A souvenir shop with cutouts of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, in Moscow. With the leaders of Russia and India visiting, China’s President will show how he can use statecraft, military might and history to push for global influence. Photo / Nanna Heitmann, The New York Times
President Xi Jinping could hardly have scripted a more favourable moment.
The leaders of India and Russia are joining him at a security summit in China — one leader pushed away by United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the other brought out of isolation by his embrace.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, US tariffs on Indian goods have raised doubts about leaning too heavily on Washington.
For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, his red-carpet treatment in Alaska by Trump blunted Western efforts to punish him for the invasion of Ukraine.
At the centre is Xi, turning America’s alienation of India into an opportunity, and finding validation for his own long alignment with Putin.
The summit of more than 20 leaders, mostly from Central Asia, followed by a military parade in Beijing showcasing China’s newest missiles and warplanes, is not just pageantry.
It shows how Xi is trying to turn history, diplomacy and military might into tools for reshaping a global order that has been dominated by the United States.
“The success of Xi’s foreign policy strategy is reflected in the parade of leaders travelling to China,” said Jonathan Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who previously worked at the CIA analysing Chinese politics.
“Indeed, Xi today probably feels more besieged by visiting heads of state than encircled by the US and its allies and partners.”
Xi, Putin and Modi will be attending the summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a Eurasian security group led by China and Russia, which began yesterday in the eastern city of Tianjin and continues today.
On Wednesday, Xi will preside over a military parade in Beijing commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II — portraying the conflict as a triumph led by the Communist Party. Many historians, however, believe it was the Chinese Nationalists who did most of the fighting.
In speeches, Xi has sought to recast World War II as a struggle in which China and the Soviet Union were the decisive theatres of battle.
That argument, which Putin has echoed, tries to shift claims of victory away from the West and towards China and Russia, not least because of the tens of millions of people in those countries who died.
Chinese officials have also asserted that the Western allies have ignored agreements negotiated during and after the war that would have buttressed China’s territorial claim to Taiwan.
That backdrop explains the importance of military parades to Beijing and Moscow.
“Beyond martial splendour and visual reminders of these nations’ contributions to the war effort, the parades are part of an ongoing ‘memory war,’” scholars at the Brookings Institution wrote recently.
“China and Russia are offering a preferred alternative history to the Western narrative of the Allied victory.”
Until recently, Beijing’s closeness to Moscow had drawn pressure from Washington. That tension appears to have eased in part because of a warming of ties between the US and Russia.
Trump lavished praise on Putin in Alaska this month and later echoed the Kremlin’s position that Ukraine needed to cede land to bring an end to the war.
Xi now appears vindicated for standing by Putin, and analysts predicted the leaders would use the summit in Tianjin to promote a vision of a world less dominated by the US.
Xi can also thank the Trump Administration for accelerating an easing of tensions between China and India, its biggest Asian strategic competitor.
New Delhi has been frustrated by the doubling of US tariffs on Indian goods to a whopping 50%, leading to calls for a rebalancing towards China.
Modi, who had previously drawn closer to the US during the Biden Administration to counter Beijing, is visiting China for the first time in seven years. He will not attend the military parade, though, unlike Putin and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un.
The convergence of Putin and Modi in China, as well as leaders from dozens of other emerging economies, including Turkey, Egypt, Malaysia, and Pakistan, contrasts with the growing discord within the US alliance with European and Asian countries.
Some of those cracks were on display this month when European leaders, shut out of peace talks, felt the need to rush to Washington to persuade Trump not to cave to Russian demands over peace terms in Ukraine.
Trump also ruffled feathers with an ally again this past week when he heaped praise on Kim during a meeting in the Oval Office with President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea.
Many US allies in Europe and Asia view China as a formidable threat to fair trade, democracy and regional stability.
The last of those concerns will be underscored by the military parade that is expected to feature new anti-ship missiles that could be deployed in a war over Taiwan.
Yet analysts say those concerns risk being overshadowed by Trump’s disruption of decades of American foreign policy.
“Despite their apprehensions over China’s conduct, some of those countries increasingly regard the US as a greater, if not the principal, destabilising force in the international order,” said Ali Wyne, an expert on US-China relations at the International Crisis Group.
China has tried to use Washington’s disorder to persuade countries like India to reassess their relationship with the US.
At the same time, Beijing fears Washington will pressure other countries to restrict trade with China at a time when the Chinese economy has been badly weakened by a property slump and price wars.
“Give the bully an inch, he will take a mile,” Xu Feihong, the Chinese Ambassador to India, wrote on X about US tariffs.
At a recent seminar in New Delhi, Xu said India and China had a responsibility to take a bigger role in global leadership to push back against US “hegemony and power politics”.
He called the neighbours the “double engines” of economic growth in Asia, using a phrase that Modi often uses in domestic politics.
Russia, a country firmly in Beijing’s camp, needs less persuasion.
Moscow has been using groups like the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation to deepen ties with China, India, and other countries that have become increasingly important to its sanctions-hit economy since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2022.
When Putin, Xi and Modi meet in Tianjin, Russian oil is certain to come up.
The Trump Administration’s tariffs on India for buying Russian crude has allowed China to become an even larger buyer than it was before without facing similar consequences as India, analysts’ reports show.
More than anything, the summit and parade will allow Putin and Xi to reaffirm their close relationship, a partnership that the West has tried and largely failed to break.
China’s relations with Russia will most likely continue to be “excellent”, said Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army of China now at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Attempts by the West to drive a wedge, he added, were nothing but “wishful thinking”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: David Pierson, Mujib Mashal and Nataliya Vasilyeva
Photograph by: Nanna Heitmann
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