Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there

This week we have a China special as it's 70 years since the birth of the Communist People's Republic.

We'll hear from, among others, individuals who were there at the very beginning.

I saw Chairman Mao and the other leaders of the country in Tiananmen Square.

I was so excited and overwhelmed. I felt so optimistic.

Those who actually knew Mao first hand.

He laughed like a little baby laughs with absolutely no control.

Like every line in his face would be laughing.

And those who experience the trauma of the Cultural Revolution.

I went there too late, the hell has been cut already.

He was a humiliate. I could have helped. I couldn't help. I couldn't rescue her.

That's all coming up later in the podcast. And to put those moments and those recollections in context, I'm joined by Isabel Hilton, long-time China Watcher,

and currently editor of the China Dialogue website. And Isabelle, you will have watched that huge

celebratory parade in Beijing earlier this week with what overriding feeling

about the past 70 years? Well I think clearly the overriding feeling is that China's

come a very long way I mean even in the past 40 years let alone 70.

So the very ragged army that arrived in Beijing and at the end of the civil War compared to what we saw marching across

Chinaman Square today is one sign of it but there are many others.

Including an extraordinary economic change in the latter half of the 70 years of communist rule.

Absolutely. I think the first 30 years were pretty grim because Mouds are doing was a perpetual

revolutionary, there were constant power struggles within the party,

which were enacted on the population, there were purges of rival centres of power,

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