Chairman Mao Zedong (center) proclaims the founding of the People's Republic of China on Tian'anmen Rostrum at 3 pm on Oct 1, 1949.

The PRC turns 60 tomorrow. All over China, anniversary celebrations are in the works, as part of the overall euphoria that marks the National Holiday Week. China Daily, China's only national English-language newspaper, has devoted a special section to a pictorial timeline of the three-score years since the PRC's founding. Here are the best shots.

Hua Tianyou (right), professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, sculpts the May 4th Movement of 1919, a relief on the Monument to the People's Heroes, in Beijing in June 1953.

Workers at Wuxi Hongqi Iron and Steel Plant in Jiangsu province during the campaign of iron and steel production in 1959.

Chinese mountaineers scale the summit of Mount Qomolangma, also known as Mount Everest, via the north ridge on May 25, 1960.

The first Chinese atomic bomb is detonated on Oct 16, 1964 at the Lop Nor nuclear test site in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. China thereby becomes the fifth nuclear power after the United States, the USSR, United Kingdom and France.

Political factions gather to learn Mao Zedong Thought in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in 1968. They vow to work towards the overall victory of the "great proletarian cultural revolution".

 

Youths travel to work on new farmland in Beidahuang, or "the virgin island of the North", Heilongjiang province, in 1968.

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Vice-foreign minister Qiao Guanhua (left) bursts into laughter at a United Nations General Assembly session in October 1971. The People's Republic of China was restored all its lawful rights in the UN that month.

Premier Zhou Enlai shakes hands with Richard Nixon, the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China, in Beijing on Feb 21, 1972. Nixon's week-long visit ends decades of hostility between the two countries and sees the signing of the Shanghai Communique, a harbinger of the development of Sino-US relations in the decades to come.

Villagers cry as they learn the news of Chairman Mao's death in Juejiao township, Rudong county, Jiangsu province, on Sept 9, 1976.

A street performance in Shanyin county, Shanxi province, celebrates the crackdown on the "Gang of Four" in 1977. The "Gang of Four" was detained in October 1976.

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Beijing opens for trial operation on Oct 10, 1987.

Rock legend Cui Jian (right) poses at Tian'anmen Square in Beijing in 1988.

Deng Xiaoping (center) at a botanic garden in Shenzhen of Guangdong province on Jan 22, 1992. Deng's support for opening-up policies renewed China's modernization drive.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin (third from left) and Prince Charles of the United Kingdom (second from right) at the handover ceremony of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.

Shi Guangsheng (right), Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, raises a toast as China joins the WTO on Nov 11, 2001.

Astronaut Yang Liwei greets the world at the door of his spaceship in Inner Mongolia on Oct 16, 2003 after completing China's first manned space mission.

A local resident walks in Yingxiu township of Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, on May 14, 2008. Wenchuan was the epicenter of a 8.0-magnitude earthquake two days earlier.