The Chinese military parade that had the world talking last week was more than just pageantry. It was a declaration that Chinese leader Xi Jinping sees himself in a race against time to secure his place in history.

For Xi, who has just turned 72, unification with Taiwan is not just a policy aim; it is the crown jewel that would elevate him above Mao Zedong and cement his reputation as the greatest leader in modern Chinese history.

The timing and staging of the parade underscored this urgency, a showcase of power before an audience of foreign leaders and cameras at a high-stakes anniversary event in Beijing.

Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, unified the country under Communist rule, but left it poor and isolated.

Xi’s mission is to finish the job by formally ending the Chinese civil war that pitted the Communists against the Nationalists and annexing the island of Taiwan to lock in his place in the party pantheon.

But waiting is dangerous. Inside the Chinese Communist Party, loyalty is transactional and rivals constantly watch for weaknesses.

In 2012, for example, Bo Xilai, a rising star and once-close ally of Xi’s, suffered a dramatic and very public downfall. The scandal could easily have consumed Xi, but he turned it into an opportunity, using Bo’s downfall to cement his own rise.

That episode remains a cautionary tale in Beijing’s elite politics: power must never falter; momentum must never slip.

More than a decade later, Xi has removed or sidelined nearly every rival and manoeuvred himself into a third term. However, he still governs with the urgency of someone who knows how quickly fortunes can turn.

US catching up on hypersonic missiles

Abroad, the strategic equation is also changing.

For years, Beijing enjoyed a headstart in hypersonic weapons, anti-ship missiles and industrial production. China’s air and advanced missile defence systems have been designed to threaten US carrier strike groups and complicate allied operations across East and North Asia.

But Washington may soon close the gap. The Pentagon requested nearly US$7 billion (A$10.6 billion) in hypersonic missile program funding in the fiscal year 2024–25, while private firms are accelerating innovation in reusable missile testbeds and propulsion.

The US Navy is repurposing Zumwalt-class destroyers for its Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic system, giving the navy its first maritime platform capable of hypersonic strike. Sea-based demonstrations of the new system are planned as soon as the program matures.

Every step narrows China’s military advantage.

US shipbuilding looking for revival, too

The industrial rivalry between China and the US is a similar story.

China currently dominates global commercial shipbuilding, a dual-use foundation that also supports naval expansion.

A recent analysis found one Chinese shipbuilder alone built more ships by tonnage in 2024 than the entire US industry has produced since the second world war. Foreign ship orders are underwriting this building capacity, which can rapidly pivot to naval platforms.

This edge has continued in 2025. Xi is counting on this industrial base to give China an edge in a future conflict over Taiwan.

However, US and allied investments in shipbuilding are starting to respond.

The Trump administration has set up a White House office dedicated to fixing US shipbuilding, while the Pentagon has requested US$47 billion (A$71 billion) for Navy ship construction in its annual budget.

Japan and South Korea, both major shipbuilders, have also added significant resources to their shipbuilding capacity in an acknowledgement of the changing power structures in East and North Asia. US politicians recently visited both countries to secure greater assistance in boosting US building capacity, too.

China is also getting older

More urgent still is the demographic clock. China’s population shrank by about two million in 2023, the second straight annual decline, as births fell to nine million, half the 2017 level.

The working-age cohort is shrinking, while the number of people over 60 years old is expected to rise to roughly a third of China’s population by the mid-2030s. This will be a major drag on growth and strain on social systems.

Demography is not destiny, but it compresses timelines for leaders who want to lock in strategic gains.

America’s competitive advantage

There is a final, often overlooked problem. The most efficient political-warfare system of the modern era is capitalism – the engine of competition that rewards adaptation and punishes failure.

The US still possesses a uniquely deep capacity for “creative destruction” – it constantly churns through firms and ideas that power long-term growth and reinvention.

That dynamism is messy, decentralised and often uncomfortable. However, it remains America’s strategic ace: it can retool industries, scale breakthrough technologies and absorb shocks faster than any centrally directed system.

China can imitate many things, but it cannot easily replicate that market-driven ecosystem of risk capital, failure tolerance and rapid reallocation.

All of this explains why Xi wants the world to believe China’s rise is unstoppable and unification with Taiwan is inevitable.

But inevitability is fragile. Beijing’s “win without fighting” approach, which involves grey-zone coercion, economic leverage and an incremental, “salami-slicing” approach to territorial claims in the South China Sea, has worked because it relies on patience and subtlety. The more Xi accelerates, the more he risks miscalculation.

A forced attempt to seize Taiwan would be the most dangerous gamble of his rule. If the People’s Liberation Army falters, the consequences would be severe: strategic humiliation abroad, political turbulence at home, and a punctured narrative of inevitability that sustains party authority.

Sun Tzu’s greatest victory is the one won without fighting, but only when time favours patience. For Xi Jinping, time is not on his side.

