Make Creating Battlefields a Strategic Task
(November 11, 1945)
To Chen [Yi] and Li [Yu]:1
	 1.	 Congratulations on your victory in the battle of annihilation against Wu
Huawen.2
	 2.	 To prepare to defeat the inevitable large-scale attacks, in addition to assembling and consolidating the troops you must create broader battlefronts,
expanding the area to the north and the south along the occupied railway, capturing the strongholds of Lin city, Teng county, Zou county, and
Yanzhou, mobilizing the popular masses extensively and offering them economic benefits. The Guomindang is just now holding a conference of generals and commanders and is promoting opposition to communism throughout
the country. It will take time, however, for them to muster large armies in
Zou and Teng counties. You should take advantage of this interval to create
the battlefield; this is your strategic task.
The Central Committee
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 134–35, where it is
reproduced from Mao Zedong’s handwritten manuscript preserved in the Central Archives.

--- Notes

1.  Mao Zedong drafted this telegram on behalf of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Chen Yi was commander of the New Fourth Army and of the Shandong Military Region, and Li Yu was deputy political commissar of the Shandong Military
Region.

2.  This refers to the victory of the Second Column of the New Fourth Army and the
Eighth Division of the Shandong Military Region over the three divisions under Wu
Huawen (1904–1962, native of Shandong) (former puppet troops absorbed into the Guomindang’s Fifth Route Army) in the areas around Nanteng county, Shandong Province, in
early November 1945.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-81