Letter to Tan Zhenlin and the
Twelfth Army
(July 1, 1931)
To Comrade [Tan] Zhenlin and the Army Committee of the Twelfth Army:
The letter of the 29th from Ninghua has been received today (the 1st). The
activities of the Thirty-sixth Division and Comrade [Zhou] Yili are not mentioned, so we do not know whether or not they have already gone to Changting.
Your current dispositions are centered around fund-raising, so no one at all has been
sent to the Shicheng area. Your present dispositions may be carried out for a month,
or for a short period of from a week to ten days. After a week to ten days are up, the
troops of the Thirty-fourth Division deployed in Qingliu and Liancheng should be
swiftly withdrawn to Ninghua and redeployed on the line from Zhongsha to Chang-ting and on the border between the two xian of Ninghua and Shicheng. Once the
work is under way in many places, the 104th Regiment should still remain on the
line of Dushang, Anyuan, and Zhongsha, but the work needs to be advanced toward
the Jiangxi border region, so as to be linked with the Red areas of Jiangxi, the 103rd
Regiment, and the headquarters of the Thirty-fifth Division. After ten days, you must
go to Shicheng to make arrangements and to begin work in three key places. If
Baishui cannot be dealt with, it should be temporarily abandoned and not be
worked on until phase two. Working districts have been divided up again, and you
are in charge only of the three xian of Ning[hua], Shi[cheng], and Chang[ting). Truly
good work in these three xian cannot be done without long-term, strenuous efforts.
Ruijin is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Thirty-fifth Army; Guangchang is
the exclusive responsibility of the Eastern Jiangxi Independent Division (under the
direct leadership of the Eastern Jiangxi Special Committee); they are not in your
charge. The places in Jianning where work has already begun will be temporarily
under your guidance, and the replenishment of the expanded Red Army there should
also be your responsibility, but the places where work has not been initiated should
belong to the Third Army Group. In the future, in terms of the overall situation,
Jianning should belong to the Third Army Group.

The General Front Committee
Jianning, at 1:00 P.M. on July 1
Mao Zedong

Our source for this letter is Jiangxi dangshi ziliao, Vol. 19, pp. 44-45. It can also be
found in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 3, pp. 197-98.