Page 233 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

STRATEGY IN CHINA’S REVOLUTIONARY WAR 227
(6) The two divisions under Chang Hui-tsan and Tan
Tao-yuan, which made up the enemy’s main force, were troops
belonging to Lu Ti-ping, who was commander-in-chief of this
“encirclement and suppression” campaign and governor of Kiangsi
Province, and Chang Hui-tsan was the field commander. To
wipe out these two divisions would be practically to smash the
campaign. Each division had about fourteen thousand men and
Chang’s was divided between two places, so that if we attacked one
division at a time we would enjoy absolute superiority.
(7) The Lungkang-Yuantou sector, where the main forces of
the Chang and Tan divisions were located, was close to our
concentrations, and there was good popular support to cover
our approach.
(8) The terrain in Lungkang was good. Yuantou was not easy
to attack. But were the enemy to advance to Hsiaopu to attack
us, we would have good terrain there too.
(9) We could mass the largest number of troops in the Lung-
kang sector. In Hsingkuo, less than a hundred li to the southwest
of Lungkang, we had an independent division of over one thousand
men, which could manoeuvre in the enemy’s rear.
(10) If our troops made a breakthrough at the centre and
breached the enemy’s front, his columns to the east and west
would be cut into two widely separated groups.

For the above reasons, we decided that our first battle should be
against Chang Hui-tsan’s main force, and we successfully hit two of
his brigades and his divisional headquarters, capturing the entire force
of nine thousand men and the divisional commander himself, without
letting a single man or horse escape. This one victory scared Tan’s
division into fleeing towards Tungshao and Hsu’s division into fleeing
towards Toupi. Our troops then pursued Tan’s division and wiped
out half of it. We fought two battles in five days (December 27, 1930
to January 1, 1931), and, fearing defeat, the enemy forces in Futien,
Tungku and Toupi retreated in disorder. So ended the first campaign
of “encirclement and suppression”.
The situation in the second campaign was as follows:

(1) The “suppression” forces numbering 200,000 were under
the command of Ho Ying-chin with headquarters at Nanchang.
(2) As in the first enemy campaign, none of the forces were
Chiang Kai-shek’s own troops. Among them the 19th Route Army