China’s State Council Information Office said on Wednesday that preparations are largely complete for a military parade on 3 September to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. The ceremony will take place in Tiananmen Square and along Chang’an Avenue, mobilising tens of thousands of service members and hundreds of aircraft in the capital’s largest such display since 2019. The roughly 70-minute event will comprise 45 marching formations of troops, ground hardware columns and aerial echelons. President Xi Jinping, in his capacity as commander-in-chief, will review the forces, which will operate under a wartime command system established for the occasion, officials added. Major General Wu Zeke, a senior officer on the organising committee, said every system on parade is an active-duty, domestically built platform, with a “significant share” being shown publicly for the first time. Highlights include hypersonic precision-strike missiles, new land-, sea- and air-based strategic weapons, fourth-generation tanks and carrier-capable fighter jets, alongside unmanned, counter-unmanned and electronic-warfare units. Formations will be arranged by combat function to demonstrate joint-operations capability. The parade will be China’s nineteenth since 1949 and only the second dedicated Victory Day procession after 2015. Beijing portrays the display as a tribute to peace and the international order, while military analysts view the unveiling of advanced hardware as a signal of the People’s Liberation Army’s modernisation drive amid heightened strategic competition.