Ian Langford, Executive Director, Security & Defence PLuS and Professor, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Julian Koplin, Monash University

What do world leaders talk about when they think we’re not listening? This week it was the idea of living forever.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping were caught off-guard at a military parade in Beijing discussing the possibility of using biotechnology to pursue immortality. In particular, Putin suggested repeated organ transplants could keep a person young forever.

There’s a lot to unpack here. The idea of lifespan extension is less outlandish, and less objectionable, than it might seem. But as a bioethicist, I do have some concerns.

Could transplants allow us to live forever?

Putin’s suggestion that we can achieve immortality via repeated organ transplants is almost certainly false.

One obvious question is where these organs would come from. Transplantable organs are a scarce medical resource. Using them to sustain the life of an ageing autocrat would deprive others of life-saving transplants.

However, Putin may have been envisaging lab-grown organs created using stem cells. This approach would not deprive others of transplants.

Unfortunately for Putin, while scientists can grow miniature “organoids” that model some aspects of human tissues, creating full-size transplantable organs remains far beyond current capabilities.

Even if, hypothetically, we had access to limitless replacement organs, ageing erodes our body’s general resilience. This would make recovering from repeated transplant surgeries – which are significant operations – increasingly unlikely.

Our ageing brains present an even deeper obstacle. We can replace a kidney or a liver without any threat to our identity. But we cannot replace our brains; whoever inhabits our bodies after a brain transplant would not be us.

Other approaches

There may be better routes to increasing longevity.

Scientists have prolonged the lives of laboratory animals such as monkeys, mice and fruit flies through drugs, genetic alterations, dietary changes and cellular reprogramming (which involves reverting some of the body’s cells to a “younger”, more primitive state).

It’s always challenging to translate animal studies to humans. But nothing suggests human ageing is uniquely beyond modification.

In 2024, Putin launched a national project to combat ageing. Could Russia deliver the necessary scientific breakthrough?

Perhaps, though many experts are doubtful, given Russia’s fragile research infrastructure.

But Putin is not alone in funding longevity research. Breakthroughs might come from elsewhere – including, potentially, from major investments in anti-ageing biotechnologies from billionaires in the West.

Anti-ageing research could bring benefits

Whether they are authoritarian presidents or Silicon Valley billionaires, it’s easy to sneer at wealthy elites’ preoccupation with lifespan extension.

Death is the great leveller; it comes for us all. We understandably distrust those who want to rise above it.

But we need to disentangle motives and ethics. It is possible to pursue worthwhile projects for bad reasons.

For example, if I donate to an anti-malaria charity merely to impress my Tinder date, you might roll your eyes at my motivations. But the donation itself still achieves good.

The same applies to lifespan extension.

Anti-ageing research could have many benefits. Because ageing raises the risk of almost every major disease, slowing it could make people healthier at every age.

If we value preventing diseases such as heart disease, cancer and dementia, we should welcome research into slowing ageing (which could in turn help to reduce these problems).

Is seeking longer lives ethical?

Putin and Xi might seem less concerned with improving population health than with postponing their own deaths. But is it wrong to want longevity?

Many of us dread death – this is normal and understandable. Death deprives us of all the goods of life, while the prospect of dying can be frightening.

Nor is it suspect to want more than a “natural” lifespan. Since 1900, life expectancy in wealthy countries has risen by more than 30 years. We should welcome further improvements.

The most serious ethical concern about lifespan extension is that it will result in social stagnation.

Our views become increasingly rigid as we age. Young minds often bring new ideas.

If Taylor Swift is still topping the charts in 2089, many other musicians will miss out. And we will miss out on enjoying the evolution of pop music.

Music is one thing; morals are another. The 21st century is raising many new challenges – such as climate change and AI developments – that may benefit from fresh moral perspectives, and from the turnover of political power.

A Russia still ruled by Putin in 2150 will strike many as the starkest version of this worry. Fortunately, we need not be too concerned about a 200-year-old Putin. He is no longer young, and significant lifespan extension is probably decades away.

Still, the prospect of ageless autocrats should give us pause. We should welcome technologies that slow ageing and help us stay healthier for longer, while remembering that even good technologies can have bad effects.

If we succeed in dramatically extending lifespans, we will need to work out how to prevent our societies from becoming as static as some of the elites who lead them.

Julian Koplin, Lecturer in Bioethics, Monash University & Honorary fellow, Melbourne Law School, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Despite he and his government being in an overwhelmingly dominant position politically, Anthony Albanese sounded quite tetchy at times this week.

He argued the toss on the ABC when pressed, reasonably enough, for detail on the expensive deal for Nauru to take former immigration detainees. Later in the week, a brief Senate inquiry revealed the 30-year agreement could cost up to $2.5 billion.

