11) Please send us political analyses and important party documents frequently.
12) Please send us large numbers of insurgents who can no longer hold out in
other districts, regardless of whether their skills are military or political, the more
the better. The Front Committee had done nothing deserving of a rebuke, and yet
it was rebuked. Is this not intolerable? Being unable to sleep is an unavoidable
evil at present. Since receiving the letter from Ji'an, the view is that a Special
Committee should be organized. What do you think? We want to receive clear
and definite directives from you. As soon as such an organization is approved,
we will organize it. If we thus establish an organ of political power in the
Luoxiao mountain range, with Ninggang as its center, and if the Party organization is strong, the army can create a real revolutionary base area in Hunan and
Jiangxi. Comrade Mao and others have put forward this argument very clearly
many times in reports, which have been repeatedly forwarded by the Southern
Hunan Special Committee to the Hunan Provincial Committee, and then to the
Central Committee. We have, however, received no clear word of either approval or rejection. Meanwhile, in the letter from the Anyuan City Party Committee, it is mentioned in passing that the Hunan Provincial Committee has
approved it. But this is not a clear directive from the Provincial Committee. Two
days ago, we received a letter from the Ji'an Xian Committee in which it is
mentioned that the Jiangxi Provincial Committee has also approved it, and Comrade Mao has been appointed to be Party secretary. But again this is not a clear
directive from the Provincial Committee. How can we begin to organize such a
committee? Besides, we are afraid of receiving unpalatable censure.
With our greetings,
Mao Zedong
Secretary of the Military Commission
Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants'
Revolutionary Army
May 2, in Yongxin City

Forwarded by the Ji'an Xian Committee;
transmitted by the Jiangxi Provincial
Committee, May 19

occupying the Jinggangshan area when he led his troops there in October 1927. Recent
official accounts assert that Wang and Yuan had already transformed their bands into
a peasant self-defense force before Mao's arrival, and even that Yuan had joined the
Chinese Communist Party in 1926. In any case, Mao reorganized them and made use
of them.
A Report on the Current Status of
the Red Army1

(June 16, 1928)

I) The struggle here now has been rather intense and widespread. The enemies, with ten regiments (Yang Ruxuan's four and Wu Shang's six²) are advancing toward us, not including, of course, the landlords' household militia.3 The
broad peasant masses from the two xian of Chaling and Lingxian have been
suppressed. The cleanup in the countryside by the Whites has totally crushed our
party organization to the point that many of our brave comrades working in
Chaling have been killed, as was the leader of the Lingxian Xian Committee.
The Eighth Army has fought against us four times, losing once and winning
three times. But because of the enemy's stubborn resistance, we were obliged to
withdraw completely from the two xian, Chaling and Youxian, which we had
previously occupied. We no longer have even have one inch of land in southern
Hunan. Recently, however, there has been a military victory.4 In May, Yang
Ruxuan's Seventy-ninth Regiment and one battalion of the Twenty-seventh Regiment, their engineer and artillery units, the machine-gun company, the medical
unit of their division headquarters, and their transportation unit were all wiped
out and most of them captured. Yang escaped to Ji'an (some said that he had
been wounded), and the commander of the Twenty-seventh Regiment, Liu, was
killed. We have captured seven mortars, two mountain cannons, and over twenty
Dan of silver yuan. But since the enemy's two crack regiments were still in the
vicinity of Yongxin xian, we decided not to pursue any further. The military
dispositions here are that we assume a defensive posture toward Hunan and an
offensive posture toward Jiangxi. But we have not yet made any move in the last

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 8-10, where it is
reproduced from a copy in the Party archives.
1. This is an extract from a letter which Mao sent to the Hunan and Jiangxi Provincial
Committees for transmittal to the Central Committee.
2. Yang Ruxuan was at this time the commander of the Twenty-seventh Division of the
Guomindang Third Army. Wu Shang was commander of the Guomindang Eighth Army.
3. As indicated by Mao's reference to it in the Circular of July 20, 1927, para. (6), the
household militia (aihutuan) was originally a kind of peasant military organization.
"Household" referred to the compulsory participation by almost every household. After the
defeat of the left in the summer of 1927, many "household militia" units were taken over
by the landlords and used against the revolution.
4. This refers to the counterattack at Caoshi'ao in mid-May 1928, during the third
"annihilation" campaign against the Jinggangshan base.

