Strive to Annihilate Three to Four Brigades
in Each Battle
 (January 2, 1947)
To Chen [Yi], and for the information of Su [Yu]:1
We received your telegram of January 1.2
	 1.	 The slogan of making battles self-supporting and using battles to improve
fighting tactics is a very good one. You should take the battle of eastern
Suqian3 as an example and strive to fight a large-scale war of annihilation,
which is to say, completely and thoroughly wipe out three to four enemy brigades in each battle. If you fight two or three more battles like this, the enemy’s attacks can be stopped and some of the lost territory can be recaptured.
	 2.	 Are preparations complete for fighting Ma Liwu?4 Have Su and the First
Division joined you in southern Shandong? We hope the fighting this time
will bring results like those in eastern Suqian.
The Military Commission
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 599–600, where it is
reproduced from Mao’s handwritten manuscript preserved in the Central Archives.

--- Notes

1.  Mao Zedong drafted this telegram on behalf of the Central Military Commission.
Chen Yi was commander and political commissar of the Shandong Field Army, and Su Yu
was commander of the Central China Field Army

2.  The telegram from Chen Yi summarized the lessons of the Subei (Northern Suqian)
Campaign and the battles in Yancheng and Lianshui, noting that the territories gained were
many and large but that misuse of resources by certain departments was resulting in excessive losses and waste; he advocated making battles self-supporting and also using battles
to improve fighting tactics.

3.  This battle, which took place in mid-December 1946, was also called the battle of
northern Suqian.

4.  Ma Liwu (1904–1963, born in present-day Guapo town, Shaanxi) was commander
of the Guomindang army’s Reorganized Twenty-sixth Division.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-255