Albanese dismissed as “not accurate” a story about officials helping the return to Australia of so-called “ISIS brides” and their families, when a fuller response would have been wiser. It emerged that while the government is not facilitating the repatriation, New South Wales and federal police are making arrangements for if and when the people arrive.

Albanese was on the back foot over issues of the government’s lack of transparency,  highlighted by aspects of new freedom of information legislation introduced this week. Although some changes are reasonable, the new regime will further restrict public access to information relating to decision-making at senior levels of government. Former crossbench senator Rex Patrick, who constantly runs FOI cases, describes it as an “Albanese counterrevolution” that “strips away citizens’ right to access important information”.

Perhaps the prime ministerial mood was darkened this week by his good political friend, former Victorian premier Dan Andrews, being caught up in a firestorm of criticism for attending China’s enormous military parade in Beijing on Wednesday.

Andrews is a private citizen now, but his presence in the “family photo” with the who’s who of the world’s dictators dismayed many people in Labor.

The parade highlighted the delicate diplomatic dance the Albanese government finds itself in with China. The show of strength sent unmistakable messages to the world. The Australian government kept its distance from the spectacle; embassy officials attended but Australia’s ambassador was in another part of China.

Albanese knew the presence of Andrews was unfortunate, although he held back from robust criticism. On Thursday, he told parliament, “I am not responsible for what every Australian citizen does”. (Andrews said in a Thursday statement the occasion had been a chance to “engage with regional leaders”.)

On the other side of politics, the opposition remains in a world of pain, deeply divided over net zero and with members breaking ranks, in comments or votes, apparently whenever they feel like it. This week several senators, including Nationals frontbenchers Bridget McKenzie and Ross Cadell, crossed the floor to support a motion moved by One Nation’s Pauline Hanson on immigration. So much for the Nationals’ agreement to accept the principle of shadow cabinet solidarity.

Separately, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price damaged the Liberals with an inflammatory comment about Indian immigration.

But amid her deep troubles, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley had a useful win this week. On Monday and Tuesday the opposition in question time targeted the new Minister for Aged Care Sam Rae over the unacceptably long waiting list for home care packages, and the delay of the roll-out of planned aged care reforms, from July to November.

Rae, it will be remembered, owed his elevation to the ministry after the election to being a factional numbers man for Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. Labor observers felt he held his own under the attack, but the government found itself in an untenable position.

The opposition had leverage because the government needed to get its latest aged care legislation through the Senate this week. On Wednesday morning, the Senate passed an amendment to bring forward a batch of home packages, when a rare combination of the Coalition, Greens and crossbenchers imposed an equally rare defeat on Labor. Although there was no division, the government registered its opposition.

Then almost immediately, Minister for Ageing Mark Butler announced the government would indeed bring forward the packages.

In the post-election Senate, the government typically only needs either the Greens or the Coalition to pass legislation – and they are usually on different sides of issues. But the unusual alignment this week shows that the Senate, although easier for the government than in its first term, retains the ability to embarrass.

Albanese, like some of his prime ministerial predecessors, tends to find sitting weeks trying. As one Labor man puts it, “Parliament is the home ground for the opposition.” Albanese would prefer to be out and about, dashing around the country – although that does come with a level of exhaustion.

Those around the prime minister would dispute the assessment of his mood as peevish. The alternative interpretation is that he’s showing some second-term arrogance. There was a whiff of this at the end of Thursday’s question time when he advised the opposition, “that they go touch grass during the break and get in touch, and get in touch with what Australians are concerned about”.

Albanese has a strong belief, reinforced by the election, in his own political judgement. He’s irritated by assessments his has been a don’t-rock-the-boat government. We don’t know directly but he must be particularly frustrated by the constant refrain from some commentators that he should be using his large majority to be more radical and reformist.

This week, for example, the respected Nine newspapers’ economics writer Ross Gittins declared that if he “can’t bring himself to govern”, Albanese should retire. “No shame in being past it,” Gittins added, twisting the knife. Galling for a leader who turned a likely minority government into one with a massive majority.

With the pesky parliament now away for a month, Albanese enters international summit season. Next week he’ll be at the Pacific Islands Forum in the Solomon Islands.

Leaders there will be curious for a clue about the government’s proposed level of ambition in its 2035 emissions reduction target under the Paris agreement. This will be announced later this month, before Albanese goes to the United Nations leaders’ week in New York, which starts on September 22. The target is set to be a band, within the broader range of 65-75% reduction on 2005 levels. Energy Minister Chris Bowen indicated this week the government might not legislate the target if there was too much parliamentary opposition.

Summit season includes a clutch of forums, but for Albanese his most important trip is the September one to the United States.

Preparations appear to be on course for a much-anticipated meeting with President Donald Trump then, either in New York or in Washington. The question on the day of that meeting will not be about Albanese’s mood, but what might be the frame of mind of the volatile, unpredictable president.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.