Prime Minister Justin Trudeau turned to the history books for inspiration when selecting an official gift to China.

Trudeau presented Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang two portrait medallions of Norman Bethune made in the same run as the medallion his father, then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, presented to chairman Mao Zedong in 1973.

The senior Trudeau's trip was the first official visit to the People's Republic of China by a Canadian prime minister.

Canada's then prime minister Pierre E. Trudeau, right, shakes hands with Mao Tse-tung, party chief of the People's Republic of China on Oct.13, 1973. The two met at Chungnanhai while Trudeau was on an official visit to China. (Canadian Press)

Seventy-five medallions were originally produced for the Canadian government in 1973.

The prime minister's press secretary said the medallions "symbolize the history of our two countries."

Seventy-five Norman Bethune medallions were originally produced for the Canadian government in 1973. (invaluable.com)

Bethune's communist beliefs made him a controversial figure in his home country of Canada, but the physician is still revered in China as a hero for helping treat wounded soldiers during the country's war with Japan in the late 1930s. He died from an infection contracted during surgery there in 1939.

There are numerous statues and memorials in his memory in China, as well as the 800-bed Norman Bethune International Peace Hospital and the Norman Bethune Medical School.

The medallions were designed by Dora de Pedery Hunt, who died in 2008.