The People's Republic is proclaimed
After victory in the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate on 1 October 1949. The Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.
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What happened
China's civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (Kuomintang) and Mao Zedong's Communists had been interrupted, not ended, by the Japanese invasion. After Japan's defeat in 1945 it resumed in full. Corruption, runaway inflation and military defeats eroded Nationalist support, while the Communists won over much of the peasantry with land reform.
Communist armies took Beijing in January 1949 without a fight, then swept south across the Yangtze. On 1 October 1949, standing on the rostrum of Tiananmen, the old gate to the imperial palace, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China before a crowd of some 300,000 people.
Chiang's government retreated to the island of Taiwan with around two million soldiers and civilians, where the Republic of China continues today. The new state allied with the Soviet Union, carried out sweeping land reform and political campaigns, and within a year was fighting US-led forces in Korea. Mao's rule would bring both national unification and the catastrophes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Part of a collection
- Communist revolutions and coups. How communist parties came to power around the world: in mass uprisings, after long civil wars, and in quiet coups backed by the army.
Around the same time
- Independence and Partition, Delhi, India, 1947
- The atomic bombings, Hiroshima, Japan, 1945
- Ghana wins independence, Accra, Ghana, 1957
- The Dust Bowl, Southern Great Plains, USA, 1930 to 1936
Earlier: Independence and Partition, 1947 · Later: Ghana wins independence, 1957
Further reading
Encyclopedia article: Proclamation of the People's Republic of China (en.wikipedia.org)