China Celebrates 60th Anniversary
The 60th anniversary of Chinese Communist Party rule on Thursday was punctuated with a precision display of military bravado and a confident prediction by President Hu Jintao that “infinitely bright prospects” lie ahead for the world’s most populous nation.
The New York Times pointed out that one notable change from past parades was the new prominence given to the People’s Armed Police, who were bit players in the past but appeared on Thursday in armored personnel carriers.
The police are the government’s main internal security force and played crucial roles in suppressing ethnic disturbances in Xinjiang region in July and in Tibet in March 2008.
Wearing a Mao-style jacket, President Hu Jintao waved while standing in the open sunroof of a Chinese-made limousine, calling out “Greetings, comrades!” through four large loudspeakers attached to the automobile roof. Following tradition, the troops replied in unison, “Serve the people!”
In a statement that must be totally understood by the Western democracies, the military journal People’s Liberation Army News, stated in February that the parade “is a comprehensive display of the party’s ability to rule.” Simple translation: China’s military answers not to the government, but to the Communist Party.
Malcolm Cook, who directs the east Asian program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a foreign affairs research organization in Sydney, Australia stated, “The message is for the domestic audience first of all, to show the strength of China, especially now that China is a great power,” he said. Modern Chinese history emphasizes the humiliations China suffers at the hands of foreign invaders, he added, and “military parades show that you have significant capabilities that work well.”
In looking at the past and recent history of China under Communism, we must always be mindful that human lives in almost unfathomable numbers were sacrificed on the altar of the Communist state.
Some experts estimate that over 80 million Chinese were direct and indirect casualties under communism. Stéphane Courtois’s book, “Le livre noir du Communisme“, documents a figure of 65 million.
Mao Tse-tung patterned his communist state after Joseph Stalin. Stalin once infamously stated that, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
We must ever be vigilant and never forget that under all the surface glitter and contrary indications, first and foremost, China is a state dedicated to Communism and all that its ideology represents.
