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China’s Victory day military parade: why are Putin and Kim Jong-un there, and what is the ‘axis of upheaval’?

On Wednesday, China is holding a military parade in the capital, Beijing, to mark 80 years since the end of the second world war. But it’s not just about the past, the parade says a lot about the forces reshaping the world today, and in the future. At the parade, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will be flanked by the leaders of some of the world’s most heavily sanctioned nations – Russia, North Korea, Iran and Myanmar – and a host of other leaders of the global south but notably almost no western leaders. The parade is seen as a show of military and diplomatic strength by Beijing amid high-stakes negotiations with Donald Trump’s administration in the US over trade. Who is going to China’s victory day parade? Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will attend the victory day parade on 3 September, marking the end of the second world war after Japan’s formal surrender. It will be the first time the two leaders have appeared in public together alongside Xi. Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to be on the dais as tens of thousands of troops march through the Chinese capital, completing a quartet that western political and economic analysts have described as the “axis of upheaval”. Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who rarely travels abroad, will also attend, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday. Most western leaders are expected to shun the parade, making it a major show of diplomatic solidarity between China, Russia and the global south. The only western heads of state or government attending the events in Beijing are Robert Fico, the prime minister of EU member state Slovakia, and Aleksandar Vučić, the president of Serbia. Fico has been an opponent of sanctioning Russia for its war against Ukraine and has broken ranks with the EU by visiting Moscow. Vučić also visited Moscow in May and wants good relations with Russia and China but says Serbia remains committed to joining the EU. The United Nations will be represented by undersecretary general Li Junhua, who previously served in various capacities at the Chinese foreign ministry, including time as the Chinese ambassador to Italy, San Marino and Myanmar. What can we expect to see at the parade? The highly choreographed event, one of China’s largest in years, will unveil cutting-edge equipment such as fighter jets, missile defence systems and hypersonic weapons – the results of a long-running modernisation drive of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) which has lately been beset by corruption scandals and personnel purges. China is expected to showcase a range of new weapons, including an enhanced DF-26 intermediate range ballistic missile – dubbed by Chinese media the “Guam killer” for its ability to hit the US Pacific base with a conventional or nuclear weapon. New anti-ship missiles called the Ying Ji, which means “eagle attack” in Chinese, have been spotted by analysts. Chinese commentators have described them as designed to “prevent the United States from posing a serious threat to China’s national security.” On the day, Xi Jinping will survey tens of thousands of troops at Tiananmen Square alongside several foreign dignitaries including guest of honour Vladimir Putin. Many ordinary Beijing residents who have experienced weeks of widespread disruption to their daily lives will be hoping for a brief respite. The last time the parade was held in 2015, China implemented a nationwide three-day public holiday and Beijing schools delayed the start of term. Ahead of the parade, Beijing has also mounted a campaign to emphasise the “correct view” of second world war history, which emphasises that China and Soviet Russia played a pivotal role in fighting fascist forces in the Asian and European theatres. A People’s Daily commentary this week claimed China’s contribution to fighting Japan was “selectively ignored and underestimated by some”, adding the Communist party’s (CCP) wartime efforts were “deliberately belittled and vilified”. What are the experts saying? Political analysts say the parade is designed to demonstrate Xi’s influence over nations intent on reshaping the western-led global order. “Xi Jinping is trying to showcase that he is very strong, that he is still powerful and well received in China,” said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy at the National University of Singapore. “When Xi was just a regional leader, he looked up to Putin, and saw the kind of leader he could learn from – and now he is a global leader. Having Kim alongside him, as well, highlights how Xi is now also a global leader.” Lim Chuan-Tiong, a researcher with the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo, said the primary purpose of the “temporary spectacle” was to reinforce Xi’s power and the strength of the CCP. “Commemorating the 80th anniversary ... does not necessarily require a military parade,” he said, noting that China only really started marking the date 10 years ago, and at a fraction of the budget. “Most of the [leaders] attending, the ones invited, are not there to support China’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the victory of WWII,” Lim said. “They are there to give face to China, to give face to Chinese leaders and to avoid harming bilateral relations. Very simple.” What other world leaders have been in China? Prior to the parade, world leaders have been attending the Shanghai cooperation organisation security forum (SCO). As well as Vladimir Putin, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have been among the attendees. Much has been made of Modi’s visit – his first in seven years – just as India’s ties with Washington have soured. It has come days after the US doubled tariffs on Indian exports to 50%, citing Delhi’s refusal to stop buying Russian oil. For China, the two-day SCO summit that started on Sunday could not be better timed. Modi “will be in China at a moment when India-China relations are stabilising and India-US relations have gone south. It is a powerful optic,” South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman said. “I’m not sure whether US officials fully realise how much trust they have squandered in such a short time.” With additional research by Lillian Yang and reporting by Reuters

