Page 229 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

STRATEGY IN CHINA’S REVOLUTIONARY WAR 223
encountered at the beginning of our first and fourth counter-campaigns
and during the whole of the fifth. During the first counter-campaign
the cadres, under the influence of the Li Li-san line, were in favour
not of retreat but of attack until they were convinced otherwise. In
the fourth counter-campaign the cadres, under the influence of military
adventurism, objected to making preparations for retreat. In the fifth,
they at first persisted in the military adventurist view, which opposed
luring the enemy in deep, but later turned to military conservatism.
Another case is that of the adherents of the Chang Kuo-tao line,
who did not admit the impossibility of establishing our bases in the
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regions of the Tibetan and the Hui peoples until they ran up against
a brick wall. Experience is essential for the cadres, and failure is
indeed the mother of success. But it is also necessary to learn with
an open mind from other people’s experience, and it is sheer “narrow
empiricism” to insist on one’s own personal experience in all matters
and, in its absence, to adhere stubbornly to one’s own opinions and
reject other people’s experience. Our war has suffered in no small
measure on this account.
The people’s lack of faith in the need for a strategic retreat, which
was due to their inexperience, was never greater than in our first
counter-campaign in Kiangsi. At that time the local Party organiza-
tions and the masses of the people in the counties of Kian, Hsingkuo
and Yungfeng were all opposed to the Red Army’s withdrawal. But
after the experience of the first counter-campaign, no such problem
occurred in the subsequent ones. Everyone was convinced that the
loss of territory in the base area and the sufferings of the people were
temporary and was confident that the Red Army could smash the
enemy’s “encirclement and suppression”. However, whether or not the
people have faith is closely tied up with whether or not the cadres have
faith, and hence the first and foremost task is to convince the cadres.
Strategic retreat is aimed solely at switching over to the counter-
offensive and is merely the first stage of the strategic defensive. The
decisive link in the entire strategy is whether victory can be won in
the stage of the counter-offensive which follows.

4. STRATEGIC COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

To defeat the offensive of an enemy who enjoys absolute superior-
ity we rely on the situation created during the stage of our strategic
retreat, a situation which is favourable to ourselves, unfavourable to