A huge military parade took place in Beijing on Wednesday, showcasing the latest in Chinese armaments, to mark the 80th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II.

Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over the carefully choreographed affair, standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

While the US was not named, Xi used the occasion to respond to the Trump administration’s unmistakable, accelerating build-up to war with China. “The Chinese nation,” he declared, “is a great nation that is never intimidated by any bullies and always values independence and forges ahead.”

Two fronts of an emerging world war are already underway—the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the widening US-backed Israeli war in the Middle East. Although not specifically referring to these conflicts, Xi warned: “Today, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win cooperation and zero-sum game.”

The fact that Putin stood alongside Xi has been widely commented upon in the US and Western media. Almost three weeks after his much-vaunted meeting with Putin in Alaska, Trump’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Ukraine have so far come to naught. Trump’s objective has never been “peace” but rather to strengthen US relations with Russia at China’s expense as Washington’s military build-up against Beijing continues apace.

In comments in the Oval Office, Trump declared that the military parade was “very, very impressive” and referring to Xi, Putin and Kim added that “my relationship with all of them is very good.” But he was clearly piqued by the image of the three of them together, tweeting on X:

“Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

Trump’s comments, along with the deluge of commentary in the US media about China’s ambitions for world dominance, are utterly hypocritical. Since assuming office, Trump has done nothing but conspire as he wages economic war on the world—friend and foe alike—through the imposition of huge tariffs on US imports. The chief target is China, which the US regards as the main threat to its global domination.

Trump’s threats and bullying appeared to backfire this week, to the consternation of sections of the American political establishment, as various world leaders appeared in China not only for the military parade, but also for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit earlier in the week. The US imposition of 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports for continuing to buy Russian oil was the major factor in Prime Minister Narendra Modi reversing his earlier decision not to attend the SCO meeting.

Washington’s aggressive confrontation with China—diplomatically, economically and militarily—has been mounting for more than a decade since President Obama announced his “pivot to Asia.” However, Trump’s tariff war is undermining US alliances and strategic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific aimed against China—such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue that includes India, as well as Japan and Australia.

Increasingly, US imperialism has focussed its propaganda and military build-up on Taiwan, seeking to goad China into invading the island, just as it provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. Washington has steadily undermined the One-China policy under which it de facto recognises Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan. Washington knows full well that any formal declaration of independence by Taipei would provoke military action by China.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that US allies boost military spending and declared that war with China over Taiwan was “imminent.”

The military parade in Beijing this week simply demonstrates that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have no progressive response to the escalating threat of war. On the one hand, the Chinese regime is engaged in an arms race with the US, while on the other offering a fanciful vision of a peaceful multi-polar world of mutual cooperation and development.

The parade itself involved tens of thousands of troops from all services of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and featured some of its newest and most advanced weaponry, including stealth aerial drones and huge underwater drones, along with a new generation of tanks equipped with anti-drone defences and hypersonic anti-ship missiles.

On display was also China’s nuclear “triad”—nuclear armed missiles that can be launched from the air, land and submarines. These included the DF-61 truck-launched intercontinental ballistic missile and the submarine-launched JL-3 missile, reportedly capable of reaching North America.

Beijing has repeatedly criticised the US for engaging in “Cold War mentality,” but it is not a cold war that US imperialism is preparing for. In its historic decline, the US is slipping economically behind China, which by some measures is already the world’s largest economy and advancing in hi-tech areas previously dominated by American corporations. As it has done over the past three decades, the US is relying on its residual military might to reassert its global hegemony, whatever the catastrophic consequences.

Xi and the CCP, however, are utterly incapable of making any appeal to the one social force capable of halting the slide into world war and nuclear Armageddon—the international working class, including in China. Xi’s speech was saturated with Chinese nationalism and patriotism from beginning to end that can only serve to divide Chinese workers from their class brothers and sisters internationally.

Xi’s obligatory reference to Marxism-Leninism and Socialism with Chinese characteristics cannot disguise the fact that the CCP presides over a capitalist economy and represents the interests of a super-wealthy oligarchy at the expense of the vast mass of working people. Unable to make any social appeal to workers and youth, it seeks to build a base among layers of the upper middle class on the basis of reactionary nationalism.

The dangers of world war are rooted in the crisis of global capitalism and the outmoded division of the world into rival nation states. Chinese workers need to turn to their fellow workers around the world to build a unified international anti-war movement based on genuine socialism to abolish the profit system. That is the perspective for which the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, alone fights.