To Zhou Enlai and Ye Jianying[1]

(April 5, 1938)

Li Yu, Secretary of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee, has arrived in Yan’an. Guerrilla warfare there holds great potential for development. In southern Shandong, the Fourth Detachment has grown from seventy men to 1,200 men with 800 rifles within three months. In addition to appointing Luo Binghui[2] to assume overall military command, we are in the process of selecting one director of the political department and twenty to thirty military and political cadres at and below the middle level to send there.

[1] This is the main content of Mao Zedong’s telegram to Zhou Enlai and Ye Jianying.

[2] Luo Binghui. After the start of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he conducted united front work at the Eighth Route Army’s Wuhan Office under the title of Deputy Chief of Staff of the Eighth Route Army. In 1938, he was reassigned as Deputy Commander of the First Detachment of the New Fourth Army.