US President Donald Trump has accused the leaders of China, North Korea and Russia of conspiring against the United States as they gathered in Beijing for a massive military parade.
US President Donald Trump has accused the leaders of China, North Korea and Russia of conspiring against the United States as they gathered in Beijing for a massive military parade.
As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin flanked Xi Jinping at the parade marking 80 years since World War II ended, Mr Trump wrote a testy Truth Social post addressing Mr Xi.
“Give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America,” he said.
In response, the Kremlin said it hoped Mr Trump’s allegation that the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea were conspiring against the United States was a joke.
“I think not without irony, he said that these three are allegedly plotting against the United States,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian state TV, when asked about the social media post by Mr Trump that alleged Mr Putin, Mr Xi and Mr Kim had gathered in Beijing to plot against Washington.
Mr Xi has warned the world is facing a choice between peace or war as he held his country’s largest-ever military parade, flanked by Mr Putin and Mr Kim.The highly-choreographed event to mark 80 years since Japan’s defeat at the end of World War Two has been largely shunned by Western leaders, with Mr Putin and Mr Kim – pariahs in the West due to the Ukraine war and Mr Kim’s nuclear ambitions – the guests of honour.
Designed to project China’s military might and diplomatic clout, it also comes as Mr Trump’s trade tariffs and volatile policymaking strain its relations with allies and rivals alike.
“Today, mankind is faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum,” Mr Xi told a crowd of more than 50,000 spectators at Tiananmen Square, adding that the Chinese people “firmly stand on the right side of history”.
Riding in an open-top limousine, Mr Xi then inspected the troops and cutting-edge military equipment such as hypersonic missiles, underwater drones and a weaponised ‘robot wolf’.
Mr Kim travelled to Beijing with his daughter Ju Ae, whom South Korean intelligence consider his most likely successor, although she was not seen alongside him at the parade.
Over the past two years, more than a dozen generals – many formerly close to Mr Xi – have been purged from the People’s Liberation Army in a sweeping corruption crackdown.
“The parade allows Xi to focus the world’s attention on its impressive strides in modernising its military hardware, while overshadowing the stubborn challenges afflicting the PLA, most notably the continued purges rolling through the ranks of its most senior officers,” said Jon Czin, a foreign policy analyst at Brookings Institution, a US-based think tank.
The parade was not only aimed at projecting China’s might to the outside world, but also galvanising patriotic spirit at home, analysts said.
In his keynote address, Xi called the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation “unstoppable”. Civil servants up and down the country have been tasked with watching the parade and writing down their reflections, one of them told Reuters-RTE
