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hen the People's Liberation Army shows off its latest weaponry on October 1 in China's biggest military parade in a decade, the images of goose-stepping soldiers, fighter jets and cruise missiles will provoke debate around the globe.
Although the equipment is unlikely to include any huge surprises, Beijing's bombastic display of its growing military prowess serves as another reminder that the world's most populous country is seeking its place as a great nation not only in economic but also in political and military terms.
When describing its foreign policy and military strategy, China continues to claim that it has purely peaceful intentions and that it is modernising and expanding its military for defensive purposes only.
However, the October 1 parade is only the latest in a series of events that justify describing 2009 as the year of China's coming out as a military power with regional, if not global ambitions.
Tai Ming Cheung, an expert on Chinese defence at the University of California in San Diego says: “We should remember that the military parade is only the final showcase of a extended display of Chinese military power that was kicked off by a naval display [this spring].”
In April, China celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA Navy with a parade off its east coast port of Qingdao in front of military delegations from 29 countries. This summer, the PLA Air Force followed up with 60th-year celebrations of its own.
Mr Cheung emphasises the domestic political purpose of the shows at a time when the Communist party seeks to reaffirm its legitimacy in ruling the country uncontested.
He says: “This series of events promoting the PLA shows the central importance of the armed forces to the Communist party's rule,” he says. “The party continues to maintain a tight grip on the PLA and this parade will clearly demonstrate the army's obedience to the party and to the party secretary/state president/supreme military commander Hu Jintao.”
But apart from this domestic element, China has started to project its military power ever farther beyond its own shores. “A series of new concepts like ‘national interest frontier' and ‘greater peripheral security' have been put forward within the PLA recently,” says Andrei Chang, China defence analyst at Kanwa Information Center, a Canada-based defence website. He adds that, under these concepts, the PLA has started to view the Gulf as part of China's “greater periphery”.
This is part of a broader move in the way Beijing defines its national and security interests. In April, Admiral Wu Shengli, commander of the PLA Navy, said in remarks published by Xinhua, the official news agency, that the PLA needed to build a new generation of warships in response to the “expansion” of China's national interests and the increase in non-traditional security threats. This expansion mainly refers to securing resources and the sea lanes through which they reach China, says Peng Guangqian, a security analyst with close ties to the PLA.
China is also letting the world know in increasingly unequivocal terms that it is determined to build an aircraft carrier – an intention which it explains mainly with its wish to demonstrate its sovereignty and national will just as other countries, many smaller and less powerful than itself, do.
However, observers say the need to secure resources and the wish to express national pride are not enough to explain the rapid military build-up. According to defence budget numbers, spending has been growing at double-digit rates for years now. Western military analysts contest these numbers and say real spending is even higher.
Among the weapons to be shown in the National Day parade are short- and medium-range missiles deployed against Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as part of its territory. “Taiwan's military estimates that China has 1,500 missiles pointing at Taiwan, and is adding them at a rate of about 70 a year,” says Andrew Yang, deputy defence minister.
On display will also be missiles that enable Beijing to target any regional adversary with precision strikes. These could deny the US access to waters around Taiwan, and even hitting Washington with nuclear warheads. A western diplomat in Beijing says: “Those are offensive, rather than defensive objectives in our view, and Beijing continues to fail to explain how these fit with its stated strategic goals.”
Defence experts emphasise that China is not a serious threat yet. “Despite all this impressive display of military power, which is likely to be well co-ordinated, the Chinese armed forces lack the extensive combat experience of the US and its allies that have been engaged in military campaigns throughout the past 20 years,” says Mr Cheung.
“The last conflict that the PLA fought was back in 1979 and that was a bloody lesson from the Vietnamese. This military parade is not necessarily a good measure of the PLA's combat prowess.”
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