In celebration parade, Chinese army offers glimpse of changes

BEIJING, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese army presented the nation and the world its latest armaments and establishments at the heart of Beijing Thursday morning in a grand military parade marking the 60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Military personnel and equipment of the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Second Artillery Corps (SAC), or strategic missile corps, which make up of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), joined the parade on Tian'anmen Square.

Dressed in the PLA's 2007 Style Uniforms, most of the parading personnel in 56 phalanxes belong to generations born in the 1980sand 1990s, symbolizing the country's 56 ethnic groups marching along the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The one-hour great show televised live worldwide gave the world a chance to watch the ongoing transformation of the PLA from a labor-intensive force to technology-intensive might capable of joint operations in modern warfare.

"As a grand ceremony for the nation, the military parade demonstrates not only the changes in military armaments," said Jiang Tingyu, a military historian and a research fellow at the Chinese Military History Museum, "but the evolution of our country's overall national strength."

Changes were omnipresent for the past 60 years as the armaments displayed in the country's first parade in 1949 were mainly seized during wars before the nation's founding. Those equipment included Japan's 75 mm Field Gun, the U.S.-made 105 mm howitzer, the EBRC armored vehicle and Britain's Mosquito bomber.

The 1984 parade presented 28 domestically made categories of weaponry.

To optimize its force structure, China had carried out several rounds of disarmament since 1949.