Where Chiang Kai-Shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948 0253016924, 9780253016928

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WHERE CHIANG KAI-SHEK LOST CHINA

Twentieth-Century Battles Spencer C. Tucker, editor

Balkan Breakthrough Richard C. Hall

China’s Battle for Korea Xiaobing Li

The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China: Siping, 1946 Harold Tanner

D-Day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan Harold J. Goldberg

Battle of Dogger Bank: The First Dreadnought Engagement, January 1915 Tobias R. Philbin The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment John A. Adams The Battle of An Loc James H. Willbanks

The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition Robin Neillands The Imjin and Kapyong Battles: Korea, 1951 Paul MacKenzie In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 Vincent P. O’Hara

The Battle of Heligoland Bight Eric W. Osborne

Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway Dallas Woodbury Isom

The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action H. P. Willmott

Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands Michael B. Barrett

The Battle of the Otranto Straits: Controlling the Gateway to the Adriatic in World War I Paul G. Halpern

Prelude to Blitzkrieg: The 1916 AustroGerman Campaign in Romania Michael B. Barrett

Battle of Surigao Strait Anthony P. Tully The Brusilov Offensive Timothy C. Dowling

The Second Battle of the Marne Michael S. Neiberg The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in Mesopotamia, 1915–1916 Nikolas Gardner

WHERE CHIANG KAI-SHEK LOST CHINA ★  ★  ★

T H E L I A O - S H E N C A M PA I G N , 194 8

H A RO L D M . TA N N E R

Indiana University Press  Bloomington & Indianapolis

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA iupress.indiana.edu © 2015 by Harold M. Tanner All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Tanner, Harold Miles.   Where Chiang Kai-Shek lost China : the Liao-Shen campaign, 1948 / Harold M. Tanner.    pages cm. — (Twentieth-century battles)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-253-01692-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01699-7 (ebook) 1. China—History—Civil War, 1945-1949—Campaigns—China— Liaoning Sheng. 2.  China—History— Civil War, 1945-1949—Campaigns— China—Manchuria. 3.  Liaoning Sheng (China)—History, Military—20th century. 4.  Manchuria (China)—History, Military—20th century.  I. Title.   DS777.5425.L5T36 2015  951.04’2—dc23 2015016683 1 2 3 4 5  20 19 18 17 16 15

For William

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Contents



· Acknowledgments  ix



· A Note on Chinese Names  xi

· Introduction · 2

1 China: Lost or Won?  ·  8

2 The Struggle for Manchuria Begins: August 1945–July 1946  ·  24

3 Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction: South Manchuria, July–November 1946  ·  44

4 Breaking the Nationalist Offensive: The Three Expeditions/ Four Defenses Campaign, December 1946–March 1947  ·  62

5 The Summer Offensive and the Wedemeyer Mission: May–August 1947  ·  84

6 Encircling the Cities: The Autumn and Winter Offensives, September 1947–March 1948  ·  104 7 The Battle behind the Lines: Building the North Manchuria Base Area  ·  122 8 Army of Learning: The Transition from Guerrilla to Conventional Warfighting Capability  ·  140 9 Contention Within: Summer 1948  ·  160

10 Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy: September 1948  ·  182 11 Close the Door and Beat the Dog: The Battles of  Tashan and Jinzhou, October 1948  ·  200 12 Putting Changchun under Siege: March–June 1948  ·  218 13 Death, Treason, and Surrender in the Garden City: June–October 1948  ·  236 14 Avalanche of Defeat: October–November 1948  ·  250 15 Assessing and Remembering  ·  272

· Notes  293



· Bibliography  339



· Index  359

viii

Acknowledgments

One of the great pleasures of historical research is that the necessary materials are not available online. Consequently, researching and writing a book of this nature has given me the opportunity to travel widely, to connect with old and new friends, and to accumulate a long list of debts to be acknowledged. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Professor Liu Tong of Shanghai Jiaotong University for sharing his insights and for directing me toward materials without which this book could not have been written. In Beijing, Wang Chaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Modern History has been generous with his advice and with arranging the institutional support necessary when doing research in China. He Jiangfeng contributed his enthusiasm and knowledge of sources in Republican-era history as a research assistant in Beijing. Dr. Li Chen of Renmin University kindly shared his insights on the civil war along with a copy of his doctoral dissertation. Chen Yung-fa, Chang Jui-te, and the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taipei provided assistance and a comfortable base for research in Taiwan. Professor Sherman Lai at the University of Manitoba has kindly shared his advice and insights into the culture of the People’s Liberation Army. Also in Canada, Sr. Huguette Turcotte, of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, kindly supplied me with material from the archives and publications of the M.I.C. I would also like to express my appreciation to an anonymous reader for his or her suggestions, to Spencer Tucker, editor of the Twentieth-Century Battles series and to editorial director Robert Sloan of the Indiana University Press.

ix

x

Acknowledgments

I conducted research at the following libraries and archives: in China, the National Library in Beijing, the Jinzhou Municipal Archives, the Liaoning Provincial Library, and the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall; in the United States, the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the Research Library of the George C. Marshall Foundation, the Hoover Archives, Stanford University’s East Asia Library, and the University of North Texas Libraries. All this travel and more was made possible thanks to the generous financial support that I have received from all levels of the University of North Texas: the Department of History and its Military History Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Provost, and also from the Hoover Institution and Archives for participation in the summer 2013 workshop “Revisiting Modern China at the Hoover Archives.” My department chair, Dr. Richard B. McCaslin has been consistently supportive of all faculty research, including my own, and made funds available to pay Professor Alexander Mendoza for drawing the maps for this book. Finally, my deepest thanks, as always, go to my wife, Yiyun, and our children, Sophia and William, for providing the foundations and the meaning for whatever professional success I may have achieved.

A Note on Chinese Names

In the main text, Chinese names have been written in the pinyin Romanization system. Most words are pronounced roughly the way an English-speaker would guess. There are a few important exceptions to this rule: “c” is pronounced as “ts,” “q” as “ch,” and “x” more or less like “s.” I have used non-pinyin spellings for the names of a few individuals and entities whose names have become universally recognized under those earlier spellings. For example, Chiang Kai-shek (pinyin Jiang Jieshi), Chiang Ching-kuo (pinyin Jiang Jingguo), Soong May-ling (pinyin Song Meiling) and T. V. Soong (pinyin Song Ziwen).

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WHERE CHIANG KAI-SHEK LOST CHINA

Every war is rich in particular facts; while, at the same time, each is an unexplored sea, full of rocks, which the general may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night. —Clausewitz, On War

Introduction ★★★

Clausewitz’s observation is as true for the historian as it is for the general: as we observe war from afar, every action seems to have been contingent on a host of other related actions, peripheral factors, and underlying conditions. As a result, any attempt to identify one specific campaign or battle as the crucial event that determined the outcome of a war or the fate of a nation runs the risk of oversimplification. When I say that the Liao-Shen Campaign (12 September–2 November 1948) marks the historical moment when Chiang Kai-shek lost China, I am clearly exercising a degree of poetic license. Some historians might argue that the Huai-Hai Campaign (8 November 1948–10 January 1949) deserves that honor.1 Others might say that if we must search for the place where Chiang Kai-shek lost China, we will find it not on a battlefield, but in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. Nonetheless, the Liao-Shen Campaign clearly played a very significant role in determining the outcome of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949). This campaign marked the end of the struggle for control of the key strategic theater of China’s Northeast (Manchuria—I will use the two terms interchangeably). This struggle began immediately following the Japanese surrender in August 1945. By the time of the Liao-Shen Campaign, the Communists had taken control of most of the Northeast. Through a 3

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Figure 0.1. Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou directing the deployment of troops from an observation post at Beimaoshan outside of Jinzhou, October 1948.

series of offensives, Communist commander Lin Biao (1907–1971) had forced the Nationalist armies into three mutually isolated areas centering on the cities of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou. Lin’s goal in the Liao-Shen Campaign was to cut off and annihilate the Nationalist armies in these areas. The campaign focused on the areas of western Liaoning province and on the provincial capital of Shenyang—hence its name, the Liaoning-Shenyang Campaign, or Liao-Shen Campaign for short. The Liao-Shen Campaign was a massive undertaking. Seven hundred thousand Communist troops organized in twelve columns, plus another 330,000 local and reserve forces, faced three Nationalist army corps totaling around 550,000 men.2 Chinese military historians divide the campaign into three stages. In the first stage, from 12 September to 19 October 1948, the Communist troops isolated, attacked, and captured the key railway city of Jinzhou in western Liaoning province. Farther north, Nationalist forces at Changchun, which had been under siege since May, surrendered to the Communists on 19 October. The second stage of the Liao-Shen Campaign took place from 20 to 28 October. Having captured Jinzhou and Changchun, Lin Biao unexpectedly wheeled around to attack the Nationalist West-Advancing Army Corps. This force, under the



Introduction5

command of General Liao Yaoxiang, was in western Liaoning, in between Shenyang and Jinzhou. Chiang Kai-shek hoped that Liao would be able to recover Jinzhou. Instead, Liao’s forces were trapped and annihilated. In the third stage of the campaign, from 28 October to 2 November, Lin’s forces captured Shenyang and the nearby port city of Yingkou. The Liao-Shen Campaign was significant in two respects: first, it eliminated some of Chiang Kai-shek’s best armies and left the Communists in complete control of Manchuria, a strategic area rich in natural resources, railways, ports, and industrial infrastructure; second, the Liao-Shen Campaign marked the Communist forces’ transition from guerrilla warfare to large-scale maneuver operations, coordination between infantry, artillery, and armor, and attacks on heavily defended cities. For this reason, the Liao-Shen Campaign makes an enlightening case study of the transition from guerrilla to conventional operations—a transition that Mao Zedong envisioned in his writings about guerrilla warfare in the 1930s. This book will examine not only the Liao-Shen Campaign but also the process by which Lin Biao’s Communist forces made the transition from guerrilla to conventional operations in order to defeat Chiang Kaishek’s armies. As they made that transition, the Communist forces in Manchuria operated under four different names. On 31 October 1945, the Communist Party organized the various units that it had sent into the Northeast into the Northeast People’s Autonomous Army, with Lin Biao in command and Luo Ronghuan serving as political commissar. On 1 January 1946, the Communist forces were redesignated as the Northeast Democratic United Army; they were subsequently renamed the Northeast Field Army in January 1948, and then became the Fourth Field Army in early 1949.3 In telling the story of the these Communist forces I have drawn for the most part on primary and secondary sources from the People’s Republic of China, including telegrams, reports, memoirs, preliminary draft unit histories compiled in the 1950s, and the work of Chinese military historians publishing from the 1980s onward. It is, however, impossible to tell the story of this Communist victory without considering developments on the Nationalist side and the role of the United States. I have accordingly drawn on the rich secondary scholarship already published in these areas, as well as archives in the United States and on Taiwan in order to provide

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

the necessary context in which Communist strategy and operations in Manchuria unfolded. In order to understand the Liao-Shen Campaign, we need to understand how the two opposing armies reached the points at which they stood in September 1948, and particularly how the Communist forces had acquired new strengths and new skills in the years of combat operations that preceded the Liao-Shen Campaign. The first eight chapters of this book describe that process. In chapters 1 and 2 I introduce the Liao-Shen Campaign itself, place it in its historical and geographical context, and describe briefly how the Chinese Communist and Nationalist leaders chose to compete for control over the Northeast at the end of World War II. Chapter 2 concludes with an overview of the initial stages of the struggle for Manchuria, from August 1945 through June 1946.4 Chapters 3 through 6 describe the series of campaigns through which the Communist forces in the Northeast managed to move from the defensive to the offensive. These include: (1) the “Three Expeditions South of the [Songhua] River and Four Defenses of Linjiang (“Three Expeditions/ Four Defenses” for short—17 December 1946 to 3 April 1947); (2) the Summer Offensive (13 May to 1 July 1947); (3)  the Autumn Offensive (14 September to 5 November 1947); and (4) the Winter Offensive (15 December 1947 to 15 March 1948). These operations led to the situation on the eve of the Liao-Shen Campaign, with the Nationalists isolated in Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou. Developments in the American involvement in the conflict, including the end of the Marshall Mission and the failed Wedemeyer Mission, are discussed in the context of these developments. In chapters 7 and 8, I step back from the military and diplomatic scene in order to look at some of the developments in the Communists’ rear area that contributed to Lin Biao’s victories on the front line. These include the Communist forces’ consolidation of control over the base area by defeating a variety of local forces, collectively labeled as “bandits,” the Communists’ management of the rural and urban economies, the acquisition of weapons and ammunition, the development of a local military-industrial base, and the process of military professionalization and training in preparation for the Liao-Shen Campaign.



Introduction7

Chapter 9 deals with the Communist planning of the Liao-Shen Campaign and also touches on Nationalist strategic planning for Manchuria. Chapters 10 through 14 deal with the Liao-Shen Campaign itself. In chapter 10 I describe the initial moves through which Lin Biao successfully shaped the battlefield. Chapter 11 deals with the crucial Battle of Jinzhou, including the Communists’ blocking operation at the village of Tashan, which prevented Chiang’s relief forces, which had been landed on the coast, from reaching Jinzhou in time to prevent the city from falling to the Communists on 15 October. Chapters 12 and 13 shift the focus to the north to tell the story of the long, bitter siege of Changchun, which led to an estimated 100,000 or more civilians dying of starvation and ended when one of the two defending armies went over to the Communists, with the other surrendering days afterward on 19 October. In chapter 14, we return to the south, where Lin Biao’s troops cut off and destroyed Liao Yao­xiang’s West-Advancing Army Corps in the complex terrain between Shenyang and Jinzhou, and then went on to capture Shenyang and the port of Yingkou. Chapter 15 puts the Liao-Shen Campaign into perspective both by presenting a brief overview of the campaign’s impact on America’s China policy and by looking at how the campaign and Lin Biao have been assessed and remembered both in China and in the United States.

Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. —John F. Kennedy, News conference, 21 April 1961

One

China ★★★

Lost or Won?

