The First Front Army Is Reorganized into the Chinese People’s Red Army Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army, and Its Policy and Tasks[1]

(April 1, 1936)

To Our Front Army:

A. In order to carry out the Party Central Committee’s decision to strive for rapid engagement in operations against Japan, the entire First Front Army is hereby reorganized into the Chinese People’s Red Army Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army; the First Army Corps is reorganized into the First Route Army of the Chinese People’s Red Army Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army; the Fifteenth Army Corps is reorganized into the Second Route Army; and a Third Route Army shall be established within five months.

B. The Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army shall take the five provinces of North China[2] as its scope of operations. In the first stage, the basic policy shall be to establish a base area for operations against Japan in Shanxi. Under this policy of taking Shanxi as the base, the entire army or a part of it may leap into a part of Suiyuan[3] or Hebei or Henan as a temporary step. Oppose taking the leap across Shanxi into Hebei or Suiyuan as the basic strategic policy for the first stage, and also oppose the inability to use temporary leaps as a campaign policy.

C. Seek consolidation through development.

D. Defeating the many with the few strategically and defeating the few with the many in campaigns are the basic principles of military command at present.

[1] This is a telegram from Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai and Zhou Enlai, vice chairmen of the Northwest Revolutionary Military Commission, to the First Front Army of the Red Army. Prior to this, the First Front Army had already been using the designation Chinese People’s Red Army Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army.

[2] The five provinces of North China refer to the then provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Chahar, and Suiyuan.

[3] Suiyuan, name of a former province, encompassing the central part of today’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, abolished in 1954.

E. The Vanguard Army shall complete the establishment and arming of a force of fifty thousand men within seven months; expanding the Red Army shall be the foremost task of the general policy.

F. Within three months, complete the formation of four local armies in the localities, two each in Shaanxi and Shanxi.

G. Create one independent regiment in each county of the new Soviet areas.

H. Elevate the Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army to the leading position among the nation’s anti-Japanese Red Armies; raise the political and military level of the cadres and personnel of the Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army and other Red Armies to the level of Leninist principles and strategic principles; and ensure the unity and solidarity of the Red Army.

(To be communicated down to cadres at the regimental level and above)

Northwest Revolutionary Military Commission

Mao  Peng  Zhou

April 1