The week the optics of a new world order were put on display

Waving beatifically over the crowd of 50,000 spectators assembled in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on Wednesday, Xi Jinping exuded an aura of confidence that many leaders in the west could only envy.

- Amy Hawkins, Andrew Roth and Helen Davidson

Waving beatifically over the crowd of 50,000 spectators assembled in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on Wednesday, Xi Jinping exuded an aura of confidence that many leaders in the west could only envy. To his left stood North Korea's Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of an increasingly strident hermit kingdom. To his right was the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Xi's "old friend" and China's biggest ally in opposing the US-led world order. The last time the leaders of these three countries were seen together in public was at the height of the cold war.

"Humanity once again faces the choice between peace or war, dialogue or confrontation," the Chinese president told the gathered crowds. His insistence that China would "adhere to the path of peaceful development" was punctured somewhat by China's biggest ever military parade, which marched through the square beneath his rostrum on top of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the entrance to the Forbidden City, which has - on and off - been the seat of Chinese power since the 15th century. Alongside Xi, Putin and Kim, a gaggle of global autocrats solemnly watched the display of Chinese military might.

The same day, more than 5,000 miles away, in Paris, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his allies assembled for a summit on the future of Ukraine, a country that has been wracked by war since Russia's invasion in 2022. The so-called "coalition of the willing", led by Britain and France, did not include the US. The optics of the new global order could not be clearer: an anti-western bloc, helmed by China, on one side, and a western alliance of democracies, lacking its traditional leader in Washington, on the other.