How NOT to celebrate the 70th anniversary of winning your freedom

[pawineguy]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/01/asia/china-military-parade-preview/index.html

"Broadcasters are prohibited from airing any entertainment programs, half of Beijing's five million registered cars are banned from streets and many of the city's parks and tourist attractions are shuttered.

Those living within the lockdown area will be virtual prisoners: They aren't allowed to leave their homes, invite guests, use balconies or even open windows.

By Wednesday afternoon, central Beijing was like a ghost town with shops and roads closed but many said they were excited despite all the disruption."

 

[Edward]

Security is always on high alert for any major show like this in Beijing. It reminds me of when the US President visited Northern Ireland in 1995 - security for that shut down huge swathes of the place. Our university was shut for the day and the campus empited as he was doing a speech there, and many of the major roads were shut down for the cars to pass. Beijng definitely ratchett it up a notch, in part becuase of their cultural approach to dissent, in part also, I'm sure, because all top tiers of government will be there. More of a shutdown than would happen in the UK on most big occasions. Typically the British state only really goes for it like this with royal-related occasions, though, save for Diana's funeral, there doesn't tend to be mass cloure of shops (and that was largely voluntary, and mostly for presentation purposes). Personally, I'd welcome one day every few years when London could be shut up like a Ghosttown... I'd not be so keen on the limitations on TV, but those Chinese who don't want to watch the parades will find something else to do with themselves. For a people who have never had anything other than an authoritarian government structure since the foundation of China as a single entity in 221BC, the Chinese are remarkably apt to ignoring a lot of rules and doing largely as they please.

The claim about 'half the cars in Beijing' being shut out is a bit spurious: city authorities have been attempting to begin to addressthe city's air pollution problem for quite some time, and there have already been limitations on car use for six or eight years. They did introduce regulations some years ago which provided that on certain days only cars with even numberplates could drive in town, and odd numbers only on other days. So at least in theory on any given day half the cars in Beijing will be prevented from driving through they city. Of course, the Chinese being the Chinese, they've found plenty of ways around thi, including acquiring, by whatever means, a second set of numberplates...