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Xi Jinping's 80th WWII Anniversary Parace: A Post-Western World on Display. Ricardo Martins : 9th Sept 2025
Xi Jinping’s 80th WWII Anniversary Parade: A Post-Western World on Display
September 09, 2025
Beijing’s 80th Victory Day parade was more than commemoration—it was Xi Jinping’s declaration that a post-Western order has arrived, with China at its centre and the West on the sidelines.
On 3 September 2025, Tiananmen Square was once again turned into a stage of spectacle, remembrance, and power projection. Ostensibly, the ceremony marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a commemoration of Japan’s defeat and China’s sacrifice in a war that left more than 14 million Chinese dead. But beneath the red banners of “victory,” the event revealed a deeper geopolitical message: China has stepped into a post-Western era, where Beijing no longer accepts being a junior player in a system designed and led by others. Any discussion about the future of humanity must be done in equal terms.
A Celebration with Global Guests
The military parade was attended by over thirty heads of state and international organisation leaders. Notably present were Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and Iran’s President, joined by leaders from Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their presence underscored Beijing’s claim to be the voice of the Global South, contrasting with the absence of leaders from the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. However, from Europe, Serbia and Slovakia were present.
For China, this was not merely a domestic celebration of the end of WWII. It was a deliberate retelling of history, asserting the centrality of China’s wartime sacrifices, often overlooked in Western narratives, and positioning the People’s Republic as both a victor of the past and an architect of the future.
Theatre of Power: Military Showcase in Tiananmen
The lesson for the West is clear: China does not seek to destroy the existing order but to supersede it with alternatives that reflect non-Western interests and elevate Beijing’s leadership
The heart of the parade was not the speeches but the weapons. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out its most advanced capabilities, offering a rare public glimpse into its nuclear, conventional arsenal and new technology such as laser, AI and drones.
- Air power: The Jinglei-1 long-range bomber missile was displayed, signalling progress in China’s strategic air power.
- Sea power: The Julang-3 submarine-launched ICBM highlighted Beijing’s ability to ensure a credible second-strike capability.
- Land power: Variants of the Dongfeng series—DF-31, DF-61—were presented as evidence of a rapidly modernising missile corps.
- Crowning Display: The DF-5C, a missile with an estimated 20,000 km range and multiple independently targetable warheads, paraded on colossal launchers, symbolising Beijing’s arrival as a peer nuclear power to Washington and Moscow.
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, China now possesses roughly 600 nuclear warheads, a number projected by the Pentagon to reach 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035. Sam Roggeveen, writing in Foreign Policy, argues that the parade demonstrates China is no longer just catching up. It is innovating in military technology, including AI, shifting the regional balance that for decades favoured the United States and its allies.
Xi Jinping’s Message: A Post-Western World
Xi Jinping’s address was unambiguous. Declaring that “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable,” he framed the moment as a choice for humanity: between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, mutual benefit and zero-sum competition. China, he insisted, “firmly stands on the right side of history.”
This was more than patriotic rhetoric. The speech was a direct signal to Washington and a carefully tailored invitation to the Global South: align with Beijing, which offers stability, shared development, and respect for sovereignty, as opposed to what is portrayed as America’s erratic unilateralism, wars and sanctions.
In pairing commemoration of WWII with cutting-edge military display, Xi effectively linked China’s historical legitimacy with its contemporary capability. The narrative is clear: China has risen from victim to victor, from regional power to global shaper of order.
Reception in the West and Asia-Pacific
Reactions in Western capitals were cool, if not uneasy. In Washington, analysts interpreted the parade as a reminder that trade wars can be endured, but military coercion cannot. The Pentagon underscored the growing risk of a tripolar nuclear world (China, Russia, and the United States) eroding America’s long-standing strategic dominance.
In Europe, responses were ambivalent. While leaders avoided outright confrontation, the parade fed into debates about Europe’s strategic irrelevance. The EU’s reliance on regulation as its main geopolitical tool rings increasingly hollow when its moral authority is undermined by complicity in genocide, such as Gaza. As critics note, Europe’s soft power has “vaporised,” leaving the continent trapped between an unreliable American ally and an assertive China.
In Tokyo and Seoul, the absence of participation was deliberate. Both nations, tied closely to US security structures, viewed the alignment of Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong-un as a stark warning: any future conflict in the region will be multidimensional, stretching from Taiwan to the Korean Peninsula and beyond.
In Canberra, the parade reinforced perceptions of China as both partner and systemic rival, deepening debates over Australia’s reliance on US protection in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific.
