China celebrates 60th anniversary of communist rule

China celebrated its rise to a world power over 60 years of Communist Party rule today, with its biggest-ever parade of military hardware and more than 100,000 marching masses.

Police blocked off a wide area around central Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic. People were told to stay away and watch the events on television, though that did not dampen a festive air as residents gathered in homes and alleys.

President Hu Jintao, dressed in a grey Mao tunic instead of the business suit he usually wears, reviewed the thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks and other weaponry, shouting “Hello, comrades” while riding in an open-top, domestically made Red Flag limousine.

During the two-hour-plus festivities, more than 100 helicopters, communication airships and Chinese-made fighter jets flew over the city in formation.

After the armaments, 60 floats celebrating last year’s Beijing Olympics, China’s manned space programme and other symbols of progress rolled by as tens of thousands of students flipped coloured cards in unison to make pictures of lucky symbols and spell out political slogans.

The events were meant to underscore what Mr Hu called the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

We “have triumphed over all sorts of difficulties and setbacks and risks to gain the great achievements evident to the world”, he said, standing atop Tiananmen gate in a speech that referred to his Communist Party predecessors and China’s success. “Today, a socialist China geared toward modernisation, the world and the future towers majestically in the East.”

The feelgood, if heavily-scripted moment, tapped into Chinese pride surrounding the country’s turnaround from the war-battered, impoverished state the communists took over on October 1 1949 to the dynamic, third-largest world economy of today.

The buoyant mood glossed over the country’s gut-wrenching twists – the ruinous campaigns of revolutionary leader Mao Tse Tung that left tens of millions dead - as well as its current challenges: a widening gap between rich and poor; rampant corruption; and severe pollution and ethnic uprisings in the western areas of Tibet and Xinjiang.

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 from Tuesday.

Explanations vary for why such elaborate festivities are being staged. Sixty is an auspicious number that plays well with Chinese who say it traditionally represents the full life of a person. The country’s leadership has avoided mention of anything to do with superstition, though.

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 synchronised performances usually associated with North Korea.

Some 5,000 goose-stepping troops who rehearsed for as long as a year accompanied the armaments – new unmanned aerial drones, amphibious fighting vehicles and new DH-10 land-based anti-ship cruise missiles.