Posted on 09/30/2009 6:06:06 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
The bunting is out, the streets have been cleared, the troops are making their final preparations, and even the massive portrait of Mao on the Tiananmen Gate seems to wear a more self-satisfied expression than usual.
Today, China will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule with flowers, fireworks, performances and a huge military parade which will celebrate the country's new-found military might.
The regime has come an enormously long way in six decades, from a society of peasant collective farms, hidden from the world behind a veil of secrecy, to the world's fastest-growing economy, an industrial and military superpower-in-waiting.
But beneath today's orgy of celebrations that marks the anniversary lurks a disturbing reality. Mao's successors may have embraced cut-throat capitalism to a degree that makes even Western economists blanch. But the arrangements for the parade are a reminder that China remains a deeply authoritarian society.
Kites have been banned from the centre of Beijing, pigeons have been culled and soldiers with machineguns are on every street corner. Scientists are even seeding the sky with chemicals to prevent inclement weather spoiling the celebrations.
Tibet has also been closed off to foreigners for the duration - a reminder of China's expansionist ambitions, and of the threat it could pose to world peace in years to come.
Since Chinese history is rarely taught in our schools and universities, it is not surprising that most Britons have only the foggiest notion of what goes on in the world's most populous nation.
Yet when historians look back, it is a safe bet they will see China's rise to power as one of the defining stories of the last century, perhaps eclipsing even the Cold War.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
someone needs to put Obomba’s face on that middle guy in that pic.....he’d rather be celebrating with them, I’m sure.
They won’t hurt us. We turned the Empire State Building red for them.
Please tell me you are kidding.
Thanks,
needed that.
Irrelevant FreethinkerNY, the Chicoms can have equal weaponry with the West, or far inferior weaponry, until, in the words of Solzhenitsyn:
“And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watch groups are sacrificing their lives”
Basically why fear the Chicoms? We are already well armed but unfortunately the mass of the West is mainly neutered and self centered, the West’s enemy within is much much greater than the enemy at the gates as it were.
I’m not nearly as concerned with the relatively stable and responsible ChiComs as any should be concerned that the US is now run by Ninnies and Statists who are far more of a threat to We the People then the worst Death Machine the ChiComs could possibly posses.
Aaand we’re paying for it!
60 Years of Communism ?? Right up there with the Democrat Party!!!!!!!
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