New China News Agency Reporter’s
Comments on the Great Victory of Our
Army’s Campaign to Destroy and Attack on
the Southern Front
(December 24, 1947)
(Xinhua News Agency dispatch, Northern Shaanxi, December 24) While commenting on the major victory in Central China, our news agency’s reporter
pointed out:
The complete destruction of the southern end of the [Bei]ping-Han[kou] railway and the destruction of the east end of the Longhai railway have shattered and
separated the battle apparatus of the Chiang [Kaishek] bandits in Central China—a
major battlefield in the civil war—and the three large Newly Liberated Areas of
E-Yu-Wan [Hubei-Henan-Anhui], Su-Lu-Yu-Wan [Jiangsu-Shandong-Henan-Anhui], and Yu-Shaan-E [Henan-Shaanxi-Hubei] have now been connected
together into one vast region. This situation has created extremely advantageous
conditions for the People’s Liberation Army to annihilate the enemy in large numbers in the future, and it also indicates there will be even more and even greater
victories in 1948. Looking back over the past month or so, our three armies that
were marching southward devoted all their strength to wiping out the local enemy
forces and bandits and to helping the great masses of the local people to stand up,
so the war situation seemed to have quieted down for a short while. Because of this,
the Chiang bandits were panic-stricken and confused, and since the destruction of
the railway line east of Kaifeng was already disastrous for them, they attempted to
amass a large number of troops to ensure the safety of the only remaining railway,
the southern end of the [Bei]ping-Han[kou] railway. However, with the force of
thunder and the speed of wind, our armies launched a campaign to destroy and
attack on three different fronts on December 13 and 14. In only three days, they
destroyed 840 li1 of railway at the southern end of the Bei[ping]-Han[kou] railway line between Zhengzhou and Xinyang and at the eastern end of the Longhai
railway between Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, attacked and occupied Xuchang,
Lanfeng, Minquan, Xinzhongmu, Chenliu, Weishi, Yuzhou, Changge, Yanling,
Fugou, Xinzheng, Xixian, Shangcai, Queshan, Xiping, Suiping, Linying, Tongbo,
Qinyang, Wuyang, Yexian, Xiangcheng, and Zaoyang, altogether twenty-three
county seats, and they annihilated more than 20,000 troops of the Chiang bandits. Luohe and Zhumadian and the other strategic strongholds previously of vital
importance in the civil war in the Central Plains were also liberated by our army.
This great campaign is still ongoing. The destruction of the southern end of the
[Bei]ping-Han[kou] railway and the eastern end of the Longhai railway not only
shattered the battle apparatus of the Chiang bandits in Central China it also put an
end to the Chiang bandits’ advantageous mobility by railway. The development of
the war will further expose the weaknesses of the Chiang bandits: lack of troops,
having too many things to deal with at the same time, and wasting all their energy
running back and forth, and thus creating an advantageous opportunity for our
field armies, which are highly mobile and flexible and which have fought plenty
of battles, to annihilate the enemy in large numbers. Now, Zhengzhou, the location of the headquarters of the Chiang bandit infantry force as well as Kaifeng,
Luoyang, Shangqiu, and other strongholds have already been isolated. Xinyang,
another crucial military stronghold of the Chiang bandits, is also exposed to our
forces and cannot hold out for long. With the vast Central Plains region almost
totally under our control, the Liberation Army can do whatever it wants from now
on: It may attack Jingpu in the east, or strike Xiangfan in the west, or cross the
Yangzi River in the south, and the Chiang bandits, with their “hollow tactics,”
will not be able to do anything about it.
At this point, the reporter continued in an optimistic tone:
By standing up in self-defense and joining closely with the People’s Liberation
Army, the millions of liberated people of Central China have enhanced the fighting capacity of our counteroffensive forces to an unprecedented level. Moreover,
the close cooperation among our armies on three different fronts will teach every
division of the isolated Chiang bandits the lesson they deserve. The great victory
at the southern end of the [Bei]ping-Han[kou] railway line ultimately will be only
the first of a series of even greater victories in the future.

--- Notes

Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 10, pp. 95–96, where it is reproduced
from Renmin ribao, December 27, 1947.

1.  A li is half a kilometer.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719436-61