Few witnesses survive to tell of the day 60 years ago that changed the history of China and the world. One of the last is Li Pu.

The 91-year-old retired journalist may be the last person alive who stood with Mao Zedong on the day that he declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Mr Li, then a relatively junior reporter, joined several hundred of the most influential figures of 20th-century China on October 1, 1949, to climb Tiananmen — the Gate of Heavenly Peace — at the entrance to the palace of the emperors.

Mr Li, his skin mottled with age and his white hair combed carefully back from his temples, is so slight that he is almost engulfed by his armchair. He pulls himself to his feet to greet a rare visitor to the sprawling apartment that was given to him as a senior party veteran in the compound of the state’s main mouthpiece, the Xinhua news agency.

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At a mass rally at the Forbidden City, Mao Tse-Tung formally inaugurated the new regime

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It was as a reporter for Xinhua that he was chosen to watch the formal birth of Communist Party rule.

“We drove up behind Tiananmen, going on the route from inside the Forbidden City,” he said. “I watched as Mao Zedong emerged from the car in front of me. In those days there was no lift to go up inside the gate. We all had to climb the stairs.”

He estimated that there may have been nearly 1,000 people on the podium of the gate that overlooks what is now Tiananmen Square.

At 31, Mr Li may have been the most junior member of the gathering. “I had to stand near the back. I really couldn’t see what was going on below us, along the Avenue of Eternal Peace and in the square. But I could hear the crowds. I estimate there must have been around 300,000 people.”

It was not Chairman Mao who officiated at the ceremony but another veteran leader. Zhu De, the commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army, descended from the podium, took his place in a small open-top truck and inspected a military parade 16,400 strong — a tradition followed by leaders at every subsequent anniversary. When he had finished it was time for Mao to speak.

Mr Li’s memory is a little fuzzy after six decades. “I think it must have been around about 3pm. Mao Zedong took the microphone and said simply: ‘I announce the founding of the People’s Republic of China’. Then he read a list of the names of the most senior officials of the new Government.”

One thing that Chairman Mao did not say in his speech was a phrase that has come to be associated with that historic moment.

Mr Li said: “Mao Zedong was speaking to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in September when he said ‘The Chinese people have stood up’. Everyone thinks he uttered those words at the founding ceremony, but he didn’t.”

Even without that rousing phrase the atmosphere around Chairman Mao was electric, Mr Li said. “Of course people were very excited. They were incredibly happy. They had been fighting for decades. Here, at last, they had achieved the purpose of all their struggle.

“And they were alive to see that day. How many people had died, had lost their heads in the battle to create a new China? And here the day had come.”

Then the chanting of slogans resounded. He heard someone leading the crowds with a shout of “Long live our comrades”. The cry was picked up by the throng and reverberated through Beijing.

Mr Li’s wife-to-be was among the tens of thousands who pressed towards Tiananmen. Xie Heng, 83, the widow of a former ambassador to Britain in the 1980s and Mr Li’s second wife, said: “My office was just to the east of Tiananmen. We all wanted to see for ourselves this great moment. I joined the revolution in the 1940s and this was the culmination of everything for which we had made such sacrifices. It was so exciting.”

Such was the throng that she could not get close. “I could hear the speech but I couldn’t see Mao.”

Mr Li recalled that Chairman Mao appeared unemotional. “He wasn’t nervous. He didn’t seem moved. He just read out his announcement and that was that.

“He was an evil man, a b*****d and it’s typical of bad people not to show their emotions. So it was impossible to tell what he was feeling.”

Mr Li said that he also remained calm. “I was a reporter. I had a job to do. I walked around the podium watching people and observing and looking for anything extra I could write.”

The young reporter stepped towards the “Great Helmsman” once he had finished speaking and asked him for his speech. Chairman Mao handed him the piece of paper with a list of the names of the 56 senior officials of the first Government of Communist China. “He said to me: ‘Please report this accurately. And don’t lose it’.”

Mr Li kept the handwritten announcement for nearly two decades. It was taken from him when Red Guards ransacked his home during the 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution that Mao launched to restore his power and oust his foes. “I never saw that piece of paper again. I don’t know if it still exists in the world,” Mr Li said.

He remains proud of the article that he wrote and which appeared on the front page of every party newspaper on October 2, 1949: “My editors didn’t change a thing. Not one word.”

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