The sound of rattling sabres

Last week, on my way out to visit my friend Nick's photo exhibition, I ran afoul of the tanks. A double column of light tanks and self-propelled guns was waiting to roll into town from the east, and almost all major roads for half a mile or so in all directions around them were blocked off. Even the footpaths alongside Tonghui Creek were closed (since they passed under the road where the column was being held, awaiting its move order), so thousands of pedestrians were being forced to walk along the elevated Jingtong Expressway, the only thoroughfare still open. Every weekend, you see, from late August until the grand 60th anniversary of the PRC on 1st October, there are full-scale rehearsals of the planned festivities around Tiananmen Square. The centrepiece of those festivities is going to be a massive parade of military hardware (How quaint! Isn't that SO Cold War?!) down the central artery of Chang'an Avenue. Of course, this causes huge disruption of traffic across the whole city for 48 hours at a time. But it's all worth it. Oh yes. No, it isn't. How I wish a new 'Tank Man' would bravely step into the middle of the road and say, "Enough of this foolishness. Go back to your barracks, and stay there." Now, I admit I can't quite shake off my schoolboy fascination with the paraphernalia of warfare, and part of me thinks it's quite cool to be able to see this sort of equipment up close. A much larger part of me, though, is ashamed of such trivial pleasures, and feels a much stronger and more profound sense of discomfort when confronted with this spectacle: there is something incongruous, indeed downright sinister, about encountering troops and tanks in the streets of a city. I think this would be true anywhere in the world; but it is especially so here in a city still haunted by the traumatic memories of the imposition of martial law 20 years ago. Inevitably, this has become a favourite talking point for me over the past couple of weeks, both in private conversations and in the weekly discussion group I'm running with some Chinese lawyers. I find it very disheartening that none of the Chinese I've broached the subject with so far seems to think there is anything untoward about any of this. Indeed, they don't seem to have even any awareness of the concept of 'militarism'. They don't see this sort of posturing as immature, or provocative. They don't see it as the kind of thing that can lead to wars. I guess they don't have any familiarity with the arms races in Europe - and, in particular, the rise, and then the resurgence of aggressive nationalism in Germany - which precipitated the two World Wars. So, I move on to try to consider the semiotics of this sort of event from first principles: what exactly is the thinking behind this? what sort of signals is it intended to send out? aren't you at all concerned how negatively this is likely to be viewed in most other countries around the world? how do the Chinese themselves interpret its message? Well, the Chinese perception of this HUGE display of military power planned for the October 1st celebrations seems to be (and here I am shamelessly recycling a comment I contributed [or tried to contribute - I'm still being plagued by Internet glitches!] to an interesting thread that's been evolving this week on Stuart's Found In China blog) that it is necessary and justified, to intimidate China's enemies. Yep, they don't even say "potential enemies" there, just "enemies". When challenged as to who those enemies might be, they start off with the USA and the UK (which seems to be more about lingering resentments of the "century of humiliation", and envy of global hegemony rather than any, you know, realistic military threat). When you point out that the USA and the UK have neither the desire nor the capability to fight a land war against China, they reconsider for a moment, and then suggest India, Russia, and Japan. Actual neighbours. That's a lot more worrying. But when you press them a little further, and ask, "Come on, really, who might you ever use these weapons against? Who are you actually trying to intimidate?" Why, then they say: Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. It's not just swaggering militarism. It's preparation for civil war. That's why I feel so uncomfortable with it. And it makes a mess of the tarmac.