Beijing Turns Into Ghost Town as It Gears Up for Military Parade

BEIJING: Police and paramilitary units fanned out in streets across central Beijing on Wednesday, shutting down the heart of this world capital in preparation for a parade of some 12,000 Chinese troops called by President Xi Jinping to showcase the nation's rising might for a global audience.

The Communist Party has spent months planning for the parade, which is scheduled to start Thursday morning, and calls it a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. But to many outside observers, it is more a symbol of the assertive posture China has taken in the region as territorial disputes have flared, prompting the United States to underline its military dominance of Asian seas.

Even during working hours on Wednesday, much of central Beijing felt like a ghost town, as offices and stores closed early to avoid traffic. The police took to the streets beneath crystal blue skies, which followed days of rain and weeks of forced closings of factories across northern China aimed at keeping the capital's infamous smog at bay. (Sarcastic Chinese commentators have called it "anti-fascist blue.")
A handful of foreign leaders in Beijing for the event, including one indicted by the International Criminal Court, met with Chinese officials and rested in upscale hotel rooms.

The parade comes at a critical time for Xi. Though plans were announced in January, the event follows a summer of domestic crises, most notably the current stock market crash that, along with a surprise currency devaluation, has raised unsettling questions about the depth and reach of the nation's economic slowdown. The lethal explosions at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin in August have also rattled people's confidence in their leaders.

So the parade gives Xi an opportunity to dispel, for at least a morning, some of the problems hounding him as he prepares to make his first state visit to the United States this month.

Scheduled for the day after the 70th anniversary of Japan's formal surrender, the parade has been devised to stress Japan's war guilt and glorify the Chinese Communist Party's role in the conflict. Many Western nations, now allied with Japan, find the effort to shame Tokyo offensive, and are also uncomfortable with the party's assertion that the Communists defeated the occupying Japanese forces. Historians credit the Nationalists, their opponents in the civil war that ended in 1949, with most of the fighting.

"The parade reflects Xi's renewed emphasis on top-down nationalism," said Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor of government at Cornell University who studies Chinese nationalism. "Coming at a time when public confidence in the government has been shaken by bad economic news and the Tianjin explosions, a massive spectacle focuses public attention on China's growing military power and victory in World War II."
The turnout of foreign leaders is expected to be far more modest than the party wanted, partly because many nations are wary of being seen to support a growing Chinese military. In recent years, moves by China on its Himalayan border and in disputed regional waters - including building artificial islands in part for military use - have set neighboring countries on edge.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is expected to top the list of foreign attendees. The president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, will be the most prominent African leader in the stands. Xi welcomed him here on Tuesday as an "old friend of the Chinese people."
Though Beijing pressured Western European countries to send high-level officials, few promised to do so. The United States planned to send its ambassador to China, Max Baucus.

A last-minute decision to attend by President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, which counts China as its most important trading partner and hopes to drive a wedge between China and North Korea, bolstered the roll call from Asia. Vietnam, a territorial rival that is also a Communist power, said its president intended to go. But some Asian countries that were occupied by Japan during World War II, including China-friendly Singapore, said they would send only junior officials. Japan boycotted the event and said a former Socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, was attending merely as a private citizen.
In the run-up to the parade, the Chinese state news media amplified their drumbeat against Japan's current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a conservative who has been excoriated during Xi's three years in power for not sufficiently apologizing for Japan's war record. On Tuesday, Xinhua, the state news agency, said in an English-language post on Twitter that Abe was a "wannabe warmonger."

Zhang Baohui, professor of international relations at Linang University in Hong Kong, said the parade reflected China's concerns over Abe's moves to lift restrictions on Japan's military and President Barack Obama's push for the United States, Japan's main military ally, to be more active in the region.

"Japan's resurgence and the U.S. strategic rebalancing do worry Beijing," Zhang said. "Bitter memories of history only enhance China's fear of a revisionist Japan. The parade is mainly designed for strategic deterrence."

On Wednesday, the police began imposing widespread restrictions to prevent ordinary Chinese from viewing the festivities in person. City residents have been told to watch the parade on state television. Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City have been closed since Aug. 22, frustrating many tourists.

Managers of apartment buildings along the wide avenue leading to the square ordered residents not to welcome visitors, open their windows, stand at balconies or take photographs. Closings across the city were so widespread that many hospitals said they were shutting down nonemergency services.

For military enthusiasts in China and many observers overseas, the display of armaments is the most anticipated part of the parade. The People's Liberation Army, whose budget, according to official figures, grew 10 percent this year, sees the parade as a strategic site for "displaying a capable military and demonstrating the will to use it," said Dennis J. Blasko, a former U.S. Army attaché in Beijing and an author of books on the Chinese army.

Blasko said that he expected few surprises, but that the Chinese military was likely to show off some weapons that the United States knows about but has not seen. That includes the YJ-18, a long-range supersonic anti-ship missile.

The Chinese military has announced that 84 percent of the equipment on display will be new, but Blasko said that referred mostly to upgrades. He noted that the DF-16, a medium-range ballistic missile that China put in use in 2009 but that has not been seen by many Western nations, was listed for the parade. Xinhua announced on Twitter that seven types of missiles would be on display on Thursday.

"There will certainly be some new things, and some average things," Blasko said. "Fantastic, I'm not so sure."

On Wednesday, IHS, an analysis firm, said it estimated that China's defense budget would be $260 billion in 2020, double the figure for 2010. Average growth would be 7 percent per year, the firm said.

For Xi, just as important as the display of hardware is the optics of aligning the military's might with his personal command. A large part of his reputation as a forceful leader rests on the fact that he consolidated power quickly after taking office in 2012, particularly his control of the military. Xi immediately took over the role of chairman of the Central Military Commission, which supervises the military, from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, then moved swiftly to purge top generals in a broad anti-corruption drive.

Xi has cast himself as a savior of the military, saying that corruption must be eradicated for the army to be battle-ready, and he has also strengthened his base by promoting officers in the general staff.

"Xi badly wants to build up an image of being the most authoritative military commander since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping," said Zhang Lifan, a historian whose father was a minister under early Communist rule. "I believe the parade is mostly for domestic politics since he wants to further assert power in the army."

For at least some Chinese, though, the parade is likely to be an authentic celebration of China's role in combating Japanese aggression - people who for seven decades have recalled the country's enormous wartime suffering, which included 14 million dead and 80 million refugees. Veterans are scheduled to appear in two motorized formations at Tiananmen Square; their average age is 90, according to official reports. Group photographs published before the parade showed them smiling proudly for the camera, medals pinned to their chests.