Geopolitical Lessons
Several lessons emerge from Beijing’s theatre of power. I would like to point out five:
- China as Constructive Leader: Xi projected himself as a global statesman advocating peace, in contrast to Donald Trump’s chaotic, undiplomatic, transactional style. For the Global South, the optics favour Beijing.
- Multipolar Alliances: The presence of Russia, North Korea, Iran and other 23 heads of state and government showed that China is not isolated but at the centre of a network of states willing to defy Washington or to turn the page of history.
- Strategic Sovereignty: States such as India, Iran, and Russia are signalling that they will not obey American diktats. Europe, by contrast, remains dependent, unable to assert real sovereignty, and unable to understand and to deal with Trump: he does not divide the world in liberal democracies and autocracies, but in strong and weak states and leaders.
- Military Capability with Defensive Framing: While China showcased formidable new arms, Xi framed them as defensive, part of a strategy of deterrence rather than aggression.
- End of Pax Americana: The image of Xi, Putin, and Kim standing together was a deliberate historical echo of Mao, Khrushchev, and Kim Il-sung in 1959. It signalled that the era of US uncontested supremacy in Asia is over. Two days earlier at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the image was Xi, Putin and Modi in candle conversation and displaying full smiles.
Europe’s Dilemma
For Europe, the message is particularly uncomfortable. The EU remains caught in hedging mode between China and the US. Its reliance on regulation as geopolitical leverage does not compensate for declining competitiveness, and without moral capital, Europe cannot exercise effective soft power. Its failure to act on Gaza, while supplying arms and intelligence to Israel, has undermined its credibility as a normative actor.
Europe’s choice is stark: either cling to an increasingly unilateral, erratic United States, or redefine itself in a multipolar world where China is setting the agenda. So far, paralysis prevails.
Conclusion: A Post-Western World in Practice
Xi Jinping’s 80th Anniversary Parade was more than an exercise in military pomp. It was a declaration that a post-Western world has arrived, one where China presents itself as the defender of peace, the champion of sovereignty, and the hub of new alliances.
The lesson for the West is clear: China does not seek to destroy the existing order but to supersede it with alternatives that reflect non-Western interests and elevate Beijing’s leadership. The question is whether Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo recognise this shift or whether they risk becoming spectators in a drama where the script is already being rewritten in Mandarin.
Ricardo Martins, PhD in Sociology, specializing in International Relations and Geopolitics
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NEO: The Rare-Earth Leverage: How China Turns Metal into Geopolitical Power.
Economy
The Rare-Earth Leverage. How China Turns Metal into Geopolitical Power
November 01, 2025
Beijing is building a system where resources are managed like weaponry—precisely, deliberately, without unnecessary fuss. It is control over the mechanism of access. Rare earth elements are turning from a commodity into a currency of trust.
The Metal That Makes Silicon Valley Tremble
China controls over eighty percent of the world’s extraction and processing of rare earth metals. Every chip, every electric motor, every satellite—all of it runs on resources drawn from Chinese soil. The technological West lives on current flowing from Beijing. When China announced new export restrictions, Silicon Valley didn’t feel the “market”—it felt dependency in its purest form. Where people once talked about startups, they now wonder whether there will be enough dysprosium to last until the end of the quarter.
The world suddenly realized that its “green” ideals smell of Asian dust. Behind every wind turbine, every drone, and every electric car lies a Chinese signature. Rare earth elements have become the nervous system of the planet, and Beijing decides the rhythm at which the global economy will beat. For some, this is an industrial fact. For others, it’s a reminder that the era when the West dictated the rules is fading into geological history.
A Political Pressure Point on the Economy
China has translated trade into the language of security. The new export rules have ceased to be a technocratic filter. They are now a tool of strategic selection. Every license now passes not through accounting, but through politics. Official statements from the Ministry of Commerce describe these measures not as prohibitions, but as part of a broader framework of “national security”—a calibrated control that allows legitimate access while signaling who is trusted to receive it. Those who took part in the technological siege of China have suddenly learned the price of their own moralizing. The economy has become a shield, and the market—a field of force alignment.
We are witnessing a metamorphosis of dependency architecture. Beijing is building a system where resources are managed like weaponry—precisely, deliberately, without unnecessary fuss. It is control over the mechanism of access. Rare earth elements are turning from a commodity into a currency of trust. Only those capable of acting without ideological slogans are allowed into this orbit. The rest are learning patience.