On 2 October 1948, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of China’s ruling Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang, or KMT), president of the Republic of China and generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army, flew from Beiping (as Beijing was then known) to the city of Shenyang in Manchuria. The staff of the Shenyang branch of the army’s Officers’ Moral Endeavor Society (responsible for local arrangements) regarded these visits with some trepidation. Chiang lived an austere and highly disciplined life, and he expected others to do the same. He demanded cleanliness and order, rose early, took an hour’s nap after lunch, wrote a page in his diary every day, did his prayers and Bible-reading at night, and generally retired around 10:00 pm. Chiang’s discipline did not allow him to show emotion easily. This time, as he proceeded from the airport to his usual quarters, his staff noticed the signs of tension in his face—very unusual for the famously stoic Generalissimo.1 Chiang had every reason to be tense. Manchuria was the key theater in the civil war that had been raging between Chiang’s government and the insurgent forces of the Chinese Communist Party ever since the end of the war against Japan in August 1945. Unfortunately for Chiang, the war had been going very badly for the Nationalist forces. The Communists had been first on the ground, thanks to the help of the Soviet Union, 9

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

which had invaded Manchuria in the final week of World War II. True, the Nationalists had recovered most of southern Manchuria in operations mounted between November 1945 and October 1946. But the Communist armies, commanded by General Lin Biao, had stymied further Nationalist offensives in the winter of 1946–1947 and then shifted to the offensive themselves. By March 1948, Lin had compressed the Nationalist armies into three isolated positions: the First Army Corps (six divisions and local units totaling 100,000 men) under General Zheng Dongguo was under siege in the city of Changchun; the Sixth Army Corps (four armies and local troops totaling 150,000 men) under General Fan Hanjie was defending the key railway junction city of Jinzhou and a few nearby positions along the BeiNing line (the rail line between Beiping and Shenyang); in Shenyang itself were the Eighth and Ninth Army Corps (eight armies and miscellaneous units totaling 300,000 men) under General Wei Lihuang, commander of the Northeast theater.2 On 12 September 1948, Lin Biao initiated a major offensive designed to trap and then annihilate all the remaining Nationalist armies in Manchuria. When Chiang Kai-shek came to Shenyang on 2 October 1948 to meet with his generals, Lin’s campaign focusing on western Liaoning and Shenyang (thus known as the Liao-Shen Campaign) was well under way. In the north, the siege was tightening around Changchun. Communist forces had blockaded the city, starving the civilian population in order to put pressure on the Nationalist garrison forces. In the south, Communist troops had cut the Bei-Ning line in several places and had isolated Jinzhou, which they were now poised to attack. Chiang and other observers, including the American diplomats in Shenyang and Nanjing, could clearly see the possibility that Lin Biao would eliminate his armies in Manchuria and that this would leave North China virtually undefended. At this point, Chiang’s only hope was to trap Lin Biao’s Communist forces before they could capture Jinzhou, deal them a harsh blow to slow their advance, and then extricate his armies from Manchuria and focus on defending North China. Chiang believed that he could do this: Lin’s forces were far from their base area at the end of a fragile line of supply. But for Chiang’s plan to work, General Wei Lihuang would need to send his main forces out of Shenyang to cut off, trap, and wipe out the Communist



China: Lost or Won?11

armies then poised to attack the city of Jinzhou. Wei, for his part, believed that Chiang’s plan would lead to nothing but disaster—his best armies would be trapped in the contorted landscape of mountains and rivers between Shenyang and Jinzhou, where they would be sitting ducks, waiting for the Communists to wipe them out. Chiang spent the afternoon of 2 October meeting with his generals, going over the maps and analyzing the situation, trying, as he had been for months, to get Wei Lihuang to move. That evening, he is said to have told Wei and the other generals: “My purpose in coming this time is to get you all out safely. With the battle having reached this point, if we can’t achieve victory now, the future is unthinkable. I will become a war criminal, and you will all be captured. This is the moment of victory or defeat.”3 Perhaps Chiang’s dire warning was meant to inspire his generals to fight harder and win an unlikely victory. If so, it failed. Chiang continued to direct operations himself from Beiping, visiting Shenyang again on 10 and 15 October, as matters went from bad to worse. On his final visit, on 18 October, Chiang did not even enter the city—he stayed at the airport, spending most of his time on the airplane itself. Only his top generals, Wei Lihuang and Du Yuming, boarded the airplane to meet him face to face. The air force ran a telephone line across the tarmac to the airplane so that Chiang could talk to the other generals in the city.4 Despite Chiang’s best efforts, the Liao-Shen Campaign ended with a spectacular Communist victory. Elements of Lin Biao’s Northeast Field Army entered Shenyang virtually unopposed on 2 November. A few Nationalist units managed to escape from the ports of Yingkou and Huludao before they fell on 2 and 11 November; farther north, the Nationalist forces defending Changchun had already given the city up to the Communists on 19 October. The Liao-Shen Campaign was a significant defeat for the Nationalists. Chiang had lost 472,000 of his best troops.5 Lin Biao had captured China’s largest industrial base and had a clear road through the passes of the Great Wall to North China. In the meantime, Communist armies in North China trapped and eliminated Nationalist forces in the HuaiHai Campaign (6 November 1948–10 January 1949). Lin Biao’s forces, now known as the People’s Liberation Army’s Fourth Field Army, came through the Great Wall passes in November and quickly took the key cities of Beiping and Tianjin in the Ping-Jin Campaign (29 November 1948–31

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

January 1949). The Fourth Field Army then continued to advance to the Yangzi River and beyond. On 1 October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, stood atop the rostrum of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing to declare the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In December, Chiang Kai-shek and the remnants of his American-equipped armies fled to the island of Taiwan, where they awaited a likely Communist invasion and a final defeat. The View from Washington On 25 January 1949, the representative from Massachusetts took the floor of the House: “Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State.” Continuing in his distinctive Boston accent, the young John F. Kennedy excoriated President Truman and, by implication, three secretaries of state—James Byrne, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson: “The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming, unless a coalition government with the Communists were formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government [of Chiang Kai-shek]. . . . This is a tragic story of China, whose freedom we fought to preserve. What our young men had saved, our diplomats and president have frittered away.”6 With this speech, the future Democratic president joined an increasingly strident chorus of critics who blamed President Truman and his diplomats—particularly George Marshall—for the fact that the Chinese Communist Party and its People’s Liberation Army had defeated Chiang Kai-shek and driven him from the mainland. Time magazine, whose publisher Henry Luce was an enthusiastic supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, posed the question “Who Lost China” in 1949.7 In the coming months and years members of the informal “China Lobby”—business people, missionaries, and other supporters of the Nationalist regime—and a number of congressmen would conduct a witch hunt in order to identify and punish those diplomats and academic advisors to the State Department who were said to be responsible for “losing China” to Communism. The critics ranged from Democrats like John Kennedy to anti-Communist ideologues like Senators Styles Bridges (a New Hampshire



China: Lost or Won?13

Republican) and Patrick McCarran (Democrat from Nevada) to the despicable and probably delusional Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. While Kennedy’s position may have been purely opportunist (he had to play to a fairly conservative anti-Communist Democratic constituency in Massachusetts), there is no reason to doubt that most of the criticism was rooted in deeply felt principles.8 But at the same time, the senators and representatives, most of them from the Republican Party, were clearly using the “who lost China” debate as a weapon with which to attack an already weakened Democratic president. Harry Truman did not allow the criticisms and accusations to go unanswered. In August 1949, the State Department issued the administration’s defense: a lengthy review of China policy entitled United States Relations with China with Special Reference to the Period 1944–1949.9 In this China White Paper, as it is commonly known, the State Department made the case that if anyone had “lost China,” it was Chiang Kai-shek. In the State Department’s view, Chiang had presided over a corrupt, dictatorial regime, he had repeatedly ignored American political, economic, and military advice, and he had put incompetent commanders (including himself) in charge of his armies. The Truman administration had sent George Marshall to mediate between the Nationalist and Communist Parties, while simultaneously sending generous amounts of economic and military aid. Chiang and the Kuomintang had failed to cooperate with Marshall and had misused the American assistance. There was nothing more that the United States could or should have done. As Secretary of State Acheson saw it: “The unfortunate but inescapable fact is that the ominous result of civil war in China was beyond the control of this government of the United States. Nothing that this country did or could have done within the limits of its capabilities could have changed that result; nothing that was left undone by this country has contributed to it. It was the product of internal Chinese forces, forces which this country tried to influence but could not.”10 For the next fifty years or more, American attempts to understand the Chinese Civil War were largely conducted within the framework established by the Truman administration’s critics and the State Department’s response. Both sides of the American debate focused on the issue of loss or defeat. The critics argued that the responsibility lay with the

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

United States: the Truman administration had given Chiang Kai-shek bad advice, George Marshall’s mediation mission (December 1945 to January 1947) had played into the Communists’ hands, an American arms embargo (which Marshall initiated) had fatally weakened Chiang’s armies, and State Department naiveté (or, according to McCarthy, treason) had prevented the United States from giving Chiang the full-throated American economic, diplomatic, and particularly military assistance that would have saved him. On the other side of the argument, the need to explain loss while defending the Truman administration and the victims of Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for American Communists drove American historians of China to devote their attention to social and economic issues: Chiang’s mismanagement of the economy had contributed to crushing inflation, his political cronyism made it impossible for him to address social issues such as poverty and concentration of land ownership in rural areas, and political repression alienated Chinese intellectuals, students, and workers. It became common to conclude that the fundamental cause of Chiang’s downfall was that he had lost the support of the people. Over time, even the American military adopted this point of view. As the United States Department of the Army’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual put it in 2007: “The Chinese Civil War illustrates the importance of pursuing and linking multiple logical lines of operations. Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat in 1949 resulted from his failure to properly establish security, good governance, the rule of law, essential services, and economic stability. Failures in each undermined his government’s position in others.” The Field Manual goes on to explain that the regime’s ethical failures, corruption, and economic collapse made the Communist victory “inevitable.”11 Both sides of the American debate have sought to explain the outcome of the Chinese Civil War without giving any serious consideration to war itself. Critics on the right focus their eyes on Washington, D.C. The defenders of the Truman administration on the left and (ironically) military professionals who seek to make the case for a regime-building approach to counterinsurgency fix their sights on Nanjing and Shanghai. Although all seek to explain why a ragtag army of Communist guerrilla fighters defeated professional armies trained and equipped by Americans, all studiously avert their gaze from the battlefield. Secretary of State



China: Lost or Won?15

Dean Acheson himself set the tone. Observing events in China from a vast physical, cultural, and ideological distance, Acheson opined that “the Nationalist armies did not have to be defeated; they disintegrated.”12 The fixation on Chiang’s defeat and the idea that the reasons for that defeat were overwhelmingly political, economic, and societal has allowed Americans to forget that the result of China’s Civil War was not only Chiang Kai-shek’s loss: it was also the Chinese Communist Party’s victory. Social, economic, and political factors certainly played important roles in that victory. And there were many cases in which Nationalist armies gave up without a fight, surrendering or even switching sides. But student demonstrations and workers’ strikes did not decimate Chiang Kai-shek’s armies or force them to retreat from the mainland to Taiwan. Urban alienation and the impassioned essays and speeches of intellectuals cannot explain campaigns involving hundreds of thousands of troops on each side and a war that led to millions of casualties. To understand why Chiang Kai-shek lost, we need to understand how the People’s Liberation Army won. To do that, we need to turn our attention away from Washington and Nanjing, to look through the fog of war onto the battlefields of China’s Northeast and to ask again: how did Lin Biao’s Communist forces, which were poorly trained, poorly armed, and outnumbered in November 1945, manage to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s best armies in such a spectacular fashion in the Liao-Shen Campaign only three years later? The simple answer is that Lin Biao and his armies learned new ways of fighting as they conducted a series of operations in the Northeast from the autumn of 1945 up through the Liao-Shen Campaign. As a result, the Northeast Field Army’s operations in the Liao-Shen Campaign do not conform to the two most common stereotypes about the way Chinese fight—what military historians have called the “Chinese way of war.” One of those stereotypes is drawn from the popular classical text known as Sunzi’s Art of War, which is thought to epitomize a Chinese way of war that is characterized by the desire to avoid battle. The second stereotype is drawn from a reading of Mao Zedong’s writings on guerrilla warfare, in which Mao describes guerrilla warfare in terms reminiscent of Sunzi’s Art of War: an emphasis on “alertness, mobility and attack,” adjustment to the situation, the use of deception and misdirection, attack on weak points, and the choice not to fight when the conditions are not favorable.13

16

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Chinese Ways of War I: Sunzi On the surface, it would appear that Mao Zedong’s conduct of the Chinese Civil War and Lin Biao’s strategy and operations in Manchuria stand in violation of the key principles outlined in Sunzi’s Art of War.14 In the west, Sunzi is best known for having written, “Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting,” “the Skillful Strategist defeats the enemy without doing battle,” and “to be victorious in battle and to be acclaimed for one’s skill is no true skill.”15 One of the many Chinese commentaries on the Art of War explains that true skill “involves subtle planning, secret movements, targeting the enemy’s mind, attacking strategy—a bloodless victory.”16 In practice, bloodless victory was very rare, and most of the Art of War is concerned not with telling generals how to achieve the ideal of “winning without fighting,” but with teaching the techniques of achieving victory in the most economical way possible. As military historian Arthur Waldron explains, “the attempt was to transform war so as to make it less costly and more rapidly decisive.”17 Sunzi’s approach suggests that war should be a last resort and that in making war, the general should aim to achieve a rapid victory while expending as few lives and resources as possible.18 Accordingly, Sunzi suggests that the general avoid the enemy when and where he is strong, and attack him at his points of weakness, to avoid protracted campaigns, to attack heavily defended walled cities only as a last resort, and, when possible, to use deception, stratagem, and psychological techniques to attack his enemy’s “mind and morale.”19 A number of influential Western scholars have drawn on Sunzi in order to argue that the Chinese have historically thought about and conducted war in a way particular to and determined by their culture—a unique “Chinese way of war.”20 Authors ranging from the British strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart to the noted American China scholar John King Fairbank to the popular British military historian Sir John Keegan all imagined a Chinese way of war characterized by the use of planning, stratagem, deception, and psychological techniques in order to win without fighting, or at the very least to use what Liddell Hart called the “indirect approach” in order to achieve victory with a minimum of combat. This Chinese way of war, in which the ideal seemed to be battle-avoidance, was constructed



China: Lost or Won?17

explicitly to stand in contrast to the idea that there is a “Western way of war” that finds its classic articulation in Carl von Clausewitz’s On War and is characterized by the use of overwhelming force in order to annihilate the enemy in violent, head-to-head, decisive battle. By defining the Chinese way of war in terms of “winning without fighting,” Western scholars could either criticize the Clausewitzian model or confirm its superiority. John Keegan, for example, described the Chinese way of war as emphasizing a gradualist military strategy, risk-averse, tending to avoid battle except when victory was assured, preferring to “over-awe the enemy by psychological means, and . . . using time rather than force to wear an invader down.”21 Laurent Murawiec argued that Chinese armies, their war-fighting based on Sunzi’s “trademark of deception and battle-avoidance,” have developed a “way of war” that can only be described as a failure: “Over a period of 170 years . . . [t]he Chinese military machine, even when it had the initiative of time and space and where it created tactical or strategic surprise, failed on the battlefield.”22 While Keegan and Murawiec saw the Sunzian Chinese way of war as a factor contributing to Chinese weakness and standing in contrast to Western strength, Basil Liddell Hart and John King Fairbank saw in Sunzi a corrective to the Western fixation on brute firepower and decisive battle. Liddell Hart, a World War I veteran, believed that Clausewitz, with his emphasis on violence, firepower, and decisive battle, had led Europeans to “the universal adoption of the theory of unlimited war” and to the brutal practical consequences of that theory in the trenches of the Western Front.23 Liddell Hart’s personal experience of the senseless slaughter of the First World War and his discovery of Sunzi led him to draw a contrast between what he saw as the typically Western direct approach to warfare and the Chinese indirect approach: “Reflection suggests and history confirms,” Liddell Hart argued, “that a direct approach is the worst of all military ‘risks.’ ”24 Drawing on Sunzi, Liddell Hart explained that a strategist’s “true aim is not so much to seek battle as it is to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision its continuation by a battle is guaranteed to do so. In other words dislocation is the aim of strategy; its sequel may either be the enemy’s dissolution or his disruption in battle. Dissolution may involve some partial measure of fighting, but this has not the characteristic of a battle.”25

