China Shows Off Military Weapons, Will This Photo Make Western Countries Nervous?
China’s military parade was a stunning display of weaponry designed to send a message that Xi Jinping’s vision of a new world order is in place.
It showed China as a leader, backed by a high-tech arsenal that appeared, in many cases, to be superior to Beijing’s rivals.
While much of the post-parade attention will focus on new long-range nuclear weapons like the DF-61 intercontinental ballistic missile – which may be more important in the long run – these weapons are already deployed in large numbers in the People’s Liberation Army, as China has indicated in pre-parade press conferences, they could pose a real problem to any adversary’s ability to undermine China’s military movements in the region.
It demonstrates that China has the industrial might to back up its claims and may ultimately bring Xi’s vision of the world to life.
This is the kind of industrial capacity the US amassed to win World War II, the end of which Wednesday’s parade is designed to commemorate.
However, while US industry marked the end of the Axis powers 80 years ago, a conflict fought by communist Chinese forces alongside Western powers, America now lacks the capacity to produce weapons in the quantities China can.
“What China is demonstrating here is the ability to independently develop advanced military capabilities, deploy them operationally, and do so much more quickly than you see happening in the West,” said Malcolm Davis, senior defense strategy analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
