Conversation with Carlson
(May 5, 1938)
[1]
So long as the people have the will to endure hardship and the determination to continue resisting, China will not collapse. China is like a one-gallon narrow-necked bottle, and Japan has already poured in more than half a bottle of water. Its troops occupy one place, and we shift to another; they pursue, and we pull back. Japan lacks sufficient forces to occupy all of China, and so long as the people are determined to continue resisting, it cannot exercise political control.

There are several kinds of encirclement. Japan surrounds us and besieges us in the Wutai Mountains. But we have another kind of encirclement. For example, Japan garrisons Taiyuan; to the northeast of Taiyuan are Nie Rongzhen's forces, to the northwest are He Long's forces, Lin Biao's forces are in the southwest, and Zhu De's forces are in the southeast. Whenever the Japanese forces in Shanxi make a move, they run into our patrols. Just as Shanxi is the strategic key to North China, the Wutai Mountain region is the key to Shanxi. If we hold the Wutai Mountains, the Japanese cannot control Shanxi. Another kind of encirclement would be the United States, the Soviet Union, and China together encircling Japan—that would be an international encirclement.

[1] This is part of Mao Zedong's conversation with Evans Fordyce Carlson, an outstanding commander in the United States Marine Corps, regarding the War of Resistance Against Japan.