18

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

John King Fairbank echoed Liddell Hart’s belief that Sunzi’s teachings can provide a corrective to the Western emphasis on achieving decision through the application of brute force when he observed that Sunzi “would smile at the American exaltation of firepower.”26 But while Liddell Hart’s and Fairbank’s model of the Chinese way of war may be a useful rhetorical tool with which to criticize particular weaknesses of some Western strategic thinking and behavior (WWI being a good case in point), it is a very poor analytical tool for understanding the multitude of ways in which Chinese have thought about and conducted war over a period of over two thousand years of recorded history.27 The theory and practice of war developed and changed over time. Sunzi’s Art of War itself was interpreted and reinterpreted by a parade of commentators who derived a variety of different lessons from the text.28 As Chinese dynastic regimes came and went, they fought and negotiated with a variety of domestic rebels and foreign (particularly Central Asian) enemies. Sometimes they conquered and incorporated other peoples; at other times, they were partially or wholly conquered. Strategies were debated at court, military thinkers articulated a variety of ideas about the art of war, and generals in the field learned from their own experience and from the strong points of their enemies. European warfare similarly underwent a long period of historical development, characterized by regional differences and change over time. Like the Chinese, many Europeans fought wars against horse-mounted nomadic armies. As a result, it is misleading to speak in absolute terms about contrasting “Western” and “Chinese” ways of war. Much of what Sunzi and other Chinese military thinkers have to say about war is echoed in their Western counterparts, from Machiavelli to Clausewitz himself.29 While there is no unique, unchanging Chinese way of war that can provide us with the key to understanding Lin Biao’s victory in Manchuria, Sunzi’s Art of War was nonetheless part of the cultural heritage of both the Chinese Communist and Nationalist Armies. If we look at specific aspects of Sunzi, we will find some precepts that Mao and Lin clearly ignored or even violated; others, however, may be relevant to an understanding of Communist strategy and operations in the Northeast. On the one hand, the Communists certainly did not follow Sunzi’s warnings against protracted warfare; and if the ideal is to defeat the enemy without fighting,



China: Lost or Won?19

then Lin Biao certainly cannot be regarded as having achieved the height of excellence.30 On the other hand, Lin Biao’s conduct of operations followed a number of precepts that can be found in Sunzi (but also in a number of other Chinese and Western works on war). Lin placed great emphasis on planning and on understanding of the terrain. Both he and Mao often quoted Sunzi’s maxim: “He who knows his opponent and knows himself will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.”31 Lin used deception and psychological techniques to gain advantage and (where possible) to induce the enemy to switch sides or surrender, and (as Sunzi recommends) treated prisoners of war kindly. He would have agreed with Sunzi that “speed is the essence of war” and that officers in the field should disobey orders and take the initiative to act without orders when to do so would further their commander’s overall operational goals; Lin’s (and Mao’s) willingness to accept heavy casualties in order to achieve a significant victory coincides with Sunzi’s observation that one of the five pitfalls of a general is a “concern for his men” and commentator Du Mu’s explanation that “a general who is [overly] compassionate and filled with concern for his men will be prevented by his fear of casualties from giving up a short-term gain for a long-term one.”32 On the operational and the strategic level, Sunzi’s technique of “moving the enemy” and the concept of shi are both relevant to understanding Communist strategy and operations in Manchuria. “Moving the enemy” refers to Sunzi’s observation that “the skillful warrior stirs and is not stirred. He lures his enemy into coming or obstructs him from coming.”33 By using maneuver and deception to move the enemy, a commander can shape the battlefield, forcing the enemy to divide or disperse his forces while concentrating one’s own forces for the attack. By doing so, the commander creates a shi—which John Minford translates as “position” or “situational energy.”34 Arthur Waldron explains shi as “the configuration and tendency of all the factors (terrain forces, morale, and so on) that bear on victory” and notes that “the military commander must evaluate all these elements, and move only when they are in optimal alignment.”35 At the operational level of warfare, a commander’s job is to observe and to create the shi that will enable him to crush the enemy—to use Sunzi’s phrase, “throwing a grindstone on an egg.”36

20

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

At the strategic level, the commander’s job is to use all the resources at his command—economic, psychological, and military—to compete for relative gain across all the theaters of war, both on the front lines and behind enemy lines, targeting not only the enemy’s troops on the battlefield, but also his alliances and his economy and his political support within his own society—not (as a narrow reading of Sunzi would suggest) to achieve victory without fighting, but rather to create the shi—the dynamic configuration and tendency of all elements—that will allow him to annihilate the enemy’s forces on the battlefield. In the case of the Chinese Civil War, this task fell on the Chinese Communist Party’s central leadership, and on the party chairman Mao Zedong. Chinese Ways of War II: Mao Zedong Mao Zedong is celebrated as the master of guerrilla warfare—the use of small, independent units roving the countryside, supported by and often indistinguishable from the local people, building base areas behind enemy lines and conducting hit-and-run operations against a large, powerful, but curiously weak enemy bound by roads and railways, his maneuverability ironically limited by his modern motorized transport, a Gulliver tied down and pestered by Lilliputians armed with simple rifles and carrying their supplies on their backs. This picture of guerrilla warfare is derived from a very selective reading of Mao’s writings. As leader, first of the Communist Party’s Jiangxi base area in southern China in the early 1930s and later of the entire Communist Party from his wartime headquarters at Yan’an, Mao studied, taught, and wrote about the theory of war while also making strategic decisions as the chairman, not only of the Communist Party itself, but also of the Party Center’s Military Affairs Commission. Mao did not work alone, nor did he singlehandedly invent all of the ideas that come under the umbrella term of “Mao Zedong’s military thought.”37 Better-educated men like Guo Huaruo taught him the theories of both Sunzi and Clausewitz.38 Historians credit the professionally trained Zhu De, not the amateur Mao, with the ideas of attacking the enemy’s logistics lines, shaping the battlefield in order to prepare for the final attack, and using political work to mobilize the people; Peng Dehuai, also professionally trained, developed techniques of mobile guerrilla warfare and the use of land reform to build support



China: Lost or Won?21

among the peasants and to extract resources from the rural community.39 Nor was Mao always correct in his assessment of the situation and the capabilities of his forces.40 Nonetheless, Mao did play the leading role in the Chinese Communist Party and on its Military Affairs Commission, both as a thinker and as a decision maker, and the results, though not always perfect, were remarkably successful. It seems reasonable, then, to talk about “Mao Zedong’s military thought” and “Mao Zedong’s decisions,” while recognizing that Mao in fact worked within a collective leadership that shares some degree of credit for his accomplishments as well as some degree of blame for his errors. In his writings from the 1930s, Mao describes guerrilla tactics in terms strongly reminiscent of Sunzi. Mao saw his guerrillas as fighting the enemy in a fluid fashion, in which there are no front lines. Guerrilla forces would not seek decisive battle. Instead, they would use the “indirect approach,” emphasizing “alertness, mobility, and attack,” adjusting flexibly to any given situation, using the weapons of deception, misdirection, speed, and surprise, attacking weak points and choosing not to fight when the conditions were not favorable for victory. Even when on the strategic defensive, guerrillas should take offensive action at the tactical level: “The tactics of defense have no place in the realm of guerrilla warfare.”41 Guerrilla units needed to be self-disciplined and to have unity of purpose, which should be instilled and guaranteed through a system of political commissars.42 Their operations should “drain the enemy’s military and financial resources.”43 Writing in the context of the war against Japan, Mao advised: “To achieve success, the Chinese troops must conduct their warfare with a high degree of mobility on extensive battlefields, making swift advances and withdrawals, swift concentrations and dispersals. This means largescale mobile warfare, and not positional warfare . . . in the early period of the war, we must avoid any major decisive battles and must first employ mobile warfare to gradually break the morale and combat effectiveness of enemy troops.”44 The defeat in Vietnam and the challenges of subsequent counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have led American analysts to focus on Mao almost exclusively as the master theoretician and practitioner of a uniquely Chinese form of guerrilla warfare and as a modern disciple

22

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

of Sunzi. This picture misses two points, both of which are essential to an analysis of the Chinese Communist victory in Manchuria. The first point is that much of what Mao has to say about guerrilla warfare, from tactics to the importance of the mobilized masses, is compatible with, and very possibly influenced by, Clausewitz’s writings on guerrillas.45 Mao himself was possibly referring to Clausewitz when he said: “A foreign military expert [sic] once said that in the strategic defensive one should in general initially avoid decisive battles if they would occur under unfavorable circumstances, and seek them only when favorable circumstances have been established.”46 The second and more important point is that a focus on Mao as the master of guerrilla operations alone cannot help us to understand the outcome of the Chinese Civil War, a conflict in which it was large-scale conventional operations like the Liao-Shen Campaign, rather than a guerrilla insurgency, that clinched the Communist victory. As Mao put it: “The outcome of the war depends mainly on regular warfare, especially in its mobile form . . . guerrilla warfare cannot shoulder the main responsibility in deciding the outcome.”47 What Mao imagined was that guerrilla fighters would play a role complementary to and in support of a regular army and that during the process of the war itself, the guerrillas would “gradually develop into orthodox forces that operate in conjunction with other units of the regular army.”48 In his 1938 essay “On Protracted War,” Mao explained that this transition would take place as the war against Japan itself developed through three stages: “The first stage covers the period of the enemy’s strategic offensive and our strategic defensive. The second stage will be the period of the enemy’s strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counter-offensive. The third stage will be the period of our strategic counter-offensive and the enemy’s strategic retreat.”49 The first stage would be characterized by the extensive development of guerrilla operations behind enemy lines and the establishment of base areas. In the second stage, the primary form of fighting would still be guerrilla operations, but these would be supplemented by regular army units conducting mobile operations.50 The third stage, said Mao, would be “the stage of the counteroffensive to recover our lost territories.” In this stage, regular units conducting conventional operations would take the lead: “Positional warfare will undoubtedly play a greater role, for



China: Lost or Won?23

then the enemy will be holding fast to his positions and we shall not be able to recover our lost territory unless we launch powerful positional attacks in support of mobile warfare. Nevertheless, in the third stage too, we must exert our every effort to make mobile warfare the primary form of warfare.”51 As it happened, Communist operations against the Japanese did not develop through all three stages. But Mao and the Communist forces applied the same three-stage model to their struggle against the Nationalists. As the Communist forces moved from the first and second, guerrilla-​ dominated stages of war into the third stage, they would need to fight decisive battles. In 1938, Mao had written: “We are for decisive engagement whenever circumstances are favorable . . . only through such decisive engagements can we achieve the objective of annihilating or depleting the enemy forces.”52 Mao’s goal was not to simply defeat the Nationalist forces, driving them out of their positions and recovering territory: he wanted to “annihilate” them. What he meant by annihilation was not to literally eliminate the enemy forces by killing or wounding all of them, but to eliminate them as functional enemy units through a combination of inflicting casualties, accepting surrenders, and even bringing entire units over to the Communist side. In 1947, Mao laid out the formula for accomplishing this task: “In every battle, concentrate an absolutely superior force (two, three, four and sometimes even five or six times the enemy’s), encircle the enemy’s forces completely, strive to wipe them out thoroughly, and do not let any escape from the net. In special circumstances, use the method of dealing the enemy crushing blows, that is, concentrate all your strength to make a frontal attack and an attack on one or more flanks, with the aim of wiping out one part and routing another so that our army can swiftly move its troops to smash other enemy forces.”53 Lin Biao’s task was to accomplish that transition from the second to the third stage of war, from guerrilla to conventional operations, and to conduct the key decisive battles that would annihilate not just a few isolated enemy units, but entire enemy group armies. This would require a process of army building, professionalization, and learning by trial and error. Lin Biao was fortunate in that China’s Northeast provided an environment that both demanded that his forces accomplish the transformation from guerrilla to conventional operations and supplied the geographical advantages and resources that made that transition possible.

A strategic retreat is a planned strategic step taken by an inferior force for the purpose of conserving its strength and biding its time to defeat the enemy, when it finds itself confronted with a superior force whose offensive it is unable to smash quickly. But military adventurists stubbornly oppose such a step and advocate “engaging the enemy outside the gates.” —Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”

Two

The Struggle for Manchuria Begins ★★★

August 1945–July 1946

Although he articulated the principle of the strategic retreat back in 1936, Mao Zedong’s initial strategy in Manchuria was not one of retreat. Instead, he attempted to occupy and control the entire region. When this failed, and the Nationalists broke through Shanhaiguan and advanced, first to Shenyang and then northward, Mao was the one urging his forces to seek decisive battle, while Lin Biao, his general on the ground, retreated, first to the city of Siping and then, after a bitter month-long defense (conducted at Mao’s insistence) north across the Songhua River to Harbin. The Northeast Mao’s initial hopes of controlling the entire Northeast, his later insistence on the defense of Siping, and Lin Biao’s ability to take refuge north of the Songhua River were all shaped by the physical geography and history of the Northeast. It was the lay of the land itself that determined the vectors of Nationalist advance and Communist retreat and the choice of key battlefields. It was not only the geography but also the history of Manchuria that allowed the Communists to gain a foothold, made it obligatory for Chiang to seek to control of the region, and that made it possible for the Communist forces to survive north of the Songhua River. 25

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

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For most of Chinese history, Manchuria was not China. The reason lies in the geographical features that set the Northeast off from “China Proper” (China south of the line that the Great Wall follows). The mountains rising from northern Hebei province and then merging into the Greater Xing’an Range separated Manchuria from both the Mongolian steppes and the North China Plain. (See map 2.1) The only significant land route from North China to Manchuria was the narrow Liaoxi Corridor, less than 50 kilometers wide between the mountains



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins27

and the sea, leading from Shanhaiguan (literally, “mountain-sea-pass,” also known as the “First Pass under Heaven”) up to the city of Jinzhou. Another, more difficult, route leads from Chengde, the capital of Rehe ( Jehol) province, north of Beijing, through a small mountain pass to Jinzhou. Jinzhou was thus a key point on the map: whoever controlled Jinzhou controlled the only two significant land routes connecting Manchuria to North China. The Liaoxi Corridor was the historical invasion route for armies from North China trying to advance into Manchuria or armies from Manchuria heading “south of the passes” to invade China Proper. At Jinzhou, the Liaoxi Corridor widens out, leading to Shenyang and the Manchurian Plain. The Manchurian Plain is a vast area of arable land, 1,000 kilometers from north to south and 400–500 kilometers east to west, watered by the Liao, Songhua, Nen, Xiliao, Zhuoer and other rivers. Surrounding the Manchurian Plain are the Eastern Highlands, the Greater and Lesser Xing’an Ranges, and the Southwestern Highlands. The Songhua River Valley extends northeast from Harbin to Jiamusi, separating the Eastern Highlands from the Lesser Xing’an and offering a transportation route to Russia. In premodern times, Manchuria was the homeland of a variety of ethnic groups that were culturally and linguistically distinct from the Han Chinese people south of the passes. With economies based on a mixture of hunting, trapping, agriculture, stock keeping, and collection of mountain products (such as ginseng), these people traded with both China and Korea. Indeed, some of the areas of Manchuria bordering on modern Korea were parts of the Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo (Koguryo, 37 bce–668 ce) and Balhae (Parhae, 628–926 ce). Dynastic regimes based in China Proper rarely controlled much of the Northeast. The more common pattern was for tribal leaders from the Northeast to construct powerful confederacies and expand their control to beyond the passes into North China. It was in order to prevent such incursions from Mongolia and from Manchuria that the Ming dynasty decided, in the sixteenth century, to build a series of walls and fortresses. This “Great Wall,” as it came to be known, became the effective boundary between Ming China and Manchuria. Extensions of the wall-and-garrison system stretched into Manchuria from Shanhaiguan in order to protect the

