Under the People’s Liberation Army’s mighty victorious offensive, the enemy garrison at Nanyang, under Wang Lingyun, abandoned the city and fled south on the afternoon of the 4th. Our forces immediately occupied Nanyang. Nanyang was ancient Wanyan County; during the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao and Zhang Xiu fought bitterly for its control. Later, Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han, Liu Xiu, raised an army here to overthrow Wang Mang’s Xin Dynasty and establish the Eastern Han regime. Many of the Twenty-Eight Stars—Liu Xiu’s principal generals—were natives of the Nanyang region.  Over the past year, Chiang Kai-shek attached great importance to Nanyang, setting up a so‑called Pacification Zone there with Wang Lingyun as commander‑in‑chief, in a bid to block the PLA’s southward advance. Last month, Bai Chongxi’s bandit forces, deploying three corps of Huang Wei’s army, spent an entire month trying to reopen the transport route between Xinyang and Nanyang, yet they never succeeded. More recently, owing to the overall collapse of his position, Chiang’s gang was compelled to concentrate nearly a hundred divisions from the entire southern front into two main areas—centered on Xuzhou and Hankou. Having already abandoned Kaifeng two weeks ago, they have now relinquished Nanyang as well. Henceforth, with the exception of Xinxiang and Anyang in northern Henan, Lingbao and Neixiang in western Henan, and Queshan, Xinyang, Huangchuan, Guangshan, Shangcheng, and Gushi in southern Henan, where pockets of remnants still remain, the entire province of Henan has been liberated by our forces.  Since last July, when the PLA’s Southern Front launched its bold march behind enemy lines, over the course of more than a year, aside from annihilating vast numbers of Nationalist regular troops, our most significant achievement has been the restoration and establishment of solid base areas in the Dabie Mountains region (the Hubei–Henan area), western Anhui, western Henan, southern Shaanxi, the Tongbai Mountains region, the Jianghan Plain, and the Jianghuai region (around eastern Anhui and northern Jiangsu). We have created seven military regions and greatly expanded the old base area of the Yu–Wan–Su Military Region. With the exception of the Jianghuai Military Region, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Northern Jiangsu Military Region, all other regions are unified under the Central Plains Military Region. The Yu–Wan–Su, western Henan, southern Shaanxi, and Tongbai regions are now contiguous, with no enemy forces separating them. These four military regions have also merged with North China to form two major armed forces. Beyond replenishing the field and local forces after more than a year of fierce fighting, this consolidation has added roughly two hundred thousand troops, laying the groundwork for even greater future development.  Bai Chongxi often said, “I am not afraid of the Communists’ ferocity; I fear only that they will strike root.” He was right to be concerned. Across the Jianghuai and Jianghan regions, we have grown not merely individual trees but a dense forest. We have not only taken root but have flourished luxuriantly. In the latter half of last year, within a very brief span of time, we prematurely implemented land‑distribution policies in this area, committing certain left‑wing errors. However, we promptly corrected these mistakes, drawing extensively on our experience from the War of Resistance Against Japan to pursue social policies of rent and interest reduction and fiscal policies that ensured a fair burden-sharing among all social strata. In this way, we united or neutralized every possible segment of society, concentrating our strength against the reactionary Nationalist regime and those few ruthless local tyrants who were universally loathed by the broad masses in the countryside. This strategy proved unequivocally successful: the enemy has been completely isolated. Under the coordinated blows of our powerful field and local forces, the besieged remnants holed up in isolated strongholds such as Kaifeng and Nanyang have been forced to abandon their positions and flee. The force commanded by Nanyang’s garrison leader, Wang Lingyun, consists of the Second Army, the Sixty-Fourth Army, and several militia units, and it is now retreating toward Xiangyang. Xiangyang too is one of the Nationalists’ so‑called “Pacification Zones.” After its first commander, Kang Ze, was captured, he was succeeded by Song Xilin, transferred from Xinjiang. Recently, Song Xilin was promoted to deputy commander‑in‑chief of the Xuzhou Front and director of its forward command post, replacing Du Yuming. Du Yuming, meanwhile, had just flown from Xuzhou to Northeast China, suffered a disastrous defeat, and then retreated to Huludao before heading to Xiangyang, presumably to take over as commander from Song Xilin. Yet the distance from Nanyang to Xiangyang is not great. Xiangyang remains an isolated stronghold; if Wang Lingyun does not flee, he will share Kang Ze’s fate.