Wanted: Tall soldiers with 'big' eyes for China's celebrations

It’s funny the stuff which is meant to impress. It was widely reported the honor guard at this year’s national day parade in Beijing would be goose stepping at exactly 116 paces every minute.

Soldiers on show during China's National Day celebrations, October 1, 2009

I tried to count to make sure, but couldn’t keep up. To do this they trained for six months. And it was pretty impressive, in a North Korean/Cold War era kind of way.

One strange note, according to leader of the honor guard, to be chosen, the soldiers needed to have “big” eyes, double eye lids, measure 1.88 meters tall and from the top of their belt buckle to the ground had to be 1.2m. To be honest such detail escaped me on the day.

It was also impressive to watch the columns of tanks and missiles roll through the heart of Beijing – the new technology we were told again and again was all “made in China”. Perhaps given the history of recent product recalls from this country that may help U.S. military planners rest a little easier.

But possibly most impressive of all wasn’t on show, the improvements in the daily life of hundreds of millions Chinese people.

Since the end of the tumultuous era of Mao Ze Dong the economy has boomed. People here are eating better, living longer and have the kind of life their parents wouldn’t dream of.

But Beijing was so intent on keeping today’s celebrations to the hand picked elite few, it deployed a security operation which was a none too subtle reminder that this country is still run by a one party authoritarian regime.

Somehow, standing there along the parade route, I couldn’t help but think, wouldn’t this have been a better day if the people of China were allowed to take part in some kind of festive celebration, minus the military hardware?

It would have been a much better image for an overseas audience than the tanks and nuclear capable ICBM’s — years of hard work by Chinese diplomats talking about their country’s peaceful rise may just have been undone by 66 minute long parade of some of the most destructive weapons on the planet.