few days. We will decide after the situation becomes clearer. A group of lowerranking officers in the army have not yet given up their opportunist attitude and
are looking for a chance to escape to southern Jiangxi. This has become an
internal party struggle. Now that the Special Committee has been set up, it is
only by the orders of the Special Committee that it will be more or less possible
to control them. There are three reasons for using Ninggang as our base camp:
(1) This is the middle section of the Luoxiao range. The location is excellent,
easy to defend and hard to attack; (2) the Party has been able to organize the
masses for the first time (Red Guard units and Red guerrilla units have been
formed), and it would be a shame to give them up; (3) southern Hunan and
southern Jiangxi can influence only one province and can extend only to the
upper reaches, whereas here we can control two provinces and extend to the
lower reaches. For these three reasons, we will struggle against our enemies with
all our might and never retreat or give up. But up here in the mountains, it is
extremely difficult to get supplies for food, money, and medicine for the
wounded. We are constantly trying to solve these problems.
II) We have learned for the first time, from a letter from Ji'an, that the Jiangxi
Provincial Committee has approved the setting up of a Hunan-Jiangxi Special
Committee (Chaling, Youxian, Lingxian, Ninggang, Lianhua, Yongxin, and
Suichuan), and has also endorsed the congress of xian representatives called
together on May 20 and 21, which adopted resolutions on political issues, political discipline, slogans for the uprising, and political slogans, and elected leaders
(the majority of them worker and peasant elements). Wan Xixian and Mao
Zedong were elected members of the Standing Committee, and Zhu De, Chen Yi
and Liu Feixiao, alternate members. Mao Zedong was designated as temporary
Secretary. Since [I], Zedong, am studying right now, I really cannot assume
these responsibilities. Later, when the two provincial committees and the Central
Committee send someone here, a meeting of the worker-peasant-soldier representatives will be called to carry out elections. (1) [We must] expand the Party to
include six provinces. (2) Launch a peasant uprising here. (3) Transform the army
into a real Red army. (4) Establish a strong Party within the army. (5) Set up military
schools and Party schools. Please send us the political news every three days via the
eastern Hunan Special Committee. I read from the newspapers that in Gaolong one
xian magistrate, two company commanders, and over fifty soldiers have been martyred, but victory was finally won when Zhu De joined in the fight. (6) The Fourth
Army Committee secretary will officially take charge today.
5. The First Congress of the Party in the Border Area was convened in Maoping,
Ninggang xian, on May 20, 1928. Mao Zedong, who chaired the meeting, delivered a
report (of which the text is not presently available) in which he addressed the question of
how long the Red régime could survive. The congress elected a Special Committee as the
supreme leading organ in the border area, with a standing committee of which the membership is given in the text. Mao became secretary, with Chen Yi as secretary of the Army
Committee. For the context, see the Introduction to this volume.
Report to the Hunan Provincial Committee
by the Special Committee of the Hunan-Jiangxi
Border Area and the Army Committee
of the Fourth Red Army of
the Chinese Communist Party

(July 4, 1928)

To the Hunan Provincial Committee:

Comrade Yuan and Comrade Du¹ arrived at Yongxin at the same time on June
30, and from them we have obtained the circular of the Provincial Committee
and the resolution of the Central Committee regarding work in Hunan. The
directives given in the two letters from the Provincial Committee are quite inconsistent. The former asks us to continue to build the organs of political power in
the xian in the middle section of the Luoxiao mountain range as the military
bases, without changing the Central Committee and Provincial Committee directives of a month ago. The latter, however, asks us to rush to southern Hunan after
we capture Yongxin in order to avoid "annihilation" by the enemy and to solve
the problem of economic difficulties. Here, after they defeated the troops of
Yang Chisheng on June 23, most of the Fourth Red Army troops have moved
toward Lianhua, Anfu, and southwest of Ji'an through Yongxin, carrying on
guerrilla warfare to raise money and mobilize the masses for uprisings. On
the evening of June 30, the Special Committee, the Army Committee, and
Yongxin Xian Committee held a Joint Conference to discuss the letters from
the Provincial Committee. Comrades Yuan and Du also attended the meeting, at
which it was decided that the Fourth Red Army should continue to deepen the
work among the masses in various xian in the border area of Hunan and Jiangxi
to build or consolidate the bases. With such bases, moving forward toward

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 2, pp. 305-07, which
reproduces the text from a documentary collection published in China in 1981.
1. Regarding Yuan Desheng and Du Xiujing, representatives of the Hunan Provincial
Committee, and their roles at this time, see the Introduction to this volume. Mao's own
views about their errors are spelled out in several documents translated below, including
the resolution of October 5, 1928, and the report of November 25, 1928.

