China is not afraid – this is Xi’s message to the world

Have been soft and hard power days

China’s message to the West

_{by Simone McCarthyCNN}

In the last three days, Xi Jinping has been the host in one of China’s busiest port cities, receiving leaders from all over Asia and the Middle East to a carefully choreographed summit, designed to show his view of a new world order.

Now the Chinese leader is ready to display a very different image, with an ostensive demonstration of military power.

This Wednesday, Xi will occupy the main artery of Beijing-the Avenida of Eternal Peace-for a large military parade that will display the country’s end hypersonic weapons, nuclear missiles and submarine drones, alongside thousands of soldiers marching in Goose Pass.

Xi’s message with his soft power exercise, which lasts for several days, is clear: China is a force that wants to redefine global rules – and is not afraid to challenge those of the West.

Xi’s list of guests for the meeting reinforces this message: a group of more than two dozen China’s friendly friendly leaders, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which also includes Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

This is also the first time the leaders of a nations quartet who, according to Washington strategists, are converging to form an anti -American “agitation axis, will be together in a single event.

For Western leaders who desperately try to increase Putin’s pressure to finish the war in Ukraine, this image will seem stark.

Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia are seen as an anti -American axis emerging by some Western observers, precisely because Tehran and Pyongyang provided weapons to Moscow and – in the case of Pyongyang – troops, while China helped its war -devastated economy and industry.

By giving them places by their side on a symbolic day to China, Xi is showing himself as the only global heavyweight with real chances of pressuring Putin to end the war-and that he will not use this influence to follow the rules of the West.

For Xi, the oldest and most powerful leader of China in decades, symbolism – and the moment when it occurs – will have a purpose.

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US is shaking its alliances and causing economic difficulties to countries around the world, including friends and allies, with their global trade war. Xi sees an opportune moment to do what his most dramatic demonstration may be so far from his challenge to a world based on western rules and sensitivities.

The image is already bearing fruit to the Chinese leader.

The glimpses of leaders’ activities in recent days have shown a strong camaraderie among those present, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Putin to greet Xi excitedly, Modi to embrace Putin and leaders to extend his hand to greet the Russian leader as he walked side by side with Xi.

These moments are undoubtedly as powerful as the statements made, signaling a convergence of leaders without the West.

“What Xi is trying to convey is certainty about China’s role in international affairs. This is clearly signaling to people throughout the region that China has come as a great power and goes nowhere,” said Jonathan Czin, head of Michael H. Armacost in Brookings Foreign Policy Studies.

“If you are an ally or US partner, you are in a capital somewhere in the region and have real questions about whether or not you can trust the United States as a partner, this is an uncomfortable division to see,” he added.

“The moment is now”

Throughout his pomp and diplomacy in recent days, Xi has seemed quite aware of the opportunity that the change in American foreign policy has provided him.

In his speeches and meetings with leaders gathered for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Sunday and Monday-a group of leaders of places as distant as the damn and Mongolia-XI emphasized the message that the world is in a state of flow and chaos, and that China is the responsible and stable power to guide it towards the future.

“(We must) oppose the Cold War mindset, block confrontation and intimidation practices,” Xi said as he spoke to a room full of leaders gathered on Monday, using a language that has long been China’s code to describe what he considers to be US behavior. Xi also promised hundreds of millions of subsidies to SCO Member States this year-and launched an initiative to reform the international system.

The message is not new, but Beijing bets that it will have a different impact after the main global superpower has cut its vast network of foreign aid, tax devastating tariffs to developing countries and raised doubts among their allies and partners about whether it really supports them.

And Xi has seen the benefits of American change.

Just look at India, whose prime minister Narendra Modi was seen smiling and laughing while talking to Xi alongside Putin on Monday-a significant demonstration of cordiality on the part of a long-cut leader as Asian counterweight to China.

Still last month, India was hit by up to 50% tariffs on their exports to the US, half of them as a penalty for their Russian oil purchases, which the US consider as aid to Putin’s war financing.

And even to countries such as those in Southeast Asia, which have long been suspicious of China’s growing military power and assertiveness regarding their territorial claims in the southern China Sea and Taiwan, change in global dynamics can have an effect, the observers say.

If there is a moment to court leaders who have long been trying to balance between the US and China, Chong said, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, “this moment is now.”

“A credible alternative”

But as much as Xi is using his highly choreographed schedule this week to present his lead to a large group of nations, he is also using it to counter western criticisms of his longtime ties with partners such as North Korea, Russia and Iran – all seen as rebel actors.

Following the Putin War in Ukraine, Voices in Washington warned of emerging coordination between what has been alternately nicknamed the “agitation axis” or “axis of increasing malignant partnerships” – although experts say that there are few coordination signs between the four parts so far.

At least so far.

“(The China Military Parade) will be the first time the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea and will all be present in the same place,” said Brian Hart, member of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “There have been few or no quadrilateral commitment between the four countries, so this is a distinct moment.”

China has been careful not to be seen as explicitly supporting the aggression of these countries – for example, it is widely recognized that it has sent large amounts of double use, but not lethal weapons to Russia, which is at war.

But by gathering these actors, Xi wants to signal that he can define the rules on who “should be considered acceptable by the international community, regardless of what the democratic West or the US may think,” according to Steve Tsang, director of Soas China Institute at the University of London.

Even so, the situation may seem less serious with Trump in the White House. Last month, the US President received Putin for a seemingly friendly summit, where he said that “he always had a fantastic relationship” with the belligerent leader and personally greeted him on the airport track.

The US president also took advantage of a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung last month to discuss a new meeting with Kim. Both would be peace efforts – but Trump is known for praising these autocrats.

But Xi’s message is part of a broader view of the Chinese leader, who may not see no more appropriate time to signal his alignments than the next military parade, which celebrates the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II and the role of China in the fight against imperial power that fought a brutal and prolonged invasion of their lands.

Like Putin, Xi sought to get inspired by this story to reformulate a narrative that positions China and Russia, which fought in World War II as a Soviet Union, as guardians of a “postwar” international order, distinct from the US-which they currently consider dominant.

In the eyes of Xi and Putin, one of the leading causes of war in Ukraine today – or even North Korea’s attempt to develop nuclear weapons – it is not the aggressions of these countries, but the US and its allies ignore their “legitimate concerns about security.”

And, more broadly, their rhetoric blames the US and the alliances and alliances of values ​​they formed after World War II for global crises, confrontations and disparities in today’s world.

This week, Xi is “defending without remorse a post-World War order that he sees as being under attack of the western powers determined to block the rise of China,” said Tong Zhao, a senior researcher at Carnegie Endowment of International Peace in the US.

And while analyzing the global panorama and calls leaders closely and far to his side, Zhao added: “XI is moving with a campaign to delegitimize US leadership, weaken Western solidarity and raise China as a credible alternative.”