This paper explicates the naming process of the current Chinese state known as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This title, albeit used sporadically since 1948, was finally decided upon only several weeks before the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Determining the official name was further complicated when considering the issue of implementing the federal republic as the form of government. This study therefore focuses on the genealogy of the positions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with reference to adopting a federated state analogous to the USSR. This argument is developed and illustrated through examining the CCP’s proposals on the name of the future revolutionary state from 1922 to 1949. The CCP’s earlier leadership, deeply inspired by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet model of ethnofederalism, promised a complete right to ethnic-based national self-determination in which non-Han nationalities should be free to join and secede from a federation. During the Yan’an period, however, the CCP began to emphasize the principle of national self-rule, while gradually silencing the propaganda of independent self-determination. Yet, despite this subtle shift, the slogan of federation survived as late as mid-1949 as the CCP leaders including Mao Zedong reaffirmed the validity of forging a federal state. A decisive turn occurred when the establishment of New China was imminent and the CCP leaders were preoccupied with drafting the Common Program as well as organizing the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. By analyzing the different drafts of the Common Program written between late August and September 1949, it appears that Mao Zedong finally abandoned not only a right to national self-determination but also the federal scheme. His final decision evidently reflects the CCP’s will to institute a unitary state with regional autonomy at the expense of the Soviet model of ethnofederalism, while the blueprint of the Federal Republic of China as the official Party line throughout the CCP’s early history became the path not taken.