Xi Jinping has it all. From Donald Trump’s perspective, the Chinese leader is basking in sycophantic bonhomie from fellow global authoritarians while enjoying a parade of tanks and stealth bombers, massive missiles, lasers and mass marches of beautifully drilled infantry.
Xi’s international prestige is at an all-time high. And Trump gave it to him.
“Today, humanity is once again faced with critical choices: peace or war? Dialogue or confrontation? Win-win co-operation or zero-sum rivalry?” Xi said.
“The Chinese people firmly stand on the right side of history and on the side of human civilisation and progress, he added – flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s ruler who beamed at the sight of China’s biggest ever military parade in Tiananmen Square.
It was fitting, among dictators, that the vast display of renewed Chinese might should be in the Tiananmen Square – where the Xi’s Chinese Communist Party of China snuffed out its pro-democracy movement with the massacre of hundreds of demonstrators in 1989.
Xi, now he believes, is the candidate to lead that multipolar world as first among equals. Because Trump has swung a wrecking ball against the foundations of international law that underpin global security. And Xi is growing the military power to drive his point home.
Trump was left to stamp his feet in Washington. He’s taller than the gallery of autocrats in Beijing. His nation’s forces are still vastly superior. And yet he was overcome by his small-man Napoleon Complex. Perhaps his own Washington military parade earlier this year, a small, shambolic affair, had left him deflated.
“Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America,” Trump said in a post directed at Xi on Truth Social.
He had done his best for them, after all. His peevishness was understandable.
In the first months of his second term, the US president has attacked his own allies. He has echoed Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions by voicing threats against Canada and Denmark. He has also abandoned climate change and global democracy as strategic policies worth pushing.
He has slapped only 10 per cent tariffs on China and is desperate to do business in Russia.
In short, Trump has undermined the West. And that makes Xi not only look good but also makes him more powerful.
America is, along with Israel, abandoning democracy at home and ignoring international law abroad. Both attacked Iran without United Nations support. Both are involved in the relentless bombing of Gaza. Both are supportive of increasingly loopy ideas for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland.
In his vision for the future, Xi told the Shanghai Cooperation Conference on Monday: “We should expand the scope of cooperation, make the most of each country’s unique strengths, and shoulder together the shared responsibility of promoting regional peace, stability and prosperity.”
