The propaganda being issued by the Chinese Communist Party on the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean war – the country’s only armed conflict with the United States – no longer fits its status as a global power, observers say.

Dr Collin Koh Swee Lean, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at RSIS said Beijing’s efforts to use the Korean war anniversary to promote an anti-American sentiment at home would achieve little besides further damaging China-US relations. “The invocation of a Korean war analogy could serve to reinforce Trump’s “Red China” narrative and help to perpetuate a cold war mentality that Beijing has been telling Washington to abandon,” he said.