China really let it rip at its latest parade: Xi Jinping strutted through Tiananmen, not alone – with Putin and Kim Jong Un at his side. This was anything but a random package of staged camaraderie. Behind the show is a pretty clear message: the West is dispensable – now China’s self-confidence is paying off.
Xi did not miss the opportunity to sprinkle in a few virtue-signaling slogans: peace instead of war, dialog instead of zero-sum games – and of course the tried and tested “win-win partnerships”. Sounds cozy, but it’s part of a larger strategic concept: brand new missiles, drones and other technology prototypes were also on display at the parade.
USA left out
In Washington, meanwhile, Trump is making long faces: immediately after Xi’s speech, he mocked the fact that the USA was not even mentioned in the jubilant speech – even though it had helped a great deal in the Second World War. His post on Truth Social (“Please give Xi my best regards to Putin and Kim while you conspire against the US”) was more irony than diplomacy. China is using the parade as a stage for a self-confident foreign policy. And Trump? Seemed more like a spectator mumbling something into his fist from the sidelines.
From rice paddy to superpower
50 or 60 years ago, China was still an economically developing country – in cities like Shenzhen, cows literally grew in the fields. Today, a mega-metropolis with skyscrapers, high-tech companies and millions of people rises into the sky.
China has also reinvented itself militarily: A cumbersome people’s army has become one of the largest high-tech armed forces in the world – with drones, hypersonic missiles and an air fleet that easily outstrips entire countries.
This rise is not limited to China itself: Beijing has long been setting the rules of the game in Asia, whether economically or geopolitically. And Europe? No matter how often it talks about “strategic independence” – without Chinese factories, solar panels, batteries and rare earths, little would work here.
China is no longer the eternal laggard, but the power that hardly anyone can ignore today – whether on the streets of Shenzhen or in the boardrooms of Brussels.