China’s Xi, Flanked by Putin and Kim, Shows off ‘New Generation’ Weapons

The Washington Post

17:01 JST, September 4, 2025

BEIJING – Chinese leader Xi Jinping, flanked by the heads of Russia and North Korea, delivered a muscular show of force Wednesday, showing off new-generation weapons and sending a message that China is rising to challenge the global leadership of the United States.

Xi welcomed the leaders of 26 countries, including a smiling Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, into the stands overlooking Tiananmen Square in central Beijing for the country’s largest-ever military parade, marking 80 years since victory in World War II.

“The Chinese nation is a great and self-reliant nation that is never intimidated by bullies,” Xi told the crowds, emphasizing the contributions of China, Russia and other non-Western countries to winning what Beijing calls the “War Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”

In recent weeks, Beijing has been recasting history to downplay the United States’ role in ending World War II while playing up the contribution of China and the Soviet Union.

President Donald Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform as the parade got underway, urged Xi to “mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader.”

Suggesting he was put out by the display of chumminess and firepower, Trump continued: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

The parade began with Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, riding in a Chinese-made “Hongqi” (literally “Red Flag”) limousine to inspect the troops of the People’s Liberation Army as 26 helicopters flew in the formation of the number “80” overhead.

Then began a 70-minute display of marching troops and “new generation” weapons that showcased AI-enhanced, anti-drone tanks; anti-ship hypersonic missiles; and huge underwater drones.

The DF-61 truck-launched intercontinental ballistic missile – one of the most advanced models in development – got a round of applause from the roughly 50,000 spectators, while the submarine-launched JL-3 missile displayed at the parade is believed to be capable of reaching North America.

The event was painstakingly choreographed with multiple rehearsals and blanket security measures to make sure nothing interrupted the lockstep marching of 10,000-plus troops or the release of 80,000 doves and 80,000 multicolored balloons to mark the 80th anniversary. Some 230,000 Chinese flags were hung around the capital.

People living near Tiananmen Square were even banned from cooking on Wednesday morning – on account that any smoke could haze up the sky – and instead were given breakfast packs of hard-boiled tea eggs, bread rolls and spicy Sichuan pickles.

Xi sends a message

The attention paid to the impressive show – and the like-minded leaders gathered around Xi – underscored his keen desire for China to be seen as a formidable military adversary for the U.S. and one that is building a coalition of world leaders who can help him challenge Western global leadership.

There was also a message for Trump and anyone around him contemplating a more confrontational relationship with China, according to state-aligned academics.

“There are lots of people in the United States who believe that the trade war alone cannot achieve their goals and they want to provoke China militarily,” said Wang Yiwei, vice president of an academy devoted to “Xi Jinping Thought” at Renmin University in Beijing. “China wants to use the parade to make it clear to these people: Military coercion of China is impossible – don’t even try it.”

Beijing spared no effort to ensure that nothing ruined Xi’s parade.

Many Beijing residents were confined to their homes, and cafes, shopping malls and offices overlooking the main parade route were closed on Tuesday. Central schools were shut and employees at downtown offices were told to work from home, in part because so many of the city’s roads were closed.

Reservists guarded bridges and public buses as they remained on the lookout for protesters. Police grounded pet pigeons, kites and sky lanterns. Two hobbyists hoping to catch an early glimpse of the latest fighter jets were detained last week for flying drones near a military base.

“I haven’t dared to drive recently,” said Sean Li, a 38-year-old accountant who lives in central Beijing. “There are armed police, traffic cops, plainclothes officers and police dogs everywhere, not to mention the squads of soldiers.”

State propagandists and academics brushed aside these complaints – as well as those of hand-wringing foreigners fearful of Chinese aggression – as missing the point.

“Western politicians accuse China of showing off its muscles through the parade. I think that is nothing but sour grapes,” said Wang Dong, an international relations professor at Peking University in Beijing.

“Our intentions and the signals we are sending are very clear,” Wang said. “It is not only for the Chinese people to remember history and for the world to recognize China’s great contributions to the anti-fascist war, but also a call to … strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

Online, nationalist commentators applauded the discipline and spectacle of Chinese troops during rehearsal parades – and drew mocking comparisons to Trump’s military parade in June.

Trump’s “sloppy” display of “loosely lined-up soldiers with rifles slung askew” was a demonstration of American decline, Chen Xianyi, a former editor of the PLA Daily newspaper, wrote on the social media app WeChat. China takes parades seriously to show it has “ample strength to safeguard its security red lines,” he wrote.

Signs of underlying concern

Despite the bluster, China’s military may not be as battle-ready as the parade wants to signal.

Since 2023, dozens of top generals and defense industry executives have disappeared or been removed on corruption charges. Experts say the crackdown is a dramatic attempt by Xi to stamp out corruption and take back political control of a military he wants to accelerate its efforts to match U.S. war-fighting capabilities.

According to U.S. intelligence, Xi’s goals include being prepared – by 2027 – to seize Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing considers its “sacred territory.” A successful invasion, should Xi ever order it, would probably hinge on China marshaling sufficient force to either defeat a U.S. intervention or deter American involvement entirely.

Trump has claimed that Xi would not invade while he is in office, even as his administration has continued to help the Taiwanese military prepare to fend off an attack with arms sales and training support.

As China’s relations have soured with the U.S. and Europe, Xi has focused on strengthening alliances with Putin, Kim and other world leaders who share his worldview. Even fewer U.S. allies and partners attended this year’s event compared with 2015, when China first held a WWII victory parade.

China’s decision to “get the socialist bloc back together again” by inviting Putin and Kim is likely to overshadow any messages about fighting a “just war against fascism,” said John Delury, a historian of modern China and co-author of “Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century.”

Instead, the parade has become “an implicit challenge to the United States at a time when Trump is really inviting that challenge,” Delury said. “There’s a multifront effort by China to gather together [world leaders] in different settings with different narratives to show an alternate leadership to the United States,” and right now Trump’s policies mean “China is walking through an open door,” he said.

The pageantry also serves Xi’s power at home. With the economy slowing, he has increasingly turned to nationalistic historical narratives to boost his domestic popularity. In this version of history, the Communist Party ended China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign aggressors and is now retaking its rightful place in global affairs.

Talking tough on Taiwan has been a core part of that strategy. The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, which has been ruled separately since the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, fled there in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War.

Xi, with his keen sense of historical purpose, often talks about the need to fulfill the “original mission” of his Communist forebears. He has said that taking control of Taiwan – whether peacefully or by force – is an essential part of China’s “national rejuvenation.”