Why This Year’s National Day Means So Much to China

China’s National Day -- the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China -- is usually marked with speeches, flags, fireworks and the like. This Oct. 1 holiday will see “mass pageantry,” including a military parade, as 2019 carries particular significance for President Xi Jinping, marking 70 years of Communist Party rule. That’s one year longer than the Soviet Union lasted. It also is freighted with a series of potential challenges, from rising prices and a slowing economy on the mainland to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and a more confrontational U.S. government.

Mao Zedong, the Communist Party’s then leader, declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, after four years of civil war with the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, following the end of Japanese occupation during World War II. The two sides had been fighting on and off for decades to fill a power vacuum left by the Chinese Revolution of 1911, which brought an end to the Qing dynasty. The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the U.S. to suspend diplomatic ties with Beijing for decades. The KMT and 1.5 million refugees fled to the island of Taiwan, where they set up a rival government.