Reply to Zhao Lin and Others, Secretary of the CPC Northwestern Shanxi District Committee[1]

(December 12, 1939)

Your policy for consolidating the Fourth Column is fundamentally appropriate, and we hope you will resolutely carry it out.

If you can consolidate the Fourth Column without missing the right moment and with methods that are both proper and suitable, then the position in northwestern Shanxi will be basically secured. It would be best if armed conflict can be avoided while still consolidating the Fourth Column.

Are you regularly in contact with Lei Renmin and Xu Fanting[2]? They have more methods; you should consult and discuss with them more often. Ensure that Lei Renmin can directly command the Fourth Column, and call upon the Party members and the new faction within the Fourth Column to unite around Lei Renmin. Without a leadership center, victory cannot be achieved.

[1] This is the main content of a telegram from Mao Zedong and Wang Jiaxiang to Zhao Lin, Secretary of the CPC Northwestern Shanxi District Committee; Peng Shaohui, Commander of the 358th Brigade of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army; and Luo Guibo, Political Commissar, regarding the policy for consolidating the Fourth Column of the Shanxi Dare-to-Die Corps.

[2] Lei Renmin (1909–2005), a native of Pingyao, Shanxi, was then Political Commissar of the Fourth Column of the Shanxi Dare-to-Die Corps. Xu Fanting was then Commander of the First Provisional Division of the Shanxi New Army.