| The
People's Republic of China was founded on October 1, 1949.
Since then, celebrations of varying scales occur on National
Day each year. Military parades were held every year between
1949 and 1959, and were presided over by Chairman Mao Zedong.
In September 1960, the Chinese leadership decided that in
order to save funds and "be frugal", large-scale
ceremonies for National Day will only be held every ten
years, with a smaller-scale ceremony every five years. Day
celebrations have taken place in 1984 and 1999, at the 35th
and 50th Anniversaries, respectively. The military parade
of 01 October 2009 will take place on Chang'an Avenue, where
the country's leaders will watch the parade. For the anniversary,
the Chinese government budgeted roughly $44 million for
the military parade, with some budget cuts due to the recent
global financial crisis.[13] The parade is expected to display
52 new types of military hardware, including J-10 fighter
aircraft, ZTZ99 main battle tank, five new types of nuclear
and conventional missiles, Kongjing-200 and Kongjing-2000
early-warning aircraft, an unnamed attack helicopter, and
new models of the Type-95 rifle and Type-03 machine gun. |
