China was set on Wednesday to hold a military spectacle that will rumble through the ceremonial heart of the capital, featuring fighter jets, tanks, and the latest in Chinese military technology in the country’s most ambitious display of power and diplomatic reach in years.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran will join China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in a rare gathering of autocrats who have positioned themselves in opposition to the U.S.-led world order.
The parade, which honors the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, is the highlight of a weekslong campaign by the ruling Communist Party to stoke nationalism, recast China’s role in that conflict, and project the party as the nation’s savior against a foreign aggressor, Imperial Japan.
The evoking of wartime memories serves to rally domestic Chinese support in the face of economic uncertainty and rising tensions with the United States over trade and other disputes.
“This great victory fully demonstrates that the people are the creators of history and the true heroes, that the Chinese nation possesses tenacious vitality and extraordinary creativity, and that the Communist Party of China is the most reliable backbone of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation,” the party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, said in an editorial on Wednesday.
China and Russia have echoed each other’s version of World War II and the role their countries played in ending it.
“For both Xi and Putin, victory was costly, but incomplete. They believe that ‘hegemonic forces’ still want to impose a foreign model upon them and block their rightful place in the world,” said Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University. “Now, they want to use the memory of the war to inoculate future generations against western values and legitimate the global order they envision.”
The parade is also a warning to countries that Beijing regards as seeking to contain China’s rise to reclaim its rightful position of centrality in the world. And it offers an implicit warning to Taiwan and its international supporters of the perils of any move toward formal independence.
“The stronger China grows, the more secure the world will be,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary this week. “The Chinese nation will not allow itself to be humiliated or bullied again, as it was by imperialist powers in the past.”
The guest list of over two dozen world leaders is as notable for who is attending as for who is not, underscoring how much the divide between Beijing and the West has deepened, particularly over China’s close alignment with Russia in its war in Ukraine.
Conspicuously absent from the list are high-level representatives from major Western democracies including the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Australia.
But the leaders of many Southeast Asian and Central Asian nations are expected to attend, and that, along with a gathering of a Eurasian security grouping in Tianjin that ended Monday, showed China’s success in strengthening regional partnerships.
David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
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