On 1 October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the PRC before a massive crowd at Tiananmen Square. The CCP headed the Central People's Government. From this time through the 1980s, top leaders of the CCP (like Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping) were largely the same military leaders prior to the PRC's founding. As a result, informal personal ties between political and military leaders dominated civil-military relations.