To Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping[1]

(August 29, 1946)

When the two brigades of the Third Division have advanced to appropriate positions, concentrate all forces to annihilate one of its brigades, and thereafter, according to circumstances, annihilate the other brigade. This division belongs to the Central Army; if it can be annihilated, the impact will certainly be great.

[1] This is the main content of a telegram drafted by Mao Zedong for the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping. It was based on the enemy situation in which the Kuomintang army had assembled its main forces—the Fifth Army, the Reorganized Eleventh Division, the Reorganized Third Division, and other units totaling 32 brigades with more than 300,000 men—and, taking advantage of the moment when the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army had just concluded the Longhai Railway Campaign and had not yet had time to rest and regroup, was advancing from Zhengzhou and Xuzhou along separate routes to launch a converging attack on the Dingtao-Caoxian area in the southwestern Shandong Liberated Area.