ABSTRACT
On 1 October 1949, a fifty-six-year-old peasant stood on a balcony of the South Gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Tall for a Chinese, with sloping shoulders, a broad face, high forehead and puffy cheeks, he read from a flapping sheet of paper into a crackling microphone. In a highpitched voice whose accent denoted his Hunanese origins, he proclaimed the creation of the People’s Republic of China. His name was Mao Zedong and he was the ruler of the most populous nation on earth.
