In Southeast Asia, the U.S. government used the now-discredited domino to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam.
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China. The announcement ended the costly full-scale civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which broke out immediately following World War II and had been preceded by on and off conflict between the two sides since the 1920’s. The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades.
