Tiananmen Gate, Beijing

A speech at three in the afternoon

At 15:00 local time on Saturday, 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong stood on the rostrum of the Tiananmen Gate — the ceremonial entrance to the Imperial City and historically the place from which Qing emperors had announced major decrees — and declared the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The speech, in his strong Hunan accent, lasted three minutes:

The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China is established today.

Below him in the square, approximately 300 000 people watched.

Above him hung the first installation of his portrait, painted by Zhou Lingzhao — a 6-by-4.6-metre canvas that has been continuously displayed in this position for 76 years, repainted annually to keep the colours fresh.

A new flag for a new state

The flag raised at the ceremony — five gold stars on a red field — had been chosen from 2 992 designs submitted in a national competition launched in July 1949.

The winning design was by Zeng Liansong, a 32-year-old economist from Shanghai.

Zeng's original design included a hammer and sickle inside the large star. The selection committee removed the hammer and sickle to distinguish the Chinese flag from the Soviet one.

Zeng was not informed that he had won until November 1949, and was not invited to the ceremony on 1 October. His prize was 500 yuan and a personal audience with Premier Zhou Enlai.

The flag has been the national flag of China unchanged since.

Tiananmen Square was much smaller then

The Tiananmen Square of 1 October 1949 was a fraction of the size of the modern plaza.

The Imperial-era square had been a T-shaped courtyard bounded by red walls on three sides, roughly 11 hectares. The expansion to today's 44 hectares — making it the largest urban square in the world — happened in 1958 in preparation for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the PRC.

The expansion demolished the surrounding Ming and Qing walls and a number of historic structures, replaced with the Great Hall of the People on the west, the National Museum of China on the east, and the Monument to the People's Heroes at the centre.

The 1949 ceremony took place on a square that no longer exists in its 1949 form.

Four decades of revolution

The PRC had been founded after 22 years of intermittent civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (founded 1921) and the Kuomintang (founded 1912).

Mao's forces had been on the defensive or in retreat for most of those 22 years. The Long March of 1934–1935 had moved the surviving CCP forces 9 000 kilometres from Jiangxi to Yan'an in 370 days, with losses of perhaps 75 per cent.

The CCP-Kuomintang Civil War resumed in 1946 after the brief united front against Japan, and the Communist forces under Mao, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao had won decisively in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek and the remnants of the Kuomintang government had retreated to Taiwan with about 2 million followers.

From this date forward — 1 October 1949 — China has been governed by a single party.