[Applause] october 1949 victory celebrations in Beijing [Music] over 30 years after the Soviet revolution communism makes a second great advance the country with the largest population in the world now has a communist government photographer who bought is on the platform the square was full of excited people chanting "Long live Chairman Mao." But there was really only one thing on my mind and that was to capture those precious moments with my camera and leave them to future generations it was a special day for China after thousands of years of struggle we were liberated at last what a joy [Applause] the crowds in Chennaman Square hear Mount Midong proclaim a new start [Applause] ma says China will now be free of inequality poverty and foreign domination from now on 1/5if of the world's people will become part of the greatest experiment in mass mobilization ever attempted they will be told to work live and think in a new way as they attempt the leap to Mars vision of a new society millions will suffer or die but their lives will be transformed [Music] [Applause] for the first half of the 20th century most Chinese still lived in a way that hadn't altered for generations four out of five worked on the land in desperate poverty most were in debt to land owners or money [Music] lenders in the west of China Hub and Shu's family were landless laborers it was a hard life we had very little to live on i wo cloth day and night to make ends meet we could only just scrape by in the past there was justice for the rich but none for the poor who cared about us then nobody you can't believe how badly the poor were treated [Applause] [Music] the need to ease the rural poverty and modernize was increasingly recognized in the 1920s president Shiang Kai-shek reestablished a central government ending the turmoil between rival warlords his nationalist party drew support from Chinese businessmen and the land owners in the countryside foreigners were allowed to keep their privileged hold over trade and finance [Applause] and the nationalists believe that in time capitalism would spread its wealth out to the other China beyond Shanghai and the coastal cities [Music] but the gulf between the lives of the middle class and the mass of peasants and laborers remained as wide as ever jing Jing was married to a leading Shanghai businessman i learned how to dance and used to go out with my husband to social functions he enjoyed playing mong and always took a lot of trouble about how he dressed when he went out as China began to industrialize low wages and poor conditions increased the social divide some looked to China's Communist Party for a radical change that could take China out of its lethargy and end its exploitation by foreigners starting in Shanghai the communists attempted to stir up the city's factory workers the communists were savagely suppressed by Chiang Kai-sheks forces from the late 1920s those who weren't purged were driven out of the cities and pursued across China after the historic long march they reached the remote [Music] northwest from the caves of Yanan their leader Metung planned a new kind of revolution that would spring from the countryside more than the workers in the city in a short time he said several hundred million peasants will rise like a tornado or a tempest the communists and nationalists had cooperated albeit uneasily during Japan's invasion of China but when the Second World War ended a full-scale civil war between the two sides resumed mao promised the peasants land reform and his troops treated them well when the soldiers first came to our village I was really scared of them i didn't even dare sleep in my room they told me they were the People's Liberation Army and that I shouldn't be frightened they slept in the street and were extremely well behaved yeah by the autumn of 1949 the communists had driven the nationalists out of all the major cities they fled to the island of Taiwan taking the country's gold reserves with them and Mount Siang took over a bankrupt and devastated country [Music] [Applause] [Applause] mao now held more power than any leader since the emperors he promised a China that could stand on its own feet alongside the other world powers