Circular About Changes in the Current
Military Situation, and Questions
Such as Our Basic Tasks
(May 29, 1936)
To Peng [Dehuai], and for transmission to Liu Xiao,¹ Zuo [Quan], Nie
[Rongzhen], Zhu [Rui], and Deng [Xiaoping], as well as Xu [Haidong], Cheng
[Zihua], and Wang [Shoudao]:
You are hereby notified of the following matters:
1. The Second Army Group and the Sixth Army Group can arrive at Ganzi
by mid-June. The Fourth Front Army has accepted our orientation, and will
move northward at the end of June, arriving at the Xia and Tao rivers at the end
of July. The Second and Sixth army groups will follow. If nothing happens, they
will be a new force in our plan for the Northwest.


2. As for relations with [Zhang] Guotao, it is agreed that for the time being
they should take the form of negotiations. Moreover, Guotao should be told that
there are no longer any political and strategic differences between us and them,
that it is not necessary to bring up past differences again, and that cooperation
and unity must be our objectives.


3. Estimations of the situation during the three months of June, July, and
August: Li Shengda and Tang Enbo will advance to the Suide-Qingjian-Anding
line, Wang Yizhe will advance to the Yan'an-Wayaobao line, Yang Hucheng
will be on the Hancheng-Yanchang line, the main forces of the Northeastern
Army will be on the Qingyang-Guyuan-Pingliang-Longde line, Hu Zongnan will
be on the Hanzhong-Bikou line, Wang Jun and Mao Bingwen will be on the
Xigu-Minzhou line, and it is possible that He Zhuguo's cavalry force will enter
Tianshui and western Gansu.


4. The three major basic tasks for the three months of June, July, and August
are to establish new base areas in the west, persist in guerrilla warfare in the
east, and win over the Northeastern Army in the south. Efforts are now being
made in the east and south to arrange things, and the Field Army and the
Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Provincial Committee are concentrating all their forces
to attend to the west.
We have translated this text from Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 536-38, where it


5. The dispatch of the Twenty-eighth Army is to be temporarily postponed,
and it is to be sent to southern Shaanxi and on through Hunan only when the
Second Front Army and Fourth Front Army have started moving northward and
Hu Zongnan has entered Hanzhong from the west. At present it is to be used in
Dingbian, Anbian, and Jingbian. Xiao Jingguang² is to lead two regiments to be
used in the direction of Huanxian and Qingbei. The Thirtieth Army is to the east
of the Wuding River and south of Songjiachuan.


6. The guerrilla warfare in the east is to be divided into several small military
districts, each to be given independence. Political mobilization and the completion of the organizational arrangements are going on right now.


7. At the Red Army School³ (Departments One, Two, and Three, with 1,400
people), Lin Biao is president, Luo Ruiqing⁴ is provost, Zhou Kun is head of
administration, and Yuan Guoping is head of the training department. Students
will graduate in six months. Political education is to be emphasized at the beginning. School opens officially on June 1.


8. There is enough grain in Wayaobao for only one month, and 3,600 dan
must be collected west of Wuqizhen to supply the rear.


About the Fourth Front Army's northward march, our relationship with the
Northeastern Army, the future operations of the Twenty-eighth Army, future
changes in the enemy situation, and so on, lower-level leaders are not to be
notified.
Mao


is reproduced from a copy in the Central Archives.

--- Notes



1. Liu Xiao (1908-1988), a native of Hunan, was at this time the head of the Political
Department of the Red Army's Western Field Army.



2. Xiao Jingguang (1903-1989) was a native of Changsha, who had spent a total of
six or seven years studying in the Soviet Union, and was also a graduate of the Huangpu
Academy. At this time, he was the commander of the Twenty-ninth Army of the Red
Army.



3. The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army School had been established at Wayaobao
in November 1935 by combining several other cadre schools. By January 1936 its name
had already been changed to the Northwest Anti-Japanese Red Army University, but in
this text it is referred to by its earlier name. In June it was to be renamed again as the
Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Red Army University.



4. Luo Ruiqing (1906–1978), a native of Sichuan, joined the Youth League in 1926,
and the Chinese Communist Party in 1928. He was a Red Army commander or political
commissar from 1929 onward, participating in the resistance to the "Encirclement and
Suppression" campaigns of the Jiangxi period. During the Long March, he was a staff
officer in the First Front Army. In early 1936, he studied briefly at the Red Army
University, of which he then became provost.