Under a perfectly blue sky in September 2015, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin strode out to the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the center of Beijing. This was the entrance to the Forbidden City when China’s last emperors ruled, and it was where Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, but that was not what they were here to commemorate. Instead, they had come to view a massive military parade to mark “Victory Day,” the anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia, or as the conflict is now known in China, “The Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.”

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