Fighter jets. Drone interceptors. Strategic missiles. These are just some of the high-end weapons that China broadcast to the world on Wednesday in a military parade. But of equal importance, if not more, was who was there to watch it.
Chinese President Xi Jinping led the parade, which marked the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, at Tiananmen Square. But the parade also opened up a rare opportunity to bring together in person Xi, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un—leaders of a so-called “axis of upheaval.”
Also in attendance were a plethora of other world leaders China invited in what experts claim was meant to be a projection of power, particularly towards the U.S. and its allies, who decided to skip the event. “The Chinese nation is never intimidated by any bullies and always forges ahead,” Xi said in a speech from the Tiananmen rostrum.
“Humanity is again faced with a choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, and win-win outcomes or zero-sum games,” Xi added. The Chinese people, he said, “firmly stand on the right side of history.”
U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge China’s parade and took aim at Xi’s guest list. “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America,” he posted.Trump also downplayed the apparent convergence of anti-U.S. forces. “We have the strongest military in the world, by far,” he said in a Tuesday interview with conservative commentator Scott Jennings. “They would never use their military on us—believe me, that would be the worst thing they could ever do.”
What is the ‘axis of upheaval’?
In an April 2024 Foreign Affairs article, foreign policy analysts Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine from the Washington-based think tank Center for a New American Security wrote of a new “axis of upheaval,” intentionally repurposing World War terminology. Since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russia, while earning condemnation from the U.S. and its Western allies, has raked in support from China, Iran, and North Korea on the battlefield.
Even before the war, the four countries have been described as ideologically aligned at times, though Christopher S. Chivvis and Jack Keating, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in October, noted that they are “far from a coherent bloc against which the United States could or should orient an effective strategy.” The bulk of the diplomatic ties between the four have existed bilaterally, and some countries in the bloc continuously face tensions.
“The military parade, while ostensibly meant to honor military efforts and veterans in WWII, will certainly showcase China’s military modernization and is meant as a display of Chinese power and strength, to both the U.S. and the West but also to China’s neighbors, including Russia and North Korea,” says Susan Thornton, a senior fellow at the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center and a former U.S. diplomat to East Asia.
Still, the so-called “axis” is united around an anti-West strategy. Kendall-Taylor and Fontaine described the bloc as a “collection of dissatisfied states converging on a shared purpose of overturning the principles, rules, and institutions that underlie the prevailing international system,” which the U.S. leads.
The North Korean leader’s presence was the most notable on Wednesday, when the axis came together in Beijing, says Thornton. “Kim consorting with leaders of major powers elevates his standing and is probably meant to project that North Korea has partners and does not ‘need’ to engage with [South Korea] or the U.S.,” she says.
Kim’s visit also “signals a warming in relations with China,” Thornton says. Kim and Xi last met in 2019.
What other countries attended the parade?
Besides Iran, North Korea, and Russia, heads of state or governments from more than a dozen other countries also attended the parade. These included a number of Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Vietnam—as well as Pakistan, Nepal, Mongolia, and the Maldives. Others in attendance included leaders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the Republic of the Congo, and Zimbabwe.
India, which attended the Chinese-established intergovernmental Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit over the weekend, did not attend the parade. New Delhi has moved closer to Beijing amid tensions with Washington after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed crippling tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.
“Modi’s presence at the SCO summit and absence at the parade reflect the fact that India is hedging itself between China and the U.S., perhaps hoping to reap the benefits of being wooed by both,” says William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen.
This year’s guest list also notably included few Western-aligned nations, even as China has sought to open itself up to the world. At the military parade in 2015, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, several Western representatives, albeit few heads of state, attended, including former Prime Minister of the U.K. Tony Blair, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and the U.S. ambassador to China at the time Max Baucus, as well as then-President of South Korea Park Geun-hye. This year, two Western heads of state attended: Prime Minister of Slovakia, an E.U. member, Robert Fico and President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić. Representatives from several other countries, including Australia and Singapore, as well as representatives from intergovernmental organizations, including the U.N. and ASEAN, also attended.
What weapons did China display at the parade?
Besides the guests, the star of the parade was Xi’s inspection of the People’s Liberation Army’s full arsenal. “In an era in which the United States is not shy about showcasing and projecting military strength, whether directly or indirectly, the Chinese government will certainly want to demonstrate that it also has a modern military that can’t be easily pushed around,” Figueroa says. The U.S. recently held a military parade in Washington, D.C., in June to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. army, which also coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
During Beijing’s parade, some armaments made their public debuts, including two extra-large undersea drones, a battle tank, and an array of missiles aimed to take down ships—including one believed to be an “aircraft carrier killer.”
Of note among the displays were new DF-61 and DF-31BJ intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), evidence of China’s development of mobile ICBMs as part of its nuclear deterrent arsenal. The DF-61 is believed to be China’s most advanced ICBM. The capabilities of these missiles are unclear, but Trump’s planned “Golden Dome” missile defense system is being developed with the intention to protect against such threats.
What does China signal with the parade?
Alfred Wu of the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy tells TIME that the parade and Xi’s speech are the Chinese President’s opportunity to boost domestic confidence in China’s future, given its economic slowdown.
But internationally, Wu says, the “main message” China wants to deliver is that “the U.S.-dominant world order is in bad shape because of Donald Trump’s leadership,” and that Beijing is offering itself as an alternative model of global leadership that puts a focus on stability, national security, and economic development.
The parade comes off the heels of the 25th SCO summit, which Thornton tells TIME “displayed the coalescing of major non-Western powers around grievances aimed at Western and U.S. ‘hegemony,’ ‘bullying,’ and protectionism.”
Xi said in his keynote speech at the summit that “the world has found itself in a new period of turbulence and transformation,” one that is plagued by “Cold War mentality, hegemonism and protectionism,” implicitly referring to the U.S.’s volatile trade, immigration, and foreign policies.
The Chinese Premier called on the SCO to “oppose unilateralism” and strengthen multilateral institutions like the United Nations, from which Thornton says the U.S. under Trump has shown itself to be “retreating.”
“As Trump dismantles many of the pillars of the post-war order and conflicts rage on the borders of Europe, China is eager to depict itself as the defender of a more equitable, inclusive vision of the liberal international order,” Figueroa says. China’s purported vision is of a global system that is shaped by post-war multilateral institutions but where there is “equality among all countries regardless of size,” the country’s foreign ministry has said.
Beijing has in recent years publicly supported multipolarity in international relations, including at the most recent SCO summit, and it has “argued that the United States is the one that attempts to impose unfair policies through the irresponsible use of force,” Figueroa says.
Trump seemed initially to dismiss any threat from the anti-Western alignment at the parade. “I have a very good relationship with President Xi, as you know,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday evening. “But China needs us much more than we need them.”
But in a tirade posted on Truth Social after the parade began, Trump questioned China’s narrative of its WWII victory, which has in recent years become more nationalistic and sought to diminish the role of U.S. aid.
“The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly invader,” Trump wrote. “Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory.”
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