To Fight Ou Zhen, Amass Fifty Regiments on
One Battlefield
(January 21, 1947)
To Chen [Yi], Su [Yu], and Tan [Zhenlin]:1
	 1.	 It is excellent and a great relief that you have captured Zaozhuang and annihilated the entire Fifty-first Division, and we are very pleased. We hope you
will cite the officers and soldiers who have made great contributions.
	 2.	 Starting from the day on which Zaozhuang was captured, the entire army
should rest and consolidate for two weeks and amass all forces to wipe out
Ou Zhen.2
	 3.	 In thirty-five days you wiped out three complete divisions, the Sixty-ninth,
the Twenty-sixth, and the Fifty-first, and won an unprecedented great victory.
The major drawback is that we were unable to combine the Shandong Field
Army and the East China Field Army into a single campaign for the two battles in Subei and southern Shandong, allowing Ou Zhen and Li Yannian3 to
pin down more than twenty regiments of our troops; otherwise, the two divisions under the command of Hu [Lian] and Feng [Zhi’an]4 would have been
annihilated as well. In future battles against Ou Zhen, you must amass more
than fifty regiments on one battlefield. As regards Tai’[erzhuang], Xu[zhou],
and Lin[cheng], it suffices to have local guerrillas keep an eye on them.
The Military Commission
---

Notes

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 632–33, 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.
Chen Yi was commander and political commissar of the East China Field Army, Su Yu was
deputy commander, and Tan Zhenlin was deputy political commissar. In late January 1947,
in accordance with a decision by the Central Military Commission, the Shandong Field
Army and the Central China Field Army were merged to form the East China Field Army,
and the Shandong Military Region and the East China Military Region were merged to
form the East China Military Region.

2.  Ou Zhen was commander of the Guomindang’s Reorganized Nineteenth Army.

3.  Li Yannian was deputy head of the Guomindang army’s Xuzhou Pacification Office.

4.  Hu Lian was commander of the Guomindang army’s Reorganized Eleventh Division. Feng Zhi’an was commander of the Guomindang army’s Third Pacification Zone and
its Reorganized Thirty-third Army.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-264