Dressed in a full replica of Chairman Mao's mouse-colored French coat, Chairman Xi stated: «Today humanity once again stands at a crossroads between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, mutually beneficial cooperation and zero-sum game». It's hard to argue with that, as with many other equally evasive and empty formulations of speeches at the SCO summit in Tianjin and during the parade in Beijing. Much more important was the attempt to present the first approaches to forming a new world order, whose even approximate image cannot be drawn without some distortion of history. And here the role of photo and video images is great: instead of Yalta with Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, it features Beijing with Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. The first version of the picture contained the seed of the cold war between allies, the second contains nothing but an alliance of autocrats sending greetings to the West in general and the United States in particular.
Forgotten Chiang Kai-shek and His «Clique»
Trump, having observed the SCO and Beijing, wrote on social media: The USA helped China «gain FREEDOM from a hostile foreign invader»; «Many Americans died fighting for China's victory and glory. I hope they will be rightfully honored and remembered». Also: «Send my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un while you plot against the United States of America». Probably, even Trump himself could not decipher the tone of his last remark, although it contains a simple statement: all Chinese meetings and celebrations are a challenge to him. He could not, as Nixon and Kissinger once did, build relationships within the USSR-USA-PRC triangle. Trump was essentially «divorced» by Putin and left alone with his chaotic tariff policy, in which, for some reason, India turned out to be the aggrieved party. A brilliant diplomatic, political, geopolitical failure, which allowed Putin in his speech at the SCO meeting to call the «Euro-Atlantic» model «obsolete». And this shortly after the meeting in Anchorage. Indeed, by his actions, Trump really questioned the unity of the States and the European Union.
Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un. China, September 3, 2025. Photo: Komsomolskaya Pravda
The US president's frustration is understandable in connection with Xi's statement that the «main victors», as Chinese comrades insist, in the «World Anti-Fascist War» (not the «Second World War»!) were the USSR and China. There are no questions about the Soviet Union. China, however, was in the status of an ally within the anti-Hitler coalition. However, the main real partner of the allies, including even the USSR, was the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek. Already as a result of post-war events, the «Chiang Kai-shek clique» settled in Taiwan, forming for decades ahead one of the many unresolved political-territorial problems, relevant also for the modern world disorder. But to attribute victory to Mao Zedong...
Mao sat in a cave in the so-called Special Region of China (Yan'an), complained that the main aid of the allies was going to the Kuomintang, that is, the competing military force fighting the Japanese, smoked a lot and drank no less (whiskey and gin within the framework of American aid), remaining, as Pavel Vladimirov wrote in his stunning diaries, the Comintern liaison at the CPC Central Committee, «a great lover of carnal pleasures». He was ready to provide the Americans with the armed forces of the Communist Party of China (CPC), but only on the condition of their reorientation from the Kuomintang to the CPC, maneuvered, demanded help from the Soviet Union in the most difficult months of the war, when there was no time for the Japanese front. In August 1945, Vladimirov recorded: «For Mao Zedong, we are not ideological allies, but a tool he hopes to use to solve his own goals». Chiang Kai-shek sent Stalin a congratulatory telegram in connection with the USSR's declaration of war on Japan. And Mao had «an organic dislike for the Soviet Union». Once again, relations between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek worsened; Vladimirov writes: «In fact, Mao's actions created the prerequisites for a military confrontation between the USA and the USSR».
Well, then came the period of «the Russian and the Chinese are brothers forever» (words by Vershinin, music by Muradeli), which vividly reminds of today's words about «eternal friendship». The first version of eternal friendship ended in the 1950s when the leadership of China, feeling internal strength, considered the course of the Soviet Union revisionist. Hostility, and quite acute, with mutual claims and very strong expressions (then the Soviet Union was called «hegemonistic»), continued for more than three decades, the peak was an armed incident around Damansky Island (there is also a song about this, performed personally by Kobzon: «Sleep, boys, sleep peacefully, soldiers. / The highest reward for you will be silence»). Normalization of relations took place only under Mikhail Gorbachev.
And again — «brothers forever». Only if once China was considered the younger brother, then in «brothers forever 2.0» the younger brother is Putin's Russia. Used against the Americans, as Mao did in the 1940s. The appearance of Kim Jong Un as the third character of the alliance also reminds of former times — the Korean War, one of the proxy battles of the USSR and the USA.
According to the Precepts of Cao Cao
And again, the picture is important. Chairman Xi, in Mao's French coat, managed to portray himself as the first among equals, a patron of both Russia and North Korea: Putin and Kim were on his right and left, like loyal advisors or bodyguards of the Chinese leader. By the way, it is claimed that the rapprochement between Putin and Kim did not delight the leader of China — the participation of North Korean troops in battles in the Kursk region, which was initially hidden and then became a matter of pride, apparently passed him by.
So Trump feels that everything happening is a conspiracy against America. They were waiting for Putin, Xi, and Trump dividing the world, instead got (and Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) — Putin, Xi, and Kim. Such is the Yalta in Beijing. However, there was no Yalta — only the picture remained. Spectacular, but, by and large, so far changing nothing in the world order. So far, only Chinese car-stocked outlets, the promise to build «Power of Siberia 2», which did not raise but lowered the stock market, and the idea of a trial visa-free regime, the conditions of which are not yet clear, remain from the «eternal friendship».
A new world order? How can it be built only by the efforts of Asian autocrats — Putin can no longer be called European, the choice is made. With Cuba, Slovakia, and Serbia, which did not represent the Asian world, it is impossible to complete the new model — somewhere you need to find a place for such a trifle as the USA. There is also the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and so on. The result is only excessively lush and expensive PR, having little to do with real interactions of countries even within just one Asian region, where there are plenty of contradictions and even armed conflicts.
Irreversible rise of Asia? If you look at it from the point of view of eternity, there have been and will be different periods in history, and without cooperation and trade with the West, of course, any Asian tiger turns out to be paper. Tons of nuanced books have been written about this — from Niall Ferguson and Yegor Gaidar to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.
This is not a new world order. Rather, the division of the world into autocracies and democracies. And where does Trump's USA end up? Perhaps the realization of the emergence of a new «axis» and friendship against him will prompt the American president to return to the «obsolete Euro-Atlantic model»? Otherwise, he hangs in the void between Europe and the alliance of China, Russia, and North Korea — who could have thought of such an implausible dystopia in 2000 when Yeltsin's heir came to power.
Cao Cao, a general of the Han Empire era (3rd century AD), said that «the state is based on strong soldiers and sufficient food». It seems that modern autocrats, including Putin, are advancing towards such a «traditional value» in a fierce backward movement. And what else is needed to force their peoples to be silent? As in the Italian joke, Mussolini told his son: «Eat and be silent!»
So far, we see a kind of failure to the end of the 1940s, when «Stalin and Mao listened to us». (They say the author of the words appeared in various public places with a joyful cynical greeting: «Greetings from Mao Zedong!») Now «Putin and Xi listen to us» with a representative of the Kim dynasty joining them.
There is even less security on the globe. Especially since, judging by the conversation between Putin and Xi about increasing life expectancy (this is one of the few things that truly interests them), they plan to live to about 150 years. Such is the biopolitics: in Russia, according to well-known wisdom, one must live long. In China, it turns out, too.
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.