October 1 will mark the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’s foundation after Mao Zedong’s Communist Party defeated the Nationalist Party in a civil war.
In 1958, Mao imposed his project Great Leap Forward in an attempt to transform society through industrialisation, but failed. Then Mao launched a decade-long movement, the Cultural Revolution, in 1966, to reassert his control over the Communist Party. In an attempt to renew the communist revolution’s spirit he mobilised the Red Guards, the country’s urban youth to root out the “bourgeois.”
This year the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping’s leadership will organise one of the largest national day parades in its history.
Carrying on with tradition, the president’s speech will follow a military parade by the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square – which is famous for being the site of the foundation of the Republic and globally for being the scene of a violent crackdown on protesters in 1989.
This is China from its foundation in 1949 to today.