China to show off military might in parade attended by anti-west leaders

Leaders from countries united in their opposition to the west will gather in Beijing this week in a show of support for China’s president, Xi Jinping, at a second world war commemoration parade designed to show off China’s military strength and geopolitical might. Described by western analysts as “the axis of upheaval”, the military, economic and political collaboration between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea has been on display on the battlefield in Ukraine and in the Middle East this year. But on Wednesday it will be Beijing that takes centre stage as the world’s second-largest economy and rising superpower presents itself as an alternative to a western-led global order. The tightly choreographed military parade through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate 80 years since the defeat of Japan in the second world war – referred to in China as the war of resistance against Japanese aggression – will be attended by 26 heads of state. As well as Russia, North Korea and Iran, leaders from Myanmar, Mongolia, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and central Asian countries will witness China’s unveiling of a range of combat-ready weaponry. The only western leaders on the guest list published by China’s ministry of foreign affairs are from Serbia and Slovakia. “Xi Jinping is trying to lay out his ambition for the global order,” said Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. In Xi’s view, “the world should be multipolar, led by China, and joined by many non-western countries,” Yu said. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is already in China, having attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin over the weekend. India’s president, Narendra Modi, also attended the annual gathering of Eurasian leaders, a sign of thawing China-India relations at a time when India has been hit by 50% tariffs by the US as a punishment for purchases of Russian oil. As well as showing Beijing’s power to gather non-western leaders, the parade – two months after US’s own lacklustre military parade held on Donald Trump’s 79th birthday in mid-June – provides a direct comparison of US and Chinese military strength that Beijing will be comfortable with. Wednesday’s bonanza comes “quite shortly after the awful US parade”, said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It would “rub it in from the Chinese side”, he said, telling the US that “if you do parades, we can do it better than anyone else”. In recent months China has been stressing the importance of its narrative about the defeat of Japan in the second world war, which minimises the role of the west. In May, when Xi visited Moscow for Russia’s Victory Day parade, he wrote an article calling for the “correct historical perspective” on the war. Xi said China and the Soviet Union were the principle theatres of war in Asia and Europe, and that the two countries “served as the mainstay of resistance against Japanese militarism and German nazism, making pivotal contributions to the victory of the world anti-fascist war”. Xi’s article made no mention of the US or European contributions against the axis forces in the war. Several recent blockbuster films have also focused on China’s experience of the war. Dead to Rights, a film about the Nanjing massacre, in which more than 200,000 Chinese people in Nanjing were killed by Japanese troops in 1937, took more than 500m yuan (£52m) in the first four days of its release in Chinese cinemas in July. Another film, Dongji Rescue, tells the story of British prisoners of war who were rescued by Chinese fishers from a bombed Japanese cargo liner, while the Chinese government has enthusiastically promoted a documentary on the same topic. Yu said the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist party was based in part on its defeat of Japan 80 years ago, making the historical narratives particularly important as Beijing grapples with challenging economic forces and a trade war with the US that threatens to undermine the prosperity of ordinary Chinese people. Analysts will be closely watching Wednesday’s parade for signs of China’s military upgrade, especially anything that could be of particular relevance to an assault on Taiwan. “Taiwan is the great unspoken piece of the parade,” said Charles Parton, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. By projecting military might, he said, Beijing is “sending a message to the Taiwanese that resistance is futile”. In May, Chinese weaponry appeared to prove itself in a conflict between India and Pakistan, when Pakistan used Chinese J10-C jets to shoot down several Indian fighter jets. The role of Chinese kit in that conflict, while never officially acknowledged by Beijing, was nonetheless highlighted in Chinese media as a success story for China’s military capabilities. Even more advanced jets could be on display at this week’s parade. Wezeman expects to see so-called “fifth-generation” fighter jets such as the J-20, a more advanced and stealthy version of the J-10C jets used by Pakistan in May. Crucially, Chinese jets are increasingly made with Chinese rather than Russian engines, part of China’s military modernisation plan, which stresses the importance of self-reliance. “The whole point for China is to be totally independent of anybody else, including the Russians,” Wezeman said. That desire for military self-sufficiency comes at a time when China’s key ally on the world stage, Russia, has been propped up by Chinese economic support and North Korean troops during its war in Ukraine. Many analysts believe Beijing is learning lessons from that conflict to inform its thinking about a potential conflict with Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as part of its own territory. And while it is difficult to showcase China’s naval progress in a parade through the concrete streets of Beijing, there may be certain technology, such as supersonic drones and large underwater drones, that could show China’s ability to “deter anyone coming to the aid of Taiwan via the sea”, Wezeman said.

