October 1, 1949: Victorious Mao proclaims the People's Republic of China a communist state - BT
 
October 1, 1949: Victorious Mao proclaims the People's Republic of China a communist state
At the end of a bitter three-year civil war, People's Liberation Army leader Mao Tse-tung declared the Nationalists defeated and proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
 
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China was proclaimed a communist state on this day in 1949.
A bitter civil war between the People's Liberation Army (PLA), led by Mao Tse-tung, and the Nationalists had raged since 1946, with Soviet Russia backing Mao's forces and the United States sending hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of military supplied to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists.
The Nationalists had vastly outnumbered the Communists, but heavy Nationalist casualties in the Liaoshen Campaign swung the war the PLA's way and by early 1949, a combination of rampant corruption, massive hyperinflation and failed political repression had seen Beijing (then known as Beiping), surrendered to the PLA. Between April and November other major cities passed from Nationalist to Communist control with very little resistance.
As the video above recalls, on October 1, in his new capital Peking (now Beijing), Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. He wasted no time in beginning a programme of land reform which replaced the traditional system of landlord owners and tenant farmers with one which appeared to be weighted in the peasants' favour.
Chiang (above), along with more than 2.5 million Nationalist troops and supporters, fled to the offshore island of Formosa and set up the government of Taipei.
The exiles expected the West to defend a free China, but within weeks Mao was in Moscow signing a pact with the Soviet Union, and other countries began to recognise the new Chinese regime.
With protesction from the superpower to the north, Mao quickly established a network of Communist bureaucrats throughout the country and within four years China had embarked on its first five-year plan, a series of centralised economic programmes that continue to this day.
China's Communist Revolution - Did you know?
The Republic of China had been established in 1912, when the Xinhai Revolution brought an end to the Qing Dynasty and 2,000 years of imperial rule.
Mao Tse-tung was born in Hunan Province in 1893. His father, born a poor peasant, had become one of the richest farmers in the town.
Mao was forced into a marriage with the daughter of another local landowner at the age of 13, but refused to recognise her as his wife and she died in disgrace.
Mao's political leanings were already well established when, witnessing starving peasants stealing his father's grain, he claimed to feel sympathy for their situation.
Mao, a member of the fledgling Communist Party of China, was also a supporter of the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party until Chiang Kai-shek became leader in May 1925 and soon turned on the communists within the party.
In response, the communists' Red Army, led by Mao, fought against KMT forces during a seven-year civil war. Facing annihilation in late 1934, Mao led the Long March, a year-long, 6,000-mile retreat to the communists' northern stronghold which allowed the Red Army to regroup.
The two parties formed a temporary alliance when Japanese forces invaded China in 1937, but resumed their civil war following the defeat of Japan in World War II.
Following the revolution (above), Mao embarked on a counter-revolutionary campaign as well as a land reform policy which saw landlords executed in public. It has been estimated that five million people were killed during this time, with another six million sent to labour camps.
Millions more died in the great famine of 1960-62, triggered when fearful local party bosses exaggerated the amount of grain being produced during a poor harvest. When this grain was taken for use in the cities and for export, rural areas were left without food and some 30 million peasants perished.
Mao and Chiang died 17 months apart, Chiang of kidney failure in April 1975, Mao of a heart attack in September 1976. Mao's body was interred in a Beijing mausolem; Chiang's was put in a copper coffin in the hope that one day he could be buried in his home town of Fenghua in mainland China.
Twenty years after the revolution, just 48 nations recognised Mao's People's Republic, while 71 recognised Chiang's Taiwan-based Republic of China. Taiwan was still in the ascendancy in 1971 (recognised by 68 to PRC's 52), but US President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972 proved the tipping point: by 1973 just 31 states recognised Chiang's republic while 89 had established diplomatic relations with the now legitimised Communist China.