Second Taiwan Strait Crisis begins

Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech to the Soviet Communist Party Congress denounced Stalin’s cult of personality. The speech contributed to ideological tensions with Beijing and the eventual...

Mao Zedong publicly advanced the formula “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” The invitation to intellectual criticism was soon recast as a way to identify...

The first Party congress after the founding of the PRC opened in Beijing. Its program called for socialist construction and a more regularized party-state, showing how post-revolutionary sovereignty...

A People’s Daily editorial recast public criticism as an attack on Party leadership, marking the shift from the Hundred Flowers campaign to the Anti-Rightist campaign. The campaign punished hundreds...

The Great Leap Forward was formally launched as a rapid campaign to industrialize and collectivize rural production. It aimed to challenge the developmental hierarchy in which poorer countries were...

The CCP Central Committee adopted a resolution promoting people’s communes in rural areas. It joined agricultural production and local administration in large collectivities, transforming village life...

A major uprising began in Lhasa amid tensions over PRC rule and fears for the Dalai Lama’s safety. Chinese official sources frame it as a rebellion by elite forces against reforms; many Tibetan...

The Soviet Union withdrew technical advisers from China amid a deepening ideological and geopolitical split. The rupture forced Beijing to pursue strategic autonomy under isolation and accelerated its...

Chinese and Indian forces clashed along a disputed Himalayan border. China’s victory altered regional security and damaged Afro-Asian solidarity built at Bandung, revealing the limits of non-alignment...

Premier Zhou Enlai began a 14-country Afro-Asian tour, including visits to ten African states. China presented its diplomacy as solidarity among recently decolonized peoples and promoted the Five...