September 4, 2025
Diane Francis
China hosted world leaders this week and showed off its military hardware at the latest Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and representatives from more than 20 countries attended. Beijing put on an extravaganza and parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII. However, the version awarded China an outsized role in the victory, while America was given a lesser one. Some touted the event as the beginning of a new world order, but it was mostly a “pity party” of leaders assembled there who took turns airing their grievances toward Western dominance and Trump’s tariff “bullying”. In response, President Trump cheekily posted: “Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully honored and remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice! May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America.”
Terrible Trio
This was not the launch of a new world order, as some believe, but was China’s biggest attempt as yet to project power and showcase a new narrative based on revisionism and propaganda. Most significantly, however, was the fact that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned up and posed often with Xi and Putin. This was a sign, speculated some, that an important U.S. ally was starting to shift the global balance. “We are partners, not rivals,” said Xi of his new friendship with Modi. But the pairing was not love so much as common anger. Modi attended because he was upset with Trump’s high tariffs on India’s oil imports from Russia (not yet imposed on China), in addition to other slights and policies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed speculation that the global tectonic plates were shifting away from the Western alliance. “This is a longstanding meeting, it’s called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and I think it’s largely performative. I think at the end of the day, India is the most populous democracy in the world. Their values are much closer to ours and to China’s than to Russia’s.”
The confab was mostly about deepening commercial partnerships. The facts are that Russia is financially and militarily bogged down in a war it cannot win against a much smaller foe. China’s economy sputters. And North Korea, like Russia, is a nuclearized pariah and is dependent on Beijing. China supplies North Korea with most of its food, and it supplies Russia’s war with massive income from oil sales, along with technology and equipment for its war machine. China is the cornerstone of this troika, but it has its own problems. Trade sags, its real estate sector has not recovered since its terrible crash, and youth unemployment hits record highs. For these and other reasons, Xi decided to stage an enormous parade and festivities — using enough people to populate the city of Denver — to distract, promote a fake narrative, and generate national pride.
Modi and Xi
India’s participation is another issue. The wily Modi was there to thumb his nose at Trump, in front of his own press corps and public, because he was insulted that America would treat India worse than China (which hasn’t gotten the oil sanctions as yet) or even than Russia, which has not been sanctioned at all despite its genocidal war. But India’s business elite has been unethical and geopolitically treacherous by profiteering mightily from buying cheap Russian oil. They have, in essence, set up a gigantic “laundering” scheme: They import illicit Russian oil sanctions-free, then refine it and resell it as gasoline or other products back to Europe, where direct purchases of Russian oil are prohibited. In other words, India’s captains of industry have been running a “sanctions laundry”, and these are the same business interests that have kept Modi in power. On top of that, India’s trade protectionism toward America has been fierce and excessive, and has made bilateral tariff negotiations difficult with Washington.
The Economist blamed Trump for humiliating India with insensitive pronouncements and ill-informed policymaking. “President Donald Trump has undone 25 years of diplomacy by embracing Pakistan after it conflicted with India in May, and now is singling out India for even higher tariffs than China. He cannot have thought through how the world’s most populous country and fifth-largest economy would react. The other humiliation is Mr Trump’s love-in with Pakistan. After a terrorist attack in India that Mr Modi blamed on Pakistan, the two rivals fought a four-day skirmish in May, involving over 100 warplanes and raising fears of a nuclear clash. Yet Mr Trump is now exploring crypto and mining deals in Pakistan. He has dined in the White House with (Pakistan’s) Field-Marshal Asim Munir, its hardline army boss and de facto ruler, who is proposing Mr Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. America has offered to mediate over disputed Kashmir, breaking its own long-standing position and an Indian taboo.”
Modi isn’t pulling his punches either. He claimed the U.S. administration had asked it to purchase Russian oil to keep the markets calm, while pointing to the hypocrisy of the European Union and the U.S. existing trade with Moscow. “The country has aimed at Washington, saying the U.S. continues to import uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for the electric-vehicle industry, as well as fertilizers and chemicals from Russia. U.S. bilateral trade with Russia in 2024 stood at $5.2 billion, down from nearly $36 billion in 2021, government data showed,” wrote the Economist. At the same time, Trump was “aggrieved” and embarrassed because Modi publicly undercut his attempt to claim credit for playing a role in the India-Pakistan ceasefire, which was negotiated by Indian officials.
Trump’s form of “personal diplomacy” is hazardous and allows his ego and business ambition to get in the way of solutions. Similar issues prevent his Ukraine-Russia peace effort from succeeding. But in this case, China’s Xi capitalized on this by courting Modi, and now the optics at his summit couldn’t be better for him or for Putin. Pictures of them laughing with Modi during an impromptu huddle today on the sidelines of the summit are publicity “gold” and signal the beginning of a new chapter in regional diplomacy and geo-economics.
The lesson to be drawn here is that as Trump’s tariffs and foreign-policy swings push around allies and foes alike and upend America’s global standing, China’s leader has cleverly elevated
Beijing’s position on the world stage by making up with Modi. Two years ago, Xi snubbed a Group of 20 summit in New Delhi over building tensions. Now, with the US targeting Indian and Chinese exports with tariffs past 50%, the neighbors are putting aside their border dispute and eyeing ways to do more business.
But India occupies a special place and must remain America’s indispensable partner in Asia because it is a democracy, a rising power, and the only country big enough to counterbalance China on the Asian landmass. Washington has courted Delhi for years through defense pacts, trade deals, and the Quadrilateral alliance with Japan and Australia, designed to contain China in the region. All this continued apace until Trump blew it. In his first term, in 2018, he slapped tariffs on Indian steel and aluminum and removed India’s special trade status. This term, he’s smacked them with tough tariffs and cozied up to Pakistan’s leadership—long India’s nemesis—while berating Modi in private conversations.
Xi noticed. So did Putin.
In March, Xi wrote a private letter to India to capitalize on the alienation underway as a result of Trump’s tariffs by improving ties and settling their border dispute. The result was this summit, Modi’s first trip to Beijing in years. After punitive tariffs were announced on India, they drew closer, and Modi allowed himself to be part of Xi’s summit of defiance against Washington. Now, Modi sits in Tianjin across the table from Putin and Xi, hedging his bets. He hasn’t abandoned Washington, but he’s leaning into alternative forums like the SCO, for domestic reasons and for economic ones as well. For Xi, this is a geopolitical jackpot: the chance to pry the world’s largest democracy away from the United States. For Trump, it’s obviously essential that he get India back onside.
Diane Francis
National Post Editor-at-Large
Kyiv Post
Atlantic Council in DC Senior Fellow Eurasia Center
Hudson Institute, Kleptocracy Initiative
Canada-US Law Institute, Case University Law School, Cleveland