{"id":113211,"date":"2025-09-02T02:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/113211\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T02:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:29:08","slug":"china-to-show-off-military-might-in-parade-attended-by-anti-west-leaders-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/113211\/","title":{"rendered":"China to show off military might in parade attended by anti-west leaders | China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaders from countries united in their opposition to the west will gather in Beijing this week in a show of support for China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping<\/a>, at a second world war commemoration parade designed to show off China\u2019s military strength and geopolitical might.<\/p>\n

Described by western analysts as \u201cthe axis of upheaval\u201d, the military, economic and political collaboration between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea<\/a> has been on display on the battlefield in Ukraine and in the Middle East this year.<\/p>\n

But on Wednesday it will be Beijing that takes centre stage as the world\u2019s second-largest economy and rising superpower presents itself as an alternative to a western-led global order.<\/p>\n

The tightly choreographed military parade<\/a> through Beijing\u2019s Tiananmen Square to commemorate 80 years since the defeat of Japan in the second world war \u2013 referred to in China as the war of resistance against Japanese aggression \u2013 will be attended by 26 heads of state. As well as Russia, North Korea and Iran, leaders from Myanmar, Mongolia, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and central Asian countries will witness China\u2019s unveiling of a range of combat-ready weaponry. The only western leaders on the guest list published by China\u2019s ministry of foreign affairs are from Serbia and Slovakia.<\/p>\n

\u201cXi Jinping is trying to lay out his ambition for the global order,\u201d said Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. In Xi\u2019s view, \u201cthe world should be multipolar, led by China<\/a>, and joined by many non-western countries,\u201d Yu said.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin, Russia\u2019s president, is already in China, having attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation<\/a> summit in Tianjin over the weekend. India\u2019s president, Narendra Modi, also attended the annual gathering of Eurasian leaders, a sign of thawing China-India relations at a time when India has been hit by 50% tariffs by the US as a punishment for purchases of Russian oil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As well as showing Beijing\u2019s power to gather non-western leaders, the parade \u2013 two months after US\u2019s own lacklustre military parade<\/a> held on Donald Trump\u2019s 79th birthday in mid-June \u2013 provides a direct comparison of US and Chinese military strength that Beijing will be comfortable with.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s bonanza comes \u201cquite shortly after the awful US parade\u201d, said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It would \u201crub it in from the Chinese side\u201d, he said, telling the US that \u201cif you do parades, we can do it better than anyone else\u201d.<\/p>\n

In recent months China has been stressing the importance of its narrative about the defeat of Japan in the second world war, which minimises the role of the west. In May, when Xi visited Moscow for Russia\u2019s Victory Day parade, he wrote an article calling for the \u201ccorrect historical perspective\u201d on the war.<\/p>\n

Xi said China and the Soviet Union were the principle theatres of war in Asia and Europe, and that the two countries \u201cserved as the mainstay of resistance against Japanese militarism and German nazism, making pivotal contributions to the victory of the world anti-fascist war\u201d.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s article made no mention of the US or European contributions against the axis forces in the war.<\/p>\n

Several recent blockbuster films have also focused on China\u2019s experience of the war. Dead to Rights, a film about the Nanjing massacre, in which more than 200,000 Chinese people in Nanjing were killed by Japanese troops in 1937, took more than 500m yuan (\u00a352m) in the first four days of its release in Chinese cinemas in July.<\/p>\n

Another film, Dongji Rescue<\/a>, tells the story of British prisoners of war who were rescued by Chinese fishers from a bombed Japanese cargo liner, while the Chinese government has enthusiastically promoted<\/a> a documentary<\/a> on the same topic.<\/p>\n

Yu said the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist party was based in part on its defeat of Japan 80 years ago, making the historical narratives particularly important as Beijing grapples with challenging economic forces and a trade war with the US that threatens to undermine the prosperity of ordinary Chinese people.<\/p>\n

Analysts will be closely watching Wednesday\u2019s parade for signs of China\u2019s military upgrade, especially anything that could be of particular relevance to an assault on Taiwan.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaiwan is the great unspoken piece of the parade,\u201d said Charles Parton, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. By projecting military might, he said, Beijing is \u201csending a message to the Taiwanese that resistance is futile\u201d.<\/p>\n

In May, Chinese weaponry appeared to prove itself in a conflict between India and Pakistan, when Pakistan used Chinese J10-C jets<\/a> to shoot down several Indian fighter jets. The role of Chinese kit in that conflict, while never officially acknowledged by Beijing, was nonetheless highlighted in Chinese media as a success story for China\u2019s military capabilities.<\/p>\n

Even more advanced jets could be on display at this week\u2019s parade. Wezeman expects to see so-called \u201cfifth-generation\u201d fighter jets such as the J-20, a more advanced and stealthy version of the J-10C jets used by Pakistan in May.<\/p>\n

Crucially, Chinese jets are increasingly made with Chinese rather than Russian engines, part of China\u2019s military modernisation plan, which stresses the importance of self-reliance. \u201cThe whole point for China is to be totally independent of anybody else, including the Russians,\u201d Wezeman said.<\/p>\n

That desire for military self-sufficiency comes at a time when China\u2019s key ally on the world stage, Russia, has been propped up by Chinese economic support and North Korean troops during its war in Ukraine. Many analysts believe Beijing is learning lessons from that conflict to inform its thinking about a potential conflict with Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as part of its own territory.<\/p>\n

And while it is difficult to showcase China\u2019s naval progress in a parade through the concrete streets of Beijing, there may be certain technology, such as supersonic drones and large underwater drones, that could show China\u2019s ability to \u201cdeter anyone coming to the aid of Taiwan via the sea\u201d, Wezeman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leaders from countries united in their opposition to the west will gather in Beijing this week in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-113211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}