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Xi Jinping will cap a week of frenetic diplomacy on Wednesday by presiding over one of China’s biggest military parades and staging a show of solidarity with fellow strongmen Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
The procession of China’s newest tanks, drones and missiles past Tiananmen Square will mark the 80th anniversary of the second world war victory over Japan and will be the first time the Chinese, Russian and North Korean leaders have gathered together in the same place.
The spectacle of the trio and more than 20 other national leaders reviewing the march by the world’s largest military in terms of personnel numbers is designed to impress China’s 1.4bn people, while warning off potential adversaries, including the US, Europe and Japan.
“It’s a great assertion of China’s prowess and advancement and strength so it’s great for domestic propaganda,” said Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London, adding that the parade would also say to the outside world: “Don’t mess with us . . . we’ve got all this kit [and] we’re serious.”
The parade on Wednesday morning, at which Xi is expected to give a speech, follows his calls at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation regional security meeting in Tianjin, south-east of Beijing, this week for an alternative global order to be created in order to replace the postwar US-led system.
At that meeting, Xi and Putin laughed and joked with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an implicit rebuke to US President Donald Trump, who has imposed tariffs totalling 50 per cent on most imports from India.
The parade, to mark China’s anniversary of victory over Japan on September 3, is the second staged by Xi during his decade in power. It will feature the “debut of hypersonic, anti-missile defence and strategic missiles”, the People’s Liberation Army has said.
It will also show off new tanks, autonomous vehicles for ground, naval and air use and electronic warfare equipment.
However, Kerry of King’s College said that, although the parade would alarm western nations, China’s military and much of its equipment had not been tested in combat.
“It’s all very performative,” Kerry said. “They can definitely march, they can put on a great parade, but they’ve not fought for many decades. It’s a completely untested military.”
Kim’s presence will elevate concerns among US allies about a new authoritarian axis emerging, especially given that North Koreans are fighting alongside Russians against Ukraine.
Kim will be meeting Xi for the first time since 2019. The North Korean dictator’s appearance also marks the first time he has attended a multilateral gathering of leaders since he assumed power in 2011.
Kim left Pyongyang for Beijing on his private train on Tuesday morning, with North Korean state media releasing photos of him enjoying a pre-departure cigarette on the platform with senior officials.
South Korea’s state-owned news agency Yonhap quoted lawmakers as saying they had been told by Seoul’s National Intelligence Service that Kim would “demonstrate trilateral solidarity by standing side by side” with Xi and Putin.
The NIS briefed the legislators that Kim’s visit was aimed at “expanding his room to manoeuvre by restoring North Korea-China relations, and securing China’s economic assistance to buoy his regime”, Yonhap reported.
Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute think-tank in Seoul, said Kim would also want to “play China and Russia off against one another”.
Just before Kim’s departure for Beijing, North Korean state media showed him inspecting his country’s latest solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile.
“He is sending a message not only to adversaries like the US but also to partners like China and Russia that he is not someone who can be pushed around,” Ward said.
