Parade effectively demonstrates China's status to the world

President Xi walks to the the Tian'anmen Rostrum accompanied by Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, right. [Photo/Xinhua]

As the world system transforms from unipolarity to multipolarity, new major powers and political paradigms emerge. China, as a rising nation, is eager to seek its identity and understanding both home and abroad.

Following Russia’s footsteps, China will hold its military parade this Thursday to commemorate the end of WWII and has become the focus of the Western media. It highlights the patriotism and nationalism to strengthen national awareness and identity and meanwhile it proves the security guarantee for the state strategies like “Chinese Dream”, “One Belt and One Road ”and so on.

With the Chinese economy maturing, Chinese citizens have been going abroad to travel in massive numbers. It’s part of the reflection of China’s “soft power”. In order to deepen the image of China being a responsible country to maintain world stability and telling the Chinese story, China attempts to express its decision of taking the responsibility for world politics by means of some important events to emphasize the importance of protecting the world principles of international laws formulated in the UN after the Second World War. 

However, it seems to be that the West has not so far recognized the peaceful rising of China, and at the moment the Western media still insist on painting China as a threat to rationalize the US “rebalancing” policy of “Pivot to Asian-pacific region”.

Therefore, in order to exert its “soft power” to influence domestic and overseas public opinion, the military parade would be one of the effective ways for emerging countries like China and Russia to win its people’s understanding of the state policy and at the same time to broadcast themselves to the world especially the inner societies of Western countries which it usually has no access to.

A military parade staged at a meaningful time could effectively signal its own national strategies to its neighbors and other countries in the world. China and Russia are the only two nations with the requirements and capacity to do so. That’s the reason to some extent why China and Russia choose parades as their commemorative style.

A parade is just a ceremony for those emerging countries to win its due international credit and respect. Undoubtedly, the Western media will throw their biases over it and take it as a threat to peace. Therefore, China must arrange its schedule carefully and spare no effort in countering the misinterpretations out of innocent or intentional reasons.

Wu Fei, Professor of JiNan University, Senior Research Fellow of Charhar Institute

Hu Feng-Ying,  Ph.D of MGIMO University, Postdoctoral Researcher of Communication and State Governance Center of Fudan University