China raises flag on National Day holiday
Crowds including students from local schools gathered from 6 a.m. on Tiananmen Square, where a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators took place decades ago in 1989, to watch the ceremony.
Soldiers marched to Tiananmen Square and conducted the flag raising ceremony. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China from the historic square on October 1, 1949.
China's National Day is resented by many democracy supporters in Hong Kong who say Beijing is eroding the wide-ranging liberties the former British colony was promised when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
