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A year that changed China and the world
ANDREW MURRAY recommends a book on the 1949 victory of the communist revolution which transformed the country and impacted on national liberation movements globally
NATION INTO BEING: (Below) Mao Zedong proclaims the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 from the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing
[Orihara1/Creative Commons] 
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China 1949
by Graham Hutchings
(Bloomsbury, £22.50)
THE MORE perspective we gain on the 20th century, the more the Chinese revolution must be considered as perhaps its most significant political development.
The 1949 victory of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was at once a connection with the world socialist revolution which had begun
in 1917 in Russia and emblematic of the great tide of national liberation which eventually freed Asia, Africa and the Middle East from formal dependence on imperialism.
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