I wish James Fallows of The Atlantic is still blogging from China. He always has such terrific and interesting insights. Even though he’s no longer in China, he has a nice blog post tipping off readers that China is planning something grandiose and frighteningly synchronized for October 1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Of course, as Fallows notes,

I can’t emphasize enough how much this is not the way most Chinese life seems most of the time. The main mental pictures I recall are people doing their own thing, in their own way, with only reluctant and enforced attention to the “rules.” But, as with the Olympics, it is certainly the face that official China wants to present — even if the effect is to make foreigners unrealistically alarmed about a big, single-minded, perfectly-organized Rising China emerging to crush all in its path. Since so many of the people working in unison on October 1 will be actual soldiers carrying weapons, the international fluster effect will be all the greater.

You know, part of me can’t help but wish that this is a prank by the Chinese politburo, as in “We really do want to co-exist peacefully with our friends in the West, but let’s mess with their minds and put on this amazing display of power and make them think that we want to march all over their soil with our ginormous army. There will be panic in their streets. They’ll hide their women and children and coward under their dinner tables.” Oh, if only they had the sense of humor to really do that.