The CPPCC Preparatory Meeting summoned in June 1949 decided to hold a military parade at the PRC founding ceremony. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) attached the greatest importance to this parade and established a preparatory committee for the PRC founding ceremony. Zhou Enlai was the committee director and Zhu De was the parade commander.

The parade's commanding office extensively solicited opinions and researched for a long time before carefully formulating a plan for the military parade ceremony, fully considering and arranging all the details such as choosing and organizing the troops to be inspected, the parade procedures, the parade ceremonial music and the pre-review training. The CPC Central Committee approved this plan which was essentially followed in the parade at the PRC founding ceremony.

At 3:00 PM on October 1st, the PRC founding ceremony began. After Mao Zedong read the declaration from the Central People's Government, the military parade began. All the troops to be reviewed passed in front of the Tian'anmen Rostrum from East to West with the Tian'anmen platform as the center, according to the sequence of the navy, the army, and the air force.

Commander-in-chief Zhu De, in military uniform, reviewed the troops from his parade car with Nie Rongzhen. The troop consisted of the navy, army and air forces. The march followed.

The first to pass Tian'anmen Square were the navy formed by personnel chosen from the northeast navy college and East China navy fleet. The army followed next, formed by personnel chosen from 199th infantry division, 619th regiment of the independent 207th division, the temporarily established 4th artillery division, the 3rd panzer division and the 3rd cavalry division. Among them, the infantry division was formed by three infantry regiments, and battalions of Tommy guns, light machine guns, communications, heavy machine guns, light mortar, heavy mortar, anti-tank guns and mountain artillery.