First Fight Several Victorious Battles
on the Interior Lines and Then Shift
to the Exterior Lines
(July 4, 1946)
To Liu [Bocheng] and Deng [Xiaoping], Chen [Yi], and the Central China Bureau:1
According to the telegram from the Central China Bureau, the news from
Liu Ruming and Cao Fulin’s2 forces is that these two armies will advance from
Kaocheng3 and Dongming to Jining. According to [Ye] Jianying’s4 telegram, on
July 1 he received a memorandum from the Guomindang, setting noon on the 30th
as the deadline for our army to withdraw from the passage between Dongming and
Kaocheng or else we will bear all the consequences. According to [Zhou] Enlai’s
telegram of July 2, the situation now is that we are fighting while negotiating, and
fighting is of the first importance. According to the telegram from Liu [Bocheng] and
Deng [Xiaoping], the diehards are preparing to deploy the Thirty-first Army Group
to attack Jiaozuo, and the Forty-fourth Army Group is preparing to attack southern
Shandong. According to the telegram from Chen [Yi], the two diehard armies at
Ji’nan and Wei county are attacking the line between Jiao[dong] and Ji’[nan], and
so on. If this is the situation, the diehard enemy forces in Jiaoji, Xuzhou, northern
and eastern Henan, and northern Jiangsu may attack us simultaneously. If that happens, we will first win several battles on the interior lines, then shift to the exterior
lines; politically, this will be more advantageous. Please heighten your vigilance
toward a possible large-scale attack by the diehard armies.
The Military Commission


Our source for this document is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 320–21, 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 Military Commission.
Liu Bocheng was commander and Deng Xiaoping was political commissar, respectively, of
the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region. Chen Yi was commander of the New
Fourth Army and of the Shandong Military Region.
2.  Liu Ruming was commander of the Guomindang army’s Fourth Pacification Zone.
Cao Fulin was deputy commander of the Fourth Pacification Zone and commander of the
Reorganized Fifty-fifth Division.
3.  Kaocheng county was combined with Lanfeng county in 1954 to become Lankao
county, Henan Province.
4.  Ye Jianying was the Chinese Communist Party’s representative to the Beiping Office
for Military Mediation.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-192