Hunan and Jiangxi, the Red Army will arrive at places with consolidated independent régimes that cannot easily be wiped out by the enemy. The reasons are
as follows:
1) The life-style of the Fourth Red Army is itself much marked by the habits
of roving insurgents in the past. So the troops are extremely unwilling to stay in
one place for a long time and to carry on the difficult work of the mass struggle.
They are still much under the influence of the Red Army's pernicious traditions
of adventurism. Only after nearly a month of many-sided education to wash
away these traits, and only because, at the same time, the masses in Yongxin and
Ninggang xian have generally stood up, have the troops of the Fourth Red Army
gradually given up this idea and begun to understand that the policy to build
Ninggang as the general headquarters suggested last time by the Central Committee and the Hunan Provincial Committee is correct. If we suddenly change
our policy now and ask the Fourth Red Army to return to its roving path, it
would be even more difficult to transform this army. It is pointed out in the last
letter from the Provincial Committee that the Fourth Red Army has already
traveled thousands of miles and moved like roving insurgents. They should
choose a place to rest, so that they can better transform themselves. This directive is extremely correct and should not be rashly changed just as it is being
implemented.
2) On the enemy side, the troops of Hunan Province are very tough and have
real military strength. They are not as easy to attack as the enemy troops in
Jiangxi. The latter have been defeated four times in succession, and they are
scared out of their wits. Besides, their soldiers' morale is much shaken because
of the impact of our practice of setting the captives free. The only troops that are
able to fight are those of Wang Jun's Seventh Division.² The First Division and
its First Regiment are stationed in Pingxiang, and its Second Regiment is in
Jiujiang and Nanchang. We judge that it will be difficult to move these troops to
attack us. Even if they are sent here, we can also use appropriate strategies to
defeat them. The situation is different for the enemy troops from Hunan. After
five or six engagements with them, we could put only a small number of these
troops to flight, without inflicting casualties on them, and they are as strong as
they were before. It is, therefore, not appropriate to rush ahead toward southern
Hunan if we are to avoid tough battles. Otherwise we may get deeply caught in
the encirclement of the enemy troops and suffer the misfortune of losing our
whole army. The enemy troops from southern Hunan now consist of two divisions of the Guangxi clique, the Twenty-first Army, one army of Shang Chengjie
(three thousand rifles), one division of Xu Kexiang, and one army of Wu Shang.

2. Wang Jun (1891-1936), zi Zhiping, was a native of Yunnan, and received his
military training there. In the fall of 1925, when the National Revolutionary Army was
established, he was appointed commander of the Seventh Division of the Third Army. In
September 1929, he became commander of the Third Army.
These troops are seven or eight times stronger than the enemy troops of Jiangxi.
Even if our army can win battles against the troops of Shang Chengjie and Xu
Kexiang, there is no way we can defeat the armies of Wu Shang and the Guangxi
clique. As soon as we arrive there, we would be caught in the encirclement of
Wu Shang, the Guangxi clique, Shang Chengjie, and Xu Kexiang and would
face the danger of being wiped out immediately. It seems that the Provincial
Committee has not taken this fact into consideration.
3) Ninggang can become the general headquarters for our military forces
because it is located in a highly strategic position among the big, steep mountains, and its roads lead to the two provinces. If we are victorious, we can
certainly defend it. If we lose, we can easily retreat. Moreover, there is absolutely no way for the enemy troops to encircle us. If you add to this the Party and
mass base in the various xian, we can indeed engage in a protracted struggle
against the enemy. If we now recklessly abandon Ninggang, then "a tiger on the
plain may be attacked by a dog," and the Fourth Red Army would be in very
serious danger.
4) Our proposal by no means reflects conservative ideas. In the past the
insurrections throughout the country were at one time very vigorous, but
when one day the enemy troops launched counterattacks, they were easily
swept away like water flushing the river bed. All this is the result of seeking
only to build up the momentum of the insurrections without attempting to
consolidate the bases. At present we are trying our best to correct this mistake by building a general headquarters for the military forces on the one
hand, and by consolidating the bases on the other, to prepare the way for
future uprisings in the two provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi. We are working
hard in Yongxin and Ninggang and making progress every day. We are also
moving toward Lianhua, Anfu, and the southwest of Ji'an to deepen the
agrarian revolution and to create local armed forces. After one more month's
work, we will be reasonably confident of winning a victory if the enemy
troops come again to attack us.
5) From the economic standpoint, because the troops of the Fourth Army are
so numerous, the daily cash allowance for meals, even practicing the utmost
economy, is 700 yuan. Apart from burning and killing in the xian of southern
Hunan, the local economy is bankrupt, and the local bullies have taken everything. After they arrived at Leiyang in February, the troops of Zhu De were not
able to raise a single cash. They could keep alive only by selling opium. It is now
absolutely impossible for them to go to southern Hunan to resolve their economic difficulties. Only in the Hunan-Jiangxi border area can the present economic difficulties truly be resolved.
6) Our wounded soldiers have increased in number to five hundred. If we
rush forward toward southern Hunan [with the wounded soldiers], the soldiers'
morale will be shaken. But we cannot leave them behind either. This is also one
of the most difficult problems.