On Saturday, October 1, 1949, a cold and sunny day, Mao Zedong declared the start of a new era for the Middle Kingdom, amid high hopes and enthusiasm.

Standing next to other top leaders of the new regime, such as Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De, China's new strongman, 55, looked over a crowd of 300,000 people on Tiananmen Square from the terrace of the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

He was not sporting a military uniform, but instead a suit that Westerners would soon name after him.

Mao had become leader of the people's republic, at the head of a 475-million-strong country -- a quarter of the world's population at the time.

Tiananmen Square, still fortified after a devastating civil war with Nationalist forces, and smaller than it is now, had been spruced up for the event, with paving stones laid down.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace, the south entrance of the Forbidden City, had been decorated with huge red lanterns and the now world-famous giant portrait of Mao, which remains in place today.

According to witnesses, the rundown state of China's capital -- neglected after eight years of Japanese occupation and four years of civil war -- stood in sharp contrast with the hopeful mood of residents.

Nationalist troops continued to fight in the southwest of China, but victory was but a stone's throw away.

On that Saturday afternoon, the crowd carried banners, sang and shouted: "Long live the People's Republic of China! Long live the Chinese Communist Party!"

In his memoirs, Li Zhisui, who had just come back from abroad and would become Mao's personal doctor, described the crowd's emotions at the sight of the "Great Helmsman."

"We were all transfixed by him. From the day my brother had described him to me as China's saviour, Mao had been my hero. It was the first time that I caught a glimpse of the messiah in the flesh," he wrote.

After the raising of the new flag -- red with five yellow stars -- the crowd was treated to a military parade, led by the cavalry and US army tanks seized from the Nationalists.

But people's hopes and enthusiasm were soon to make way for disillusion stoked by the excesses of Maoism: the Great Leap Forward, the anti-rightist movement and the Cultural Revolution, which led to tens of millions of deaths.

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