Tanks and other heavy weaponry rumbled across Beijing behind goose-stepping troops as China celebrated 60 years of communist rule Thursday with its biggest-ever military review — a symbol of its rapidly expanding global might.

The elaborate ceremony for the founding of the People's Republic unfolded on national television but behind tight security that excluded ordinary people from getting near the parade route through Tiananmen Square.

Precisely choreographed, the two-and-half-hour event hewed closely to tradition. President Hu Jintao, in a Mao jacket instead of a business suit, rode in an open top Red Flag limousine to review the thousands of troops. A parade of kitschy floats, flanked by more than 100,000 people, lauded the communist revolution and the Beijing Olympics. Even the weather cooperated, with aggressive cloud-seeding by the government having brought overnight showers to disperse smog and bring in blue skies.