Vietnam today celebrated the 80th anniversary of its declaration of independence from colonial rule, with a lavish military parade through the streets of the capital, Hanoi.
Tens of thousands of people crowded the streets, many of them holding Vietnamese flags or clad in red, to watch more than 16,000 soldiers, including soldiers, naval officers, signals units, commandos, police officers, peacekeepers, and military medics, who marched in great serried ranks through the streets of the Vietnamese capital.
The military procession began at Ba Dinh Square, where national leaders, diplomats, and other foreign dignitaries, including senior officials from China and Russia, watched on from grandstands.
In a speech opening the parade, To Lam, the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), expressed pride in the nation’s development “from a colony into an independent and unified nation, steadily advancing towards modernity and deep integration.”
“We are determined and persistent in safeguarding the independence, freedom, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and every inch of the sacred land of the Fatherland by exerting the combined strength of the entire nation,” Lam said, according to an official translation of the speech published in Vietnamese state media.
National Day marks the occasion on September 2, 1945, when Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the communist Viet Minh, declared Vietnam’s independence from France, in the vacuum that opened up following the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II. However, France did not recognize the new nation and soon returned in force to reclaim its Indochinese colonies. This led to a long and grueling war that ended with the Viet Minh’s victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
“In this sacred moment,” Lam said in his speech, “each of us seems to hear the echo of Uncle Ho’s Declaration of Independence in 1945, and to see millions of Vietnamese hearts beating with pride and resounding with the oath ‘to die for the survival of the Fatherland’.”
The parade showcased some of the most advanced military equipment possessed by the People’s Army of Vietnam. This included tanks and artillery formations, featuring in a National Day parade for the first time since 1985. It also included domestically made drones, cruise missiles, and air defense vehicles, including its XCB-01 infantry fighting vehicle.
According to VnExpress, a formation of five Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter jets soared over Ba Dinh Square, “tilting their wings in salute to the people below and releasing flares in a dramatic aerial display.” Russian-made Mi-171 helicopters thrummed over central Hanoi carrying giant Vietnamese and Communist Party flags, which rippled in the morning haze.
Taking place concurrently, and broadcast on large screens set up along the Hanoi parade route, was what state media described as Vietnam’s “first-ever naval parade.” This was a sort of elaborate coordinated drill at Cam Ranh Bay in central Vietnam, featuring a command vessel, maritime patrol aircraft, anti-submarine helicopters, Kilo-class submarines, missile frigates, anti-submarine corvettes, fast attack missile boats, and patrol boats of the Vietnam People’s Navy, among others.
Today’s grand procession comes after the CPV put on a similarly lavish parade in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in April, to mark the 50th anniversary of the fall of the South Vietnamese republic. This procession was the first to include contingents of troops from China, Laos, and Cambodia, in recognition of their respective contributions to the Vietnamese communist victory. Today’s parade also featured soldiers from these three nations, as well as from Russia. In keeping with the hierarchy of Vietnam’s foreign relations, the Chinese contingent came first, followed by the Russian, Laotian, and Cambodian contingents.
While the parade celebrated the significant sacrifices made to secure Vietnam’s independence, particularly the military efforts to prevail in the wars against the French and the Americans, Lam’s speech offered a good encapsulation of how the CPV views the past millennium of Vietnamese history. Lam described independent Vietnam as “the crystallization of a thousand-year tradition of national construction and protection; and of steadfastness, intelligence, compassion and aspiration to rise up.” This, he said, stemmed from the strength of the Vietnamese people, which was harnessed and directed by the CPV, which he positioned both as the embodiment of the Vietnamese national spirit and, by implication, the sole legitimate representative of the Vietnamese people.
While historians of Vietnam would find a lot to quibble with here – not least the backward projection of the modern, unified Vietnamese nation into the mists of the distant past – the apparent public enthusiasm for the parade, and the widespread displays of patriotism by Hanoi’s residents, suggest that this view is widely shared, or at least not widely contested.