Xi plays up the inevitability of China’s rapid global rise

A key part of Xi Jinping’s strategy for China’s emergence as a dominant force in military and economic global affairs has been to project an aura of inevitability to disarm and dissuade detractors. Like a long list of authoritarian dictators before him, Mr Xi has a history of using military parades to showcase state power to great effect. Wednesday’s parade in Tiananmen Square – the scene of the Chinese Communist Party’s bloody repression in 1989 of students seeking a more open society – marks another significant historical point.

A showcase of advances in military hardware was matched by a display of diplomatic support that allowed Mr Xi to bolster his claim that China’s ambitions to overturn the global dominance of Western liberalism are in the ascendancy and inevitable.

The massive military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war against Japan was calculated to show that China no longer just aspires to being a global superpower, but believes it has achieved that goal.

There may be doubt, as Peter Jennings wrote on Wednesday, whether China’s display of military might really is as potent as it appeared to be. But what is clear is that at a time of deepening divisions in the Western alliance, caused in no small measure by Donald Trump’s “bull in a china shop” approach to tariffs and America’s allies, Mr Xi has seized the opportunity to change the narrative about China as a superpower.

There are many lessons to be taken from the parade to celebrate an exaggerated and false reading of Beijing’s contribution to the defeat of Japan in World War II, but China’s inevitable triumph against the West is not among them. US defence spending and capability still outstrips that of China by a wide margin. Taiwan is not bowing to Beijing’s message of inevitability and has signalled it will boost its defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2030.

For many Australians, the enduring image may be of Victoria’s “useful idiot”, former premier Daniel Andrews, shaking hands with Mr Xi and then being in a VIP team photo that included the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Political has-been though he may be, in doing so, Mr Andrews helped Mr Xi achieve his objective of using a massive military parade to demonstrate to the world that China no longer just aspires to being a global superpower, but believes it has arrived.

Behind a rhetoric of global peace, Mr Xi has served notice on the Western alliance that Beijing is armed and ready to take on not just Taiwan, but the world. It would be wishful thinking to dismiss the array of military hardware that was on display as mere window dressing. As The Times reported, the US has been paying particular attention to China’s rapid advances in the building of hypersonic missiles, which military experts now believe to be the finest in the world.

The parade included not just hypersonic missiles, but stealth fighters and drones and other systems that could be categorised as “anti-access” systems intended to deny the US navy or air force use of the waters around Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

While he did not attend the military parade, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence at the Chinese-led Shanghai Co-operation Organisation’s summit in Tianjin that preceded the parade showed the extent to which India has shifted from being mostly pro-Western and part of the Quad alliance to embracing a closer relationship with China, a country with which it was fighting a border war only a few months ago.

Putin’s presence at Mr Xi’s side dispels European hopes that, more than three years into the war in Ukraine, the “no limits” alliance between Moscow and Beijing may be fraying. No wonder the Russian despot appears so confident in rejecting Mr Trump’s frequent threats and (unfulfilled) deadlines over a ceasefire and an end to the fighting.

As both the SCO and the military parade showed, and Putin made a point of saying, the alliance between Moscow and Beijing has seldom seemed stronger, and with Mr Xi backing him there is little likelihood of the Russian tyrant bowing to Mr Trump’s demands.

Likewise, Iranian President Pezeshkian, sitting close to Mr Andrews in the team photo in Tiananmen Square, can clearly count on solid Chinese and Russian support if his country comes under renewed attack by Israel and the US.

Without overstating the meaning of the Chinese military power that was on display, it is important for Australia and other countries in the region, including Japan, to be wide-eyed to the strategic implications of Beijing’s show of strength and what it implies in resisting Beijing’s unlawful expansionist actions and threats to the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

As Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s appearance in the front row of the team photo standing alongside Putin and Mr Xi showed, Australia’s neighbours in the region are easily persuaded by power. Last week Mr Prabowo cancelled plans to go to Beijing because of the violence occurring across Indonesia. But that didn’t last long. As Cameron Stewarts sums up: “Xi’s message with this parade was unmistakeable – China is coming and it’s time to pay attention.”