From the centre stage in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as China staged its largest ever military parade, President Xi Jinping sent an unmistakable message to the world and, in particular, to his rivals in the West.

Flanked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin to his right, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to his left, Xi engineered a defining image of this decade, if not the 21st century. For the first time in history, the trio appeared in public together , and to laud China’s military prowess no less, signalling their growing affinity in a shared anti-US cause and furthering the image of what some analysts have called an “axis of autocracy”.

From Tiananmen Square – where a civilian groundswell for Chinese democracy was snuffed out by the military in 1989 – the message was clear. For the sanctioned, s

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