The first flag-raising ceremony on Tiananmen Square took place on 1 October 1949 during the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China. After that, the raising of the flag was done by electrical means for two decades, with" exceptions to this being done on 1 October. An official ceremony was inaugurated in May 1977 with the 3 PLA soldiers from Weifang raising the flag. This continued until 28 December 1982, when the newly formed People's Armed Police and its honour guard took over the ceremony which would last for 35 years. In December 1992, on the basis of the original flag guard, the National Color Guard was expanded into a battalion-sized unit of the PAP. The detachment was called the Tiananmen Guard Detachment. On New Year's Day in 2018, the People's Liberation Army took over command of the ceremony, with a 96-man composite national color guard company made up of guardsmen from the service branches (the PLA Ground Force, Navy and Air Force). This followed the then-recent attachment of the Beijing Garrison Color Guard Company to the BGHGB which led to its reformation, this time, with PLA personnel. According to the "Xinhua News Agency" (the official state-run press agency of the PRC), the changes marked a "new era" of national civil-military ceremonies.