To properly celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic, China has to embrace its messy, complex and bloody history

On October 1, China celebrates the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. There will be a military parade, fanfare and a speech by President Xi Jinping, likely lauding China’s accomplishments and calling for more unity, nationalism and progress. However, Xi, like the rest of the leadership, was not alive when the People’s Republic was founded and did not experience what it took for New China to be formed. I did.

I have had the great fortune of a long life and the ability to bear witness to a changing China. I have distinct memories of my childhood in 1930s and 1940s China, the tumultuous pre-People’s Republic period. I have also had the honour of being in China to celebrate the 30th, 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries.

The older generation of leaders understood the struggle, dedication and sacrifice of becoming a new country. Today’s leaders know only the fruit of those struggles.

The communist victory was not as glorious and heroic as is often pictured in Chinese films and speeches. Many factors of Mao Zedong’s success were outside his control, and do not fit the party’s preferred narrative. These included the Sino-Japanese war, Chiang Kai-shek’s failures and Zhang Xueliang’s interference.

In 1936, Chiang wanted to finish off the communist forces decimated by the Long March but “Young Marshal” Zhang disagreed. He had been Manchuria’s warlord before the Japanese invasion and could not stand to watch more of China fall. He insisted that Chiang fight Japan first, ultimately kidnapping him to force him to join the communists’ fight against Japan.

As the Japanese advanced, and after the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937, my family was forced out of our Beijing home. We fled from city to city until we reached the British colony of Hong Kong. I embraced my new home, learning Cantonese and enjoying Western luxuries. But, after the 1941 Pearl Harbour attack, the Sino-Japanese War became part of the second world war and Hong Kong was bombed. In Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, we faced food and water shortages.

My father, who had attended a military academy in Japan, was a former classmate of lieutenant general Takashi Sakai, who commanded the occupational forces in Hong Kong. He gave us permission to leave and, in 1942, we returned to Japanese-occupied Beijing. When the war ended in 1945, we all celebrated. China could now find peace and stability.

But our peace was short-lived. A year later, I stood in the Forbidden City as Chiang urged a crowd of students to join his fight against the communists, promising a victory within three months.

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But years passed and the civil war continued. Cities filled up with refugees, families were displaced, and civilians were caught in the crossfire. Chiang’s fatal mistake was in once again underestimating the importance of Manchuria (the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin). Decisive communist victories in Shenyang and Changchun in late 1948 marked a major turning point in the war.

As the Red Army approached Beijing, I bore witness to the city’s turmoil. My father, Wang Shuchang, was a military general and former Hebei governor who frequently met Nationalist military officials in the city. After nearby Tianjin fell to the communists, I overheard a conversation between my father and general Fu Zuoyi.

My father, worried about the fate of important cultural landmarks such as the Forbidden City, encouraged Fu to surrender Beijing. Weeks later, in early 1949, I watched the Red Army enter the city. Without the surrender, Beijing would have suffered untold bloodshed and destruction.

My family chose to stay. We did not truly believe the communists would win the war or stay in power for long. After all, warlords were common in the 1920s and 1930s, and control frequently changed hands.

Communist or Nationalist made little difference to me – I wanted to go to America to study. To do that, I needed to leave Beijing and make arrangements through the Nationalist government. It was a difficult journey through a war-torn country. I witnessed devastation, poverty and deaths.

My travels brought me to Qingdao, Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou). In Canton, I was issued a passport. In Hong Kong, I received my visa to America and boarded a flight to San Francisco, where I travelled by train to my school in New York.

A few weeks later, I watched a newsreel of Mao declaring the founding of the People’s Republic of China to crowds in Tiananmen Square. It was a shock to hear the announcement of a New China and the painted image of a liberated and unified China. After all, communist victory had come at the expense of a civil war that tore China apart, with Nationalists still in control of Taiwan.

The Communist Party narrative depicts 1949 as a clear dividing line between China’s Century of Humiliation and a strong New China, but this is incomplete. The war could easily have turned out differently. Chinese people’s suffering did not miraculously end in 1949.

I remember returning to China for the first time. Soon after former US president Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China in 1972, I was sent to China by the US government through my job at the Library of Congress to arrange cultural and educational exchanges. I was shocked by the hardship and poverty I saw. This New China appeared worse off than the war-torn country I left decades previously.

Today, the rising Chinese generation do not remember China’s hardships. They are inundated by propaganda displaying a curated past. History, however, is complex. It is only by acknowledging the past that China can truly move forward.

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As Chinese people celebrate the country, they should remember the blood and strife that came before with humility and a determination to do better. Perhaps, by gaining some perspective, China will be better equipped to face its many challenges.

Regardless of how you interpret or remember history, however, there is one thing I hope we can agree on – the strength of the Chinese people. Although the China of my childhood was Sun Yat-sen’s Republic of China, while today we have Xi’s People’s Republic of China, I have deep affection for my motherland.

I will not be around to see the 100th anniversary, but I hope it celebrates a country Chinese everywhere can be proud of.

Chi Wang, a former head of the Chinese section of the US Library of Congress, is president of the US-China Policy Foundation