Chen and Su’s Units Should Fight Small
Battles, Not Large Ones, During the Next
One to Two Months
(October 3, 1947, 10:00 P.M.)
To Chen [Yi] and Su [Yu], and for the information of Liu [Bocheng] and Deng
[Xiaoping]:1
Your forces are extended over vast areas. For the next one or two months, you
must resolve to fight only small battles and not large ones. Each of your columns
should be assigned to a territory consisting of a few counties and they should
devote themselves to wiping out small units of enemy forces, the [landlord] militia, bandits, and the baojia,2 establishing political power and carrying out land
reform. Each county will assign the framework (cadres) of a battalion and manpower corresponding to one company of armed forces to provide the backbone
of the county’s armed forces. The main force of each column will be in the area
under its jurisdiction, where it will battle back and forth and sever rail lines. The
area under the jurisdiction of your five columns includes not only places south of
the Longhai railway,3 west of the canal, east of the [Bei]ping-Han[kou] railway,
and north of the Huai River. In addition, you can move a force south of the Huai
River, where it will advance to areas east of the Shouxian, Hefei, and Chaoxian
line, and also send troops north of the Yangzi River to contact Liu and Deng’s
troops in central and northern Jiangsu. If one to two months is not enough time,
you may extend it accordingly, forcing the main body of the enemy troops into a
position in which the enemy is useless and half dead with exhaustion. Within a
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 4, pp. 281–82, where it is
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, and Su Yu
was deputy commander of the East China Field Army. Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping
were commander and political commissar, respectively, of the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan) Field Army.
2.  The reference is to the system of community control set up by the Guomindang
authorities and effectively controlled by the landlords, consisting of jia, each of which was
made up of ten households, which were subordinate to bao, each of which was responsible
for ten jia.
3.  The Longhai railway runs west from the coast to Xi’an.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719436-38

short time, our army will annihilate the enemy’s lackeys and establish bases for
our concentrated forces that will be the foundation for battles in the near future.
This type of task might not seem very important, but in fact it has great strategic
significance. Also follow the method used by Liu and Deng’s units to provide
winter clothing for your army; that is, each column will borrow cloth from merchants and common people who have some (in the future, we will repay them the
exact amount in cash). If each person makes one coat, it will be sufficient for the
winter. Do not expect the rear areas to deliver clothing; this will only cause delay.
The Military Commission

reproduced from Mao Zedong’s handwritten manuscript preserved in the Central Archives.