The massive parade of troops and military hardware, watched over by leaders of an authoritarian coalition in Tiananmen Square last month, claimed to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Imperial Japan’s surrender in World War II.
In reality, it represented a carefully curated showcase of the world’s largest active military, now numbering more than two million personnel, of the authoritarian vision that Xi Jinping represents, and of his aim to recast the world that the U.S. and its allies have constructed since 1945.
The parade caused some shock and much commentary in democracies. It raised up the world’s determined strongmen with Xi Jinping eagerly welcoming Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s King Jong Un, along with the leaders of Iran and Belarus.
Whether this reflects the emergence of a more formal alliance is beside the point. It was a Chinese-led statement of intent aimed at the old global order. There is no real reason to be shocked by this because the groundwork has been laid over the past decade, in the military and non-military spheres. First, China’s growing capabilities allow it to flex its military muscle, including in the South China Sea, where countries from the Philippines to Indonesia to Vietnam have been subjected to progressively more intense intimidation, including the construction of a formidable chain of fortified islands.
In March, Beijing sent warships into the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, conducting unannounced live-fire exercises within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. In August, China and Russia ran the latest in a series of joint drills in the Sea of Japan. And as part of an ongoing campaign to menace one of East Asia’s thriving democracies, Beijing has increased live-fire exercises, practiced blockades, and sent jets into the skies around Taiwan.
Second, while China’s growing military assertiveness is telling, so too is its strategic commitment in non-military domains, through which Beijing is seeking to gain a decisive edge in the global competition with the United States and its natural allies.
China’s sizable, long-term investments in outward-facing influence activities deserve special attention. In August, a report detailed how in New York City, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “foiled the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government” while backing others who supported the party’s policies. This episode was redolent of one in Australia a decade ago in which the CCP, using what Sinologist John Fitzgerald calls Beijing’s “integrated networks of influence,” effectively coopted an Australian senator, Sam Dastyari, before he was compelled to resign. Such activity is part of a global pattern of the CCP’s widespread engagement, including in Europe.
Business is a crucial vector for CCP influence. Beijing uses United Front work – political influence activities that Xi calls one of the CCP’s “magic weapons” – abroad to influence overseas Chinese communities, as well as foreign governments and businesses with a presence in the Chinese market.
More than any other sector, technology is central to global competition. Beijing is no longer just pushing back against a digital order shaped by democracies — it is actively seeking to rewrite the rules. Backed by a network of state-linked companies and strategic initiatives like China Standards 2035, which seeks to set technology standards, Beijing exerts influence on global digital norms in ways likely to shape the future of freedom. This is not solely about national interests; it’s about rallying autocratic allies and building coalitions to challenge the Western-led status quo.
While China’s leadership is determined, Beijing’s success in the tech competition is not a given. But absent a more concerted response from democracies, we can expect a more coordinated, assertive China driving the global tech agenda. This would mean, in turn, a world with more censorship, surveillance, and official control.
Finally, China is outflanking the United States and other free societies in the global competition of ideas. Along with Russia and other autocracies, Beijing spends billions of dollars on ever more sophisticated global media and information capabilities. To this end, it has now established well-developed platforms in open societies to promote its agenda. In June, for instance, more than 30 Italian media outlets showed a television series promoting Xi Jinping, the latest example of how “China enlists apparent cultural cooperation to advance its political narratives and foreign policy objectives”.
Democracies, as Center for European Policy Analysis Fellow Edward Lucas observes, are not losing this ideological competition because democratic “ideas are weak” but “because the battlefield is skewed against them”.
So, the Beijing parade did not simply show off military hardware; it also signaled solidarity with authoritarian powers that are cooperating in multiple areas.
It was, moreover, a demonstration of “discourse power” and the bending of reality through information manipulation, including the CCP’s effort to rewrite history by falsely claiming that it, rather than the Chinese nationalists, led the fight against Japan in World War II.
When Xi assumed China’s top leadership role in 2012, most observers saw China principally in terms of opportunities, not risks. In the intervening years, a good deal has been learned about the predatory and manipulative character of the Chinese regime.
Yet too few have right-sized the risk-reward ratio, and too many remain dangerously vulnerable to the exertion of China’s sharp power, which Beijing uses as a way to shape outcomes in one region after another. To meet this persistent, strategic challenge, democracies require a different quality of unity, as well as preparation.
There is a glaring paradox in today’s global competition for influence. At the precise time that unfree countries, led by China, are actively expanding their global ambitions, the United States and many other free societies are retrenching.
So while the democracies press the brakes on outward-facing influence capabilities, China’s leadership keeps its foot on the gas, for the time being driving the world in an unfriendly direction for US and European interests alike.
Christopher Walker is Vice President at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
A version of the article was published in Formiche magazine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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