On Wednesday, China will host a significant military parade in Beijing’s capital to commemorate the 80th anniversary of World War II.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will introduce world leaders like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the country’s largest military parade, showcasing the military prowess and future plans of the country.
What can I expect from the parade, and why is it significant.
What time does the Victory Day parade in China begin?
According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, the event will begin on Wednesday at 9am (01:00 GMT).
Ten years ago, China held a military parade on victory day. China first staged a grand military parade to honor the victory of the war.
What might be in store?
A choreographed display of cutting-edge military equipment, including drones, hypersonic missiles, and fighter jets, will be featured in the parade as a display of Chinese military might.
According to Chinese military officials, the parade will feature hundreds of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft.
The parade will feature 80 buglers, honoring the 80 years since Imperial Japan’s defeat in World War II, according to state media reports.
Since Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, more than 1, 000 musicians have been seated in 14 rows, representing each year how China has responded.
According to China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, seated spectators will be seated on chairs adorned with green, red, and gold, which represent fertile land, the people’s sacrifices, and peace, respectively.
45 troop contingents will march past Xi in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during the “Victory Day” parade, which is scheduled to last about 70 minutes. A speech is also anticipated by Xi.
Beginning in August, when the parade rehearsals began, China increased security in Beijing.
Who will be present?
26 foreign leaders will be present at the military parade, according to China’s Assistant Foreign Minister, Hong Lei, at a press conference on August 28.
Putin has already been in China, having spent Sunday and Monday at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin.
Other leaders who traveled to China to attend the SCO summit or other related meetings, including Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif, Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyev, will also be present for the September 3 parade.
However, they are also welcoming more people.
Kim’s armored train crossed the border between North Korea and China early on Tuesday, according to the state-controlled Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
A North Korean leader has not been in 66 years to watch a Chinese military parade. Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea and Kim’s late grandfather, was the last North Korean leader to attend a 1959 military parade in China.
Only two leaders from Europe, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, are scheduled to attend the Beijing gathering.
Fico has pushed for closer ties with Russia and traveled to Moscow for talks with Putin in December 2024, despite the country’s membership in the EU and NATO. Similar to Fico, Vucic has recently visited Moscow and criticized Russia’s sanctions against it for its war in Ukraine.
What is the purpose of China’s Victory Day parade and why?
In the West, the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which led to the British and French declaring war on Germany, is widely accepted as the start of World War II.
By that time, Asia had been facing the most Japanese aggression.
Japanese and Chinese troops engaged in a number of skirmishes after the Manchuria invasion in 1931, primarily under Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, Japan made significant advances while the KMT and the CCP were still at war with China in the early stages of their own civil war.
Then, outside of Beijing, Japanese and Chinese troops engaged in combat in July 1937. By the time the KMT and CCP had agreed to a united front against the Japanese that would last until 1945, this had grown into a full-fledged conflict.
Invading eastern cities, including Nanjing, the Japanese military began to massacre civilians, rape children, and kill townspeople. The CCP and KMT remained in opposition. According to some estimates, the war left 20 million Chinese casualties, the majority of whom were civilians.
Under Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US imposed an oil embargo on Japan in 1941. The US entered the war at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941 when the Japanese army launched a surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet.
In addition to capturing parts of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and parts of modern-day India in the 1940s, Japan also seized other parts of Asian nations.
The US Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and Nagasaki, Japan, three days later. The Soviet Union then launched a military conflict with Japan.
On September 2, Japan officially gave up.
After the communists under Mao Zedong’s leadership fled to Taiwan, where the CCP and KMT both found themselves, and the two eventually won the civil war in 1949, when Chiang and his remaining KMT troops retreated and established a parallel government there.
The Chinese government designated September 3, 2014, as Victory Day, the day Japan’s surrender occurred.
Veterans were invited to the military march in 2015 by the CCP to honor the sacrifices made by KMT soldiers during the war. Taiwan was once ruled by the KMT, which has long sought to have closer ties with mainland China under the CCP despite its historical strife.
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has remained assertive about the self-governing territory’s sovereignty, has been in power since 2016 to date. China has criticized the DPP, insisting that Taiwan must reunite with the mainland.
Source: Aljazeera
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