28

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Liaoxi Corridor, which, along with some parts of western Liaoning, had also come under Ming control. In the long run, the Great Wall was not successful. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a Jurchen chieftain named Nurhaci (1558–1626) and his son Huangtaiji (1592–1643) built a broad confederacy of Jurchen tribes and renamed them “Manchus.” In 1644, when a rebellion in China itself overthrew the Ming, the Manchus came through the Great Wall passes, captured Beijing, and established the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Qing territory included both China and Manchuria in a vast empire that eventually included Mongolia, Tibet, and the far northwestern area known as Xinjiang. The Qing emperors tried to maintain Manchuria as a Manchu homeland. Nonetheless, over the course of time, forces beyond the control of the Manchus transformed their ancestral homeland in ways that substantially enhanced the strategic significance of this already strategically important area. By the late nineteenth century, migration from China had changed Manchuria’s population: the population of the area was now overwhelmingly Han Chinese. The Manchus had become an irrelevant minority. At the same time, both the Russian and the Japanese empires had their eyes on the ports and natural resources of the Northeast. Beginning in 1896, Russia constructed key railways and port cities: the Chinese Eastern Railway (completed in 1903), from Lake Baikal across Manchuria to Vladivostok, the ports of Lüshun and Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula, and the South Manchurian Railway from Lüshun north through Dalian, Shenyang, and Changchun to Harbin, where it connected with the Chinese Eastern Railway.1 Russian railway, telegraph, and port construction stimulated the economy of the Northeast and led to the growth of railway cities. But Russian imperialism also led to a sharpening of the competition between Russia and Japan. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) gave it possession of Russia’s lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, including Lüshun, Dalian and the South Manchurian Railway. Then, on 18 September 1931 the Japanese Kwantung Army forces at Shenyang (then known as Mukden) set off an explosion along the railway tracks in order to create an excuse to initiate military action against the Chinese. This “Mukden Incident” led to the complete takeover of Manchuria. In order to give their



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins29

action a veneer of legitimacy, the Japanese claimed that they were merely helping the people of Manchuria to establish their own independent country—“Manchukuo.” The Soviet Union was deeply concerned about the Japanese presence in Manchuria. As far as Joseph Stalin was concerned, Manchuria, its railways, and the Liaodong Peninsula fell within the Soviet sphere of influence. In the 1920s and 1930s Japan had replaced the Soviet Union as the paramount power in Manchuria and then annexed it entirely. In Yalta in 1945, Stalin saw an opportunity to reassert Soviet control when Franklin Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union’s special interests in Manchuria in return for Stalin’s promise to join the war against Japan. On 9 August, the Soviet Red Army attacked the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchukuo. In short order, the Soviets had liberated both Manchuria and northern Korea. The Communists Enter Manchuria: August–October 1945 In June 1945, Mao Zedong noted that with Soviet assistance, the Chinese Communist Party would be able to establish a secure base area in the Northeast and that “we might lose our current bases, but so long as the Northeast is in our hands, the Chinese revolution is on an unbeatable foundation.”2 Mao knew very well that the civil war against Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Party would resume as soon as the Japanese laid down their arms and surrendered. He had been thinking about how to position the Communists for the next round of hostilities ever since mid-1942. Mao’s plans were not confined to the Northeast: he saw the Northeast, Shandong, and other parts of North China, as well as South China (south of the Yangzi), as areas where the Communists could develop base areas behind Japanese lines from which they could assert authority over broad swathes of territory and even major cities like Shanghai and Nanjing once the Japanese had surrendered.3 These plans were still in flux when the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo forced Japan to surrender more quickly than expected. As a result, in August and September both the Nationalists and the Communists were scrambling to gain advantageous positions on the ground in the areas formerly under Japanese control.

30

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Chiang had to rely on the American navy to transport his best armies from southwestern China to ports on China’s east coast, and then on railways and roads to move men and equipment to positions in the interior. The Communists were already on the ground in base areas ranging from Yan’an in the northwest to small mountain guerrilla bases in the south. This gave the Communists the advantage of proximity, but it also meant that many of their forces were scattered across the country in isolated bases. Many of the smaller base areas, particularly those in South China, were of questionable strategic value. In light of this weakness, the party leadership quickly chose to focus on North China and Manchuria, pulling troops out of the south in order to strengthen key positions in the north and sabotaging the north–south railway lines in order to slow the Nationalist advance. While Nationalists and Communists competed to occupy advantageous ground, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a series of diplomatic maneuvers in which each tried to advance its interests in China. In August, neither side wanted to see China fall into a civil war that might weaken or eliminate one of their clients or draw the Americans and the Soviets themselves into war. Thus both Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin pressured Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong to meet in Chiang’s wartime capital of Chongqing (Chungking) for peace talks. The Chongqing negotiations dragged on from 28 August to 19 October, when they ended without any meaningful agreement. In the meantime, both Nationalist and Communist forces continued to position themselves on the ground. As they did so, both sides began to focus on the Northeast. Chiang Kai-shek was at a distinct disadvantage in Manchuria. The Soviet Red Army had occupied the area and was taking the Japanese surrender. The Soviets were determined to protect their interests—interests that the United States had recognized in the Yalta Agreement and that Chiang Kai-shek’s government was perforce obliged to recognize as well. The Soviets would not welcome any extension of American influence into Manchuria, whether directly or in the form of Chiang Kai-shek’s National Army. The only way that Chiang could assert his government’s sovereignty over the Northeast was through negotiations with the Soviets. On 14 August 1945, Chiang’s diplomats signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance and an accompanying agreement giving the Soviets port,



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins31

railway, and industrial privileges. The Soviet Union promised to transfer sovereignty over Manchuria to Chiang’s Republic of China, but the devil was in the details: the transfer of authority would take place on Soviet terms, and on a schedule to be determined by the Soviet Union. In the meantime, Communist troops were already beginning to make their first moves into the Northeast. The first Communist units, 2,500 men under the command of Zeng Kelin, entered the Northeast through the small pass of Jiumenkou on 29 August.4 After capturing Shanhaiguan (with the help of a Soviet unit) on 30 August, Zeng’s forces advanced up the Liaoxi Corridor to Jinzhou and Shenyang. On 15 September, Zeng and a Soviet officer named Dimitri Belorussov flew to Yan’an to brief the Communist Party leadership on the situation in the Northeast. Zeng and Belorussov’s reports were highly encouraging.5 On 17 September the Soviet Politburo in Moscow sent a telegram to Yan’an, advising their Chinese comrades to pull their forces back from South China and focus on the north.6 The party leaders in Yan’an thus suggested a new strategy, which Mao Zedong approved by telegram from Chongqing, where he was immersed in the peace talks with Chiang Kai-shek: “Advance in the north, defend in the south.”7 Sending more men into Manchuria was the key component of the Communists’ “advance in the north.” Soldiers and Communist Party cadres (officials) moved overland from Rehe and Hebei and by sea across the Bohai Gulf from Shandong. The Communists also recruited new men in Manchuria, including former Manchukuo “puppet” troops. Even so, by mid-November 1945, there were no more than around 130,000 Communist troops and party cadres in the Northeast.8 The Communist Party’s Central Committee created a five-man Northeast Bureau, initially stationed in Shenyang, to exercise leadership over Communist military and political activity in Manchuria. Peng Zhen (1902–1997), the secretary (i.e., leader) of the Northeast Bureau, had been a Communist Party member since 1923 and was a member of the party’s Central Committee. Peng’s previous experience in urban work and in directing underground operations in Manchuria made him eminently qualified to lead the party’s efforts in the Northeast, where key human and material resources were concentrated along the railway lines and in major cities such as Shenyang, Chang­ chun, and Harbin. But Peng had little experience in military matters or in

32

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

building rural base areas. Mao Zedong needed to send someone to assist Peng in handling military affairs. He chose a man who had fought by his side since the 1920s: Lin Biao. Lin Biao Lin Biao was born in Hubei province in 1907. As a child of a prosperous merchant family, Lin was educated in his home village and in Shanghai before enrolling in the Whampoa Military Academy’s fourth class in 1925, where he studied under the school’s commandant, Chiang Kai-shek, and with political commissar Zhou Enlai. As a Whampoa graduate, Lin had something in common with some of the men whom he later defeated in the Northeast. But unlike these Nationalist generals, many of whom were utterly loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, Lin Biao owed his loyalty to the Communist Party, having been associated with its youth organizations since around 1924. After graduation from Whampoa in January 1926, Lin served in Chiang’s National Revolutionary Army, participating in the Northern Expedition in 1926–1927 and rising to the rank of colonel. When Chiang Kai-shek turned on his erstwhile Communist allies in 1927, slaughtering thousands of them, Lin Biao (who had joined the party that year) took his troops to join the Chinese Communist Red Army that Mao Zedong and Zhu De were organizing in the remote Jinggang Mountain area and then helped them to establish the larger Jiangxi Soviet base area. Lin proved his military capabilities in a number of battles with Nationalist units, rising to commander of the First Red Army Corps in 1932.9 As he rose through the ranks, Lin established a close personal relationship with Mao Zedong.10 This relationship continued through the Long March and into the Yan’an period. Lin supported Mao in his political struggles for domination of the party, led vanguard units on the Long March, served as president of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in Yan’an in 1936–1937, and was appointed commander of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army around July 1937.11 In September 1937 Lin led the 115th Division in the Battle of Pingxingguan, a “spectacular yet costly ambush against . . . Japanese troops.”12 Sometime after Pingxingguan, probably in early 1938, Lin was out riding, wearing a Japanese coat and carrying a Japanese sword. A Chinese soldier from warlord Yan Xishan’s army shot him, apparently having



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins33

mistaken Lin for a Japanese. The bullet pierced Lin’s abdomen and may have injured his spine. Lin was sent to the Soviet Union for medical treatment in 1939, and stayed there until January 1942. There are no reliable records or accounts of Lin’s stay in the Soviet Union, but most of the ten officers who accompanied him spent their time at the Frunze military academy. Lin himself is thought to have studied Soviet military science and battle plans.13 When he returned to China, Lin served as deputy head of the Central Party School and was also active in military training. He approached both tasks with a strong sense of pragmatism.14 Lin arrived in Shenyang on 29 October. He had a reputation as a “cool, calculating, experienced field commander.”15 In his personal life, Lin was highly disciplined. He spoke in a thick Hubei accent and dressed neatly but simply. His meals (cooked by a politically reliable but not very talented cook) were generally two dishes, usually vegetables and tofu, a soup, and a small bowl of rice. He often snacked on roasted soybeans. Unlike many of his officers, Lin neither drank nor smoked. He had health problems, perhaps stemming from his injury. He abhorred physical exercise of any sort and was an insomniac and a hypochondriac. His staff had to curb his tendency to treat his real and imagined illnesses with random herbal medicines, some of which had serious side effects.16 As a commander, Lin Biao was generally calm, patient, and even-tempered. He took little interest in ideological and organizational work or in the nuts and bolts of logistics. These he left to his political commissar, Luo Ronghuan (1902–1963). Lin preferred to focus exclusively on military operations. He would spend hours sitting on a turned-around chair, resting his arms on the chair back, staring at the maps pinned to the walls of his headquarters. Lower-level units all developed a habit of labeling their communications to Lin as “urgent” in order to get his attention. Since they abused this label, Lin did not necessarily regard all the “urgent” messages as his top priority. But when Lin believed that a situation really was urgent, he would issue orders directly to frontline units in the field, telling their column command only afterward.17 Lin’s operational style was to collect as much information as possible through intelligence operations and from personal observation, to plan thoroughly, and to act with speed, hitting weak points in an effort not simply to defeat but to annihilate enemy units.18 But when Lin first

34

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

took command in Manchuria, he faced an extremely challenging situation. The Communist forces were a hodge-podge of poorly organized, poorly trained, and poorly armed units, most of which had never worked together. Many units had only recently arrived in Manchuria and were physically exhausted. The soldiers were quite good at siege and ambush tactics, but weak in mobile warfare and entirely inexperienced in either defending or attacking cities.19 There were also morale problems. Many of the soldiers and officers had joined the Communist Party’s armies in order to fight the Japanese. Now that the Japanese were defeated, they did not understand why they should still be fighting, when what they really wanted was to go home. As some of them put it: “Why do Chinese have to fight Chinese? Let Chairman Mao play three games of Chinese chess with Chiang Kai-shek; whoever loses can resign.”20 The Nationalists Enter Manchuria—November 1945 Neither Chairman Mao nor Chiang Kai-shek had any intention of resolving their differences so peacefully. In October, with the Soviet Union encouraging him to take an aggressive stand, Mao Zedong told Peng Zhen and the Northeast Bureau: “Our party must resolutely mobilize all its forces, control the Northeast, protect North China and Central China, smash their [i.e., the Nationalists’] offensive in the next six months, then force Chiang to the negotiating table and make him accept the autonomous status of North China and the Northeast. Only then can there be a transition to peace: otherwise, peace is impossible.”21 At the same time, the Americans were encouraging Chiang Kai-shek to assert his government’s sovereignty over Manchuria. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it on 18 September: “It is U.S. policy to assist the Chinese Government in the establishment of essential Chinese troops in liberated areas, particularly Manchuria, as quickly as practicable.”22 The Soviet Union would not permit Nationalist troops to land at the Soviet-controlled ports of Lüshun and Dalian, and they had turned the smaller ports of Andong, Yingkou, and Huludao over to the Communists. The best the Americans could do was to transport the Nationalist Thirteenth and Fifty-second Armies to the port of Qinhuangdao, just south of the Great Wall. From here, the Nationalists would attack the Communists at Shanhaiguan and fight their way up the Liaoxi Corridor. The military struggle for control of Manchuria was on.



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins35

Commanding the Nationalist forces was General Du Yuming (1903– 1981). Du was a graduate of Whampoa Military Academy and a veteran of the Northern Expedition (1926–1928) and of General Joseph Stilwell’s disastrous first Burma campaign (1942). Du would lead Chiang’s armies in the Northeast from November 1945 to July 1947; he would be sent in again in late October 1948 to direct the evacuation of the few Nationalist units that survived the Liao-Shen Campaign. From there, Du was transferred south to Anhui province, only to be defeated and captured in the Huai-Hai Campaign. In November 1945, few would have imagined that Du Yuming would be a prisoner of war in scarcely more than three years. Nationwide, the Nationalist armies outnumbered the Communists by around five to one.23 On the ground at Shanhaiguan, Du had six times as many men as the Communists. Du’s forces captured Shanhaiguan on 16 November with little difficulty. Over the next few days, they advanced up the Liaoxi Corridor toward Jinzhou, pursuing Communist troops but failing to trap and annihilate them. On 21 November, as the Nationalists approached Jinzhou, the Party Center ordered Lin Biao to “conduct a fighting retreat stage by stage, neither defending territory to the death nor lightly giving it up.”24 At this point, the party leadership believed that the Chiang armies face multiple difficulties, they do not have enough troops to deploy, at the moment they can send only five armies at the most to the Northeast, so that even if the Soviet Union allows the Chiang armies to airlift troops to take control of the major cities of the Northeast, after the Soviet army leaves, we still have the possibility of taking the major cities; right now, if we can annihilate two armies, it will give Chiang a decisive setback. It will dampen the Americans and Chiang’s prestige throughout the country and have a very beneficial effect on the Communist-Nationalist Party peace talks and on the national anti-civil war movement.25

Lin Biao, however, realized that the Center’s vision was completely unrealistic. On the night of 25 November, the Communists hurriedly retreated from Jinzhou. With the Liaoxi Corridor and Jinzhou in his hands, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Du Yuming to pause. Du’s supply lines were fragile and his forces overextended. In addition, the Soviet Red Army was still occupying the major cities and railway lines. Any further significant advance into

