China’s 60th anniversary stirs pride

Security in Beijing has been intensifying for weeks over worries that protests, which are common in China, or an overexuberant crowd might mar the ceremonies. Parts of central Beijing were sealed off and businesses were told to shut down beginning on Tuesday. Flights in and out of Beijing’s international airport were suspended since Thursday morning. An intensive cloud-seeding operation cleared away the smog that had shrouded Beijing for two days.
The government has customarily held military parades on 10th anniversaries. With China riding high in the world and feeling good about itself after the Beijing Olympics, the 60th was the Hu administration’s chance to score popularity points.
Early this year, before China’s economy rebounded from the global downturn, authorities promised only a modest celebration in keeping with the gloomy times.
The parade is now billed by state media as China’s largest-ever display of weaponry, reminiscent of the Soviet Union, and came with the mass synchronized performances usually associated with North Korea. Alongside the 80,000 card-flippers making 41 pictures, another 100,000 civilians accompanied the floats, many of them with kitschy displays of computers and signs of industry.
Some 5,000 goose-stepping soldiers who rehearsed for five months accompanied the armaments -- new unmanned aerial drones, amphibious fighting vehicles and new DH-10 land-based anti-ship cruise missiles.
The People’s Liberation Army in its newspaper early this year said the event’s meaning was clear: “This military parade is a comprehensive display of the Party’s ability to rule and of the overall might of the nation.”
Geremie Barme, a China scholar at Australian National University who has studied past National Day parades, said the displays are typically aimed at the domestic audience -- Communist Party officials and ordinary Chinese. “It is meant to educate, excite, unite and entertain. If a tad of ‘shock and awe’ is delivered around the world, all well and good,” he said.