The confidence of a regime may, on occasion, be measured by its devotion to protocol.
In Beijing, they are planning a victory parade on September 3 to commemorate what is officially known as “the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War,” a title that will please the guest of honor, Vladimir Putin.
China means to show that it is undisturbed by foreign wars and theatrical summits, viewing Ukraine and Gaza as mere ripples in a tide of history that now runs in its favor.
It testifies to the mood in Beijing and Moscow that state-approved commentators in both capitals were permitted to speculate that President Donald Trump might also attend the parade at the invitation of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.
While that has not been confirmed, Xi clearly shares the belief of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that Putin has won the war in Ukraine. Xi’s task is to fit the outcome into China’s strategic purposes.
The Communist Party has also announced that the Fourth Plenum of its 20th Central Committee is to take place in October. This will be a venue for consecrating economic decisions and setting the outlines of home policy. It is a sign of business as usual.
These two events set a road map for Xi. They project the idea that China is a serene and stable power whose economic and military weight grants it a new place in the world.
A glimpse of Xi’s thinking comes from commentator Shao Xia, who wrote in the People’s Daily on the decline of American leadership under Trump in a column of July 30.
“Around the world, a powerful ‘second awakening’ is underway. BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are gaining traction, offering developing countries alternative platforms for a more equitable and multipolar international order,” Shao wrote.
(The BRICS economic grouping includes Brazil, Russia, and India, while the Shanghai Cooperation Organization groups Belarus and Iran alongside Asian states.)
Citing splits between Europe and the United States over the Middle East, Ukraine, and trade, the column reached a confident conclusion:
“The decline of US soft power, industrial capacity, and global standing signals more than a transitional phase — it heralds the emergence of a post-American world order.”
Get the Latest
Sign up to receive regular emails and stay informed about CEPA’s work.
For Europe, Xi foresees a role in a new multipolar system, ideally one favorable to Chinese economic interests and in which military alliances are confined to a country’s neighborhood.
Chinese diplomatic publications tend to identify the emerging order like this. China and the autocracies of Russia, Iran, and North Korea are a bloc. The “Global South” embraces a multitude. The United States and its NATO allies look shaky. Their partners in Asia, like Japan, Australia, and South Korea, are uncertain. Europe is a trade entity, not a military power.
It is all extraordinarily opportune, in the Chinese view. In recent months, Europe has learned that Chinese diplomacy and economic pressure operate in concert to achieve the regime’s aims. Xi’s ambitions know few limits: one initiative calls for China to host a world governance center for Artificial Intelligence based in Shanghai.
Nonetheless, all is not perfectly aligned for radical action to disrupt the status quo.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said in a July 21 interview with Fox News that the tide of European opinion had shifted from inertia to resistance as the war in Ukraine dragged on.
“Everybody knows – it’s not a secret – that China is giving Russia as much aid as they can get away with without being discovered. The Europeans have caught onto this. There is no way that Putin could have sustained this war without Chinese support, particularly buying his oil,” Rubio said.
“And I think the Chinese have an incentive to see this war go on. They think that the longer this war goes on, it’ll distract us and prevent us from focusing on other parts of the world that they’re interested in.”
Rubio added that “the United States and China are the two most powerful and important countries in the world,” saying that “we have to have relations. We have to be able to talk to them, and we have to, if possible, find areas of cooperation.”
That is not easy due to the “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” which constitutes the locus of Chinese power politics, much as it did in Stalinist Russia.
The head of the Communist Party’s International Relations Department, an Oxford-educated diplomat, Liu Jianchao, 61, is reported to have been arrested on his return from a foreign tour. His female deputy, Sun Haiyan, is also said to have been detained.
Both were seen by analysts as key figures in the influence and money operations run by the party overseas. Their apparent downfall surprised China watchers.
Liu was a well-known figure – perhaps too well known, as it turns out – on the conference circuit, meeting the likes of Tony Blair and the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on a visit to Britain in June, which included an appearance at the Chatham House think tank.
That leaves foreign policy in the hands of the dour veteran Wang Yi, whose loyalty to the leader’s line leads some to compare him with Stalin’s durable diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov. Just the man to welcome the guests at the Victory Parade on September 3.
Michael Sheridan is the author of The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China published by Hachette Books in the United States and Headline Press in the UK, and The Gate to China, an acclaimed history of Hong Kong.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Europe’s Edge
CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.