36

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Manchuria would have to be predicated on negotiations with the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Soviet forces. In the meantime, Du would take measures to consolidate the Nationalist position in southern Manchuria and to open the railway line from Jinzhou to Chengde. Lin Biao and Peng Zhen would take advantage of this opportunity to further build their strength and strengthen their positions behind the screen of protection offered by the Soviets. This stalemate would last until the Soviet Red Army withdrew from Manchuria in March 1946. During the period of enforced idleness, a number of Du’s soldiers and officers patronized the prostitutes of Shenyang. When reports of this behavior and the resulting spread of syphilis reached Chiang Kai-shek, he sent General Du an angry telegram, ordering him to take concrete steps to prohibit such behavior and warning that Du himself would face punishment if the problem remained unsolved.26 The Marshall Mission Begins— December 1945–March 1946 In Washington, President Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes had been watching the situation in China with growing concern. What they feared was a civil war in which the Communists, with Soviet assistance, might gain control of Manchuria and North China.27 American ambassador Patrick Hurley had obviously failed to keep the situation under control. To make matters worse, Hurley abruptly submitted his resignation on 26 November 1945 and publicly accused key State Department staff of siding with the Chinese Communists to work against freedom, democracy, and the free enterprise system in China.28 Truman’s response was to call General George Marshall, the architect of the Allied victory over Germany. Marshall’s assignment was to arrange a cease-fire between the Nationalist and Communist forces, to negotiate an agreement to combine the Nationalist and Communist armies into a single army under state (not political party) control, and to bring the two parties together in a coalition government operating on democratic principles. The Marshall Mission was doomed to failure. To begin with, none of the three sides involved in the negotiations particularly liked or trusted either of the others. Personal relationships between Americans and



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins37

Chinese had been marked by tension and misunderstanding even when the two countries were allies in the war against Japan. When General Joseph Stilwell served as commander of the China-Burma-India theater, he made no attempt to disguise his utter contempt for Chiang Kai-shek. At the lower level, American and Chinese soldiers voluntarily segregated themselves on their shared bases and in their mess halls, where the Americans ate American food and the Chinese ate Chinese food. When American soldiers gave orders to Chinese laborers in English and the Chinese failed to understand, the American response was often to “lose patience and bawl the hell out of the bewildered Chinese.”29 In the summer of 1945, an intelligence report back to Washington noted that “the prevailing Chinese attitude toward Americans in Chungking [Chongqing] is hatred; the prevailing American attitude toward Chinese is bitter hatred.”30 Part of the problem was that Americans tended to view Chinese through the lenses of the racist stereotypes that were prevalent, mainstream, and largely unquestioned at the time. The 1940s was still in many ways the age of imperialism when, as Marshall’s staff officer John Caughey observed, “a White man in the Orient can live a wonderfully easy life.”31 In American eyes, Chinese were inscrutable, dishonest, and corrupt, but also childlike, irrational, backward, and in need of American assistance and American tutelage.32 Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, had little respect for Marshall, or for Americans in general. In his diary, Chiang often referred to Americans as naïve, superficial, emotional, and immature. Chiang bitterly hated the Communists, whom he called “bandits.” The Communists had no trust or liking for Chiang and the Nationalists, and while Mao and Zhou Enlai hoped that they could use Marshall in order to gain short-term advantages both at the negotiating table and on the ground, in the final analysis they regarded the United States as a supporter of the Nationalists, and therefore as an enemy rather than as a neutral mediator.33 Although he faced insuperable barriers, Marshall appeared to have made significant progress after three months. Chiang had to cooperate with Marshall in order to ensure continued American support—U.S. Marines were guarding key railway lines, cities, and ports, American ships and airplanes were transporting his troops, and his American-equipped

38

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

units needed shipments of American weapons, ammunition, and spare parts. The Communists were willing to make compromises both because they were the weaker side in the military sense and because Joseph Stalin wanted Mao to avoid outright civil war, which might bring American intervention in North China and Manchuria.34 The spirit of cooperation, superficial as it was, meant that Marshall was able to arrange a cease-fire, which went into effect on 10 January 1946. The two sides agreed in principle to a plan for the integration of the Communist forces into a national army under Chiang’s command and to a Political Consultative Assembly to discuss China’s political future. Pleased with these accomplishments, Marshall returned to Washington on 13 March 1946 to report back to President Truman and to lobby the American Congress for more economic aid for Chiang’s government. While Marshall was in Washington, everything that he had worked to achieve began to unravel. When Chiang signed off on the 10 January cease-fire, he had reserved the right to transfer troops to and within Manchuria in order to reassert Chinese sovereignty. In practice, this meant that Chiang’s army would be trying to encroach on territory under Chinese Communist control. This had already led to clashes in January and February. In March, the Soviet Red Army finally began to withdraw from Manchuria. They did so suddenly, giving the Nationalists little warning, while encouraging and even helping the Communists to take over key positions and to attack isolated Nationalist garrisons in cities including Siping and Changchun. As the situation deteriorated, hardliners in the Kuomintang pushed Chiang to take a more aggressive approach toward the Communists and accused him of having a severe case of “Soviet-phobia.”35 Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech of 5 March and the mounting U.S.-Soviet tensions over Iran pointed to a heightening of Cold War tensions. Chiang may have believed that the West was seizing the initiative in the global struggle against the Soviet Union and that his own fight against the Communists would fit into the Western nations’ broader agenda—and thus would enjoy substantial support.36 While hardliners in the Kuomintang were urging Chiang to pursue a military solution in Manchuria, Joseph Stalin was advising the Communists to do the same. Mao and the Soviets had agreed that the Communists would need to give up southern Manchuria



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins39

but that they would fight to defend their positions in the north, including the major cities of Changchun and Harbin.37 Just days after Marshall’s departure, Chiang ordered Du Yuming to launch a major offensive. Chiang’s ultimate goals were to advance at least as far as Changchun, and perhaps to Harbin, and to trap and destroy Lin Biao’s main force. In response, Mao Zedong’s instructions to Lin Biao were to “use our entire strength to control the two cities of Changchun and Harbin and the entire China Eastern Railway . . . [do not] spare any sacrifice to prevent Chiang’s armies from capturing Changchun, Harbin and the China Eastern Railway.”38 Mao believed that if he could hold onto Changchun for long enough, George Marshall would force Chiang to agree to a cease-fire, which would give the Communists time to rebuild and would leave them in possession of a huge base area stretching from Yan’an across Inner Mongolia, Chahar, and Rehe to Changchun and on to the Soviet and Korean borders. To accomplish this, Lin Biao would have to “resolutely control the Siping area, if the enemy advances to the north thoroughly annihilate them, absolutely do not allow them to advance to Changchun.”39 The Second Battle of Siping: April –May 1946 Siping is a small railway city 113 kilometers south of Changchun. Lin Biao did not think that his forces were ready to mount a long positional defense at Siping: he would have preferred to conduct mobile operations to wipe out individual enemy units rather than trying to hold territory. Nonetheless, Lin did as Mao had ordered.40 The Northeast Democratic United Army (NDUA, as the Communist forces were called at this point) defended Siping for a month, from 18 April to 18 May 1946. When they withdrew, the Communist forces had suffered heavy casualties. Many more men and even some officers deserted as the withdrawal fell into chaos. With the situation clearly unfavorable, Lin Biao decided to abandon Changchun and the China Eastern Railway without a fight. By the end of the month his battered forces had withdrawn north of the Songhua River to Harbin. With Du Yuming still pursuing, Lin was planning to retreat even further. Precisely at this point, George Marshall (who had returned from Washington on 18 April) extracted a ceasefire agreement from Chiang Kai-shek. The cease-fire went into effect on

40

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

7 June. Initially fifteen days, the cease-fire was extended once. For the most part, calm prevailed in the Northeast throughout the summer and on through September.41 The cease-fire in Manchuria did not signal the end of the civil war. Chiang Kai-shek and his chief of staff, Chen Cheng, were confident not only that a military solution to the Communist problem was feasible, but that it would be fairly easy. Chen Cheng expected victory within three to six months.42 Chiang’s strategy was to set Manchuria to one side for the moment, both in order to avoid confrontation with the Soviet Union (he was apparently still suffering from “Soviet-phobia”) and in order to focus his limited military resources on South Manchuria and North China.43 In late June, Nationalist forces attacked the Communists in Hubei and Anhui provinces.44 The operation was not as easy as Chiang and Chen Cheng had expected. Nonetheless, the Nationalists made significant progress through the summer, pushing Communist forces out of key parts of Anhui, Hubei, Jiangsu, and Shandong provinces.45 By this time ( June–July 1946), the Marshall negotiations had lost any real meaning for either the Nationalists or the Communists.46 From the American point of view it seemed that “one day it is the Communists that are obstreperous, and the next it is the National Govt. Neither the Commies nor the Govt. are doing much to help.”47 Marshall, the State Department, and the Pentagon all understood that the mediation effort was a lost cause.48 On the one hand they were wary of getting dragged into the Chinese civil war; but on the other hand, they were resigned to the fact that they had to continue to support Chiang’s government in order to counter the Soviet Union.49 The Communists Regroup: June–July 1946 Lin Biao, now ensconced in the relative safety of Harbin, began the task of rebuilding his forces and rethinking the Communist strategy for the Northeast. In public, the Communists tried to put a positive spin on the loss of Siping and Changchun. The Northeast Daily declared that “the main reason for the withdrawal is that through a month of victorious defense, the Democratic United Army had achieved its initial goal of causing massive material losses and casualties to its American-equipped enemy.”50 Some of Lin’s men and officers were so convinced that they had been



The Struggle for Manchuria Begins41

winning that they failed to understand why the NDUA should have been in such a hurry to give up Changchun and run for Harbin.51 Lin Biao and the other top leaders knew very well why they had retreated. As the Northeast Military District Command observed in an assessment compiled in 1949: “In light of our party’s actual strength and equipment, it was not appropriate to have fought a large-scale positional defense like Siping; the Battle to Defend Siping saw some tactical successes and was fought for a month with bravery and determination, but in strategic terms it was a defeat.”52 A defeat of this magnitude called for a thorough revision of Communist strategy. For months, Lin Biao and others, including Luo Ronghuan, Gao Gang, and Chen Yun, had been openly critical of Peng Zhen’s leadership of the party’s work in the Northeast. As they saw it, Peng was too narrowly focused on the goal of capturing and holding Manchuria’s “three big cities” of Shenyang, Changchun, and Harbin, too inclined toward military “adventurism,” and not willing to give sufficient attention to the task of building rural base areas.53 Mao Zedong and the party leadership in Yan’an agreed. On 16 June the party Central Committee dismissed Peng Zhen from the position of secretary of the Northeast Bureau. His replacement was none other than Lin Biao. Lin now exercised unified leadership over party, government, and military work in the Northeast.54 In late June and early July Lin Biao and the Northeast Bureau worked to articulate the new strategic principles that would guide their work for the next two years. The result was the July seventh (7-7) Resolution. First drafted by Chen Yun in Harbin and then substantially revised by Mao Zedong in Yan’an, the 7-7 Resolution called for Communist Party cadres and combat units to go out into the rural areas of northern Manchuria to suppress local bandits, build base areas, and conduct land reform. At the same time, Lin Biao was to further strengthen the NDUA and conduct limited mobile operations to annihilate isolated Nationalist units. Rather than defend positions, the Communists should “draw the enemy in deep, wait until the enemy is dispersed, and use superior numbers to annihilate the enemy.”55 In constructing this strategy—and in explaining the situation to those NDUA men and officers who complained that Lin seemed to have been doing nothing but retreat ever since he abandoned Jinzhou back

42

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

in November of 1945—Lin and the Northeast Bureau leadership (and Mao himself, who certainly contributed to the final version of the 7-7 Resolution) drew on Mao’s December 1936 talk on “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War.” In the fifth chapter of “Problems of Strategy,” entitled “The Strategic Defensive,” Mao argued that when faced with a stronger enemy, Communist forces should use strategic retreat in order to force the enemy to overextend his armies and reveal his weak points.56 This lesson was particularly relevant to those in the NDUA who were questioning Lin’s withdrawal from Siping and Changchun, and even referring to him as “General Retreat.”57 Mao’s point was that “the object of the strategic retreat is to conserve military strength and prepare for the counter-offensive.”58 In order to prepare for the transition from the strategic defensive to the strategic counteroffensive, the Communists would need to build base areas and gain the active support of the people. They would also have to defend their base area against further enemy attack—not by passively waiting for and responding to the enemy, but by conducting an “active defense,” that is, to grasp the initiative, choosing and fighting a series of “decisive engagements.” The cumulative result of such decisive engagements (in which the Communists would be taking the tactical offensive while remaining on the strategic defensive) would be to break the enemy’s offensive, “bring about a change in the balance of forces,” and thereby create the conditions under which the Communists could make the transition to the counteroffensive.59 Lin Biao would achieve that transition in a complex set of operations collectively known as the “Three Expeditions South of the [Songhua] River and the Four Defenses of Linjiang.” But first, he would lose even more territory to the Nationalists.

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If the superior strength of the attack—which diminishes day by day— leads to peace, the object will have been attained. There are strategic attacks that lead up to the point where their remaining strength is just enough to maintain a defense and wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns and the reaction follows with a force that is much stronger than the original attack. This is what I mean by the culminating point of the attack. —Clausewitz, On War

Three

Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction ★★★

South Manchuria, July–November 1946

In July 1946, Lin Biao’s main forces had withdrawn north of the Songhua River, a vast area that they would build into their North Manchuria Base Area. A smaller Communist force, consisting of the Third and Fourth Columns and a few other units, remained in the small South Manchuria Base Area, which (at this time) included the towns of Tonghua and Andong as well as Linjiang and other remote counties in the mountainous area along the North Korean border. Chiang Kai-shek had ordered Du Yuming to set the problems of the Communist North and South Manchuria Base Areas to one side for the time being. Having captured the Bei-Ning line, most of South Manchuria, Changchun, and the China Eastern Railway, Chiang hoped to use political means to resolve the problem of North Manchuria, both so that the Soviet Union would not get directly involved and in order not to let his armies get overextended, which, he knew, would create weak points that the Communists would take advantage of.1 For the moment, Du Yuming’s tasks would be to consolidate his positions in South Manchuria and to take control of Rehe province. In the meantime, Chiang would focus his main attention on attacking the Communists south of the Great Wall.

