China Celebrates 60 Years of Communist Rule
David Gray/Reuters
Chinese officers and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army marched in front of Tiananmen Gate at the start of the military parade to mark the 60th China anniversary in Beijing on Thursday. More Photos >
The celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the crystalline skies which, just a day earlier, had been laden with smog.
In all that, it was a fitting analogy for how China’s Communist Party leaders wanted their citizens and the world to regard them — and, perhaps, how they may be feeling themselves these days. The last such parade, in 1999, was of interest mainly to foreign military analysts and China hands. This time, the world’s news outlets reported raptly on the significance of every detail, and China’s state-run television network streamed video coverage over the Internet, in English and other languages, to viewers worldwide.
Beyond that, however, the Chinese made few concessions to their global audience. The 60th celebration was slightly kitschy and indisputably retro, a carbon copy of the prior once-a-decade celebrations.
“On one level, they are naturally aware of the international audience, but in the end this is a parade and show for Chinese leaders and the people of China,” Geremie R. Barmé, professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University, said in an interview. “It has always been such a show. It is a display of China’s might and power. When it comes to this kind of parade, international perceptions are just not that important.”
A confident President Hu Jintao, clad in a high-collared Mao-style jacket, told the invited guests — the general public was not allowed to attend the parade — that “infinitely bright prospects” lay ahead for the world’s most populous nation.
“Today, a socialist China geared to modernization, the world and the future has stood rock-firm in the east of the world,” Mr. Hu said in a brief speech speckled with boilerplate references to Chinese-style socialism. The Chinese people, he said, “cannot be prouder of the development and progress of our great motherland.”
Mr. Hu’s review of his troops — made standing in the open sunroof of a Chinese-made 12-cylinder Red Flag limousine — echoed the reviews conducted by his predecessors in decades past. Television images showed Mr. Hu waving stiffly and calling out “Greetings, comrades!” through four large microphones attached to the limousine’s roof. Following tradition, the troops replied in unison, “Serve the people!”
The vast display of military power — according to the state-run Xinhua news agency, 52 weapons systems; 151 warplane flyovers; 12 intercontinental-range missiles; and new a missile, the Dongfeng 21-C, that one day could be used to counter American aircraft carriers — received by far the most attention. While China’s military remains well behind that of many developed nations in sophistication and firepower, analysts said, its progress since the last such parade in 1999 was impressive.
Analysts said, however, that there was little or nothing unknown in the procession of hardware.
And some of the most notable changes did not involve the military at all, but the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force that was a bit player in the past. On Thursday, the police had specially outfitted armored personnel carriers, a signal of their growing stature. The group is the government’s main internal security force and played crucial roles in suppressing ethnic disturbances in the Xinjiang region in July and in combating riots in Tibet in March 2008. Their performance in Tibet was widely criticized, and the government has since taken steps to modernize the force and train it to military standards.
To foreigners, the show of firepower and Mr. Hu’s bromide-filled speech may have evoked memories of the cold war and the former Soviet Union’s performances at May Day ceremonies. But in China, the National Day ceremony is directed mainly at the Chinese people, and particularly at the 75-million-member Communist Party, which not only runs the government but also has direct control of the armed forces.
The military journal People’s Liberation Army News said in February that the parade “is a comprehensive display of the Party’s ability to rule.” And the theme of this parade, emphasized in weeks of newspaper articles and television broadcasts, is that the Communist Party has made China strong, increasingly prosperous and respected in the world — and that it is in firm control.
Those points were underscored in the procession of floats that followed the military display in the parade, with each float highlighting a Chinese province’s charms or one of China’s accomplishments. One float carrying fish and a sheaf of wheat proclaimed China’s ability to feed itself; another, holding a huge space capsule, celebrated China’s manned space program; another depicted the bullet trains that are beginning to link a few large cities.
Each of four floats bore a huge portrait of a Chinese leader with his trademark slogans: Mao Zedong (“The Chinese people have stood up”); Deng Xiaoping (“Pushing reform and opening up”) ; former President Jiang Zemin (“Adhering to the important thoughts of the Three Represents”) and the current president, Mr. Hu (“Implementing scientific outlook on development”).
