Editor’s Note: This article was first published in Sunday Morning, the Colombo-based weekly.
We are on the cusp of a remarkable fortnight in Asian geopolitics. By the time this column reaches readers, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tianjin will have already commenced, convening leaders from nearly half of humanity and a third of global economic output.
Within days, Beijing will host its grand Victory Day parade, commemorating the 80th anniversary of China’s triumph over fascism — a meticulously choreographed display of military modernisation designed to signal strategic capacity as much as national memory.
This rare confluence of multilateral diplomacy and martial pageantry crystallises China’s dual approach: cultivating cooperative regional architecture while simultaneously projecting the rapid evolution of its armed forces.
China’s engagement with India exemplifies this duality. After more than five years, direct flights between the two nations are poised to resume. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasised during his recent visit to New Delhi, the two nations “should be partners, not adversaries,” a sentiment echoed by his counterpart.
Significance of the SCO
The SCO, in this context, is more than a regional security forum; it is a platform where India can recalibrate its long-term strategic posture vis-à-vis China while simultaneously managing the ever-present challenge posed by Pakistan.
As I argued in a newspaper column last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would do well to invoke the legacy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose cautious yet constructive engagement with Islamabad offers a template for negotiating trust and mitigating hostility. Without such calibrated diplomacy, rapprochement with Beijing risks leaving India strategically exposed along its western flank, where historical enmities remain unresolved.
The SCO is gradually reshaping the contours of the global order. Originally established as the Shanghai Five to address border disputes and combat terrorism, the organisation has evolved into a comprehensive Eurasian consortium that champions non-interference, consensual decision-making, and economic connectivity.
As I wrote in my column for Beijing Review this week, “The persistent exhaustion with bloc-driven diplomacy, epitomised by NATO, Quad, and AUKUS, signals a wider yearning for an alternative paradigm that eschews zero-sum calculations.”
In this respect, the SCO challenges Western-centric conceptions of multilateralism, offering a forum where collective development, trade integration, cultural diplomacy, and security coordination can proceed simultaneously.
India’s engagement in this architecture is both pragmatic and necessary, as economic integration, access to Chinese markets and technology, and influence over regional security dynamics all hinge upon its ability to navigate this multipolar environment with strategic acuity.
China’s long-term vision
Yet, it is in the immediate theatre of military modernisation that China’s long-term strategic vision becomes most tangible. The forthcoming Victory Day parade in Beijing, marking eight decades since the Japanese surrender, promises to showcase not only historical memory but also contemporary technological prowess.
Chinese military authorities have confirmed that the parade will feature domestically produced systems making their debut, including hypersonic anti-ship missiles such as the YJ-17 and YJ-20, advanced combat drones including the stealth Feihong FH-97, and nuclear-capable DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles with ranges exceeding 15,000 kilometres.
According to Bloomberg, satellite imagery of the staging areas has already revealed a panoply of weaponry designed to “win a high-tech, high-intensity war” and suppress adversary naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific.
This is a blunt reminder that China, which has not engaged in a conventional war since the mid-1970s in Vietnam, is now developing the means to shape the future of warfare on its own terms, leveraging unmanned systems, laser-directed energy weapons, and space-based reconnaissance.
The narrative of Victory Day is inseparable from China’s wartime sacrifices, which remain largely underrepresented in Western historiography. From the 18 September incident of 1931 to the protracted battles across eastern China, Chinese forces and civilians bore staggering costs — over 35 million casualties, with Japanese forces losing roughly 1.5 million personnel, amounting to 70% of Japan’s wartime losses.
Heroic episodes, such as the Flying Tigers American Volunteer Group providing air support, Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune establishing frontline hospitals, and ordinary fishermen from the Zhoushan Islands rescuing 384 British POWs from the Lisbon Maru, exemplify a collective resilience rarely acknowledged.
At the same time, the horrors of the era — the Nanjing Massacre, widespread biological and chemical experiments, and systematic atrocities against civilian populations — etched a profound imprint on the Chinese psyche, one that informs contemporary military doctrine and national identity alike.
Implications for India
China’s postwar trajectory, therefore, is as much about remembrance as it is about strategic renewal. The country has transitioned from wartime attrition to peacetime reconstruction and now to high-technology combat capability.
The Victory Day parade functions as both commemoration and demonstration: a symbolic articulation of the principle that national survival and military modernisation are inseparable. Unlike Western powers, which have often manufactured perpetual conflict to sustain military-industrial capacities, China has achieved this evolution largely through technological innovation and methodical capability enhancement, rather than repeated direct combat experience.
The implications of this duality are profound for India and the broader Eurasian region. On one hand, the SCO provides India with leverage and collaborative frameworks to stabilise its periphery and engage China constructively.
On the other, China’s growing conventional and asymmetric capabilities — hypersonic missiles, integrated drone warfare, and space-enabled command networks — signal a qualitative transformation in strategic balance that cannot be ignored.
For Indian policymakers, the challenge is to harness the SCO’s cooperative potential while acknowledging the asymmetries in military modernisation that Beijing has quietly achieved. Only a sophisticated blend of diplomacy, economic engagement, and defence preparedness will ensure a genuinely long-term, win-win relationship.
Moreover, the juxtaposition of the SCO and the Victory Day parade highlights a broader narrative about global multipolarity. In Eurasia, states are increasingly asserting autonomy from Western-dominated structures, whether through alternative trade linkages, regional defence partnerships, or strategic industrial collaboration.
China, by simultaneously leading a regional multilateral initiative and demonstrating cutting-edge military capability, is presenting a model of statecraft that integrates soft power, technological sophistication, and historical legitimacy.
As Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong last week affirmed in New Delhi, Beijing opposes punitive tariffs imposed by the United States and seeks to uphold the multilateral trading system, reflecting a coherent strategy that aligns economic, diplomatic, and security imperatives.
The bottom line is that the SCO Summit and Beijing’s Victory Day parade are far more than ceremonial; they are concurrent demonstrations of diplomacy and military prowess, signalling a new Eurasian order in which cooperation and competition coexist.
India’s role within this framework is pivotal: to secure both economic and security gains from engagement with China, New Delhi cannot ignore historical grievances, must maintain measured ties with Pakistan, and exercise strategic patience. Modi’s shift from cautious engagement to active participation in the SCO could herald the emergence of a genuinely multipolar, Asia-centred order.
Meanwhile, China’s deliberate accumulation of technologies in peacetime compels both regional actors and the West to reconsider deterrence, power projection, and the very structure of military readiness, demonstrating that careful planning can sustain capability without the ravages of continuous conflict.
As former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai reflected, “China’s strength lies not in the clanging of arms alone, but in the patient cultivation of knowledge, unity, and resilience.”
