Reply to Nie Rongzhen, Xiao Ke, and Others[1]

(February 23, 1948)

Approval is given to your operational plan, namely, in the first ten days of March, to dispatch three columns toward Yuxian, Xiheying, and Taohuabao to annihilate the enemy, and thereafter to strike northward and eastward; to dispatch two columns toward the Yanggao-Tianzhen line to annihilate the enemy, and thereafter to strike toward the Chaigoubu-Datong line; and to dispatch one column to the area north of the Daqing River, along with other such dispositions.

This operation marks the first long-distance maneuver by your main forces in over a year. You must overcome among cadres such erroneous thinking as fear of long-distance operations, fear of mountain warfare, fear of fighting in sparsely populated and grain-scarce regions, and fear of Fu Zuoyi. If such thinking still persists among cadres at present, you must resolutely overcome it.

[1] This is the main content of a telegram drafted by Mao Zedong for the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in reply to Nie Rongzhen, Xiao Ke, Zhao Erlu, Yang Dezhi, Luo Ruiqing, and Yang Chengwu.