Duplicates of historic Communist Party of China (CPC) documents including a handwritten Communist Manifesto of China in 1920 went on display at the Beijing Exhibition Center on Sunday.

The CPC history exhibition at the Beijing Exhibition Center, open till July 4, showcases replicas of items, many of which have never been seen by the public.

Some were copied from scraps of letter paper, brown paper or paper torn from a notebook in a hurry.

A signature of Mao Zedong suggested that he had joined a Communism organization in Changsha in 1920, one year earlier than the official founding of the CPC. The time when Mao joined the Party was still controversial, an official at the central archives of the State Archives Administration told the Beijing Daily on Friday, reflecting the fact that before the official founding of the CPC there were already some informal local Communism organizations.

"It's interesting to see these handwritten copies in this exhibition, rather than just in the history textbooks," a visitor surnamed Wang told the Global Times on Sunday.

Some of the handwriting was too hard to read, an employee with the organizing committee of the exhibition told the Global Times on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

A copy of Mao's order to send an army to the Korean War in 1950 was almost illegible as the Great Helmsman fine-tuned the official title of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army.

The archives on display include:

A yellowing copy of the La Jeunesse early Marxist newspaper;

A hand-drawn Red Army battle map;

Mao's written refusal to have his family's house renovated at the cost of public funds in 1949;

A notice written by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai about Deng Xiaoping's return to power in 1973;

Deng Xiaoping's approval to relaunch national college entrance exams in 1977; and,

Signed Beijing 2008 Olympic Games documents.

Some of the archives were on exhibition for the first time, said the organizing committee employee.

Everything was fake, he explained. The genuine materials were still stored safe in the CPC archives.

"The duplication work took us nearly a year," general manager Xu Zhongdong of Beijing Datang Wanbang duplicate technology company told the Beijing Daily. The free exhibition is open by appointment until July 4 by calling 86 10 8806-4092.