Arms Racing With China: 70th Anniversary Military Parade, Part 1: Missiles

BEIJING, CHINA - OCTOBER 01: A soldier of the People's Liberation Army stands on a tank during a parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China. Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images

News Analysis

Every 10 years, China holds a major military parade in Beijing to mark the anniversary of the Communist Party’s takeover of China on Oct. 1, 1949, declared by Mao Zedong, the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship. These parades give the CCP-led People’s Liberation Army (PLA) an opportunity to display new weapons, usually developed over the previous decade, to intimidate adversaries near and far, in addition to the Chinese people.