President Xi Jinping declared that "no force" can shake China as he oversaw a huge military parade to celebrate 70 years of Communist Party rule, shadowed by protests in Hong Kong that threatened to steal the spotlight.
About 15,000 troops along with tanks, new nuclear missiles and a supersonic drone paraded down the Avenue of Eternal Peace on Tuesday as Mr. Xi and other Communist Party leaders watched from a rostrum overlooking Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The event was meant to extol China's journey from a poor nation broken by war to the world's second-largest economy, but Mr. Xi faces a clutch of challenges from a US trade war to months of unrest in Hong Kong.