Swiftly Wipe Out the Puppet Troops in Liaocheng and Other Places[1]

(June 15, 1946)

Chen and Shu, Liu, Deng, and Bo:

The 3,000 puppet troops in Liaocheng and the more than 10,000 puppet troops in the area between Gaotang, Boping,[2] and Yucheng must be swiftly wiped out. In addition to the 15,000 troops to be sent by the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region, we hope Chen and Shu will order the Bohai Military Region to send more than 10,000 troops to move out quickly and place them under the unified command of Liu, Deng, and Bo to wipe out these bandits, so as to remove a future menace and facilitate subsequent operations. We hope Liu, Deng, and Bo will immediately appoint a unified command organ for this campaign and make all preparations to wipe out these bandits by the end of this month or the beginning of next month.

The Military Commission

Yishan

[1] In mid-June 1946, the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region planned to launch the Liaocheng-Gaotang-Yucheng Campaign and proposed that the Bohai Military Region send 10,000 troops to coordinate in the operation. This was a telegram drafted by Mao Zedong for the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee addressed to Chen Yi, commander of the New Fourth Army and concurrently commander of the Shandong Military Region, Shu Tong, director of the Political Department, and Liu Bocheng, commander of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region, Deng Xiaoping, political commissar, and Bo Yibo, first deputy political commissar.

[2] Boping was an old county name. It was merged into Chiping County, Shandong Province, in 1956.