Nanning International Folk Songs Festival held in

Guangxi in Sept. 2009 and the China International Piano Competition in Xiamen in Oct. 2010. Both of them are mature and influential art festivals. The host cities, Nanning and Xiamen, located in south China, are famous for their unique scenery and folk customs. I hope that the member states would send the best artists to participate in these events.

Ⅳ. Discuss and sign the charter of the 5th Art Festival of SCO member states

Owing to the active cooperation and efforts of the host country as well as the participating countries, each art festival was a great success, wining the appreciation from the heads of the states attending the summit and the rest of the audience. The 5th Art Festival is hosted by Russia. China agreed to sign the charter of the festival and will, together with other member states, give its support to Russia in the organization of the event according to the charter. We believe the art festival of this year will undoubtedly be a complete success. Ⅴ. Regarding the time and the place for the next meeting of Culture Ministers

The host country of the culture ministers’ meeting is decided on the basis of willingness instead of the alphabetic order of each member state. The first meeting was held in China in April, 2002; then from 2005 up to now, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia took turns in hosting the meeting. The time and the place of next meeting will be decided by the specific conditions and each country’s willingness.

Ⅵ. Regarding the signing of this year’s conference minutes, announcements, the Action Plan on implementation of the agreement among the governments of SCO member states on cooperation in the field of culture for 2009-2011, the Work Plan for the Expert Working Group in cultural cooperation for 2008-2009 We highly praise the work done by the SCO Expert Working Group in cultural cooperation. After studying, we agree to sign the above-mentioned documents.

Ⅶ. At last, I’d like to put forward several suggestions on SCO cultural cooperation in the future:

1 Explore more possible fields for SCO cultural cooperation and further the cooperation in the industry of film, television, broadcast, publishing and sports.

2 Involve the SCO observer states in the cultural cooperation in the framework of the organization to extend SCO’s influence and effect. We may invite the observer states to our regular art festivals and to the meetings of culture ministers.

3. Vigorously support and promote unscheduled cultural exchanges and communications between non-governmental organizations. Hosted by the Academy of Traditional Chinese Painting in West Lake, Hangzhou, a SCO forum about the art of painting named Paintings of West Lake was a huge success which encouraged the friendship and artistic communications between the artists from SCO member states. We think there is still much work we can do in similar fields. We firmly believe that this meeting will act as a stepping stone in further pushing the cultural communication and cooperation in the SCO framework. Let’s join our hands to make new contributions to launching more cultural communications and cooperation between us and to deepening the mutual understanding and friendship between our people.

(Kazan, Russia, April 27th 2009)

(Translated by Yao Xin)