00:00Well, Zoe Reid is the chair of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding.
00:06She was at the parade and she's been talking to Juliet Mann.
00:10We were sitting parallel with, in the permanent seating.
00:15So parallel with where Xi Jinping was sitting and all the main political leaders, but a few blocks on.
00:21So everything that came up to go past him and the political leaders then came on past us.
00:27The young guy sitting next to me was explaining, you know, these have got no drivers.
00:32These are, you know, these are controlled elsewhere.
00:35So these go under the sea and these go, you know, in boats on the sea.
00:42So obviously they know what all the equipment was.
00:45I think the sheer volume of it.
00:50And obviously we saw President Xi drive past every rank, you know,
00:56and sort of said, hello, everybody, and you've done well kind of thing.
00:59I think the thing that my colleague and I were chatting about afterwards was the absolute precision of the marching troops.
01:09You know, they were all different.
01:11Some were armies, some were navies, some were whatever, whatever.
01:13But there wasn't a single tiny bit of people being out of step.
01:20You know, it's absolute perfection.
01:22And also how can you drive everything exactly aligned without any, you know, anything out of step?
01:29And then flying all the planes all exactly in line.
01:32Let's talk about the image of China that this projects.
01:36Is it a military power?
01:38Is it a promoter of peace?
01:39In Britain, we have not had the experience of being invaded for 14 years.
01:47We've not had the experience of, you know, pro rata losing the 36 million people that the Chinese people have lost through the fascist aggressors.
01:57And we've not had the experience, for example, of children being orphaned and hiding in the ditches during the day
02:06and then running to safety at night, which was the experience of my father.
02:10So it kind of made me think that if this was the backdrop to our life, we might think differently.
02:18We might behave differently if we felt we were under attack, under threat.
02:22And also, of course, we're an island in Britain, so I think we might think differently about how we manage our borders
02:31if we had, you know, real physical borders across our country.
02:35I think it was an attempt to show peace through strength.
02:38We will hold peace by showing our strength.
02:42President Xi has rallied leaders of developing nations to advocate for a more equal, multipolar world
02:48and promote the correct historical perspective of World War II.
02:52What's your take on that?
02:54Certainly I, as someone born and brought up in Britain in the 50s, 60s, 70s,
02:59had absolutely no idea that China was in the war
03:04or that China suffered the devastating, aggressive losses that they did
03:10or that it went on for so long.
03:11And I think that's one of the things that this sort of opened my eyes to
03:16and, you know, made me realise the crucialness of understanding the history,
03:22what's happened to people, which then obviously shapes the way they respond to future situations.
03:28There is a place for everybody in the world.
03:30We need to find a way of working together peacefully
03:34and ensuring that everybody develops and grows as they need to and as they can.
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