By Richard McGregor, the FT’s former Beijing bureau chief
Most commentaries about modern China these days stress how far the country and the state has moved on from the totalitarian rule of Mao Zedong. The parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China through the centre of Beijing today is a reminder of the opposite, and largely overlooked, trend – just how communist the Chinese state still is.
Sure, the parade was largely a display of old-fashioned communist kitsch, of the kind to make one nostalgic for the annual march pasts through Red Square in the Soviet Union. Goose-stepping soldiers, replicas of grand industrial projects, joyous peasants and the latest homemade weaponry were all part of the hours-long parade through Tiananmen Square. As the FT correspondents observing the event recorded, the float showing off the far western region of Xinjiang was a flying carpet topped by a petrochemical plant. Not a peep, of course, about the bloody ethnic riots there recently, which left hundreds of people dead.
The parade was part high-camp, and part genuinely intimidating, just as the similar marchpasts in Moscow used to be. The overall event itself, however, and the minute preparations surrounding it, was designed as an unmistakeable statement about the ruling communist party’s hold on power.
The people in the ‘People’s Republic’ were nowhere to be seen. They had been cleared off the streets in the weeks ahead of time and told to stay at home and watch it on TV. Potential troublemakers and other ne’er-do-wells were detained just in case. All the totalitarian impulse of the communist state, usually hidden away in China these days, were deployed to make sure that no one rained on the party’s parade. China can no longer be accurately described as a totalitarian state. But the stiff, metronomic parade and the heavy Marxist rhetoric that went with it displayed a deeper truth about modern China, and the resilience of its communist institutions and instincts.
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