2015-09-01
Policeman checks a pedestrian at Tiananmen Square in advance of a scheduled military parade, Beijing, Sept. 1, 2015.
AFP
As the ruling Chinese Communist Party gears up for a massive military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Japan in World War II, shops in the capital are being shuttered, medical facilities are closing, and nonresidents with complaints against the government are hiding from police for fear of being sent back to their hometowns.
Meanwhile, millions of students returning to primary schools, high schools, and universities across the country have been ordered to spend their first day back in class immersed in paeans of praise to the party, according to a recent government directive.
Major parks and attractions along Beijing’s central, east-west Chang’an Avenue were shut on Tuesday ahead of Thursday’s parade, which will feature highly choreographed displays from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and an array of military hardware.
Tiananmen Square, the iconic heart of communist China, was also sealed off to visitors on Tuesday, while subway trains and buses are running past but not stopping and several major hospitals in the vicinity are no longer seeing patients, residents said.
Shops in five main shopping drags near Tiananmen Square—including Wangfujing, Dongdan, and Qianmen—have all been ordered to close until the parade ends, business owners said.
“The authorities have sealed off all the roads, and they will eventually be completely closed,” the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
“The entire shopping street has been affected, because none of the business owners are able to carry on their business,” he said.
An employee at a nearby store said they had been ordered to close on Wednesday and Thursday, but declined to comment further.
“It’s not convenient for me to talk right now, sorry,” he said. “If you have any questions, you will have to get in touch with my company.”
‘The first lesson’
China’s powerful propaganda ministry issued a directive in recent weeks requiring schools and higher education institutions to arrange “the first lesson of the new school year” to teach students about the events of the war against the Japanese invasion.
The directive stressed the need to educate freshmen about China’s national humiliation suffered under Japanese occupation, and about the “Chinese dream.”
Students, many of whom will begin school a week later than usual to take the anniversary celebrations into account, should be taught an extensive history of the war “in the spirit of education,” it said.
Former top Communist Party aide Bao Tong, who has been under house arrest at his Beijing home since serving a seven-year jail term in the wake of the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement, said he has been forbidden to give interviews to overseas media until after the parade is over.
But he added: “The propaganda ministry is determined to get them when they’re very young, so that our youngsters will have the correct historical perspective from primary school onwards, and so that they will know what really happened in the war of resistance against Japan,” Bao said.
“They aren’t supposed to pay attention to any other views, and that’s why they have to get them when they’re young, or it could all go wrong later.”