Rare earth elements have become the nervous system of the planet, and Beijing decides the rhythm at which the global economy will beat
China is assembling industry and technology into a political structure where a license becomes a litmus test of relations. The economy is losing the illusion of neutrality. It is becoming an instrument of power—the power to regulate the pace of global transformation, the power to decide who will make it into the new era and who will remain in the age of coal and declarations. Translated and archived version of China’s Order No. 61** reveals how far this architecture extends—jurisdiction over any product containing Chinese-origin materials, regardless of where it is processed.
The West in the Mirror of Its Supply Chains
For decades, the West outsourced production to Asia, believing it was progress. Optimization turned into loss of control. Now every Western factory, every military plant, every climate project looks to China as a socket—without which none of their “sovereignty” can be switched on. The model of globalization, built on the illusion of endless access to resources, has revealed its true anatomy—a thin thread leading back to the Chinese mountains.
The policy of “de-risking” sounds confident but remains a genre of conference panels. There is no infrastructure for real independence. Western corporations continue to crawl within China’s magnetic field, calling it “diversification.” This is what an era looks like when interdependence proves stronger than geopolitical rhetoric.
Beijing watches without emotion. It knows the West can talk about free markets as long as the supply lines are intact. When they aren’t, it remembers sovereignty. Washington’s own rhetoric confirms this reversal: the April 2025 presidential fact sheet frames critical minerals as a matter of national security, citing China’s export actions as justification for invoking Section 232. The empire now imitates the discipline it once condemned. Control over rare earth elements has become the silent weapon of the 21st century. China doesn’t sever the chains—it regulates their tension. That is the essence of the new power: the power to control not resources, but the speed of someone else’s panic.
Metal as a Form of Diplomacy
Rare earth elements have become the new grammar of global politics. China writes in this language without translators. Every change in export rules is a diplomatic phrase—one not everyone is able to read. The West insists on calling it “trade restrictions” because it lacks another vocabulary. In reality, this is the political semantics of sovereignty. A resource becomes an argument. Metal becomes a form of speech for a state that no longer needs to raise its voice.
This diplomacy does not resemble familiar forms of pressure. Beijing acts like a surgeon or a conductor, managing the movement of flows with mathematical precision. It does not threaten; it orchestrates pauses. It does not close doors; it changes the rhythm at which they open. A license becomes a sign of trust. A quota—a measure of political maturity. Every shipment turns into a diplomatic document, signed not with ink but with metal. Thus, a new diplomacy is born—quiet, precise, material.
Around this approach, a new geography of loyalties is taking shape. Asia, Africa, and Latin America see stability in Beijing. The raw materials arrive on time, and the terms do not shift with the gusts of Western sanctions. This quiet realignment mirrors a broader pattern—from regional trade pacts to strategic partnerships—where the Global South begins to articulate its own economic grammar, particularly visible in Latin America’s pivot toward Asia’s industrial orbit. Against this backdrop, the old centers of power are losing their accustomed instruments. Sanctions, embargoes, and trade barriers—all are weapons of the paper age. China controls the material used not only to build rockets but also the microchips that guide them. Its influence grows not through military bases but through control over the matter from which the digital world itself is made.
Power Shifts from Financial Centers to the Depths of the Earth
Rare earth elements have ceased to be invisible. They are no longer background—they are actors on the world stage. Western progress has long rested on the myth of “apolitical” raw materials—as if lithium and neodymium had no borders. China dismantled that myth layer by layer, showing that even an atom can have a flag. The European Parliament’s July 2025 resolution urging countermeasures against China’s export controls only confirmed that resource politics has entered the legislative bloodstream of the West—an empire drafting motions against the gravity of geology. Metal has become an expression of strategic will. A quota has turned into a diplomatic marker, a shipment into an instrument of influence, and waiting into a form of instruction.
Beijing acts with composure, rewriting the logic of the world. While Western cabinets react in familiar ways—with threats, tariffs, and mantras about the “free market”—China calmly shifts the tectonic plates of geo-economics. The same subterranean shift is visible across Eurasia, where transport and digital infrastructure weave a new network of influence beyond the reach of missiles and sanctions. The 21st century belongs less and less to those who print money and more to those who control the substance the world runs on. Power is moving from financial centers to the planet’s crust. This redistribution of material influence mirrors a broader realignment, where Asia’s furnaces—not Europe’s trading floors—have become the new engines of production and political gravity.
Rebecca Chan, Independent political analyst focusing on the intersection of Western foreign policy and Asian sovereignty
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