A THOUSAND WORDS

A picture may be worth a thousand words — but without context the image of Xi, Putin and Kim at Beijing’s military parade commemorating the Second World War victory sends a chill through many people in the West. To them it radiates the camaraderie of three authoritarian strongmen bent on rewriting the rules of global power: smiles that read as contempt, handshakes like pacts of defiance, and gazes fixed on a world they believe must be reshaped.

So, let’s write the thousand words

FORGOTTEN HISTORY

As a child, I learned that the US and UK liberated Europe and won the Second World War. Nazi Germany was defeated; Imperial Japan surrendered after the atomic bomb. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas likely grew up with the same version. In September she said she was surprised to hear that China and Russia presented themselves as victors of that war and added that people accept such stories because they read less and remember less of the past. Her beliefs reflect a common Eurocentric view of the war, which downplays the Soviet and Chinese contributions to defeating the Axis powers.

China’s eight years of resistance against Japan from 1937, which cost some twenty million lives, barely registers in European history books. The twenty-five million Soviets who died fighting are realities we Europeans prefer to forget since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Korea, then under Japanese colonial rule, was a base for guerrilla fighters such as Kim Il-sung, whose anti-Japanese struggle became part of Beijing and Pyongyang’s shared wartime legacy. This explains why Putin and Kim Jong Un were invited to take centre stage at the commemoration of China’s victory over Japan in what China calls the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In the West, their invitation is interpreted as a provocative geopolitical signal.

This historical fact is also why China (first represented by the Republic of China and, since 1971, by the People’s Republic) and the Soviet Union (whose seat passed to Russia in 1991) were given permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council alongside the other victorious powers: the United States, the United Kingdom and France. While the Western Allies were indispensable, ignoring China’s sacrifices from 1937 and the Soviet Union’s from 1941 is the same revisionism we accuse them of. It is precisely this long-standing historical injustice that has driven China to make sure the world now listens when it tells its story. Xi Jinping will no longer keep silent: Deng Xiaoping’s era of “hide your strength, bide your time” is now over. Where the West reads aggression, China signals it will not be silenced anymore.

All this context matters, because the more important question is: who was the audience Beijing wanted to send a message to?

Who Xi Was Really Talking To

The parade was above all a domestic spectacle — reminding 1.4 billion Chinese of past sacrifice, restored status and future readiness. By showcasing a force able to deter any attack, it aimed to reassure citizens that China will not again be threatened. A narrative of unity: from now on Chinese society can live in peace — as NATO promised collective defence since 1949. It is intended as a message of peace, yet in the West it is read as a preparation for war.

The commemoration marked the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. It carried a clear warning to Japan to face its past and resist remilitarisation — all the more relevant at a time when Japan has again started expanding its defence budget and capabilities, and when NATO is deepening its ties with Tokyo. It was a warning of restraint aimed at a former aggressor, not intended as a threat from a future one.

Contrary to Donald Trump’s portrayal of the Xi–Putin–Kim encounter as a joint conspiracy against the United States, Xi’s show of force was primarily aimed at those in the front row: Putin and Kim. It signalled China’s seniority as the region’s dominant power. Long wary of Moscow and viewing North Korea as a source of instability in the region rather than an ally, China used the parade of missiles, hypersonic systems, bombers, drones, laser weapons and naval power as a pointed reminder of who sets the military hierarchy in the East. It was a message that Xi can keep Putin and Kim in check in ways the West cannot.

Some 80 % of the world lives outside the West. For the Global South — especially BRICS — the event signalled not just a shared anti-colonial struggle but a common aspiration for global, not exclusively Western, rules, security and progress — an agenda China now drives through initiatives such as the BRI, the GDI and the SCO. Trump’s confrontational diplomacy and trade war has pushed many southern nations, from India to Brazil, further into Beijing’s orbit. In this narrative China casts itself as a beacon of stability and fairness — the opposite of what it depicts as Washington’s bullying big-power behaviour.

Xi also sent a message to Taiwan. Beijing has always proclaimed itself the defender of national unity, but under Xi that principle is now backed by a visible demonstration of capability — a show of strength meant to make conflict unnecessary rather than inevitable. Yet China has explicitly stated it does not promise to renounce the use of force if needed. But as Sun Tzu wrote, ‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill’ — Beijing’s message was that its power is now overly sufficient to deter independence plans without ever having to fire a shot.

Finally, the sight of hundreds of soldiers marching in flawless formation across Tiananmen Square stood in stark contrast to the chaotic Fourth of July parade in Washington — a spectacle that underscored Xi’s message of disciplined order in China and, by comparison, cast a shadow of embarrassment over America’s self-image. While the military parade and Xi’s invitees were widely seen in the West as a show of China’s military power and alignment of authoritarian regimes to build an alternative world order to Western values and structures, it took Trump less than three weeks at the UN to declare the organisation “non-functional” — effectively reinforcing Beijing’s narrative rather than weakening it. President Trump quickly grabbed the spotlight back, and Xi had to weather a few weeks of negative coverage in Western media — but the parade left a lasting impression where it matters most for China: at home, in Japan, in Russia, in North Korea, in Taiwan and across more than a hundred nations of the Global South.

This is 1 000 words exactly.

The parade was more than a show of arms; it was a reminder of sacrifice, hierarchy and deterrence — China’s way of signalling that it can shape its future without firing a shot. That was the main message of the 3rd of September — one largely lost in the West’s focus on the optics of authoritarianism.