Order to Cross the Yellow River to the West to Expand the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet Region
# Date: 1936-04-28
# Source: en:MRP


5. In addition to daily food supplies, you should be prepared to carry with
you enough grain for fifteen days.


Peng [Dehuai]
Mao [Zedong]
Order to Cross the Yellow River to the West to
Expand the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet Area
(April 28, 1936, 8:00 P.M.)


To Vice-Chairman Zhou [Enlai], Lin [Biao] and Nie [Rongzhen], Xu [Haidong]
and Cheng [Zihua], Ye [Jianying] and Yang [Shangkun]:


1. The current situation
a. In Shanxi it is Yan Xishan plus Chiang Kaishek (fifty-one regiments), plus
blockhouseism.
b. In Shaanxi it is Zhang Xueliang and Yang Huchen¹ attacking northern
Shaanxi under orders from Chiang Kaishek in an attempt to blockade the
Yellow River. But the area around Shen[mu] and Fu[gu] and the area
around Dingbian, Anbian, and Jingbian² are weakly defended.
c. In Gansu the situation is that Chiang Kaishek's two units under Hu Zongnan and Zhou Pin have entered Shanxi; Mao Bingwen has been transferred
to southern Gansu; Wang Jun, Wu Chengren, and others are in southern
Shaanxi and southern Gansu; and most of Zhang Xueliang's troops that
were originally in the Huanshui area have been moved to Shaanxi. The
Huanshui area as well as the area to its west are weakly defended.


2. Given the situation as described above, there are no longer favorable conditions for waging war in Shanxi for the Front Army, but such favorable conditions have arisen in Shaanxi and Gansu, which would permit us to go there and
operate so as to carry out the tasks of expanding the soviet areas, tempering the
Red Army, training cadres, and so on. On the other hand, another important task
at present is to shatter the traitors' plan to disrupt the anti-Japanese rear area. In
addition, it is also necessary to dispatch a detachment to southern Shaanxi to
expand the soviet areas and lure the enemy.


3. Our army has decided to cross the Yellow River to the west, and first
concentrate in the Yanchang area. The time and order for crossing the river and the
delineation of areas for concentrating our forces will be set out in a separate order.


4. The purpose of going westward to carry out the tasks described above
remains that of accomplishing the basic political task of striving to wage war


We have translated this telegram from Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 523-25,
where it is reproduced from a copy in the Central Archives.



--- Notes



1. Yang Huchen is another form of Yang Hucheng's name.

2. These three places in Northwestern Shaanxi are collectively referred to in the
Chinese text as the "three bian." Further occurrences of this usage are not noted.



2. Song Shilun was head of the combat section under the Red Army First Front
Army's Fifteenth Army Group command. This refers in particular to two battalions he led
at the time, one belonging to the 224th Regiment of the Seventy-fifth Division, and the
other belonging to the Eighty-first Division.