The Dragon Awakes
Mao Zedong, son of Mao Yichang, walked to the podium, and laid his hands on the Chinese dragon embroidered into the red flag draped upon it. This was the day he and millions of other Chinese had laboured for. February 4th, 1941. Thirty years after the Xinhai Revolution, fourteen years after the Autumn Harvest Uprising, seven years after the Long March, and five years after the start of the War of Vengeance, as the Comintern war against the Japanese was now called. A day that would forever be engraved in history. The founding day of the People's Republic of China. He smiled. Should death take him now, he would be satisfied, for his life's dream had been realized.
Mao looked outwards, from his speaking stand at the base of the Tiananmen. A million soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, selected from the PLA's crack divisions, were formed before him, bayonets fixed and banners flying. These men, both veterans of the Long March and fresh recruits who had proven themselves in the fierce fighting of the Vengeance War, were the cream of the PLA, the cadre upon which the army was based. Next to them were the tanks of the Red Army, the remnants of the 1st Tank Army which had left a bloody trail of Japanese bodies in their race across the coast and, when finally encircled and trapped in Nanjing, had forced a butcher's bill on the Japanese as the price of their destruction, slaughtering the Japanese even as their tanks burned and their men died. Scarcely a regiment remained of what had once been nine divisions. They had earned a place here as much as any PLA man had.
Further out, beyond the army, were the citizens of China. Bedecked in red, both the traditional Chinese color of luck and the color of Communism, Mao reflected that this was a fine sight indeed for the beginning of the new China. They had, upon seeing their Chairman ascend the stage, broken out into the Internationale, the anthem of the Communist International. Even further behind them stood the proud flags of the Workers' Republics, consisting now of the Soviet Union, China, Korea, Mongolia, Tannu Tuva, and Indochina, all surrounding a taller flagpole with a simple red flag flying - the flag of the workers.
Mao took a breath, and spoke.
"Today, we stand here to mark the beginning of a new era, an era of justice. The Chinese people have endured a century of humiliation at the hands of the Imperialists. Today, we declare that they shall reap what they sow. For thirty blood-stained years the forces of the People have fought to renew China. Today, with aid from our fellow Communists, rendered in blood, sweat, and steel, the honest currency of the workers, we can finally say the words "I am Chinese" with pride. China has been reunited, the imperialist puppet of the traitors Chiang and Wang has been destroyed, and the Japanese presence on our soil has been exterminated. Today, the entire world shall hear these words.
China...has stood up!"