HONG KONG — China’s military is getting stronger, and it wants the world to know it.
The world’s largest active military, with more than 2 million personnel, is holding one of its biggest parades ever on Wednesday, a highly choreographed “Victory Day” spectacle to mark the 80th anniversary of Imperial Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II.
The grand occasion in Beijing will showcase not just China’s growing ability to rival the United States in any future conflict, but support from some of the world’s most heavily sanctioned nations in a display of unity against the West.
Thousands of troops will march through Tiananmen Square, where they will be reviewed by Chinese President Xi Jinping as heads of government and state from 26 other countries look on.
Topping the guest list are Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has pressed on with his war against Ukraine despite a U.S. peace push, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a rare departure from his isolated, nuclear-armed state.
Leaders from the United States and other Western governments have declined to attend the parade, partly because of the presence of Putin.
It comes amid heightened military tensions in the region as China clashes with neighbors in the South China Sea and the U.S. and its allies brace for potential conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.
“It’s definitely a show of force,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “It’s a means to show China’s neighbors, other countries around the world, that China’s military is formidable.”
The parade will showcase China’s growing military power under Xi, who has overseen a modernization campaign as well as political purges of senior officials and even defense ministers.
“It’s now become a much more capable force that is increasingly a near peer, if not a true peer, to the U.S. military in many respects,” said Elsa B. Kania, a doctoral candidate at Harvard and an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington that specializes in U.S. national security issues.
China, whose annual defense spending is estimated to be about a third of the $1.3 trillion spent by the United States, has said its goal is for military modernization to be “basically complete” by 2035, and for the Chinese military to be “world class” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of communist rule.
“The U.S. is the only world-class military in the world, and we still have a need to catch up with the United States — and it will take time,” Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told NBC News in an interview.
“But I believe by 2049, which is still far away, we should be confident to reach the objective,” said Zhou, a retired senior colonel in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Confidence on display
Security has been tight in Beijing in the weeks leading up to the parade, disrupting businesses and traffic. Tanks could be heard rolling down the streets during weekly overnight rehearsals that paralyzed the city center and were conducted with great secrecy.
This is China’s first military parade since 2019, when Beijing commemorated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and its third under Xi, who also held one in 2015 for the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender.
The legacy of World War II is still a sensitive subject between Japan and China, which is estimated to have suffered between 20 million and 35 million military and civilian deaths during a 14-year Japanese invasion and occupation that China calls the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
The parade is aimed just as much at the Chinese public as it is at foreign adversaries, said Thompson, the former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the U.S. Department of Defense.
“It’s fanning anti-Japanese sentiments to increase the party’s legitimacy in the eyes of its own people,” he said, particularly at a time when the Chinese public is concerned about a slowing economy.
Japan, a key U.S. ally, has reportedly urged other countries not to attend, leading China to lodge a diplomatic complaint.
According to the Chinese government, much of the equipment included in the 70-minute parade is being revealed for the first time.
In addition to the troops, the parade will involve more than 100 aircraft and hundreds of ground armaments, all of them domestically made and battle-ready, officials said at an Aug. 20 news conference in Beijing.
The “new-generation” equipment on display “reflects a high degree of informatization and intelligence, underscoring our military’s ability to adapt to technological advances and evolving warfare patterns, and to win future conflicts,” said Maj. Gen. Wu Zeke, deputy director of the parade.
Air and missile defense systems that could make an appearance include the HQ-19 and the more advanced HQ-26 and HQ-29, all of which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles and are believed to have capabilities similar to equivalent U.S. systems.
Military observers are also watching for any new intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as new supersonic and hypersonic missiles.
Such missiles “pose a big threat for U.S. naval ships” that would be central to any U.S. military intervention in the Asia-Pacific, said Shinji Yamaguchi, a senior research fellow in the China Studies Division at the Japanese government’s National Institute for Defense Studies.
China is also expected to display autonomous drones, which especially since the war in Ukraine have “really changed the way of warfare,” Yamaguchi said, as well as unmanned underwater vehicles, also known as sea drones.
In a conflict, China could deploy sea drones in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere “to strengthen intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities,” Yamaguchi said.
Jet fighters will also be in focus after Pakistan said it used Chinese-built J-10Cs to shoot down Indian aircraft during a four-day conflict in May.
But while China has become more open about displaying weaponry as its confidence grows, it is difficult to know what is going on behind the scenes.
The “dramatic” removal of officials “has raised questions about Xi Jinping’s trust in military leaders, or about whether systemic problems of corruption can be resolved,” Kania said.
There has also been little recent real-world demonstration of the actual capabilities of the Chinese military, whose last experience in a large-scale conflict was against Vietnam in 1979.
“None of this has been tested. Nobody knows,” Thompson said. “And this may be one of the reasons that China relies on this very conventional form of deterrence and signaling in the form of a parade.”
Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong, and Janis Mackey Frayer from Beijing.
