China’s efforts to expand its influence will reap rewards today at a two-day meeting in Kazakhstan attended by Xi Jinping, as well as fellow leaders Vladimir Putin of Russia, India’s Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. Pakistan and India will join the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, founded in 2001 chiefly to combat the “three evils” of extremism, terrorism and separatism (and an unspoken fourth, Western influence). As China happily points out, the enlarged, eight-member SCO will cover three-fifths of the Eurasian landmass and nearly half of the world’s population. All member states are supposedly equal, but China, where the SCO was founded, is central to it. Mr Xi wants the SCO to promote his “belt and road” initiative of infrastructure spending across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. But India and Pakistan are a quarrelsome couple. The new members may make it hard to agree on anything important.