| Date |
Ruling entity |
Head of State |
Events |
Other people/events |
| 1949 |
People's Republic of China |
Mao Zedong |
Founding of the People's Republic of China |
|
| 1950 |
Battle of Chosin Reservoir |
Korean War |
| 1951 |
Occupation of Tibet |
| 1953 |
|
| 1956 |
Hundred Flowers campaign |
|
| 1957 |
|
| 1958 |
Great Leap Forward |
|
| 1959 |
Three Years of Natural Disasters |
| 1960 |
| Sino-Soviet split |
| 1961 |
|
| 1962 |
Sino-Indian War |
|
| 1964 |
State Council decrees it is acceptable to abbreviate most characters listed in the Plan for Character Simplification |
The PRC detonates its first atomic bomb |
| 1966 |
Cultural Revolution |
The Little Red Book |
| 1969 |
Opening of the first line of the Beijing Subway: 17 stations |
| 1970 |
First satellite launch, using Long March rocket |
|
| 1971 |
The PRC replaces the ROC as a permanent member of the UN Security Council |
Henry Kissinger secretly visits Beijing |
| 1972 |
Richard Nixon visits China. Shanghai Communiqué |
|
| 1974 |
Discovery of the Terracotta Army |
|
| 1976 |
Four Modernizations |
Tiananmen incident following the death of Zhou Enlai |
| Hua Guofeng of Deng Xiaoping Period |
|
|
| 1977 |
Beijing Spring |
|
| 1978 |
Start of Chinese economic reforms |
Democracy Wall Movement |
| 1979 |
One-child policy |
| USA and PRC establish full diplomatic relations |
Visit of Deng Xiaoping to Washington, D.C |
| Border-war with Vietnam |
Deng Xiaoping's Four cardinal principles |
| 1980 |
First Special Economic Zones |
Trial of the Gang of Four |
| 1981 |
|
|
| Hu Yaobang of Deng Xiaoping Period |
|
|
| 1984 |
Margaret Thatcher in China, signs Sino-British Joint Declaration,
to handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997 |
|
| 1987 |
|
|
| Zhao Ziyang of Deng Xiaoping Period |
|
|
| 1989 |
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 |
|
| Jiang Zemin of Deng Xiaoping Period |
|
| 1991 |
First McDonald's restaurant in Beijing |
|
| 1996 |
Third Taiwan Strait Crisis |
|
| 1997 |
Hong Kong handover, becomes a Special Administrative Region |
Death of Deng Xiaoping |
| 1999 |
Macau handover |
|
| 2000 |
The PRC passes Japan as the country with which the USA has the largest
trade deficit |
|
| 2001 |
Accession to World Trade Organization |
Beijing elected to hold the 2008 Summer Olympics |
| 2002 |
16th Party Congress |
|
| 2003 |
Hu Jintao |
SARS outbreak |
Shenzhou 5, PRC's first manned space mission |
| 2004 |
|
Jiang Zemin retires from his post as Chairman of the Central Military Commission |