45

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

By October victories in China Proper, Rehe, and Chahar had convinced Chiang that the time had come to advance further in the Northeast. His strategy would be “first south, then north.” The first step would be for Du Yuming to eliminate the Communists’ small South Manchurian Base Area. Du’s forces moved into action beginning on 9 October. The Communists retreated at first, giving up both Andong and Tonghua. Although it was successful, in retrospect it becomes clear that Chiang’s advance had now reached Clausewitz’s “culminating point of the attack.” Strategic, logistical, diplomatic, and domestic political factors combined to make the Nationalists’ newly acquired positions untenable and further advance virtually impossible. If the losses inflicted had been enough to make the Communists sue for peace, all would have been well. But Mao Zedong and Lin Biao’s response to the setbacks of autumn, 1946, was to revise both their strategy and tactics. They realized that if they failed, Chiang would take complete control of southern Manchuria and then cross the Songhua River to attack Harbin. In making their preparations, the Communists benefited from the fact that Chiang did not have to deal with military challenges alone: he also faced serious political struggles that had a direct impact on his ability to conduct military operations. Chiang Kai-shek’s Political Struggles During the summer of 1946, Chiang and his commanders were confident that they could defeat the Communist armies in three to six months.2 Du Yuming’s capture of Changchun, Lin Biao’s retreat to Harbin, and the Nationalist victories in China Proper all contributed to the sense of optimism. But Chiang’s victories on the battlefield were not matched by victories in the political arena. As summer stretched into fall, the Nationalist regime’s relationships with its American sponsors and with its own people steadily deteriorated. It would be simple and gratifying to place the blame for Nationalist China’s political problems squarely on the shoulders of Chiang Kai-shek and a few other members of China’s ruling elite. But while they certainly bear a heavy responsibility for their own decisions, it must be remembered that Chiang, his wife, Soong May-ling, her family, and other prominent Kuomintang figures were fully immersed in, sustained, and in a sense



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction47

created by a complex system of human relationships and economic realities that would have posed tremendous challenges to any leader. As with so many political systems, the short-term personal interests of Republican China’s political and economic elites often clashed with the long-term interests of the country and its people as a whole. Chiang, the Americans, the Communists, and various intellectuals not aligned with either the Communists or the Nationalists all saw the same set of problems: poverty, corruption, and civil war, but they imagined different solutions. The Americans thought that the best way to address China’s problems was for Chiang and his government to implement reforms that would bring China closer to an American model of government and society: greater emphasis on transparency, effective measures against corruption, rule of law, and a democratic system of governance. A number of Chinese intellectuals and students, drawing inspiration at least in part from American ideals, argued for greater levels of individual freedom, fundamental economic and political reforms, and a negotiated end to the civil war. Chiang Kai-shek’s vision of the Chinese future clashed with the ideals both of the Americans and of Chinese intellectuals and students. Chiang drew inspiration from his own Confucian and military school educational background, from his experience in surrounding and eliminating the Communist Jiangxi Soviet base area back in the 1930s, and from Sun Yat-sen’s political thought. Confucian philosophy taught Chiang that the fundamental solution to a nation’s problems lies in the moral regeneration of its people, beginning with its leaders, who should set a strong moral example. His military training encouraged him to demand strict regimentation and discipline from ordinary people as well as from his officers and soldiers. The elimination of Communist rural base areas in the 1930s—culminating in his victory over the Jiangxi Soviet in 1934—convinced Chiang that the fundamental solution to the Communist problem would be a military campaign. Sun Yat-sen’s political theories held up constitutional democracy as a long-term goal while arguing that a period of political “tutelage” under an authoritarian government would be required to give China the degree of social stability, economic development, educational level, and political sophistication required for a successful democracy.

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

As Chiang saw it, only he could lead the Chinese people to overcome their challenges and move toward the ultimate goal of constitutional democracy, and to do so, he would need to exercise a leadership style that might be described as a benevolent Confucian autocracy. Chiang’s style of governance did not conform to American ideals. His penchant for authoritarianism and his confidence in a military solution to the Communist insurrection put him at odds with his American interlocutors. These included not only George Marshall and his staff, but also the newly appointed American ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart. Stuart was born in Hangzhou, China, in 1876, the child of Presbyterian missionaries. A distinguished career as an educator, administrator, and fund-raiser in China led to his appointment as president of Yenching University in Beijing in 1919. He was appointed as ambassador to China (on Marshall’s recommendation) on 4 July 1946.3 As a long-time, distinguished foreign resident of China, Leighton Stuart enjoyed close personal relationships with Chiang Kai-shek and other Kuomintang leaders. He had no such relationships with Communists. The pattern of Leighton Stuart’s friendships and his own religious and political beliefs made him favorably inclined toward the Nationalists and optimistic that Chiang could undertake the kind of reforms and negotiations that would resolve China’s many problems.4 In July and August 1946, Marshall and Leighton Stuart made multiple visits to Chiang Kai-shek’s summer retreat at the mountain resort of Guling. As Marshall’s staff officer Colonel Caughey described it: “To get to the place you have to take first a two-hour plane ride up the Yangtze River. Then cross the river in a boat, then take a bus, and then a sedan chair up the hill. The whole trip takes, from start to finish a little over five hours.” The sedan chair ride involved a team of eight “coolies” per chair (four to carry, four to push), climbing up three miles of steps carved out of the stone mountainside.5 During these visits to Guling, Stuart and Marshall tried to convince Chiang to undertake economic and political reforms and to find some solution to the question of whether the Communists would need to give up their military units before proceeding with further negotiations (as Chiang demanded), or whether negotiations should come before Communist disarmament (as the Communists insisted). The two Americans



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction49

made no discernible progress. As Colonel Caughey observed: “The Gimo won’t give up any of his dictatorial power and the Communists won’t give up any of the territory that they were able to so neatly grab off right after the war.”6 Nonetheless, Stuart remained optimistic that Chiang would take real steps toward instituting an agrarian reform program that would improve the welfare of the average Chinese and thus deprive the Communists of rural support.7 On the lighter side, Mrs. Marshall and Soong May-ling taught Chiang how to play Chinese checkers. Caughey guessed that it was “the only game the Gimo has ever played.”8 Chinese checkers and various social events may have helped to ease, or at least disguise, the tension that was building between Chiang and the Americans. Throughout the summer, Chiang complained in his diary entries that the Americans were treating China like a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the Soviet Union, that Americans regarded Chinese with no less contempt than they did their colonial subjects in the Philippines, that Marshall was selfish and concerned only with his own accomplishments (for which he would willingly sacrifice China’s national interest), and that Americans were by nature superficial, impulsive, infantile, and impatient. He regretted deeply that his government had to operate under the increasing pressure of American foreign policy.9 When Americans like Colonel Caughey tried to understand Chiang and China, they drew on their own preconceptions: “The situation out here is an enigma, something steeped in 4,000 years of tradition and feeling not even explainable to the people of China . . . all Chinese are individualists without the slightest idea of pulling together but instead interested only in the family unit which turns any situation to its own favor . . . no-one owes his full allegiance to another.”10 Although they found China difficult to comprehend, the Americans could clearly see that Chiang was losing the support of key sectors of the Chinese public. The assassination of two prominent intellectuals in Kunming made this shockingly clear not only to Marshall but also to Harry Truman. On 11 July, assassins shot and killed Li Gongpu, the leader of the Democratic League (an independent political party, often very critical of Chiang and his government). On 15 July, the much-admired poet Wen Yiduo was gunned down after delivering the eulogy at Li’s funeral.11 The assassinations of Li and Wen led to widespread outrage, not only in China,

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

but also in the United States. Such incidents suggested that the Americans were supporting a bloody dictatorship rather than a bastion of democracy. As Colonel Caughey observed: “When a despotic rule starts involving the U.S. then maybe it is time to start thinking of some other way of handling the situation.”12 Under both domestic and international pressure, Chiang ordered the military command in Kunming to apprehend the assassins and not to allow this sort of thing to happen again.13 Privately, Chiang seems to have been ambivalent about the situation. In his diary, he lamented the fact that the Communists and “reactionaries” were using the assassinations to attack him.14 It turned out that the assassins of Wen Yiduo were both Yunnan police officers. They felt that Wen’s public speeches on many occasions were insulting to the military and showed disrespect for the army’s eight years of struggle against the Japanese. The high-profile nature of the Wen Yiduo case meant that the government had to execute the two policemen, but at the same time, government officials and perhaps Chiang himself were reluctant to do so because they sympathized with the assassins’ point of view. As a result, the government moved slowly in handling the case—thus dragging out the process of public and international condemnation.15 Harry Truman, apparently disgusted with the situation, sent a confidential letter to Chiang Kai-shek, lamenting that Marshall’s mediation efforts had “all proved unavailing” and condemning “the selfish interests of extremist elements, equally in the Kuomintang and the Communist Party” that were standing in the way of the American goal of a “strong and democratic China.”16 While Chiang and his government dragged their feet over the Kunming assassination case, military operations against the Communists continued. Chiang had chosen to set Manchuria to one side in order to focus on the civil war in China Proper, but he had no intention of abandoning the Northeast. In the late summer and autumn of 1946, Chiang’s forces conducted operations designed both to further consolidate his position in southern Manchuria and to isolate Lin Biao’s North Manchuria Base Area by cutting its land connection to the main Communist base area in North China and Inner Mongolia. In August, Nationalist forces worked to eliminate Communist guerrillas still active along the Bei-Ning line between Tianjin and Shenyang and to capture the key cities of Chengde



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction51

and Chifeng in Rehe province. The Communists retreated from Chengde on 29 August and withdrew from Chifeng on 30 September. Chiang apparently believed that in the final analysis, the United States would continue to support him no matter what he did. His confidence led him to underestimate the extent to which political disasters like the Kunming assassinations and his continued military operations were leading to frustration and disillusionment on the American side. In July, this sense of frustration led Marshall to impose an embargo on the further sale of American arms and ammunition to China. The embargo remained in effect for ten months. There was—and continues to be—heated debate over the question of whether or not the American arms embargo contributed to Chiang’s defeat in Manchuria. At any rate, the embargo “had no appreciable effect on the policies of Generalissimo Chiang.”17 Chiang continued his advance on the Communists at Kalgan (Zhangjiakou). Not even Marshall’s threat to resign from his mediation mission could bring an end to the fighting. Under pressure from Marshall, the most that either Chiang or the Communists would do was to propose cease-fire conditions that would be clearly unacceptable to the other side.18 On 10 October, Nationalist forces under General Fu Zuoyi (Fu Tso-yi) marched triumphantly into Kalgan.19 With the loss of Kalgan, the Communists had also lost the last land route from Yan’an to the Northeast. On the same day, Mao Zedong told Zhou Enlai: “There is no longer any connection between the negotiations and the war, no question of coordinating between them. You should just educate the masses, show them that the responsibility for the rupture is not ours, and resolutely oppose the U.S.-Chiang Kai-shek fraud. You shouldn’t dissuade Marshall and Leighton Stuart from abandoning their mediation.”20 Lin Biao’s Unease From his base in Harbin, Lin Biao observed Chiang’s military operations in Rehe and Chahar with increasing concern. The ceasefire in Manchuria itself gave Lin four precious months to reorganize his troops and rebuild his strength. But he did so in the full expectation that Chiang would soon launch another offensive, perhaps even an attack on Harbin itself. One of Lin’s tasks was to convince his men that war was inevitable and that they should be prepared to fight. Many men, even cadres

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

(officers), had joined the Communists because they wanted to fight the Japanese, or just because they wanted to make a living and the Communist military seemed to offer them a chance to get out of poverty. Some were quite sympathetic to Chiang and the Nationalist government.21 Party commissars working in the army were obliged to conduct thorough programs of indoctrination in order to teach the soldiers what they were fighting for. Propaganda, written in clear, simple terms, explained the need to defend the rights of ordinary people against the oppression of landlords, of Chiang Kai-shek, and of the Americans. The Northeast Bureau also told commissars to teach the soldiers that in fighting mobile and guerrilla warfare, it would sometimes be necessary to give up cities and other positions. The Northeast Bureau leadership feared that if common soldiers did not understand this, “deserters will outnumber the wounded.”22 Cities, towns, and other specific positions could be given up and regained later, but if the Communists lost the rural areas or were driven out of northern Manchuria, they would be left with nothing. In July, Lin Biao called for guerrilla operations in order to maintain a strong Communist presence behind enemy lines, particularly in southern Manchuria.23 From June through August, Lin understood that he was relatively safe: the Nationalists were clearly focusing on China Proper, and simply carrying out “nibbling” operations on the periphery of the Communist base areas on northern and particularly in southern Manchuria. Even so, the situation in southern Manchuria in particular was discouraging. Poorly armed, poorly trained Communist units struggled to conduct guerrilla operations in rural areas in which they had no mass support. Leaders at the base level were confused and at a loss, blaming each other for every setback. Part of the problem was that they chose to disperse their forces across the countryside, using individual battalions to conduct independent guerrilla operations. This technique had worked during the war against, Japan, when the Communists enjoyed mass support and their goal was simply to harass the Japanese and then disappear. But in southern Manchuria, the result was that the Communists could never focus overwhelming force in order to wipe out Nationalist units, whereas the Nationalists were able to locate, cut off, and attack the small, isolated Communist units, inflicting heavy casualties. Some of these guerrilla units fled to the safety of the



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction53

Soviet-controlled Guandongzhou territory on the Liaodong Peninsula, adjacent to the ports of Lüshun and Dalian.24 From the end of August through early October, the situation worsened. As Lin Biao saw it, Chiang had a choice: either attack the long-established Communist North China base area, with its strong defenses and deeply rooted support among the people, or move first against the more fragile, newly established, and not yet firmly consolidated Communist forces in the Northeast. Lin guessed that Chiang would choose the easier target, and worried that his remaining positions in southern Manchuria, particularly the relatively exposed port city of Andong (Dandong) would be the first to be hit; at the same time, he was also concerned about a possible attack on Harbin.25 On 7 September, Lin asked the Party Center to instruct Communist units south of the Great Wall to conduct operations in support of the Northeast.26 Within the Northeast, Lin ordered his forces to conduct further training and to purge the ranks of “bad elements”—hooligans, criminals, KMT agents, former members of the Manchukuo police forces, and others of questionable loyalty. Combat units were to be reorganized: three squads to a platoon, twelve soldiers to a squad, three to six light machine guns to a company. Every infantry regiment was to be brought up to a full strength of 2,000 to 2,200 men, both through recruitment and by reorganization and amalgamation of understrength units.27 Chiang’s Strategy for Manchuria: First South, Then North Lin Biao’s fear of an imminent attack on Harbin was misplaced. The strategy that Chiang Kai-shek and Du Yuming had chosen to pursue in the Northeast was “first south, then north.” An attack on the Communist main forces in northern Manchuria would have involved serious logistical challenges; it would also have run the risk of international complications if the Soviets should get involved.28 By contrast, conditions in southern Manchuria seemed to favor the Nationalists. Over one-half of Manchuria’s population and one-quarter of its territory, including the major cities, raw materials, and industries, were already in the Nationalists’ hands.29 The extensive railway and road network favored the Nationalist army, allowing it to move its men and their heavy American

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

equipment rapidly into positions from which they would initiate operations against the small, isolated Communist South Manchuria Base Area.30 It was little wonder, then, that Chiang Kai-shek was confident that he could capture and hold all of southern Manchuria, and then turn his attention to the north.31 Du Yuming’s goal in October 1946 was to capture the cities of Tonghua and Andong, both important but vulnerable positions on the periphery of the Communist South Manchuria Base Area. To begin with, he took control of branch railway lines and territory in order to bring him closer to the target cities and to recover the main railway lines.32 As they advanced into the countryside of southern Manchuria the Nationalists used a combination of political and military methods to assert control over the newly captured areas. In each town, they would set up local government and an intelligence network, using a combination of threats and rewards to gain popular support, or at least to politically isolate the Communist armies and Communist Party organizations from the people, denying the Communists the mass support on which they relied for intelligence, logistical support, and supplies. The Nationalist forces also built defenses—trenches, walls, and so on—and left a small garrison force in each town that they had captured. In the meantime, the main forces would focus on hunting down Communist units, blocking off mountain passes, blockading places where the Communist troops were positioned, and attacking at night.33 This technique was very effective. Local men familiar with their communities easily led the Nationalist troops to the locations of local Communist government and party offices. Many of the Communist militia turned around to join the Nationalists. Communist Party cadres fled for their lives.34 These successful Nationalist operations were an ongoing problem for George Marshall. As the State Department White Paper later described it, George Marshall met with Chiang on 13 October. Marshall “reminded the Generalissimo that in early July the latter had said that it was first necessary to deal harshly with the Communists and later, after 2 or 3 months, to adopt a generous attitude. It seemed to General Marshall that after more than 3 months with the Government in possession of all the important strategic points that the time had come for the generous attitude of which he had spoken.”35



