Resolutely Decide to Disperse for Guerrilla Warfare in Southern Shaanxi[1]

(July 25, 1946)

Li, Wen, Ren:

All telegrams received. (1) On the day of the si telegram, instruct Zhou Zijian, representative at the Xi’an office, to contact Xiannian and the 32nd Team[2] on your behalf, declare willingness to accept mediation, and demand that the government troops cease encirclement and pursuit to facilitate negotiations. (2) As long as you can survive, there is hope for resuming negotiations and implementing a ceasefire, because the Kuomintang deeply fears our Central Plains Army’s guerrilla operations on all fronts. (3) You should resolutely decide to disperse into southern Shaanxi counties with the regiment as the unit, delineate areas, each regiment administering one to two counties, the degree of dispersion to be such that it can strike the civil corps and one company or one battalion of the Kuomintang as the standard. You may begin by dispersing within three or four counties, gain experience, and then gradually expand, breaking out from within the enemy’s encirclement in separate units to beyond the ring, only thus can you survive.

Central Committee

Wu-you

[1] This is a telegram drafted by Mao Zedong for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, addressed to Li Xiannian, Commander of the Central Plains Military Region, Wen Jianwu, Commander of the 2nd Column, and Ren Zhibin, Political Commissar.

[2] The 32nd Team refers to the 32nd Team of the Peiping Executive Headquarters for Military Mediation, dispatched to the Central Plains Military Region.