President Xi Jinping declared on Tuesday that “no force” can shake China as he oversaw a huge military parade to celebrate 70 years of Mao Tse-Tung-led Communist revolution, shadowed by protests in seething Hong Kong that threatened to steal the spotlight.
Some 15,000 troops along with tanks, new nuclear missiles and a supersonic drone paraded down the Avenue of Eternal Peace as Xi and other Communist Party leaders watched from a rostrum overlooking Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The event was meant to extol China's journey from a poor nation broken by war to the world's second largest economy, but Xi faces a clutch of challenges from a US trade war to months of unrest in Hong Kong.
Xi, who wore the distinctive “Mao suit”, delivered a speech invoking the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation -- his grand vision of restoring the country to perceived past glory.
“There is no force that can shake the foundation of this great nation,” Xi said from the Tiananmen rostrum where Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.