ON THIS DAY ·
Founding of the People’s Republic of China
Mao proclaims the People’s Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The south-west is still in Nationalist hands, and the new state has more soldiers than Party members to govern with.
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The moment in context
A proclamation could announce a government; it could not by itself give that government control of the country. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Communist Party’s army, had grown from something like a party militia to a force of about five million. In October 1949 it still had campaigns to fight. Follow the arrows into the southwest: Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping’s forces entered Guizhou and Sichuan, taking Chongqing on 30 November and Chengdu on 27 December. Lin Biao’s forces swept into Guangxi and crossed to Hainan in April 1950.
From Mao’s consolidation and land reform, chapter 1 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976 (1949).
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — An army that had already won. The Communist victory rested on an army of about five million. In the great battles of 1948–49 the PLA destroyed the Nationalist field armies,…
- The turn — Tiananmen, 1 October 1949. The Gate of Heavenly Peace had been a place from which emperors issued edicts. Mao’s proclamation there on 1 October announced that a new authority…
- What it changed — War arrives before the state is built. The government had scarcely begun building its institutions when war came. The Korean War started eight months after the proclamation, and in…
Then ask the room: Did land reform secure the countryside for the Party chiefly through the land it gave or through the violence it organised? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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