>>17974413
People think there is no traditional culture left in China because Mao destroyed it, but these military reviews are actually very old. There are dynasties where the emperor would review soldiers. These parades are modernized but it echoes "the grand military review held by the Qianlong Emperor at Nanyuan."

I think there are three sources that have been combined here. The first is the traditional culture, the second is the "red" (communist) culture which came to China via Russia (and you'll still see that stuff in China), and then there's the "modern" culture which existed in Shanghai in the 1920s but we're really talking about Western influence since the 1980s (and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), and they've combined in a stew. Elements of the traditional culture have been brought back but updated or rebooted or given a texture pack update.

A big thing in Confucianism is also the political ritual. In Confucianism, the collected body of ritual is what holds the society together more than a system of law. Think of tea ceremonies. You do the ritual very precisely for an aesthetic and kind of spiritual experience. I think there's an element of that to these parades, and the soldiers put a lot of emphasis on performing the state ritual in a very precise way.

>>17974591
>>17974675
>>17974874
People have a hard time grasping the 1960s communist stuff because it was deeply critical of bourgeois Western capitalist culture and the traditional culture of their own society at the same time. During the cultural revolution, there "revolutionary operas" with political themes about peasants overthrowing feudal lords:
https://youtu.be/81LaWaire9U

I think the traditional "Peking Opera" stuff was shut down. But now that is performed in China as an interesting historical fossil. Nowadays, you're more likely to see governments promote a conservative or trad thing in contrast to Western liberalism. Russia does that though China can be very futurist in propaganda.