Report on the Question of Military Operations[1]

(May 28, 1936)

In June, July, and August we must take Hongde City as the center and create a new base area. To the east, Chiang Kai-shek and Yan Xishan are attacking us with thirty regiments; they are our main enemies. Chiang Kai-shek is intensifying his deployments in Shaanxi and Gansu, attempting to separate us from the 2nd and 6th Army Corps and the 4th Front Army, to separate us from the Northeast Army, and to separate us from the Soviet Union. In the Northwest, the warlords are especially numerous, which is advantageous to us. Our disposition is in the west, while Chiang Kai-shek is concentrating his forces in the east. Our work: first, to carry out sovietization work in the area of four to five hundred li west of Ansai and near Hongde City; second, to complete preparations on the main fronts with regard to the Northeast Army, especially politically, in internal unity, in the creation of cadres, and so on; third, to persist in guerrilla warfare in northern Shaanxi, preferably in the Bailong Mountain and Shenmu areas, transforming a "world of great peace" into a "world not of great peace," with small guerrilla unit activity being the best form, short, compact, and highly effective, and in each district there should be one large guerrilla unit.

[1] On May 28, 1936, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China convened a meeting at Wayaobao in northern Shaanxi. The meeting mainly studied the question of military operations. This is a part of the report delivered by Mao Zedong at the meeting.