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction55

Chiang was not ready to be generous. As he reflected in his diary, he was determined to continue with the attempt to capture Andong, whether Marshall liked it or not.36 On 16 October, the Nationalist forces began the attack on Andong.37 Four days later, on 20 October, the offensive was broadened to include the entire Communist South Manchuria Base Area.38 This Nationalist onslaught probably helped Lin Biao to unify opinion within the fractious Northeast Bureau. Even as late as mid-September, some members of the Northeast Bureau were still arguing that American mediation could lead to a stable peace agreement, nationalization of the armed forces, and Communist participation in a democratic political process. These men evidently had reservations about the idea that the only way to achieve peace was for the Communists to thoroughly defeat Chiang’s forces in a protracted war.39 With Du Yuming on the offensive, the question of whether or not to fight was moot: the question was how to fight. Lin cautioned his units in southern Manchuria not to meet the Nationalists head on, and not to try to chase down Nationalist units that were moving from one position to another by road or railway. Any attempt to do so would leave the Communists exhausted and on the defensive. He also warned them not to be forced into fighting prolonged defensive battles, which would inevitably end with the Communists losing both their men and whatever positions they had been trying to defend. Battles in which the Communists merely drove the enemy off were also to be avoided. What Lin wanted was for his troops to concentrate superior force to attack and wipe out isolated enemy regiments or brigades. As a matter of principle, a Communist commander should use eight or nine regiments to attack a single enemy regiment: around four, with artillery support, for the attack itself, and another four positioned around the battlefield to intercept and wipe out any enemy forces that might break through the encirclement and to block reinforcements.40 These instructions were clearly meant as a corrective to the Communist cadres’ tendency (described above) to divide their forces into widely dispersed small units. Lin also cautioned the southern Manchurian forces not to defend cities: he did not want to see a repetition of the month-long defense of Siping. Instead, they should transport precious supplies away

56

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

from exposed positions like Tonghua and Andong to more secure rear areas—or even all the way to North Korea—and prepare to withdraw from indefensible positions like Andong and Tonghua. Lest his men fail to understand the wisdom of the strategic retreat, Lin once again recommended that they read Mao Zedong’s 1936 essay “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War.”41 Retreat was justified: Chiang knew that he could capture Andong, and he was determined to do so. On 24 October, his more cautious prime minister and brother-in-law T. V. Soong was still urging Chiang to call a halt to the attack, for fear that the continued use of force would anger General Marshall. Chiang responded that he could not base his plans on the whims of one individual. Du Yuming took Andong the next day. The Communist forces had retreated, preferring to give up the city rather than to fight a losing battle.42 Helping the Communist forces to retreat was the fact that they had the Yalu River and North Korea at their backs: this made it impossible for the Nationalists to truly outflank and surround the NDUA forces. Nationalist units were prohibited from crossing or even firing across the Yalu.43 The Battle of Xinkailing As he advanced toward and captured Andong, Du Yuming also pushed the Fifty-second Army’s elite Twenty-fifth Division to move aggressively into the area east of the Shenyang–Andong railway line, mountainous terrain deep in Communist territory. But as they gave up Andong, the Communist forces focused their attention on the Twenty-fifth Division. The Communist Fourth Column had eight regiments, only twice the number of men as the Twenty-fifth Division, and their weapons were vastly inferior: their real advantage was the terrain. The Twenty-fifth Division was in a valley to the east of the town of Xinkailing, with high mountains on either side. After some initial skirmishes, the Communists led the Twenty-fifth Division into a trap and opened fire from three sides on 30 October. Under attack and with the Communists blocking reinforcements, the Twenty-fifth Division fought bitterly. Communist tactical errors, including the failure to concentrate sufficient troops and the failure to control key positions on high ground, allowed the battle to drag on for days. Finally, on 2 November a Communist artillery bombardment destroyed the enemy divisional

Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction57



 









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headquarters. Motor vehicles exploded; men, livestock, and cars became tangled together in the fire and the acrid smoke. The Twenty-fifth Division collapsed into chaos, soldiers laying down their weapons.44 When the battle was over, the Twenty-fifth was completely destroyed: over 1,600 casualties, and 5,877 men captured, including the divisional commander.45 The victory at Xinkailing boosted Communist morale and bought precious time in which the Liaodong Military District Headquarters could move to safety and in which Communist hospital, factory, and warehouse facilities could be moved to North Korea. But Xinkailing did not represent a fundamental change in the Communists’ precarious position in southern Manchuria. Even as their comrades were annihilating the Nationalist Twenty-fifth Division, Communist troops in Tonghua were

58

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

hurriedly withdrawing from the city. After Xinkailing, Du Yuming’s Nationalist armies continued to advance. As they did so, civilian support for the Communists evaporated, and captured Nationalist soldiers who had been hastily integrated into Communist units began to desert, some of them shooting their commanders before crossing back to the Nationalist side.46 The Nationalists were now reaching the maximum extent of their control of territory in the Northeast—but their troops were spread more thinly than ever.47 Lin Biao’s Tactical Guidelines Throughout the civil war in the Northeast, Lin Biao’s headquarters would analyze each battle as soon as possible after the fact. The experiences gained and the lessons learned were reported to the Communist Party Center and also used to provide further guidance to Communist combat units on the ground.48 Analysis of the Battle of Xinkailing revealed flaws in the organization and conduct of the operation. For example, the Tenth Division had been thrown into combat too quickly, before all its troops had arrived and without waiting for artillery support.49 In addition, Communist commanders at Xinkailing had initially tried a simple frontal attack from one direction, and they had failed to concentrate sufficient (i.e., overwhelming) force at the main point of attack.50 Mao Zedong’s assessment of the Communist performance at Xinkailing (surely based on and probably reiterating material from Lin’s reports) noted that the Communist troops had failed to concentrate sufficient force at the tactical level when they first attacked the Twenty-fifth Division on 1 November, but that when they concentrated firepower on a specific point the next day, they were able to make and build on a breakthrough. Mao concluded that in larger battles, it was necessary for the Communists to concentrate ten, or even twelve, regiments in order to guarantee victory.51 The lessons derived from the experience at Xinkailing were used to further reinforce a set of tactical guidelines that Lin Biao had been developing since December 1945. These tactical guidelines represent the cumulative lessons and experience of troops under Lin’s command.52 They also reflect a range of influences, including Lin Biao’s previous experience, Mao Zedong’s military thought, Sunzi, and Clausewitz. While Lin’s staff officers probably wrote a fair number of the documents in which these



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction59

tactical principles are articulated, it seems both convenient and reasonable to attribute them to Lin Biao himself. Eventually, six of the most important of these guidelines came to be known as “Lin Biao’s Six Principles of Combat.” Although they emphasize the use of overwhelming force, Lin Biao’s tactical principles should not be confused with the “human wave tactics” that are stereotypically associated with the People’s Liberation Army. The human wave is generally preceded by an artillery barrage and requires that “the infantry platoon, company or battalion advance from its last covered and concealed position (the line of departure) toward an enemy position (the line of contact) without attempting to mask or shield its movement. The infantry would move in line or column, and while it usually would aim for a weak point of the enemy position, the sheer scale of the attack typically would render it a de facto frontal assault.”53 The human wave is typically associated with a willingness to accept heavy casualties, or even callousness toward the loss of life, sometimes attributed to Chinese culture and sometimes to the Communist ideology.54 Lin Biao’s tactics were more complex than the human wave stereotype would suggest. Lin and his commanders in the Northeast were certainly willing to accept heavy casualties when they were convinced that such casualties were the essential price to be paid for achieving a particular goal. But at the same time, they were concerned to minimize unnecessary casualties.55 To do so, the Communists would need to understand and respect their enemy and to adjust their tactical behavior accordingly. This is a lesson that Lin had learned through experience. Writing in 1947, he observed that when the Communist soldiers first went up against wellarmed, well-trained Nationalist troops in 1945, “we had some commanders who were without understanding of this kind of enemy, thinking that they were the same enemy as back in the civil war period [of 1927–1936] that would collapse and lay down their weapons as soon as they were attacked. As a result, they attacked wildly and experienced setbacks.”56 The “wild attacks” of which Lin Biao was so critical were instances in which large numbers of Communist soldiers charged the enemy in close formation, attempting to overwhelm enemy positions by sheer force of numbers and determination. These tactics, which certainly fit the definition of the human wave, resulted in unacceptably heavy casualties and

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minimal results. In December 1945, following the loss of Shanhaiguan and the retreat from the Liaoxi Corridor and Jinzhou, Lin Biao held a meeting of NDUA cadres of regimental level and above. It was at this meeting that he laid out a protracted war strategy of retreat, base-building, and avoidance of major battles and in which he emphasized the need to fight a series of small battles in order to gain experience and build up toward the goal of fighting large battles. At the same meeting, Lin reiterated the need to concentrate overwhelming force—ten to twenty times the number of men as the enemy—but he also put forth two tactical principles that prescribed techniques for the use of this overwhelming force in ways more sophisticated than the “human wave.” These two tactical guidelines were “one point, two flanks” and the “3-3 system.” “One point, two flanks” suggested that when attacking the enemy, a Communist unit should focus overwhelming force on one particular point of the enemy’s defenses. At the same time, smaller numbers of troops should stage secondary attacks at one, two, or more sides or flanks of the enemy position. The ratio of troops at the “one point” to troops on the one or more additional flanks was to be 3:1, 4:1, or even as great as 9:1, depending on the concrete circumstances.57 Lin probably did not regard this emphasis on concentration of force on the enemy’s weak point as a unique insight on his part: in explaining the concept, a document issued by his command headquarters pointed to the experience of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany, when “no matter whether the Germans were attacking the Soviets, or the Soviets were attacking the Germans, they both adopted this method, for the most part conducting a wedge-shaped attack.”58 While “one point, two flanks” called for concentration of force, the “3-3 system” addresses the actual use of force in the attack. Under the “3-3 system,” a platoon would be organized into three or four teams of three or four men each. The platoon leader and his second-in-command would be in charge of the first two teams. The third team leader would be a politically reliable soldier with a good combat record.59 Lin Biao explained that while it was essential to concentrate superior troop strength at the strategic level and operational levels, “at the tactical level of combat maneuver, we want to disperse troops and spread them out. Concentrating our troops does not require us to conduct assaults in tight formation: rather, it demands



Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction61

that when a part of our troops charge an enemy position, they have to be thoroughly protected by firepower, and there has to be a second echelon coordinating with them, so having lots of soldiers does not mean that they all charge at the same time, but that you have to use the 3-3 system.”60 “One point, two flanks” and the “3-3 system” form the core of Lin Biao’s tactical thinking. He later added four other tactical guidelines to form what became known as the “Six Principles of Combat.”61 These guidelines were purposely expressed in simple terms that would be easy for the largely uneducated Communist cadres and soldiers to grasp and remember. As a whole, the “Six Principles” emphasize the concentration of overwhelming force on the enemy’s weak point in order to make a breakthrough, throw the enemy into chaos, and thus annihilate enemy units. In advocating the use of overwhelming force, Lin was clearly echoing the ideas of his mentor, Mao Zedong, who argued that it was essential to concentrate troops in order to “pit ten against one” at the tactical level even while the Communists might be fighting “one against ten” at the strategic level.62

Make it so the enemy does not dare to disperse his forces, make it so that he exhausts himself without accomplishing anything, but rather is often wiped out by us, step by step. Our only option is to adopt this kind of persistent struggle in specific areas, while waiting for the situation in the Northeast and in the country as a whole to take a gradual turn for the better. —Northeast Bureau, 16 December 1946, quoted in Xiao,   “Sibao Linjiang de zhandou suiyue”

Four

Breaking the Nationalist Offensive ★★★

The Three Expeditions/Four Defenses Campaign, December 1946–March 1947

The Communist South Manchuria Base Area was now compressed into four small counties in the mountainous Korean border region: Linjiang, Changbai, Mengjiang, and Fusong.1 This was the high point of Nationalist superiority in the Northeast: 580,000 Nationalist soldiers to 360,000 Communists.2 Confident of his position, on 8 November Chiang ordered his troops in the Northeast to adopt a defensive posture and declared a unilateral cease-fire to go into effect at noon on 12 November.3 The Nationalists controlled most of southern Manchuria and remained poised to resume the offensive against the Communist South Manchuria Base Area at any time. Chiang assured Marshall that he was not considering an advance on Harbin, as to do so would very likely lead to difficulties with the Soviet Union.4 With the cease-fire, Chiang shifted his attention from the military struggle back to politics. The National Assembly (which Chiang had called for despite a failure to gain Communist agreement to participate) was to convene in eight days’ time.5 General Marshall helped Chiang to draft the cease-fire order, but as he did so, he made it clear that the order did not reflect his views or those of the American government.6 The announcement itself carried the implied threat that Kuomintang combat operations would soon resume, and the National Assembly, being held without the participation of the 63

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Communists, was certainly not going to lead to a political resolution of the civil war. Although he had difficulty in accepting the idea of failure, Marshall knew that his mission was effectively over. He told Truman as much on 16 November.7 Zhou Enlai departed from Nanjing on the nineteenth—leaving nobody to negotiate with on the Communist side.8 The truce teams, which were to help maintain the cease-fire, left the Northeast on the twenty-first.9 Only Ambassador Stuart remained optimistic, still clinging to the belief that Chiang wanted to make China into a constitutional democracy and that what he most needed at this stage was not criticism, but sympathy and encouragement.10 The Communists’ Crisis and the Qidaojiang Meeting Observing the international and domestic political context and the military situation in the Northeast, Lin Biao sensed both danger and opportunity. The Nationalist armies had penetrated deeply into western and southern Manchuria, but in doing so they had become widely dispersed and had left a relative vacuum in the area north of Changchun up to the Songhua River. Lin planned to take advantage of this weakness to launch an offensive that, he said, would “change the entire situation.”11 However, a preliminary mid-November operation in which Lin’s troops attacked isolated Nationalist positions north of Changchun led to few results.12 By early December, when the rivers had frozen solid, Lin feared that Du Yuming’s armies would cross the ice and attack Harbin. Nationalist officers had been hinting as much to the Americans in Nanjing.13 Communist intelligence reports suggested that the attack would come soon, before the weather turned impossibly cold. On the night of 9 December, Lin Biao’s headquarters went on high alert. Within an hour, Lin had fired off seven urgent telegrams ordering troops to sabotage the rail lines between Changchun and Harbin and mobilizing the Second and Sixth Columns for possible combat. Lin was fully prepared to retreat, lure the Nationalist forces deep into northern Manchuria, and revert to a combination of mobile and guerrilla operations.14 The crisis of 9–12 December turned out to have been a false alarm. There was no imminent Nationalist assault on Harbin. Nonetheless, Harbin was vulnerable. The key to its safety was in southern Manchuria. As long as the Communists maintained their presence in the small



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive65

South Manchuria Base Area, they could threaten the Nationalist rear and tie down Nationalist troops, thus preventing Du Yuming from concentrating his forces for an attack north across the Songhua.15 But the South Manchuria Base Area was in an even more tenuous position than Harbin. Lin Biao had been worried about the viability of the South Manchuria Base Area since at least late October, when his dissatisfaction with the performance of the commanders in southern Manchuria prompted him to send two of his close colleagues, Xiao Jinguang and Chen Yun, from Harbin to take command of the situation.16 Xiao and Chen set out from Harbin on 27 October. Proceeding by a circuitous route through the Soviet Union and North Korea and delayed by poor transportation and a railway accident, the two comrades arrived in Linjiang (the main town of the South Manchuria Base Area) a month later.17 The situation in southern Manchuria was far from encouraging. The area itself now consisted of four rural counties with a total population of only 23,000. It would be difficult for such a small population, most of them poor peasants, to provide the resources, the logistical support, and the new recruits needed to maintain two Chinese Communist columns. The area itself was infested with bandits, former Manchukuo policemen, and local militia. The people did not know or trust the Communists, thought that they were doomed to defeat, and preferred not to have anything to do with them. This made it difficult for the Communists to gather intelligence or to keep their plans and movements secret and difficult to take the enemy by surprise.18 Morale among the Communist troops was low. Facing a winter of minus forty degrees Celsius with inadequate food, clothing, and shelter, the soldiers were complaining that “every place the brass tells us to fight for, we lose” and that they were destined to “go take a drink in the Yalu River.”19 Lin Biao was confident that despite all these disadvantages, the South Manchuria Base Area could remain a valuable asset if it had the right leadership. The two columns stationed there (the Third and Fourth), a total of nine divisions and four artillery regiments, represented some two-fifths of total Communist troop strength in the Northeast. Their weapons and ammunition, though limited, were on the whole superior to those of the main force north of the Songhua. The mountainous terrain, the climate,

