By displaying China’s growing military power, the September 3 parade aimed to intimidate adversaries, impress friends, and justify government policies. Yet, Russia’s failures in Ukraine remind us that organizing a parade and winning a war are different endeavors.
The Chinese government displayed its military and diplomatic prowess with its flashy September 3 military parade. U.S. President Donald Trump termed the event “very, very impressive.” The occasion unquestionably showcased some striking cutting-edge weaponry, especially compared to the last such parade in 2018. The parade’s goals included intimidating potential Chinese adversaries, impressing foreign friends, and justifying government policies to domestic audiences.
Those marching People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units represented both the traditional services (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force) and the newer service arms (Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force). According to PRC sources, the PLA displayed only systems manufactured in China. However, some weapons still appear to be under development or available in small numbers.
The PLA Air Force and Rocket Forces exhibited several advanced warplanes and missiles, such as the H-6J long-range naval bomber equipped with supersonic YJ-12 anti-ship cruise missiles. The upgraded variant of the “Guam Killer” DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile will complement China’s already sizable portfolio of ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. The PLA can launch these from a variety of air, sea, and land-based platforms.
The parade marked the first occasion that Beijing presented all three legs of its nuclear triad in a single showing. These included China’s first air-launched strategic missile, the JL-1, its next-generation submarine-launched JL-3 intercontinental-range system, and the first viewing of its DF-61 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). The new missiles appear to have longer ranges than their predecessors. They may also be more accurate and possess superior countermeasures against ballistic missile defenses.
China continues to develop and deploy new solid-fueled and liquid-fueled ICBMs. The PLA can store its solid-fueled rockets more safely and launch them more rapidly, but liquid-fueled missiles of the same size can carry larger payloads, comprising both warheads and decoys, due to their greater throw weight. The United States only fields solid-fueled ICBMs, but the PRC apparently has devoted sufficient resources to build and operate both types, giving its leadership more warfighting options.
Despite having more personnel than any other military, the PLA has evidently learned the lesson from the Ukraine War that having superior military drones could prove decisive in battle, especially for reconnaissance and strike. The parade confirmed the PLA Air Force’s novel interest in employing air combat support drones as collaborative combat aircraft (“loyal wingmen”) to crewed planes. The PLA Navy similarly showcased new robotic surface ships and helicopters that could lay and detect mines as well as enhance the Navy’s maritime domain awareness. The novel deep-sea underwater drones are well-suited for enforcing robust blockades and severing underwater cables around Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.
The PLA also flaunted counter-drone systems with lasers, microwaves, electronic warfare, and other technologies to complement more traditional kinetic air and missile defense systems. The variety of defense systems reflects the experience in Ukraine, where drones can operate individually, in swarms, and in partnership with decoy drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and crewed aircraft. They can also have diverse guidance systems, ranging from wires to fiber optics to fire-and-forget inertial guidance systems. The PRC is evidently pursuing a layered network of countermeasures against all drone threats. Some of the systems on display may also have an undeclared counterspace capacity for disrupting or downing satellites.
By holding these high-profile events, the PRC pursued several critical political-military goals. The parade most visibly aimed to deter the United States and other potential adversaries. In calling on the PLA to “firmly safeguard China’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity,” Xi wanted to communicate that, “The Chinese nation is a great nation that is never intimidated by any bullies.” When he stated that, “Today, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win cooperation and zero-sum game,” Xi meant that Washington and its allies had to choose since, “The Chinese people firmly stand on the right side of history and the progress of human civilization.”
Xi’s keynote speech also aimed to appeal to other foreign audiences alienated from various U.S. foreign policies. The parade’s formal title—a “solemn commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”— affirmed the view, proposed in Beijing and Moscow for several years now, that their countries played the leading role in defeating the Axis powers, even though the PRC did not exist before 1949 and only join the UN decades after the war. Additionally, the statement marking “the 80th Anniversary of the Victory in World War II and the Founding of the United Nations” and related PRC messaging implied that the threat of fascism remains in Western countries and that China and its partners at the parade have now become the champions of “safeguarding the foundation of the postwar international order.”
Though another goal of the parade may have been to showcase PRC arms for sale, no foreign forces participate
Through the parade and his address, Xi was also seeking to appeal to various domestic audiences. By extolling how the CCP had achieved “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” starting with the victory over Japan, and continuing with the construction of one of the most powerful armed forces in the world, he was defending the PRC regime’s historical legitimacy, the primacy of the Party over the military, and the unprecedented anti-corruption purges of senior defense leaders. Furthermore, Xi appealed to patriotism and pride while demonstrating his authority in orchestrating such a prominent political-military event.
The large number of novel systems on display illustrates why the Pentagon calculates that the annual PLA budget could amount to almost $450 billion, approximately double its official figure. Even so, how well these systems, and the PLA, will perform in wartime is unpredictable. China has not fought a major armed conflict in decades. The Russian failures in Ukraine underscore how a military that appears superior on paper, with larger forces and superior weaponry, can fail disastrously in the field due to poor leadership, low morale, and other deficiencies.
