1st October 1949: Mao Zedong declares the establishment of the People’s Republic of China

The first stage of the Chinese Civil War had been suspended in 1937 in order to focus a combined Chinese army against the Japanese, but relations between the two Chinese contingents had remained poor. Even before the Japanese surrender, the Kuomintang and the PLA had begun to receive support from the USA and the USSR respectively. In the aftermath of the Second World War this division continued until the two Chinese armies resumed full-scale war on 26 June 1946. A quarter of China’s land area and a third of the population were already under Communist control, and the PLA soon expanded to over 1.2 million troops supported by a militia of almost double that. With the resumption of the Civil War, the Communist Party itself promised land reform to the peasantry. In return for supporting the PLA, peasants were told that they would be given possession of their own land instead of needing to rent it from unscrupulous landlords. This secured more support for the Communists and, combined with the effective ‘passive defense’ strategy, led to the gradual expansion of Communist control and a Kuomintang retreat. By October 1949 almost all of mainland China was under Communist control and Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and the retreating Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan in December.