Telegram to Peng Dehuai
(August 11, 1943)
Comrade Dehuai:
Except for yours, most opinions about maintaining the struggle, on the one hand,
and preserving large numbers of cadres, on the other, are incorrect. There are
very few good, important cadres sent from the district under Nie [Rongzhen]’s
command. The Central Committee has telegraphed them to select four to five
hundred good, upper-level cadres from directly affiliated organs, schools (Party
schools and the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University), and the Beiyue,
central Hebei, and Pingbei areas and to send them to study in Yan’an (these may
include some of the best midlevel cadres). Please tell Liu [Bocheng], Deng
[Xiaoping], Yang [Shangkun], Huang [Kecheng]1, and so forth to choose about
five hundred good, trainable upper-level cadres from directly affiliated
organizations, schools, and from Taihang, Taiyue, southern Hebei, and the Hebei-Shandong-Henan region to send to Yan’an to study. Another large number of
midlevel cadres and those who have made mistakes or are dubious and whom the
front has difficulties taking care of, may also be sent to Yan’an, but do not
include them in the above number. It is not a problem in terms of the material
capacity of the border region to accommodate 20,000 to 30,000 more soldiers and
10,000 to 20,000 more cadres. This year rainfall in the border region has been
sufficient, and we expect a good harvest.
Mao Zedong
Notes

Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 7, p. 123, where it is reproduced from Zhonggong
zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Wenxian he yanjiu, 1983 huibian ben.
1. Liu Bocheng (1892–1986) was at this time the commander-in-chief and commissar of the Shanxi-Chahar-Shandong-Henan Military Area Command and the commander of the 129th Division of the Eighth
Route Army; Yang Shangkun (1907–1998) was a longstanding military commissar and Chinese Communist
Party leader—heading the Northwestern Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and
from March 1943 serving on the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party; Huang Kecheng (1902–1986)
was a leading Communist general serving at this time as the political commissar of the Eighth Route Army.