By DPA,
Beijing : “Democracy” is taking a minor role in Thursday’s show marking 60 years of the People’s Republic of China, upstaged by the ruling Communist Party’s invitation-only celebration of its own history, ideology and military prowess.
Held amid unprecedented security in Beijing, the show is to include China’s biggest-ever display of its military hardware in the first major parade by the People’s Liberation Army since 1999.
About 180,000 carefully vetted civilians are to perform in the city’s symbolic heart, Tiananmen Square, after the military parade and a landmark speech by party leader and state President Hu Jintao.
The civilian show has the three key themes of “ideology, achievements and future prospects”, state media quoted parade commander Wang Yue as saying Tuesday.
“Ideology” is to be represented by three mass formations bearing huge portraits and ideological slogans associated with Hu and former party leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, Wu said.
Some of the 60 floats in the civilian parade are designed to highlight China’s achievements in the fields of science, industry, trade, agriculture, education and its use of the controversial “one-child” family-planning policy to limit its population to 1.3 billion people.
One of the last floats, seen during the final rehearsal for the civilian parade, is in the shape of a giant ship called The Future.
Prominently displayed at the front of the ship are four pairs of Chinese characters meaning that the party sees China’s future as “civilised”, “harmonious”, “prosperous and strong”, and “democratic”.
Yet, despite its constant claims to democratic development, the party has made it clear many times that it has no plans to allow multiparty national elections for several decades, if ever.
Among the latest ideology promoted by the Communist Party are the Six Whys, which explain why the 76-million-strong party must continue to lead the nation and why multiparty democracy is unsuitable for China now.
Hu was expected Thursday to reiterate the party’s insistence that China’s government must be based on Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and recent ideas like his own “scientific concept of development” and “harmonious society”.
Hu is to preach stability, unity and harmony in his speech to an audience of party, military and business elite as he stands on the Tiananmen Rostrum, the place where Mao proclaimed the founding of communist China Oct 1, 1949.
He is to watch about 8,000 of the army’s 2.3 million troops accompany a display of tanks, fighter planes, attack helicopters and nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles in what the army says is a move to increase transparency and allay the fears of other nations.
Troops trained for five months for Thursday’s “sacred mission”.
“The design and planning of the parade were achieved by computer simulation with the aid of three-dimensional software to improve efficiency and reduce costs,” Major General Gao Jianguo told reporters last week.
The government has encouraged most of Beijing’s 15 million people to stay at home and watch live broadcasts of the celebrations from state-run China Central Television as it seeks to maintain security for the event.
It has tightened its control over internet access, blocking more websites than usual and most proxy servers.
The government has also suspended foreign tourism to the Tibet Autonomous Region over the anniversary, tour operators said, after serious unrest in many Tibetan areas of China last year.
In Beijing, the government mobilised 800,000 volunteers to assist hundreds of thousands of security guards, uniformed and plainclothes police, paramilitary units, anti-terrorist forces and even the local People’s Militia.
Security cordons are likely to ensure that no one without an invitation could get within a block of Chang’an Avenue, the main road running across Tiananmen Square, while police have instructed people living nearby not to open their windows to watch the parade.