Of China and Trump's Insatiable Vanity

China's president, Xi Jinping, has been busy on the diplomatic front.

- STEFAN WOLFF

China has just hosted the largest annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), followed by an impressive military parade to mark the defeat of Japan in the second world war — all accompanied by key bilateral meetings with heads of state from like-minded countries. You could be forgiven for thinking Beijing is now the diplomatic capital of the world.

But look behind the facade of bonhomie on display in the Chinese capital, and the unity underpinning a new China-led global order looks a lot more fragile than Xi would have you believe.

The most important result of the SCO summit on August 31 and September 1 was not the fact that leaders adopted a lengthy communique and more than 20 joint statements on issues as diverse as artificial intelligence, green industries and international trade. What mattered most was the attendance of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the rapprochement between New Delhi and Beijing.

This was Modi's first visit to China in seven years. That his country's relations with China continue to improve was made clear by Modi's positive assessment of his bilateral meeting with Xi ("fruitful") and also their relationship, which he said is based on "mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual sensitivity".

Another obvious indicator of China trying to pull India closer into the SCO fold was its unequivocal condemnation of the terror attacks in Pahalgam in Kashmir in April 2025. China's earlier failure to do so had prevented India's defence minister from signing a similar communique at a meeting of SCO defence ministers in June.