General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Founding of a Republic (建国大业)

The Founding of a Republic (建国大业, Jianguo Daye) is a 2009 Chinese historical drama directed by Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin that dramatizes the founding of the People's Republic of China, recounting the victory of Mao Zedong's Communist Party over Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces in the Chinese civil war.¹^•² Produced by the China Film Group as the official tribute film for the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding, it assembled a cast of Chinese film stars and became the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in China upon its release.¹

Key fact	Detail
Directors	Han Sanping (chief director) and Huang Jianxin; BFI also credits Chen Kaige, Peter Chan Ho-sun, Feng Xiaogang and Du Jun¹^•²
Release	2009, China; 138 minutes; Mandarin dialogue¹
Occasion	Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China²
Cast	83 leading actors joined for 170 roles, most working without pay³^•⁴
Lead roles	Tang Guoqiang as Mao Zedong, Zhang Guoli as Chiang Kai-shek, Liu Jin as Zhou Enlai, Xu Qing as Soong Ching-ling⁵
Budget	30 million RMB; overseas rights sold before release recovered the full investment⁴
Box office	Highest-grossing Chinese-language film in China upon release¹
Series	First of the "founding trilogy," followed by Beginning of the Great Revival (2011) and The Founding of an Army (2017)⁶

Spoilers

Story and historical scope

The film covers the period from the victory over Japan in August 1945 to the founding ceremony of the People's Republic on 1 October 1949.⁷ Its narrative center is the call issued by the CCP Central Committee in 1948 for a Political Consultative Conference, and the film re-creates the establishment of the multi-party cooperation and political consultation system that accompanied the founding of the new state.⁸^•⁹ The screenplay was written by Wang Xingdong and Chen Baoguang; Wang had proposed a dramatization of the founding of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to Beijing CPPCC chairman Yang Anjiang in 2006, arguing that the birth of the consultative body and the birth of the republic were inseparable.¹⁰

The script drew on documented perils faced by delegates traveling to the first CPPCC session: Feng Yuxiang died in a ship fire in the Black Sea en route from the United States; Li Jishen traveled north from Hong Kong disguised as a merchant; Zhang Lan was nearly kidnapped and drowned by agents in Shanghai before being rescued by underground Party workers; the general Yang Jie was assassinated in his Hong Kong residence to stop him from attending; and five delegates from Xinjiang died when their Soviet plane crashed into a mountain in Siberia.¹⁰

Narrative approach

Unlike earlier revolutionary-history films centered on a single party's viewpoint, the film adopts a third-party perspective, judging the two parties largely through democratic figures and progressive Kuomintang figures such as Feng Yuxiang, Soong Ching-ling, Zhang Lan, and Li Jishen.¹¹ Chinese academic commentary identifies this shift of viewpoint as the film's principal artistic innovation, breaking the single-perspective narration of traditional "red" films and avoiding a preachy tone.¹² The film shows few battle scenes; its purpose is to demonstrate the necessity of the people's war rather than to stage it, and the declining, cold-toned Kuomintang scenes are contrasted with revolutionary-romantic treatment of the rising Communist side.¹¹

The film is built as a dual-line narrative, in contrast to its successor Beginning of the Great Revival, which uses a single panoramic line.¹³ It contains about 1,500 shots, a count higher than some commercial blockbusters, supporting a fast visual rhythm.¹²

Production

The project was assigned by the state film administration to Han Sanping, chairman of the China Film Group, who was told to direct it personally for the 60th anniversary; a film of this scale would normally need about 20 months, but he had roughly ten.⁴ The script was finalized in January 2009, shooting took about a month, and post-production ran five to six months, much of it spent on digital effects that removed modern traces from the frame to restore the look of 1945 to 1949; a single shot could require ten people working twenty days.³

Casting was a central problem, with 170 roles to fill in a compressed schedule; the director Chen Kaige advised Han Sanping to use stars extensively, and 83 leading actors joined, most for a single scene, a line, or even one shot, generally without pay.⁴^•³ The BFI describes the cast as "a veritable who's who of every major figure in Chinese cinema," including onscreen appearances by the directors Chen Kaige, Feng Xiaogang, Jiang Wen, and John Woo, and notes that Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and Donnie Yen appear together for the first time.²

Location work included Nanjing, where the normally closed main gate of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was opened for the shoot and roads near the Presidential Palace were closed.⁴ Chongqing, the setting of the historic Mao–Chiang meeting and the Double Tenth Agreement, could not be used because surviving period buildings are now surrounded by high-rises; those scenes were shot on sets in Beijing, and a 1946 Chongqing night sequence was created entirely by computer, one of the film's few digital composites.¹⁴

Reception and significance

The film opened nationwide on 17 September 2009 in the National Day holiday slot, and its box-office expectations rose from 80 million to 100 million RMB during production.³ It became the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in China upon release, and audience attendance set a record, with the film described in Chinese industry discussion as a landmark of film industrialization.¹^•¹⁵

Scholarly analysis treats the film as a new model of the Chinese "mainstream film." Shenshen Cai, a researcher of Chinese cinema, argues in a peer-reviewed study that the film merges official propaganda with commercial devices so subtly that the CCP's orthodox ideology becomes more neutral, natural, and entertaining, and that its commercial and critical success made it a template for later mainstream films.¹⁶ The British Film Institute's synopsis, while acknowledging the film is officially sanctioned, calls it "much more than mere propaganda; a rousing yet sophisticated spectacle."²

The film's success also drew controversy during production: some netizens mocked the foreign citizenship of several participating actors, and authorities issued clarifications to calm the dispute.⁴ Its formula was followed by two sequels, Beginning of the Great Revival (2011), on the founding of the Communist Party, and The Founding of an Army (2017), on the Nanchang Uprising; commentators note that the later film replaced the fragmented narrative style of the first two with a single continuous storyline.⁶^•¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026