BEIJING — At the end of a gala Thursday celebrating communist China's 60th anniversary, President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, got down from their rostrum and joined hands with the dancers in Tiananmen Square.
It was a symbolic gesture designed to soften the image of a remote and authoritarian leadership that had been reinforced by a military parade earlier in the day.
But the day of festivities was like that, full of contrasting images and a hodgepodge of sometimes contradictory slogans. The People's Liberation Army paraded the weapons of war -- missiles, fighter jets, tanks -- while commentators in the official media waxed on about the nation's love of peace.
Slogans about "democracy," "reform," "opening up" and "a new era of progress" were at odds with the way they were spelled out by 80,000 Beijing students, who appeared less like human beings than pixels in a digital photo as they lifted colored pompoms to form Chinese characters. The depersonalizing technique has been discredited in recent years because of its associations with North Korea's dictatorship.
Propaganda extolled the harmonious relationship between China's ethnic groups, but there were few minorities at the event. Dancers dressed in colorful headdresses and costumes appeared to be Han Chinese masquerading as ethnic minorities.
Security around Beijing was extraordinarily tight because of fears of terrorism or protests by Uighurs and Tibetans.
"Xinjiang people show their appreciation by happily singing and dancing," intoned a commentator from China radio without a trace of irony, referring to the western region where at least 200 people were killed and thousands injured July 5 in China's worst ethnic rioting in decades.
The military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party's rise to power was billed as the largest ever in China, but its staging followed the hackneyed formulas of parades past. There were the same formations of goose-stepping soldiers and the floats looked like they'd barely been refurbished from the 1980s, with replicas of cows and tractors publicizing agricultural achievements.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics," a concept developed by the late Deng Xiaoping in 1984, was the phrase heard most often in official commentary.
