New China News Agency Correspondent’s
Comments on the Victory in Northern
Shaanxi
(August 23, 1947)
(Xinhua News Agency, Northern Shaanxi, August 23) Commenting on the victory of the Northwest People’s Liberation Army in annihilating the Reorganized
Thirty-sixth Division of Hu Zongnan’s1 army, the Xinhua News Agency correspondent stated: The scale of this victory was unprecedented on the battlefield of
the Northwest. The Thirty-sixth Division was one of Hu Zongnan’s three mainforce divisions, and another of Hu Zongnan’s three main-force divisions, the
Reorganized First Division, had two of its brigades wiped out, so Hu Zongnan
now has left only one main-force division, which is the Reorganized Ninetieth
Division. Since May, after the victory of our Northwest People’s Liberation Army
in the battle at Panlong, the enemy that was encircling eastern Gansu, [Dingbian],
[Anbian], [Jingbian], and Yulin has been wiped out. Hu Zongnan then ordered
his troops to divide forces and engage in “mopping up” operations, running
roughshod over the people all over the Liberated Areas. He seemed to think that
through the process of this “mopping up,” the people of the Shaanxi-GansuNingxia Border Region would give in to him, and the People’s Liberation
Army would then be easier to deal with. Little did he realize that the people
of the border region are impossible to defeat, and his “cleaning up” came to
naught. The more brutally Hu Zongnan’s forces trampled upon the people, the
more resolute the people became in their determination to take revenge. When it
came to the point that our forces attacked Yulin, Hu Zongnan was forced to
send troops from afar as reinforcements. He then ordered his main force to
advance northward in haste in an attempt to drive our forces into Shanxi,
and he even had the audacity to penetrate the line from Zhenchuanbao (30 li
north of Mizhi) to Jiaxian on the 20th of this month. Unexpectedly for him,
our forces started fighting from the vicinity of Zhenchuanpu, and within a
few hours they had wiped out the Thirty-sixth Division. After the annihilation
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong xinwen gongzuo wenxuan, pp. 365–66, where it
passages set in bold are those that Mao changed or added in revising the text.
1.  Hu Zongnan was director of the Guomindang army’s Xi’an Pacification Office.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719436-24

of the Thirty-sixth Division, all that is left of Hu Zongnan’s central forces are
fourteen brigades, of which their mobile strength is unlikely to be more than
seven brigades. Furthermore, because his rear is weakly defended, the people’s
guerrilla warfare is afforded an even greater opportunity for development. The
annihilation of the Thirty-sixth Division indicates the following reality: that is,
the People’s Liberation Army has already started a counteroffensive on the battlefield of the Northwest. Because of the serious strategic mistake he made in
invading Yan’an, Chiang Kaishek is now at the point of having to reap what
he has sown. The war situation in the Northwest has undergone a fundamental change with the annihilation of the Thirty-sixth Division. The beginning of
the Northwest People’s Liberation Army’s counteroffensive marks the beginning
of a new phase in the liberation of the greater Northwest. This situation, combined with counteroffensives on other battlefields throughout the country,
is extremely unfavorable to Chiang Kaishek and extremely favorable to the
Chinese people.

is reproduced from a manuscript edited by Mao and preserved in the Central Archives. The