oct 1, 1949 - Mao Zedong proclaims the formation of the People's Republic of China

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"A second but simultaneous expansion of the Cold War occurred in East Asia, where on October 1, 1949 – a week after Truman’s announcement of the Soviet atomic bomb – a victorious Mao Zedong proclaimed the formation of the People’s Republic of China. The celebration he staged in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square marked the end of a civil war between the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese communists that had been going on for almost a quarter of a century. Mao’s triumph surprised both Truman and Stalin: they had assumed that the nationalist, under their long-time leader Chiang Kai-Shek, would continue to run China after WWII. Neither had anticipated the possibility that within four years of Japan’s surrender, the nationalists would be fleeing to the island of Taiwan, and the communists would be preparing to govern the most populous nation in the world….American officials consoled themselves with the argument that the ‘loss’ of China to communism would not amount to a ‘gain’ for the Soviet Union. Mao, they thought, might well turn out to be the Asian Tito: hence, the administration made no commitment to the defense of Taiwan, despite the fact that the powerful pro-Chian “China Lobby” in Congress was demanding that it do so." (Gaddis 2006, p. 37).

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