Beijing has been at the center of a whirlwind of diplomatic activity in early September 2025, as China’s President Xi Jinping hosted the largest annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Tianjin, followed closely by a grand military parade in the capital. These events, attended by an array of world leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, have thrust China’s ambitions for global leadership into the spotlight. Yet, beneath the impressive displays of unity and spectacle, the alliances and strategies underpinning China’s vision for a new world order appear far more complex—and fragile—than they might seem at first glance.
The SCO summit, held on August 31 and September 1, 2025, was notable not just for its scale but for the presence of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This marked Modi’s first visit to China in seven years, signaling a significant thaw in the often-tense relationship between the two Asian giants. According to The Conversation, Modi characterized his meeting with Xi as “fruitful” and described their relationship as one of “mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual sensitivity.” This positive tone was further underscored by China’s unequivocal condemnation of the terror attacks in Pahalgam, Kashmir, in April 2025—a move that helped mend fences after previous diplomatic snubs and allowed for greater cooperation within the SCO framework.
At the summit, leaders adopted a lengthy communique and more than 20 joint statements on a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence to green industries and international trade. While these documents showcased common ground, the real headline was the public display of solidarity among Xi, Modi, and Putin. Their unity, however, was less about shared values and more about a collective opposition to the current US-dominated international order. As Professor Stefan Wolff of the University of Birmingham observed in The Conversation, “they are united by little more than their opposition to the current US-dominated order.”
China’s ambitions were on full display just days later, when Beijing hosted a spectacular military parade on September 3 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II. The event drew global attention, with Putin and Kim Jong Un in attendance, as highlighted by France 24. Modi, notably, did not attend the parade, a subtle but telling signal that India is wary of being too closely associated with North Korea and the China-Russia axis.
Xi used the SCO summit to promote his Global Governance Initiative, a sweeping blueprint that aims to transform the United Nations into an institution led by Beijing. But as The Conversation points out, the prospects for rapid change remain limited. Both China and India are deeply woven into the existing international financial and economic systems, and while they may resent certain US policies—especially the protectionist tariffs championed by President Donald Trump—their leverage is not as great as their rhetoric might suggest.
China’s approach to reshaping the global order is multifaceted, involving not only the SCO but also the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The BRI, global in scope and focused on economic expansion, overlaps with the regional, security-oriented SCO. Yet, as Wolff notes, these efforts “begin to look less like a coherent strategy than a series of trial balloons—with even Xi unsure which will eventually pave the way to China’s global leadership role.”
The week’s diplomatic activity was not limited to summits and parades. On September 7, France 24 published a roundup of major events, including the Beijing military parade, a deadly cable car derailment in Lisbon, and a devastating 6.0-magnitude earthquake in northeast Afghanistan, underscoring the interconnectedness and volatility of the current global landscape.
Meanwhile, the relationship between China and Russia took a decidedly warmer turn on the travel front. On September 2, China announced that Russian citizens would be able to stay in China without a visa for up to 30 days starting September 15. This gesture was quickly reciprocated—at least in spirit—by Putin, who, during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 4, declared, “Russia, undoubtedly, will reciprocate this friendly act. We will do the same.” According to the South China Morning Post, this sparked a surge in interest among Chinese travelers for flights and hotels in Russia, with online searches increasing more than sixfold within an hour of the news breaking. The two countries also resumed their visa-free policy for group tours, a practice suspended during nearly three years of strict COVID-19 border controls.
These moves are more than just gestures of goodwill; they signal a growing alignment between Beijing and Moscow, both economically and diplomatically. Yet, as the week’s events reveal, not all of China’s partners are equally enthusiastic about every aspect of its burgeoning sphere of influence. India, for instance, while warming to China in the context of the SCO and cooperating on issues like counterterrorism and trade, remains cautious about aligning too closely with China’s other key partners—particularly North Korea.
The United States, for its part, appears to be grappling with its own strategic missteps. As The Conversation notes, more than two decades of careful US-India diplomacy have recently been undermined by President Trump’s “America-first” policies, including punitive tariffs on India and a rekindling of relations with Pakistan. Trump’s assertion that China, Russia, and North Korea “conspire against the United States” has raised alarms among America’s allies, who hope for a more measured approach to managing the challenge posed by China’s ambitions.
Despite the impressive optics of the SCO summit and the Beijing parade, the alliances at the heart of China’s vision for a new world order remain fragile. The ties between China, Russia, and India are held together more by their shared dissatisfaction with US leadership than by a cohesive, positive agenda. And while Xi’s efforts to build a Chinese-dominated sphere of influence in Asia are logical from a strategic standpoint, the lack of a clear, unified strategy—and the reluctance of some partners to fully commit—suggests that Beijing’s path to global leadership is anything but assured.
In short, the past week has underscored both the ambition and the complexity of China’s quest to reshape the international order. The world is watching closely, as the balance of power continues to shift—sometimes subtly, sometimes with great fanfare—but always with consequences that reach far beyond the borders of any one nation.