The Chinese Communist Party is preparing to welcome a rogues gallery of anti-Western world leaders for a military parade next week.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un are among the most high-profile guests expected at the Sept. 3 celebration commemorating the end of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
North Korea’s state news outlet, Korea Central News Agency, announced Thursday that the supreme leader would attend “celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed Putin’s participation earlier this week, stating that he will be holding a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sept. 2.
It is set to be an overt display of Chinese global influence, pulling together leaders from across the world who have positioned themselves against U.S. hegemony.
Representatives from Iran, Cuba, and more than a dozen other countries are expected to fly to Beijing for the ceremony.
Other world leaders expected to attend the parade include Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, and President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia.
The parade will also be an opportunity for the Chinese government to flex its military capabilities, displaying both antique weapons and cutting-edge war technology.
More than 10,000 soldiers are set to take part, matched by 100 aircraft and hundreds of ground vehicles.
Members of the People’s Liberation Army are already running drills in Beijing to prepare for the military parade, and the city has been decorated to mark the occasion.
The display comes ahead of a possible visit to Asia by President Donald Trump. He floated the idea of meeting with Xi but insisted that he would not actively pursue such talks without the Chinese leader’s request.
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“I’d like to meet him this year. President Xi would like me to come to China,” he said this week at the White House. “We’re taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and different things … It’s a much better relationship economically than it was before with [former President Joe] Biden. I mean, they just took him to the cleaners.”
China, which seeks to assert its independence and economic might on the world stage, remains one of the most difficult negotiators the White House is confronting in its efforts to renegotiate trade deals to be more favorable to the United States.
