Chinese president puts military might on show
China’s President BEIJING — Xi Jinping has opened a public campaign to deepen his grip on power in a coming leadership shake-up, using a huge military parade on Sunday, speeches and propaganda, along with a purge in the past week, to warn officials to back him as the nation’s most powerful leader in two decades.
Wearing his camouflage uniform as commander in chief of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi watched as 12,000 troops marched and tanks, missile launchers, jet fighters and other new weapons drove or flew past in impeccable arrays.
Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong famously said political power comes from the barrel of a gun, and Xi signaled that he, too, was counting on the military to stay ramrod-loyal while he chooses a new leading lineup to be unveiled at a Communist Party congress in the autumn.
“Troops across the entire military, you must be unwavering in upholding the bedrock principle of absolute party leadership of the military,” Xi said at the parade, held on a dusty training base in the Inner Mongolia region, 270 miles northwest of Beijing. “Always obey and follow the party. Go and fight wherever the party points.”
Officially, the display was to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the creation of the People’s Liberation Army. But it was also the highlight of a week of political theater promoting Xi as a uniquely qualified politician whose elevated status as China’s “core” leader, endorsed by officials last year, should be entrenched at the party congress.
“These military parades could become a regular, institutionalized thing, but this one also has a special meaning this year,” said Deng Yuwen, a former editor at a party newspaper in Beijing who writes current-affairs commentaries. “It’s meant to show that Xi Jinping firmly has the military in his grip, and nobody should have any illusions of challenging him.”
The congress will almost certainly give Xi, 64, a second five-year term as the party general secretary and chairman of the commission that controls the military, and it will appoint a new team to work under him.
Russia’s global MOSCOW — military ambition was on display Sunday when the country celebrated Navy Day with large military parades not only in St. Petersburg, but also on the banks of Syria.
The parades of ships, submarines and aircraft were held at Russian naval bases in Sevastopol, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, and at Tartus in Syria, where Russia is expanding its military presence.
The main parade took place in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and home of the navy’s headquarters.
Aboard his presidential cutter, Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, greeted crews of five ships and a submarine lined up for him in St. Petersburg’s Neva River. Thousands of viewers filled the city’s granite embankments.
Later, Putin disembarked onto the Admiralty Embankment to deliver a speech from a tribune.
“Much is being done today for the development and renovation of the navy,” Putin said. “New ships are being commissioned, the fleet’s combat training and readiness are being perfected.”
“Today, the navy is not only solving its traditional tasks, but is also nobly responding to new challenges, making a significant contribution to the fight against terrorism and piracy.”
Numerous ships then proceeded in front of the embankment, with new ones showcasing the continued modernization of the Russian fleet. In 2011, Russia began a large-scale overhaul, ordering dozens of new ships and submarines.
In Syria, seven Russian ships and a submarine took part in their own military parade just off the Russian military installation there. Fighter jets and bombers from the Russian Hmeymim air base flew above.
In 2015, Moscow intervened in the civil war in Syria, citing the need to fight terrorists while they were still far away from its own borders. The emphasis of the Russian effort, however, has been to shore up Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, one of Moscow’s few allies in the Middle East.
Assad did not attend the parade.
Russia’s presence in Syria also created a bargaining chip for the Kremlin in its conflict with the West over the annexation of Crimea in Ukraine and what U.S. intelligence agencies say were its attempts to intervene in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
On Thursday, Putin signed a law ratifying a deal with the Syrian government that allowed Russia to keep Hmeymim air base for almost half a century. The deal cemented Russia’s military presence in the region.
In January, Russia also signed a similar agreement over its naval facility in Tartus, where it plans to build a permanent base.
Large ships and submarines that could not enter the Neva River were lined up in the nearby naval base city of Kronshtadt, which guards the entrance to St. Petersburg from the Gulf of Finland.
In Kronshtadt, two Chinese ships joined the parade to showcase Moscow’s strategic cooperation with Beijing. The Chinese ships came thousands of miles to take part in war games in the Baltic Sea.