This military parade was the only one of the 13 National Day military parades to be held in the rain since the founding of New China. Peng Dehuai and Yang Chengwu were again the parade Commander and the parade Commander-in-Chief respectively.

They reviewed a troop comprising 11,929 soldiers. The parade was attended by the then-Indonesian President Dewi Sukarno and Nepalese Prime Minister Acharya, representatives from the Communist Party, Workers’ Party, Party of Labor, the Party of Working People and People's Revolutionary Party from over 50 countries attending the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, guests from over 50 countries who were invited to the ceremony, diplomatic envoys and officials in China and experts from the Soviet Union, the People's Democracies and other countries who helped with the construction of New China.