Our Army Liberates Zhengzhou[1]

(October 22, 1948)

[Urgent dispatch from the Xinhua News Agency at the Zhengzhou front, 24:00 hours, October 22] Our Central Plains People’s Liberation Army occupied Zhengzhou today. The defending enemy fled northward and has been surrounded by our forces in the area north of Zhengzhou and south of the Yellow River railway bridge, where they are now being annihilated. Zhengzhou is the junction of the two major railways, the Beiping–Hankou and the Longhai railways, and has always been a strategic military town. Because Xuzhou was in urgent danger, Chiang Kai-shek was compelled to transfer eastward the three armies of Sun Yuanliang’s corps garrisoned in Zhengzhou (Note: Beginning in October, the Kuomintang army changed the designation of all reorganized divisions to armies and all reorganized brigades to divisions). The defending forces in Zhengzhou were weak, and as soon as our army arrived, they fled desperately. Now Zhongmu County east of Zhengzhou and the Yellow River bridge to the north have both been cut off by our army, and the fleeing enemy will be swiftly annihilated.

[1] This is a news report written by Mao Zedong for the Xinhua News Agency.

Manuscript of "Our Army Liberates Zhengzhou," written by Mao Zedong for the Xinhua News Agency.