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BEIJING, June 7-- Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to Kazakhstan is highly anticipated to inject new momentum into the development of bilateral relations and to chart the future course for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Xi's four-day tour, starting on Wednesday, includes a state visit to the Central Asian country at the invitation of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the attendance of the annual meeting of the SCO's supreme decision-making body, the Council of Heads of State, as well as the opening ceremony of the 2017 World Expo in Astana. BOOST BILATERAL TIES The Chinese leader has visited Kazakhstan twice since taking office, respectively in 2013 and 2017, forging a profound friendship with the country and its people. Xi's visit will, in the first place, further promote the China-Kazakhstan political trust and chart the course for bilateral pragmatic cooperation in future, said Zhang Xiyun, a former Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan. The two countries, since establishing diplomatic relations 25 years ago, have "made great strides in their ties both in form and in substance," he said. "Beijing and Astana have remained quite attentive to each other's development needs." Xi brought up the initiative on the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, at the Nazarbayev University in September 2013, during a visit to Kazakhstan. | 
