Mick Ryan
In his speech to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that “we should contribute to safeguarding world peace and stability. . . . We should set an example in championing the common values of humanity.” Two days later, Xi had played host to a crowd of foreign leaders at a military parade in Beijing, which, according to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was to commemorate “the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”
The reality is that the parade had three more vital objectives for Xi. The first was to reshape narratives about the role of Russia and China in winning World War II, and to downplay to very significant role played by allied fighting forces and industry. The second was to act as a mega–arms bazaar, demonstrating China’s latest advanced weaponry to potential buyers, particularly those who no longer wish to rely on Russian equipment or want cut-price versions of the latest generation U.S. weapons. Finally, and most importantly, the parade sought to project China’s strength and its inevitable and unstoppable rise through a demonstration of large-scale and high-technology military power.
The parade, along with the recent three-way handshake between the leaders of China, India, and Russia, was a rebuke with Chinese characteristics to current U.S. economic and security policy objectives in the Indo-Pacific, and potentially heralds a very different political, economic, and security environment for all of us who live and work in this dynamic region of the world.
This commentary aims to assess the implications for Australian politics and national security affairs in the wake of the events of the past 48 hours in China. But first, what was unveiled during the parade, and what might it mean for military affairs in the Pacific theatre?
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