Taipei resident Mu Chu-hua caught some glimpses of China’s mighty military parade on YouTube on Wednesday. As she watched hypersonic missiles roll down Beijing’s Changan Avenue and troops march in lockstep, she did not feel like they posed a threat to Taiwan.
Mu, a 69-year-old retiree, said she saw the parade as simply a way for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to “say thank you to the troops.”
“I thought it was quite normal,” she said. “It was very cool.”
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
China’s military parade commemorating the end of World War II was being watched internationally for insights into Beijing’s military advances and its show of unity with traditional US adversaries such as Russia and North Korea.
However, for many in Taiwan, the military show registered at most for its entertainment value.
“The lack of public reaction to China’s display of military might reflects both the limits of Beijing’s intimidation campaign against Taiwan and the longstanding concern of Taiwanese people becoming desensitized by the constant military threat posed by China,” said William Yang (楊?暐), a senior Northeast Asia analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“It’s essentially a double-edged sword,” Yang added. “On the one hand, China’s attempt to regularize military operations around Taiwan in recent years has forced Taiwanese people to view these activities as part of a ‘new normal’ in their everyday life. However, China’s increasing military presence also reduces the effect of these intimidation tactics on the Taiwanese public.”
Taiwan’s government used the event to renew alarm over Beijing’s military intimidation of the nation.
President William Lai (賴清德) in a speech on Tuesday ahead of Armed Forces Day said that the “security environment” in the Taiwan Strait was “more severe than ever before.”
China’s military intimidation and alleged cognitive warfare tactics are “not only a threat to Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, but also a challenge to the entire democratic world,” Lai said.
On Wednesday, Lai laid a wreath at a memorial shrine commemorating fallen soldiers and war heroes.
During WWII, it was the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that was leading China out of the wartime capital of Chongqing.
The country was then known as the Republic of China, which is now based in Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) acknowledges the role of the KMT army in defeating Japan, while playing up the exploits of its own guerrilla fighters.
The KMT in a statement on Wednesday criticized the CCP’s “twist of history” while reiterating its own role in the war.
“Eighty years ago, it was the Republic of China government and the National Revolutionary Army that led the nation in the War of Resistance against Japan, sacrificing countless lives and blood to protect the nation and its people and achieve final victory,” the KMT statement said. “This historical evidence is irrefutable and cannot be distorted or falsified.”
While the KMT, the Democratic Progressive Party and CCP sparred over their own interpretations of the day, for 17-year-old Justin Hu, a high-school student in Taipei, the military parade was just “a nice celebration and a nice display of military power,” he said.
“It is just a ceremony,” he added.
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