| Date | Ruling entity | Head of State | Events | Other people/events |
| 1949 | People's Republic of China | Mao Zedong | Founding of the People's Republic of China | |
| 1950 | Battle of Chosin Reservoir | Korean War |
| 1951 | Occupation of Tibet |
| 1953 | |
| 1956 | Hundred Flowers campaign | |
| 1957 | |
| 1958 | Great Leap Forward | |
| 1959 | Three Years of Natural Disasters |
| 1960 |
| Sino-Soviet split |
| 1961 | |
| 1962 | Sino-Indian War | |
| 1964 | State Council decrees it is acceptable to abbreviate most characters listed in the Plan for Character Simplification | The PRC detonates its first atomic bomb |
| 1966 | Cultural Revolution | The Little Red Book |
| 1969 | Opening of the first line of the Beijing Subway: 17 stations |
| 1970 | First satellite launch, using Long March rocket | |
| 1971 | The PRC replaces the ROC as a permanent member of the UN Security Council | Henry Kissinger secretly visits Beijing |
| 1972 | Richard Nixon visits China. Shanghai Communiqu | |
| 1974 | Discovery of the Terracotta Army | |
| 1976 | Four Modernizations | Tiananmen incident following the death of Zhou Enlai |
| Hua Guofeng of Deng Xiaoping Period | | |
| 1977 | Beijing Spring | |
| 1978 | Start of Chinese economic reforms | Democracy Wall Movement |
| 1979 | One-child policy |
| USA and PRC establish full diplomatic relations | Visit of Deng Xiaoping to Washington, D.C. |
| Border-war with Vietnam | Deng Xiaoping's Four cardinal principles |
| 1980 | First Special Economic Zones | Trial of the Gang of Four |
| 1981 | | |
| Hu Yaobang of Deng Xiaoping Period | | |
| 1984 | Margaret Thatcher in China, signs Sino-British Joint Declaration, to handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997 | |
| 1987 | | |
| Zhao Ziyang of Deng Xiaoping Period | | |
| 1989 | Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 | |
| Jiang Zemin of Deng Xiaoping Period | |
| 1991 | First McDonald's restaurant in Beijing | |
| 1996 | Third Taiwan Strait Crisis | |
| 1997 | Hong Kong handover, becomes a Special Administrative Region | Death of Deng Xiaoping |
| 1999 | Macau handover | |
| 2000 | The PRC passes Japan as the country with which the USA has the largest trade deficit | |
| 2001 | Accession to World Trade Organization | Beijing elected to hold the 2008 Summer Olympics |
| 2002 | 16th Party Congress | |
| 2003 | Hu Jintao | SARS outbreak | Shenzhou 5, PRC's first manned space mission |
| 2004 | | Jiang Zemin retires from his post as Chairman of the Central Military Commission |