ABSTRACT
The first generation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders became founders of the People's Republic of China (PRC) after twenty-eight years of military and political struggles on the road to increased power. The CCP had acquired sufficient experience and self-confidence to create a new Communist state; its alliance with the Soviet Union reinforced the new government's capability of following the Russian model. In 1949, Mao Zedong, chairman of the CCP until his death, transformed the party from a rebellious force against the Nationalist government to a ruling apparatus of the PRC. Before the founding of the People's Republic, Mao had declared the "lean-to-one-side" policy, according to which the new republic would favor the Soviet Union and join the socialist and communist camps in the post-WWII world. After Mao proclaimed the PRC on October 1, 1949, his new government was still confronting more than one million GMD fighters in Taiwan and Southwest China.
