China: XI celebrates huge military parade with Kim and Putin – the pictures

China committed the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War with a large -scale military parade in Beijing. In the center of the capital, the People’s Liberation Army passed the field of heavenly peace. State and party leader XI Jinping took off the show with more than 10,000 soldiers, hundreds of vehicles and aircraft.

Xi called for peace and at the same time warned of new dangers. “Today, humanity is again faced with the election between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win and zero-sum game,” he said. China will be “firmly on the right side of the story”, stick to the path of peaceful development and build up a “community with a shared future” with other peoples. The People’s Liberation Army had to be expanded into a world-class army in order to secure sovereignty and territorial integrity and at the same time to contribute more to world peace.

US President Donald Trump commented on the events in his social network Truth Social. He asked whether XI would remind the support that the USA would have given China in the fight against the Japanese aggressor in his speech. Many Americans died for China’s victory and fame. He hoped that these victims would be honored. “Please host my warmest greetings to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, while you are conspiring to the United States of America,” Trump continued with a view of the Kremlin chief and North Korea’s rulers who were in Beijing among the guests of honor.

However, many western diplomats stayed away. The event was a geopolitical showcase: China presented itself alongside those two heads of state who are considered aggressors in the Ukraine war in the West – a signal that caused irritation there.

In his speech, XI thanked “the foreign governments and international friends who supported and helped the Chinese people in resistance to aggression.”

In the run -up to the military, the military had announced that they were also showing new systems in the 45 formations passing by and exclusively in China. Beijing had expected 26 heads of state and government to the spectacle.

Putin had previously traveled to China for several days, in which he took part in the Shanghaier Organization for Cooperation (Soz) in Tianjin. There Putin and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonstratively held on their hands and showed themselves in a good mood alongside XI. The Chinese president campaigned for a “fair, multipolar order”.

Historically, Beijing took up a dark chapter with the parade, which took place in a similar form ten years ago. Officially, she was entitled to the “End of Japanese Aggression”.

Japan attacked China in 1937. The war lasted until 1945 and demanded millions of dead in China. At that time, nationalists and communists agreed on a unit front against Japan, but remained suspicious of each other. After the Japanese surrender, the civil war flared up between them.

In 1949 the communists won, Mao Zedong called the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, while the nationalists withdrew to Taiwan. The fact that the People’s Republic did not yet exist in 1945 is still mentioned as the reason to criticize Beijing’s presentation of the war – especially in Taiwan, which is ruled itself, but is used by Beijing as a own territory.

The military parade of China’s communist leadership on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II was the largest in the People’s Republic to date.