Leaked ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan dismissed as ‘insane’ attempt to cover ethnic cleansing

A plan circulating in the White House to develop the “Gaza Riviera” as a string of high-tech megacities has been dismissed as an “insane” attempt to provide cover for the large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory’s population. On Sunday the Washington Post published a leaked prospectus for the plan, which would involve the forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population of 2 million people and put the territory into a US trusteeship for at least a decade. Named the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust – or Great – the proposal was reportedly developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with financial planning contributed by Boston Consulting Group. Most controversially, the 38-page plan suggests what it calls “temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population” – a proposal that would amount to ethnic cleansing, potentially a genocidal act. Palestinians would be encouraged into “voluntary” departure to another country or into restricted, secure zones during reconstruction. Those who own land would be offered “a digital token” by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere. Those who stay would be housed in properties with a tiny footprint of 323 sq ft – minuscule even by the standards of many non-refugee camp homes in Gaza. It was not clear if the plan reflects US policy, and neither the White House nor the State Department responded to the Washington Post’s request for comment. But the prospectus seem to reflect Donald Trump’s previously stated ambition to “clean out” Gaza and redevelop it. Among critics of the leaked prospectus was Philip Grant, the executive director of Trial International, a human rights group based in Switzerland, who called the plan “a blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development”. “This is a blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development. The outcome? A textbook case of international crimes on an unimaginable scale: forcible population transfer, demographic engineering, and collective punishment,” Grant said. Trial is one of fifteen groups that have previously warned that private contractors operating in Gaza in collaboration with the Israeli government risk “aiding and abetting or otherwise being complicit in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide”, and that they may be liable under several jurisdictions. “Those involved in the planning and execution of such a plan – including corporate actors – could face legal liability for decades to come,” Grant said. Even in the Israeli media the proposal invited incredulity, with a column in the left-leaning Haaretz describing it as “a Trumpian get-rich-quick scheme reliant on war crimes, AI and tourism”. The highly fanciful prospectus – subtitled “From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally”– appears to have been drawn up by people with no physical knowledge of Gaza, the politics of the Middle East or the likely challenges in attempting to rebuild the territory as a multibillion-dollar tourism and technology hub that would inevitably compete with Israel. The scheme, described as requiring no US funding and intended to be funded by investors to the tune of $100bn, envisages a bustling port city bisected by a watercourse and bordered by up to eight leafy AI-powered high-tech megacities, apparently modelled after Saudi Arabia’s troubled Neom project. It also envisages an “Elon Musk” manufacturing park located – without irony – on the ruins of the Erez industrial zone, which was built with Israeli investment to exploit cheap labour in the Palestinian territory and subsequently closed and destroyed by Israeli forces. Examination of the map appears to suggest the plan would also involve the expropriation for an Israeli security buffer zone of much of Gaza’s agricultural land, which tends to be located at Gaza’s periphery close to the border with Israel. The small print is most damning, however, making no distinction in terms of sovereignty between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, suggesting no consideration has been made for Palestinian self determination. Under the plan, Israel would maintain vaguely defined “overarching rights” over Gaza “to meet its security needs”. There would be no Palestinian state but a “Palestinian polity” which would join Trump’s Abraham Accords. The entire language in the prospectus, and labelling of several features, appears aimed at appealing to the vanity of Trump, Musk, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, for whom the security ring around Gaza is named. According to the Boston Consulting Group, quoted by the Post, work on the document was not approved and two senior partners who led the financial planning had been fired. That criticism was echoed by HA Hellyer, a senior associate at the Royal United Services Institute who suggested that the details of the plan were so clearly ludicrous that the proposal should not be taken seriously at face value. “It’s insane. What is important is what the plan points to, and that is not a new idea: the Israel determination that there should be no Palestinian sovereignty or self determination in Gaza. “The US has made clear since February [when details of plans for a Trump Riviera in Gaza first emerged] that they are OK with the idea of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. “The notion that this would be about ‘voluntary departure’ when Palestinians in Gaza have no choice but to be shot or starved.” Katherine Gallagher, a senior lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said that “any company that aligns itself with Israel – and seemingly, Trump – in a plan to forcibly transfer Palestinians from their homes in Gaza is opening itself up to significant legal liability at home and under universal jurisdiction”. The CCR recently sued the Trump administration for records of its funding of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private outfit overseeing aid distribution in Gaza and at whose sites hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while queuing for food. The prospectus was leaked days after Trump held a White House meeting to discuss day-after planning for Gaza attended by the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has contributed views on Gaza’s future to the Trump administration and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The leaked plan was also rejected by senior Hamas official Basem Naim who said: “Gaza is not for sale. “Gaza is part of the greater Palestinian homeland.”

