China: 50 Guns For 50 Years

China marked 50 years under communist rule Friday with a lavish parade featuring the symbols of its military might and national pride: ballistic missiles, heroic soldiers and plentiful harvests. CBS News Anchor Dan Rather reports.

President Jiang Zemin and other Communist Party leaders looked down from the Gate of Heavenly Peace as military regiments marched past, followed by heavy artillery and missiles, including China's new East Wind-31 intercontinental ballistic missile, which is capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska.

Fighter jets streaked through the sky. Cannons fired a 50-gun salute.

China's first military parade in 15 years and the ornate, patriotic floats that followed were all part of an extravaganza, worth the equivalent of $36 million, devoted to showcasing the nation's achievements under a half-century of communist leadership.

"The Chinese nation will stand rock-firm in the family of nations," Jiang declared in a speech.

"Long live the great People's Republic of China! Long live the great Communist Party of China! Long live the great Chinese people!" he said.

	Celebrating 50 Years of the People's Republic of China Photo Essay · Video · Timeline

That float was followed by another carrying a portrait of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang's mentor and the key leader behind economic reforms of the past two decades. Floats nearby portrayed heroic oil workers and bumper harvests.

Finally, in Jiang's section of the parade, his portrait was surrounded by hundreds of teen-agers dancing in bright ethnic costumes and waving hot-pink scarves. Floats in this final part praised gains in science, education and technology.

Chinese navy soldiers march on parade through Tiananmen Square.

Lion dancers cavorted on the pavement. Gold, pink and orange dragons, each held up by 24 male dancers, slithered down the street.

A cordon kept ordinary citizens away from the festivities, which continued in the evening with dancing by 100,000 performers in Tiananmen Square and fireworks displays there and across the city.

Wearing a charcoal gray Mao suit, Jiang stood in the open roof of a black limousine to review the assembled military units - just as Deng, his mentor and patriarch of China's reforms, did 15 years before.

Military jets and helicopters thundered overhead. Tiananmen Square was awash with color, filled with 100,000 youths holding colored fans that they opened to create giant slogans and, as the military filed past, a white dove on a sea of blue.

Chinese leaders hope the national pride generated for the anniversary will help the Communist Party, whose public image has been tarnished by pervasive official corruption and complaints about unemployment and falling incomes.

"The Chinese people have never held their heads so high and drawn so much attention from all over the world as they do today," the party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily, said in an editorial.

The entire parade was planned for months and orchestrated down to allocating the exacnumber of seconds every group had in front of the leaders. Once past the view of Chinese television cameras, parade marchers had to break into a run to be able to disperse in a controlled fashion. Nothing outside the script was allowed.

Before the festivities, the government cracked down on political dissidents and drove out migrants and beggars. In thorough security sweeps along the parade route, police inspected for bombs, padlocked manholes and sealed mailboxes.

Barred from the parade route, most Beijing residents viewed the events on television and enjoyed a weeklong holiday that will give them a chance to visit parks decorated with hundreds of thousands of flower pots and displays for the anniversary, an annual extravagance in the capital.

The authorities took no chances in ensuring that patriotism ruled the day. Households were ordered to display the red and gold national flag.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, issued a statement urging Chinese leaders to mark the anniversary by releasing political prisoners and improving human rights.
CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report