SEOUL, South Korea — Beijing commemorated the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end Wednesday with a massive parade of goose-stepping soldiers and a display of high-tech weaponry designed to awe.
On the VIP reviewing stand, the balcony of Beijing’s Forbidden City, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-in flanked Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Leaders from Global South nations including Cuba, Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Vietnam stood behind or alongside the three.
Amid global cleavages between authoritarian continental powers and maritime democracies, the leaders of China’s other World War II allies — France, the U.K. and U.S. -— as well as Commonwealth states that fought in the Pacific — Australia, India and New Zealand -— were no-shows.
Other absentees were leaders of regional democracies Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Ironically, the highest-profile leaders on hand for the commemoration are actively opposed to the rules-based world order emplaced after 1945 by the World War II allies.
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However, experts question how closely the authoritarian states are linked. Unlike Iran, North Korea and Russia, China, the most powerful, is restrained by its deep engagement in the global economy.
WWII’s ‘Forgotten Ally’
Overseen by Mr. Xi in a grey tunic, the parade ran through Beijing’s Tiananmen Avenue and Square to the tune of the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers” — which dates to wartime 1934.
“The Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression was an important part of the World Anti-Fascist War,” said Mr. Xi, using official party nomenclature for the conflict. “With huge national sacrifice, the Chinese people made major contributions to save human civilization and safeguard world peace.”
Forty-five formations paraded, with national, party and unit flags flying.
Honor guards in spotless parade kit hefting silver-plated Kalashnikovs were followed by camouflaged troops with helmets and goggles. Vehicles included tanks, mobile unmanned and anti-unmanned weapons systems, and self-propelled artillery.
Mounted on huge transporter-erector launchers were nuclear-capable Dongfang (“East Wind’)-5C intercontinental ballistic missiles. State broadcaster CGTN boasted that they “can reach any corner of the world,” forming “a peace shield of strategic deterrence.”
Above, formations of stealth fighters, airborne-early-warning aircraft, flying tankers and helicopter gunships flew past, towing red flags.
Americans date World War II’s commencement to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. For the Chinese, it started in Manchuria in 1931, then expanded to China proper in 1937.
While America crushed Japan’s naval and air power, China, widely overlooked in historiography, battled the bulk of Japan’s ground forces.
Amid horrors including the Nanjing Massacre, the operations of Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 and the blowing of the Yellow River’s dikes to slow Japan’s advance, the human cost to China was colossal.
Oxford historian Rana Mitter in his 2013 book “Forgotten Ally” estimates 80 million refugees and a death toll of 14 million. State news agency Xinhua puts it higher, at 30 million.
Imperial Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945. Documents were signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri on Sept. 2, but only on Sept. 3 did Japanese forces in China surrender.
That date is celebrated across China as “V-Day.”
Problematically for the ruling Communist Party, most fighting was undertaken by Nationalists. The Communists won the subsequent Chinese Civil War, forcing Nationalists to flee to Taiwan, where a democratic competitor state subsequently emerged.
Mr. Xi side-stepped the issue with official nomenclature that emphasizes the “Chinese people.”
A new axis?
As the Global North struggles for influence over the Global South, China is the most powerful of the four powers aligned against. The four have no official alliance, but are informally dubbed the “CRINK” (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea), the “Axis of Upheaval” (states opposed to the global order) or “The Axis of Authoritarianism” (states opposed to liberal democracies).
Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine and diplomat with extensive Asian experience, prefers the latter.
“Though I’d use ‘totalitarianism’ instead of ‘authoritarianism,” he said. “These regimes all use violence and murder to stay in power and get their way.”
Western self-doubt aids them, as does a weakening of the U.S. commitment to liberal democratic values.
“One notes constituencies in the democracies that just might think the [China]-led system is better than evil democratic systems based on oppression, theft and slavery,” Mr. Newsham said.
“The West, because of the U.S. retreat from its historical role as the guarantor of world order, is fighting with one hand behind its back,” added John Nilsson-Wright, an associate fellow at London think tank Chatham House. “The meeting in Beijing is an opportunity to exploit the momentum … to win the new battle for hearts and minds.”
Beyond anti-West rhetoric and diplomacy, the unity of the continental authoritarian powers is questionable. Iran, North Korea and Russia, all heavily sanctioned, openly trade arms with one another. China, vulnerable to sanctions, trades dual-use technologies, but not actual arms.
“What unites CRINK is the view that the rules of the international order don’t serve them and that they should push back,” said Rob York, program director at think tank Pacific Forum. “That is not to say that they share the same means of doing so, or that they have the same vision [to] replace the current international order.”
China is the nearest global challenger to the United States in influence, economic size, military force and technological terms. However, it is beset by over-investment in sectors ranging from real estate to infrastructure to shipbuilding — arguably including its expansive military.
Beijing has not fought a kinetic conflict since 1988, against Vietnam in the Spratly Islands. Its power projection in the South and East China Seas is a creeping advance using sub-kinetic tactics.
“China wants to rewrite rules to place itself as the Middle Kingdom again,” Mr. York continued. “Russia seems more enamored of how the world worked before 1945, with great powers naturally controlling smaller countries in their near abroad.”
Russia’s once-vaunted army is bogged down in Ukraine, suffering untold casualties while incurring heavy Western sanctions.
Despite a plodding advance, no final victory is in sight for Moscow.
North Korea’s Mr. Kim is a rising force. Nuclear-armed, he enjoys mutual defense treaties with both Beijing (1961) and Moscow (2024), while his soldiers have recently gained frontline experience fighting alongside Russia.
Mr. Kim, who traveled to Beijing on his luxury armored train, was attending his first multinational event abroad: Prior overseas engagements have all been bilateral.
He was accompanied by his teenage daughter Ju-ae, increasingly seen as being groomed for eventual succession.
“This event demonstrated how far North Korea is punching above its weight,” said Jenny Town, director of the Stimson Center’s North Korea-focused platform 38 North. “If Kim wanted to prove he’s more than just a poor country but can play big power politics, this event helped him nail that narrative for both foreign and domestic audiences.”
In Beijing, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was less visible than Mr. Putin or Mr. Kim. Iran has seen proxies Hamas and Hezbollah shattered while its air defense failed against Israeli and U.S. attacks.
“They got the hell knocked out of them recently,” said Mr. Newsham. “That does tend to slow one down a bit.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, widely lambasted by Korean and U.S. hard rightists as a “China lover,” did not — unlike predecessor Park Geun-hye in 2015 — attend the Chinese parade.
World War II enemy Japan was a predictable no-show. Irked by a wave of anti-Japanese nationalism in China that includes new films on wartime atrocities, Tokyo reportedly asked partner nations to stay away.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.