‘There is death in every home’, families say, after at least 800 killed in Afghanistan earthquake – as it happened

The death toll from the earthquake that has risen to over 800, the Taliban government spokesperson has said, with the majority of deaths occurring in the remote Kunar province. About 800 people died and 2,500 others were injured in Kunar, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference in Kabul, adding that the toll of 12 dead and 255 injured in the Nangarhar province had not changed. Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the earthquake intensified existing humanitarian challenges in Afghanistan and urged international donors to support relief efforts. “This adds death and destruction to other challenges including drought and the forced return of millions of Afghans from neighbouring countries,” Grandi wrote on the social media platform X. Rescuers are operating across Afghanistan’s east, with helicopters helping bring the injured to safety, while rubble is combed through in the hunt for survivors. The Taliban interior ministry has said in a statement that the vast majority of deaths occurred in the Kunar region (610), with a further 12 deaths in Nangarhar. An unnamed but high-ranking Taliban official in the Kunar province has told BBC News that the rescue mission is now focused on finding survivors, not the dead. He said that rescue teams have been struggling to reach wounded people because significant numbers are waiting to be airlifted by helicopters as landslides have closed most of roads. More than 1.2 million people likely felt strong or very strong shaking after Sunday’s earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which recorded at least five aftershocks throughout the night. As a reminder, the magnitude 6 earthquake hit four provinces in eastern Afghanistan around midnight on Sunday, with the rugged, mountainous region of Kunar the worst affected, triggering landslides and flooding. The Afghan Red Crescent said its officials and medical teams have “rushed to the affected areas” of the earthquake and are “providing emergency assistance to impacted families”. Humanitarian agencies say they are fighting a forgotten crisis in Afghanistan, where the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid. “So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work,” a spokesperson of Afghanistan’s foreign office said on Monday. Rescuers have been battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake. “The area of the earthquake was affected by heavy rain in the last 24-48 hours as well, so the risk of landslides and rock slides is also quite significant - that is why many of the roads are impassable,” Kate Carey, an officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha), told Reuters. One resident in Afghanistan’s Nurgal district, one of the worst-affected areas in Kunar, said almost the entire village had collapsed under the force of the earthquake. “Children are under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble. Young people are under the rubble,” the villager, who did not give his name, told the Associated Press. Muhammad Aziz, a labourer from Kunar’s Nur Gul district, said 10 of his relatives, including his five children, had been killed in the earthquake and many people from his village remained trapped under the rubble. “The poor people in this area have lost everything,” he said. “There is death in every home, and beneath the rubble of each roof, there are dead bodies.”

‘Coalition of willing’ to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine in meeting on Thursday – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap! The so-called “Coalition of the Willing” will meet on Thursday to “discuss work on security guarantees for Ukraine carried out in recent weeks and take stock of the consequences to be drawn from Russia’s attitude, which stubbornly refuses peace,” the Élysée Palace said (10:05, 14:22, 16:10). The meeting comes as it emerged that Russia is believed to have jammed the satellite signal of a plane carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, over Bulgaria (11:05, 12:29, 12:34). Separately, EU’s von der Leyen clashed publicly with German defence minister Boris Pistorius, after she spoke in a newspaper interview with the FT that Europeans had “pretty precise plans” for deploying troops to Ukraine, with Berlin saying she had no mandate to discuss the issue (10:24, 10:47, 13:05, 17:21). And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Climate change kills, Spanish PM tells deniers at launch of plan to tackle crisis

