Beijing closed down its streets overnight in the heart of the city near Tiananmen Square as tens of thousands of people joined in the first dress rehearsal for China’s 60th anniversary parade.
On Oct. 1, the People’s Republic of China celebrates six decades since its founding. The first full-fledged rehearsal was held overnight on Friday for hours along Chang An Avenue, the major boulevard that runs in front of the Forbidden City.
Chanting loudly, a massive procession of participants, holding aloft banners and balloons, flooded the central Avenue of Eternal Peace for a full kilometer, moving in giant orderly formations.
PHOTO: AP
From 11pm le until dawn yesterday, police blocked off streets surrounding the area and cleared roads of cars and people.
Hundreds of passenger buses lined up in the middle of the street and disgorged thousands of performers onto the boulevard.
Some were dressed in matching colored T-shirts, caps and shorts, while students in uniforms carried pink and yellow pompoms or red rings. Marching in groups, the performers slowly made their way toward Tiananmen Square, where the Oct. 1 celebration will begin.
Few details have been given out on the schedule for the celebrations, but a keynote address from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) is expected, followed by an elaborate military parade and performances involving 200,000 people, 60 floats and fireworks.
Like most official party events, the National Day festivities are expected to be tightly choreographed spectacles, with this one centering on a huge parade. The events are a way for the leadership to show off to the world and its people the country’s might and prosperity.
The secrecy surrounding the proceedings required hotels along the main avenue to keep guests sequestered inside as parade preparations were under way.
The parade is intended to highlight accomplishments China has made in its defense sector during the past six decades. But during the overnight drill, troops and military hardware that Beijing plans to showcase in October were not in evidence.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS