Beijing
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For the past three days, Xi Jinping will host one of China’s busiest port cities, welcoming leaders in Asia and the Middle East, and welcome carefully choreographed summits designed to showcase the vision of the New World Order.
Currently, Chinese leaders are set to exhibit very different images in a show of military power.
On Wednesday, he will direct Beijing’s main arteries: the path of eternal peace. The major military parade will showcase the country’s cutting-edge polar weapons, nuclear-capable missiles and undersea drones, alongside thousands of goose stepping soldiers.
The message about Xi’s soft and hard force on his days of exercise is clear. China is the power to reset global rules and is not afraid to challenge Western rules.
To hit that message is the guest list of The Gathering’s Xi, a cohort of more than two dozen Chinese-friendly world leaders, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
It can also be combined in one event for the first time that Washington strategists’ quartet leaders are converging to form an anti-American “turbulent axis.”
Those optics look harsh as Western leaders are trying to put pressure on Putin to end his war in Ukraine.
Iran, North Korea, China and Russia are considered new anti-American axes by some observers in the West as Tehran and Pyongyang fed Moscow’s weapons.
As Xi gives him a seat by his side on China’s iconic day, he shows himself as a global heavyweight who can withstand a real chance to put pressure on Putin to end the war.
For Xi, China’s longest, most powerful leader in decades, symbolism and its timing are intentional.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has shaken up its alliances, causing economic distress in the world’s trade wars for countries around the world, including friends and allies. Xi sees convenient moments to make what may be his most dramatic show about his challenge to a world based on Western rules and sensibilities.
The optics are already rewarded for Chinese leaders.
A glimpse into the recent leadership activities has shown a strong sense of camaraderie among the gathered people, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Putin greeted Xi with animation, Modi accepting Putin, and the leaders reaching for the Russian leader and walking shoulder to shoulder with XI.
These moments are undoubtedly strong results as the statement was made, indicating the convergence of the leaders without the West.
“What XI is trying to convey is certainty about China’s role in international affairs, which clearly informs people across the region that China has arrived as a major power and will not go anywhere,” said Jonathan Chin, chairman of Brookings’ Foreign Policy Studies.
“If you’re an ally or partner in the US, sitting in the capital somewhere in the region and really doubting whether you can rely on the US as a partner, then it’s an unpleasant split screen to watch,” he added.
Through his recent pageant and diplomacy, Xi seemed to be familiar with what the American foreign policy shaking had given him.
In his speech and meeting with leaders, he gathered for the Shanghai Cooperation Agency (SCO) on Sunday and Monday – a cohort of leaders as far away as the Maldives to Mongolia – XI played the message that the world is in a state of flux and chaos, and that China is a responsible and stable force that will lead it into the future.
“(We must) oppose blocking Cold War thinking, conflict and bullying practices,” XI spoke to the leader’s room gathered on Monday, explaining what it considers American behavior using a long-standing Chinese code, language. He also pledged grants to SCO countries this year to hundreds of millions of people and began pushing for reforming the international system.
The message isn’t new, but Beijing is betting on different lands after major world superpowers cut off huge networks of foreign aid, slapping unstable tariffs on developing countries, and questioning whether they actually have a back among allies and partners.
As Chinese leaders put their speech late Monday, “House rules in some countries should not be imposed on other countries.”
And Xi has already seen the benefits from the American shift.
We can’t find any more than India where Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to XI next to Putin on Monday and saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi laughing and laughing.
Last month, India was slapped at a 50% tariff on exports to the US. Half of that will be paid as a fine for Russian oil purchases, which the US believes is helping fund Putin’s war.
And, like countries that have long been carefully watching China’s military power and assertion, changing global dynamics can have an effect when it comes to territorial claims in the South China Sea and Taiwan, observers say.
Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, said if there is time to plead with leaders who have been trying to hedge between the US and China for a long time, “it’s time.”
But this week, XI uses his highly choreographed itinerary to market his leadership to a broad national cohort, which he uses to push back Western criticism with partners such as North Korea, Russia and Iran.
In the wake of Putin’s war in Ukraine, the Washington voice has warned of new adjustments between what instead refers to as the “turbulent axis” or the “growth axis of malignant partnership,” but experts say so far there are few indications of four-way coordination.
At least up until now.
“This is the first time that (China’s military parade) has China, Russia, North Korea and Iran leaders all exist in the same place,” said Brian Hart, a fellow at the China Electric Power Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “This is a distinctive moment, as there was little or no quadrilateral involvement between the four countries.”
China has been careful not to be seen as explicitly supporting attacks in these countries. For example, it is widely seen that they sent large quantities of double-use items but not sending deadly weapons to Russia as they waged war.
But when Xi brings together these players, he hopes to show that he can show that he should be seen as being considered acceptable to the international community, regardless of what the West of democracy or the US is thinking.
Still, the optics may not look very strict with White House Trump. Last month he hosted Putin, a clearly friendly summit where he personally welcomed him at a tarmac, saying he had “always had a great relationship” with the fighting leader.
The US president also used a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jaemuun last month to discuss his meeting with Kim again. Both are peace efforts, but Trump is well known for praise these dictators.
However, Xi’s message is part of a more drastic vision for Chinese leaders who don’t think the moments to show his cooperation more than the upcoming military parade, commemorating the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, and China’s role in fighting the power of its land for many years and cruel invasions.
Like Putin, XI was drawn from its history and attempted to reconstruct the narrative that positioned China and Russia, which fought as the Soviet Union in World War II.
In the eyes of XI and Putin, the key causes of wars in today’s Ukraine, or even North Korea’s bids for the development of nuclear weapons, are not attacks of those countries, but the US and its allies ignore “legitimate security concerns.”
More broadly, their rhetoric denounces the United States and alliances and valuable systems that have formed in the wake of World War II for the global crisis, conflict and disparity in the world today.
This week, XI “is negatively defending post-World War II orders that it sees as under attack by Western countries that have decided to stop the rise of China,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Fund for International Peace.
And as he explores the global landscape and summons his leaders far from his side, Zhao added, “Xi is pushing for a campaign to outlaw US leadership, weaken Western solidarity and promote China as a reliable alternative.”