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: “If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener.” Sánchez said August’s heatwave-fuelled wildfires – which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza and required “the biggest human and technical deployment” ever seen in Spain – showed that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. He said waiting any longer would be dangerous and expensive, and he criticised those who deny the realities of global heating in Spain. Over the past five years, he said, the climate emergency had caused more than 20,000 deaths and cost the public purse €32bn (£28bn) in material losses. “We need to mobilise as a society against climate change, which is a common enemy that lies beyond ideologies,” he said. “Climate change kills. It kills. And that’s why we have to be aware of everything it represents in terms of insecurity and in terms of the risks it poses to our lives. “The climate change denial that’s coming from an important part [of society] – and which is growing as a result of the lies spread on social networks by some members of our political class – is as incomprehensible as it is worrying.” He proposed a series of initiatives including a state civil protection agency to coordinate crisis responses, a network of climate refuges across the country and a rethink of forest management and land use. Only by acting now, he said, could the country hope to avert similar disasters or reduce their impacts. “The biggest opportunity we have right now is to avoid this tragedy – and to do that, we need to do as a US president once advised when he said that the moment to fix your roof is when the sun’s shining and not when it’s raining,” he said. “I think he was right because these sixth-generation fires that have burned through more than 300,000 hectares in our country aren’t put out in summer; they’re put out in winter and in autumn. They’re put out by working all year.” Other measures in the socialist-led government’s “state pact to address the climate emergency” include funds to prepare for, and rebuild after, climate-related disasters, improvements to firefighting capacity, a plan to increase water resilience in the face of floods and droughts, and initiatives to fight rural depopulation and thus help keep the land clear of combustible material. Sánchez said farming would also play an important role in fighting the climate crisis, pointing to the benefits of extensive agriculture, careful grazing and efficient irrigation. The final two measures are promoting a “civic culture of prevention and reaction” and accelerating the green transition. The plan will be approved in cabinet on Tuesday and put out for public consultation.

‘The walls collapsed around me’: Afghans describe quake devastation

It was almost midnight when Hameed Jan was jolted awake in his bed by a deep rumble. Powerful tremors were shaking his small house in Piran village, in Afghanistan’s Kunar region, and he could see the walls beginning to crack. “I jumped out of bed and rushed to where my children and parents were sleeping,” Jan said. “I managed to rescue two of my children and brought them outside to safety. I went back inside to save my younger siblings, but as I did the roof and walls collapsed around me.” As the magnitude-6 earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan late on Sunday night, Jan found himself buried in the rubble of his own house. As much as he tried to claw at the debris, he struggled to push his head through the wreckage. It took villagers five hours to finally free him. When he finally broke through, he was greeted with scenes of tragedy and devastation. His wife, two sons and two brothers were among the dead after the powerful earthquake had razed entire villages across the region to the ground. In the poverty-stricken, mountainous terrain of Kunar, most homes in the affected villages had been made only of mud, giving people little defence from the debris and floods caused by the earthquake when it struck as they slept. Most homes lay in piles of rubble or had been washed away entirely. “It felt as if the entire mountain was collapsing on us,” Jan said. “Our village has been completely devastated and residential areas wiped out.” The official death toll stood at 800 on Monday evening, with more than 2,500 injured, and was widely expected to rise significantly. Many in the villages of Kunar remained unaccounted for and rescuers continued to pull bodies from the rubble as all local hospitals declared a state of emergency. The Taliban, who took control of the country more than four years ago when its internationally recognised government collapsed, dispatched helicopters but many areas remained impossible to access. Sanaullah, another resident of Kunar province, had been away from his village when the earthquake struck. When he travelled back on Monday, he found that his house had been reduced to rubble and his brother had been killed alongside his five children. “It is the story of each and every house here,” he said. “Everyone I know here has lost at least three to five family members.” Abdul Rahim, a cleric in Kunar, said graveyards in Mazar valley in Kunar were now overflowing with the dead. “Everywhere people are crying and embracing one another following a mass funeral,” he said. “The death toll is so high that graveyards are overflowing, and local people are busy digging graves in advance as bodies arrive every half hour.” Many of those affected were critical of the rescue efforts by the Taliban, which was widely seen to lack the resources, manpower and funds to deal with a crisis on this scale. Since the Taliban retook power in 2021, it has become increasingly difficult for NGOs to operate in the country, particularly amid the draconian ban on women’s employment and education, and most foreign governments have withdrawn aid from Afghanistan, now one of the poorest countries in the world. Sohail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesperson, called on international organisations to step in and offer assistance in the wake of the disaster. “Many villages are not accessible yet,” he said. “I fear the casualties are very high.” One resident from the Maza Dara area, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely, criticised the Taliban rescue efforts. “There are women and children pleading for help but there are no authorities present to help them,” he said. “Everyone is trapped under the rubble and we are helpless and seeing them dying in front of our eyes,” he added. “There is no one here to help those buried and alive in the debris. There is no one here to remove the dead.”