China Accentuates Positive During 50th Birthday Bash

The world’s last remaining Communist giant celebrated its 50th birthday today as China trumpeted its achievements in a massive military and civilian parade designed to show that the People’s Republic has finally arrived.

Flags flapped, leaders waved and half a million carefully vetted participants packed Tiananmen Square or marched, danced and rode their way down the Avenue of Eternal Peace, the main boulevard of this capital for the last 700 years.

The only thing missing was ordinary people, banned from attending the official gala honoring the republic established in their name. Beijing’s laobaixin--your average Zhous--were kept away from the city center by police and neighborhood-watch sentries charged with ensuring that nothing untoward marred the big event.

The morning festivities were clearly intended to be the Party’s party, a paean to the Communist revolution that unified and “liberated” the Chinese in 1949 after decades of war against foreign powers and each other.

From atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace--the same spot where Mao Tse-tung announced, “The Chinese people have stood up”--President Jiang Zemin declared: “Long live the great People’s Republic of China! Long live the great Communist Party of China! Long live the Chinese people!”

He was flanked by other top Chinese leaders, all members of the Politburo’s inner circle, including Premier Zhu Rongji and former Premier Li Peng.

The celebrations began with a review of the nation’s expanding military arsenal, clearly the centerpiece of the two-hour show, which was literally scripted down to the last second.

People’s Liberation Army troops, more than 10,000, goose-stepped past while Russian- and Chinese-built fighter jets streaked overhead in formation. Soldiers showed off 400 pieces of heavy equipment, including antiaircraft artillery, missile launchers and prototypes of a tank more advanced than the kind that rolled down the same avenue 10 years ago to crush pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

Also on display was the new Dongfeng-31 long-range missile, tested only two months ago and theoretically capable of hitting the western U.S.

About 95% of the hardware was built within the last decade, officials said, reflecting Beijing’s drive to modernize the PLA, the world’s largest armed force but also one of its most backward.

The message was obvious: After a long period of imperial decline, foreign oppression and civil strife, China is not to be bullied. The same theme had underlain the protests that erupted here in May following NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

“The parade shows our national prestige,” said Fan Meili, 21, a waitress who watched the ceremonies on television, the closest most of China’s 1.3 billion people could get. “Our country is powerful now, especially after Hong Kong’s return to the mainland [in 1997].”

The idea of national sovereignty and territorial integrity rang throughout.

“The complete reunification of the motherland and the maintenance of its security are the very foundation” of the republic, said Jiang, citing the need to bring Taiwan back under mainland control.

Floats representing all of China’s provinces, including trouble spots in the west like Tibet and Xinjiang, emphasized the idea of national unity.

The floats were divided into three groups, representing the Mao era, the economic reforms begun under Deng Xiaoping and now Jiang’s leadership.

Not surprisingly, there were no references to the darkest periods of Communist China, which covered most of the first 30 years of its existence under radical Maoism. The parade ignored the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, a mass collectivization movement that left up to 30 million dead of starvation, and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, during which marauding leftist Red Guards roamed the country, setting back the nation’s progress disastrously.

Yet Mao was still a presence, his huge portrait gazing out over Tiananmen Square on a China that he would hardly recognize, much less approve of--a China of gleaming skyscrapers, breakneck economic development and a collapsing socialist safety net.

Jiang, who took the reins of power tenuously in 1989, continued to cast himself as the clear, undisputed successor to Mao and Deng, even in his choice of clothes. Of all the leaders assembled atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace, only he wore a gray Mao-style suit. The rest of the men wore jackets and ties.

Today’s jubilee--at $36 million the most expensive and biggest birthday bash in Chinese history--capped weeks of preparation. Workers had hammered away day and night at huge infrastructure projects throughout Beijing and the rest of the country. Millions of potted plants, red lanterns and holiday lights adorn the capital’s main streets.

“Everyone in Beijing can see the big changes that have taken place here,” said Wang Lianrong, a retiree who participated in the founding parade back in 1949. He still has a leather belt and canteen issued to him for the event.

“In the past, where I live now used to be a narrow and bumpy mud lane,” said Wang, 66. “Now, one building after another has popped up.”

Despite the pomp, China faces some troubling circumstances, including a sluggish economy, labor unrest and disobedient local officials. Human rights advocates called on the Communist regime to release imprisoned political dissidents and allow greater freedom.

None of that was in evidence today, however. Authorities had spent weeks rounding up criminals, screening parade participants, cracking down on followers of the mystical Falun Gong sect and turning Beijing into a forbidden city for migrant workers and prostitutes, who were supposed to have been stamped out under Communist rule anyway.

Security was tight. The government had sent inspectors to examine manholes for bombs and to padlock the covers. Guests in hotels along the parade route--some of whom paid up to $5,000 a night for a window view--were forced to clear out of their rooms this morning, but were allowed to watch the festivities from makeshift grandstands outside.

“The party is for the people, but the people can’t participate,” grumbled one man who was deputized to keep order in his neighborhood.

The only thing the government could not control was the weather, but luck prevailed. Clouds that poured down rain Thursday moved out overnight, leaving the morning overcast but dry for the nation’s first military parade in 15 years and the last one this century.

“China has an extremely bright future,” Jiang told the crowd of parade participants, foreign dignitaries and journalists.

“Let us hold high the great banner of Marxism, Leninism, ‘Mao Tse-tung Thought’ and ‘Deng Xiaoping Theory’ and march bravely toward our sublime objectives,” he said. “China will surely emerge as a prosperous, strong, democratic and culturally advanced modern socialist country.”