  A staggering 620,000 TV sets have been handed out so the spectacle can be watched across the land
  And more than 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Beijing beneath a firework-lit sky to witness it in person
   Tuesday marks 70 years since the formation of Communist China and to trumpet the landmark, a magnificent military parade will enthral its citizens – and impress the world – as the focal point of week-long celebrations
   President Xi Jinping will speak of unity, nationalism and progress.  And whatever the world might think, it has no choice but to listen and watch
  This will be a country revelling in its power.    Within 10 years, China is set to become the biggest economy in the world, leaving the US trailing
  "It’s an enormous shock,” admits Prof Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London
  "This is what we have to make sense of – a world where capitalism is everywhere and yet the most successful practitioner of it is a Communist country
"  So how did this Communist state reach this summit, when its original backer, the Soviet Union, fell 28 years ago?  What President Xi won’t dwell on is that its rise was built on  catastrophic policies, bloodshed and fatalities by the million
    After a bloody civil war with China’s Nationalist Party, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party, finally claimed victory on October 1, 1949
   The country was then hit with Mao’s Great Leap Forward – his pursuit of an idealistic Communism which saw land snatched for  industrialisation, peasants  centralised into communes and agricultural output collapse
   The result, through the 1960s, was 45 million dying of starvation.  In addition, from 1966, Mao’s Cultural Revolution also saw a violent cleansing of the middle classes and intelligentsia
 Millions more were to die.  With the death of Mao in 1976 came the “opening up” of China
    But, by the next decade, the country’s youth began to demand democracy – and that would not be tolerated by the Party
  Protests were brutally quashed in 1989 in Beijing’s infamous Tiananmen Square massacre
 Thousands were reported shot or crushed by tanks.  Human rights were challenged again by the country’s draconian one-child policy, introduced in 1979, by a party fearful at having to feed a spiralling population
  Only since 2016 can parents have two children as the state now fears a population shrink
  Yet the radical economic changes since the 1970s have been nothing short of phenomenal
  Prof Brown says: "In 1978, the society was pretty impoverished.  "The per capita GDP was about $300 – now it’s 20 or 30 times that
  "In 1949, life expectancy was 35 and now it’s around 80."      The transformation will be on show during the celebrations in terms of China’s military might
  A nuclear-armed missile that could reach the US in 30 minutes, the Dongfeng-41, is thought to be part of the parade, plus a supersonic drone and a robot submarine alongside 15,000 troops
  But Prof Brown says he doesn’t believe the message is one of global conflict.  He explains: "I don’t think China wants to be a global power because it doesn’t want the costs and expense
"  For the first time in decades, China must be wary of expense – millions suffer poverty, the economy has slowed and the country is fighting a trade war with a self-protectionist US
  Yet the country is still on course for world economic domination.   Any future UK trade relationship, however, has to be balanced with the human rights abuses and disturbing  totalitarianism in China
   Beijing keeps a tight rein on its population and, in the build-up to the anniversary, that has been pulled tighter
 Activists have been placed under house arrest and the country’s Great Firewall – its online censorship system – has been bolstered
  And there is the horrific treatment of its mainly Muslim ethnic minority, the Uighurs – thousands of whom have been sent to detention centres
  During a recent UN Human Rights Council meeting, China was even accused of harvesting organs from persecuted minority groups
 China denies the allegations.  Prof Brown says: "It’s not going to be easy. There will be sharp choices
 Obviously we want to exploit this huge new potential market, but it’s going to be a very challenging situation
"  
