A TRANSFORMED ARMY

Military watchers agreed that in addition to hardware, the "soft" capabilities of the Chinese army have also been greatly upgraded and the PLA, once composed mainly of uneducated soldiers, is being transformed into a lean, professional and high-tech force.

Wearing green, white and blue ceremonial or camouflage uniforms, more than 3,000 Chinese servicemen and women from China's elite troops, marched past the Tian'anmen Square in 14 phalanxes with identical steps to the music played by a 1,300-member military band.

In between the two ornamental columns standing on each side of the Tian'anmen, soldiers have to take exactly 128 goosesteps in 96 meters. Each step should be exactly 0.75 meters.

Over the past months, participating servicemen and women, most of whom were born in the 1980s and 1990s, had trained for nearly 12 hours a day, even in summer when temperatures exceeded 40 Celsius.

Four phalanxes, each with 325 members, were composed of would-be officers from prestigious military academies of the PLA Army, Air Force, Navy and the SAF.

Li Hanjun, commander of the naval academy formation, said all the student officers in his formation have two majors. Nearly one third of them had traveled overseas on warships and some even sailed around the world.

"Compared with my generation, they have much broader vision," 44-year-old Li said.

A total of 14 arms from four PLA services participated in the National Day parade, including the young and mysterious Special Forces of the PLA Army, marine aviation troops from the Navy and ground air defense from the Air Force.

Compared with the National Day military parade 10 years ago, Thursday's parade involved fewer personnel and more equipment, fewer Army troops and more troops from PLA Navy, Air force and the Second Artillery Force.

Lieutenant General Fang Fenghui, general director of the parade, told Xinhua that the formation of the phalanxes shows the ongoing transformation of the PLA from a labor-intensive force to a technology-intensive one and its ability to carry out diverse military missions.

With the rapid development of information technology, the PLA has speeded up its pace of mechanization and informatization. The PLA has announced that it will reach its goal of building "modernized" armed forces and national defense system in the mid of the 21st century.

In keeping with the modernization process, the PLA has demobilized millions of men and women since 1978. The number of its personnel declined from a peak figure of nearly 6 million in 1951 to 2.3 million at present.

In 2003, the Central Military Committee began to implement a Strategic Project for Talented People, which proposes that by the end of 2010, there will be a remarkable improvement in the quality of military personnel, and a big increase in the number of well-educated personnel in combat units.

Currently, about three quarters of China's military officers have been to college or postgraduate schools, 51 percent more than in 1995, according to a White Paper on National Defense issued last January.

SELF-DEFENSE IN NATURE

As the military parade went on, 80,000 children holding red, green, blue plastic wreath and flowers spelled out slogans, turning the vast Tian'anmen Square into a sea of color.

The slogans included "Ting Dang Zhi Hui (follow the Party's orders)", "Fu Wu Ren Min (serve the people)", "Ying Yong Shan Zhan (fight valiantly and skillfully), "Zhong Cheng Yu Dang (be loyal to the Party)" and "Bao Xiao Zu Guo (serve the country)".

As the military parade came to an end, the slogans were changed into images of a peace dove and the Great Wall, indicating that the country is peace loving and the PLA has solid defensive capability.

The military parade, with little doubt, will be closely scrutinized by domestic and overseas military watchers for clues about China's development trends.

In an effort to ease concerns over of its growing military might, senior PLA officials have on many occasions stressed that a stronger PLA will not be a threat to other countries.

General Gao Jianguo, spokesperson of the National Day Military Parade Joint Command, said last week that the display of China's armed forces and weaponry should be seen as an open, transparent, peaceful and friendly gesture rather than "a show-off of military might."

Gao dismissed the allegation that a powerful military capability shown by the high-profile parade might worry China's neighboring countries, saying that holding a military parade on major festivals is an international practice.

"Whether a country's military power would raise threats to other nations depends on the nature of the country's defense policies," he said.

China's White Paper on National Defense issued in January 2009 said China pursues a national defense policy which is purely defensive in nature.

Before the founding of New China, China had suffered from repeated invasions of foreign powers.

In August 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces (Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States) lined up the Tian'anmen Squre for a military review after they gunned their way into Beijing and looted the 3,000-year-old city.

"That is one of the darkest moments in China's history, a huge humiliation. But I think that will never happen again. That's why we need a strong army and strong national defense," 23-year-old postgraduate Tang Liang, majoring in rocket design in the Beihang University in Beijing, said after watching the parade on Internet.