![]() ![]() The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else. The best policy is to declare victory and leave. “This parade and patriotism are two separate things,” said Mi Guoxian, who had come to Beijing for a wedding, standing on a nearly deserted street behind a line of police.Yes, victory is sweet, but it doesn’t necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day. Xi will meet Obama in Washington for talks later this month that will be dominated by a host of thorny issues, including China’s growing military reach.īeijing was locked down to ensure nothing went wrong at the parade, with much of the downtown off-limits, a three-day holiday declared and ordinary people kept well away. We will operate in the far seas and we are a global presence’,” said Dean Cheng, a China expert at the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington. “It is living up to what the Chinese have been saying, ‘We are now a blue water navy. Chinese state media has said nothing about the Bering Sea deployment. It was not clear whether their presence was timed to coincide with Obama’s visit or if it followed a recent Chinese-Russian navy exercise. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said it was the first time the United States had seen Chinese navy ships in the Bering Sea. In a sign of that emerging capability, five Chinese Navy ships are sailing in international waters in the Bering Sea off Alaska, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, at a time when US President Barack Obama is touring the state. Xi has set great store on China’s military modernisation, including developing an ocean-going “blue water” navy capable of defending the country’s growing global interests. “As for the claim that China intends the event as a sabre-rattling occasion to instil fear, it is nothing but nonsense since China has always insisted on resolving disputes via peaceful means,” state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary. On Wednesday, Xi said Japanese invaders before and during World War Two behaved with barbarity. However, it rarely misses an opportunity to draw attention to Japan’s wartime role. “I would like China to show its future-oriented attitude to work on common issues which international society is facing, not focus excessively on the past unfortunate history,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference in Tokyo.Ĭhina’s government repeatedly said the parade was not aimed at today’s Japan, but to remember the past and to remind the world of China’s huge sacrifices during the conflict. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not attend the parade, which was held one day after the 70th anniversary of Tokyo’s surrender in World War Two. Most Western leaders rebuffed invitations to attend, diplomats said, unhappy about the guest list and wary of the message China would send with the show of strength. Xi was joined by Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of several other nations with close ties to China, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Advanced fighter jets and bombers flew overhead in a highly-choreographed spectacle that lasted around 90 minutes.Īmong the weapons China unveiled for the first time was an anti-ship ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-21D, which is reportedly capable of destroying an aircraft carrier with one hit.Īlso shown were several intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the DF-5B and the DF-31A as well as the DF-26 intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), dubbed the “Guam killer” in reference to a US Pacific Ocean base.įor Xi, the parade is a welcome distraction from the country’s plunging stock markets, slowing economy and recent blasts at a chemical warehouse that killed at least 160 people. They were followed by ballistic missiles, tanks and armoured vehicles, many never seen in public before. More than 12,000 soldiers, mostly Chinese but with contingents from Russia and elsewhere, then began marching down Changan Avenue, led by veterans of World War Two carried in vehicles. ![]()
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