Whatever you might think of the politics, the performance was nothing short of perfect.
Tens of thousands of service personnel in lines so straight they could almost have been animated.
Every flex of the foot, every turn of the head, every cry of allegiance exactly in sync.
And the noise, you could feel every bit as much as you could hear.
The stamp of boots, the rumble of the tanks and the roar of the jet engines literally reverberated through the stand where we were sitting.
“We serve the people” came the cries when called on; the passion, of course, had been practised, but it felt authentic too.
The security to get here spoke volumes about just how tightly controlled this whole event has been.
Our meet time, dictated by the Chinese government, was over seven hours before the start of the parade itself, bussed in at the dead of night, no fewer than three separate rigorous security scans.
But once onto Beijing’s historic Tiananmen Square, we were free to film in places that are normally strictly off limits.
And that is because today, nothing less than China itself, in all its prowess, is on show.