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and the characteristics of the population of southern Manchuria all held great potential for Communist base-building and military operations. In addition, the fact that the South Manchuria Base Area was adjacent to North Korea meant that the Nationalists would not be able to surround it: the Communists could use North Korea as a source of logistical support and a safe rear area.20 With Xiao Jinguang taking over as commander and Chen Yun as political commissar, the South Manchuria Base Area could remain viable. Xiao and Chen’s first job was to convince the commanders of the Third and Fourth Columns that they really could and should continue to defend the base area. Xiao and Chen spent over half a month meeting with cadres from the Third and Fourth Columns, getting familiar with the men and the situation.21 Then, beginning on 11 December, they held a four-day meeting of cadres of divisional level and above at the frontline headquarters in the village of Qidaojiang. The meeting naturally revolved around the fundamental question: stay in southern Manchuria or withdraw to join the main force north of the Songhua? The majority of the men at the Qidaojiang meeting wanted to abandon southern Manchuria as fast as possible. Preparations were already under way to pull all the regular forces out and leave only some local units to conduct guerrilla operations from small bases deep in the mountains.22 When Xiao Jinguang (who was initially in charge of the meeting) told them “we can hold South Manchuria, but we will have to go several rounds [with the enemy],” he was greeted with derisive laughter.23 His opponents argued that the base area was too small for large units to conduct mobile operations, that there was not a sufficient pool of new recruits, and that their forces were inferior to the Nationalists both in numbers and in weapons.24 As the meeting dragged on, word came that the enemy was advancing on two Communist positions. At the end of his tether, Xiao sent a message asking Chen Yun to come and take control. Chen Yun arrived late at night on 13 December in the teeth of a vicious snowstorm, nursing a cold. Nonetheless, he spent the next few hours listening patiently to each man’s point of view, telling them “Comrade Xiao Jinguang does the military business, he’s very learned in that regard; you’re all military men. I’m not a military man. I’ve come to listen to your ideas.



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive67

Everybody should put their suggestions forward, everybody should think about what to do.”25 In fact, Chen Yun had already made up his mind. Listening to everyone’s ideas was simply a part of the process of forging a consensus. The next day, Chen addressed the meeting. Explaining that the Third and Fourth Columns would lose more men by retreating to northern Manchuria (or in the worst case scenario, all the way to the Soviet Union) and then having to fight their way back south, Chen argued that if the Communists continued to keep Du Yuming’s forces tied down in southern Manchuria, he would be unable to attack north of the Songhua. Chen concluded: “I am here to make the decision, and the decision is that we stay in southern Manchuria.”26 The Third Column would defend Linjiang against the Nationalist offensive. The Fourth Column would be sent to conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines. Not everybody agreed, but they had their orders. There would be no more debate.27 Defending Linjiang The decision to defend Linjiang was difficult but ultimately correct. Beginning in mid-December 1946, the Communists turned back four Nationalist offensives against the South Manchuria Base Area. When the Fourth Defense of Linjiang drew to a close in early April 1947, the strategic situation was very different than it had been five months earlier. In December 1946, Du Yuming’s Nationalist forces still grasped the initiative: the Communists could do little more than react and defend. By the spring of 1947, it was the Nationalists who would have to react to the Communists’ moves. The Northeast Democratic United Army (NDUA) did not achieve this strategic transition without making substantial sacrifices. The First Defense of Linjiang was particularly difficult. On 17 December Du Yuming threw six divisions into an all-out assault on the South Manchuria Base Area. Xiao Jinguang and Chen Yun’s response was to use a combination of conventional mobile defense on the front line and guerrilla operations in the enemy’s rear area. As Xiao Jinguang explained it to the commanders of the Third and Fourth Columns on 21 December: “Putting primary emphasis on military resistance to [the KMT’s] extermination [campaign], send strong guerrilla units [i.e., the Fourth Column] deep into the enemy’s rear areas to conduct wide-ranging guerrilla operations, disrupt the enemy’s

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extermination [campaign], recover the broad rural areas, restore [local Communist] political power, and attack and slow down the enemy’s new offensive. The main force [i.e., the Third Column and the Fourth Column’s artillery units] should assemble in an appropriate position and prepare to annihilate a part of the enemy as he attacks, in coordination with the guerrilla resistance.”28 From his headquarters in Harbin, Lin Biao told Xiao Jinguang to adopt an active defense, surrounding vulnerable enemy positions in order to draw out and annihilate reinforcements.29 Lin also expected the troops to conduct “hard-fighting battles.” As Lin described it: “Because the situation of mass [support] has not yet matured, our army finds it very difficult to secretly draw close to the enemy; in addition, the enemy forces that we encounter are relatively strong, so they cannot be defeated in a single blow. Furthermore, the enemy’s railway and road networks are closely-knit, so he can send reinforcements very quickly. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve the usual situation of superiority in which we hit the enemy individually in battles of annihilation.”30 Lin explained that under these circumstances, the Communists would need to fight “hard-fighting battles” in which they might have only a six or seven out of ten chance of victory, and in which the result might be the annihilation of an enemy unit, but might end with nothing more than heavy casualties on both sides. In Lin’s estimation, the situation called for taking this kind of calculated risk while depending on his soldiers to fight with bitter determination.31 The Third and Fourth Columns tried to put these tactical guidelines (as well as the “3-3 system” and “one point, two flanks”) into practice in their defense of the South Manchuria Base Area. When possible, units from the Third Column surrounded and attacked isolated Nationalist units, both in order to inflict maximum casualties on those units and to draw out and attack reinforcements. Nonetheless, there were numerous problems: Communist cadres often did not dare to conduct flanking and envelopment moves, and therefore did not wipe out as many enemy soldiers as Xiao Jinguang thought they could have. In some instances the Communists stayed in their trenches without making any attempt to conduct an active defense. At other times, commanders sent entire regiments charging blindly forward without any organization or coordination.32 While the Third Column held off the Nationalist offensive, the Fourth Column broke through enemy lines on 18 December to conduct over

Breaking the Nationalist Offensive69







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4.1 The Three Expeditions/Four Map 4.1. The Three Expeditions/Four Defenses Campaign.

Defenses

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ten days of guerrilla operations.33 The Fourth Column’s main goal was to attack local Nationalist forces in order to force Du Yuming to transfer regular units away from the front lines.34 To accomplish this goal, the constituent units of the Fourth Column broke up and conducted a series of small engagements in which they targeted small enemy units and threatened railway lines and roads.35 These operations were conducted under brutal conditions. Poorly clothed, poorly equipped Communist soldiers marched 70–100 li (13–20 kilometers) a day, braving deep snow and temperatures as low as minus forty degrees Celsius, moving constantly, often using remote mountain paths to conceal their movements.36 All this was accomplished with very little logistical support from the masses. The rural population of South Manchuria had largely given up on the Communists. The local governments, party organizations, and militia that the Communists had hastily set up only months earlier had evaporated. Land reform had not brought the peasants any long-term gains.37 As Xiao Jinguang noted in a report to Lin Biao: “We must acknowledge that the Nationalist Party has a not inconsiderable foundation in rural society. Special agents, police, hooligans and landlords are the core ruling forces in the countryside.”38 Accordingly, in addition to combat, the Fourth Column also conducted propaganda, writing slogans on the walls of the villages that they passed through, distributing propaganda leaflets, talking to the people, and demonstrating by their presence that the Communist Party had not yet been defeated.39 Not all the Fourth Column’s operations were successful. As Lin Biao had pointed out, the railway system still gave the Nationalists an advantage when it came to moving troops quickly to trouble spots. As a result, whenever the Communists set out to fight a small battle, they had to be prepared for it to become a larger engagement. They also had to be prepared to flee if too many Nationalist reinforcements showed up. This made it difficult for the Communists to surround and annihilate isolated Nationalist units.40 In addition, some of the units of the Fourth Column simply performed poorly under pressure. Ideally, a Communist commander operating behind enemy lines would disperse his forces when the enemy was pursuing him in order to confuse the enemy commander and compel him to disperse his own forces. Then, when the conditions were right, the Communist commander should recover the initiative,



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive71

concentrate his forces, and attack one or more of the now fragmented enemy units. In practice, commanders sometimes found it difficult to gauge correctly when and how widely to disperse their units and when and where to concentrate them for an attack. For example, the Communist Twelfth Division’s Thirty-fifth Regiment lost two battalions because the commander dispersed his forces too widely, so that the Nationalists were able to pick them off one by one.41 In early January the commanders of the Twelfth Division simply lost heart and withdrew to the safety of the Soviet-controlled Guandongzhou area of the Liaodong Peninsula, just north of Dalian.42 Despite these weaknesses, the First Defense of Linjiang was a success. The Fourth Column’s operations forced Du Yuming to transfer two divisions (the Twenty-second and the Ninety-first) back to secure his rear area, thus reducing the pressure on the front lines. On 18–19 January, units from the Third and Fourth Columns defeated the Nationalist Second Division at the town of Ji’an. Xiao Jinguang was not completely satisfied with the result: his verdict was that the operation had “basically achieved its task,” which was to cut a key railway line and thus foil the Nationalist attempt to blockade the South Manchuria Base Area.43 With this battle, Du Yuming called a halt to operations. The first attempt to eliminate the South Manchuria Base Area was over. Du Yuming would try to attack Linjiang three more times over the next three months. In the Second Defense of Linjiang (30 January to 8 February), Xiao Jinguang noted that the Nationalist 195th Division, which was trying to outflank him from the north, had driven deep into Communist territory and was isolated from the other three enemy divisions. On 5 February, Xiao used three of his divisions to attack the 195th at Gaolichengzi in snow so deep that neither horses nor motor vehicles could pass through. Achieving victory (a reported 2,000 enemy casualties), Xiao quickly deployed two divisions to outflank and envelop the Nationalist 207th Division’s Third Regiment, which had been on the way to reinforce the 195th Division.44 The annihilation of the Third Regiment marked the end of the Second Defense of Linjiang. Although they had now fended off two Nationalist offensives, Xiao Jinguang’s forces were still on the defensive. Many of his cadres still doubted that they could continue to defend the base area. This situation

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began to change with the Third Defense of Linjiang. On 13 February, five Nationalist divisions began to advance toward Linjiang, moving forward along four vectors. Once again, Xiao identified and hit a weak point in the Nationalist offensive. By 12 March, he had defeated three out of the five Nationalist divisions, killing, wounding, or capturing (according to Communist sources) nearly 10,000 enemy soldiers.45 At this point, Xiao’s cadres began to gain confidence. As it turned out, they would need all the confidence that they could muster. Xiao and Chen themselves were concerned about the viability of the South Manchuria Base Area and asked Lin Biao for reinforcements and supplies. The shortage of men was critical: when the Nationalists launched their fourth attack, this time with seven divisions, Xiao Jinguang had only four divisions on the front lines, with another two operating in the enemy’s rear area. Chen Yun and Xiao were deeply aware of the danger that they were in, but they were determined to fend off the Nationalists, even if it cost them two-thirds or three-quarters of their troops.46 Once again, Xiao and Chen had to spend days discussing the situation with their commanders, convincing them that the defense was both necessary and feasible. This time, Xiao told his commanders, the Communists would seize the initiative. The Nationalist forces had begun to move on 28 March. On 3 April, before the Nationalists had engaged the Communist main forces, Xiao Jinguang suddenly outflanked, enveloped, and attacked the Nationalist Eighty-ninth Division, annihilating an entire regiment.47 This loss prompted Nationalist commander Zheng Dongguo (standing in for Du Yuming, who was ill) to call off the entire offensive. Over the course of the four defenses of Linjiang, Chen Yun and Xiao Jinguang’s forces had killed, wounded, or captured a reported 40,000 or more Nationalist soldiers. Their success on the battlefield had also given them increased confidence—particularly confidence in their ability to overcome seemingly insuperable obstacles through sheer willpower and physical effort. On 2 April, on the eve of the victory that ended the KMT’s fourth offensive, Chen Yun reported to Lin Biao’s headquarters that he and Xiao had resolved a fundamental conceptual problem among the cadres in South Manchuria—the problem of whether or not to defend the base area in order to prevent the Nationalists from concentrating all their forces on North Manchuria. No longer were the cadres in southern Manchuria



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive73

determined to “preserve their forces” by avoiding battle. Pointing to the tremendous sacrifices that his men had made, Chen asked the Northeast Bureau to give further consideration to the question of mutual support and coordination between the Communist forces in different regions of the Northeast. In doing so, Chen made it very clear that in his opinion, Communist units in other areas did not really understand the sacrifices that the South Manchuria Base Area forces were making and that they had not given enough attention to the need to conduct operations that could have tied down even more enemy troops in order to relieve the pressure on Linjiang, nor had other areas sent enough men and supplies to help strengthen the embattled Third and Fourth Columns.48 The First Expedition South of the River Chen Yun may not have gotten as much support from the small Communist guerrilla forces in some of the other areas of Manchuria as he wanted, but the North Manchuria Base Area’s three incursions into Nationalist-held territory south of the Songhua River played a key role in the defense of Linjiang by forcing Du Yuming to shift troops away from the front lines in the south in order to deal with new challenges in the north. The coordination of the Three Expeditions South of the [Songhua] River and the Four Defenses of Linjiang is an example of the way in which Lin Biao put Mao’s principle of the active defense into practice by conducting an “offensive-defensive campaign.”49 Chinese peasants put it in simpler terms: “cutting a pig’s ear while castrating him.”50 But in the conduct of operations south of the Songhua, Lin’s forces did more than just take pressure off Linjiang: they also began to learn through experience how to coordinate infantry, artillery, and armor to attack enemy positions in towns and small cities. The lessons derived from these experiences helped the Communist troops to move toward the capability of conducting largescale positional assaults, culminating in the attack on Jinzhou during the Liao-Shen Campaign. The First Expedition got under way on 5 January 1947. The operation had been in the works since at least mid-December, and Chen Yun had been pushing Lin Biao to get started.51 On 3 January Lin assured Chen that he was preparing for action, but warned him that the scale of operations would be limited: the weather was so cold that machine guns

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would not fire at night and his poorly clothed men would be susceptible to frostbite.52 When Lin’s forces (the First, Second, and Sixth Columns, along with three independent divisions and three artillery units) did cross the Songhua River, they engaged the enemy in three battles and a series of smaller operations before they retreated back across the river on 17 January. The First Expedition achieved its strategic goals of drawing Nationalist forces away from southern Manchuria, annihilating Nationalist forces, and weakening Nationalist positions north of Changchun, but the conduct of operations revealed some serious tactical shortcomings. The centerpiece of the First Expedition was an attack on the Nationalists at the town of Qitamu and an accompanying ambush of reinforcements at Zhangmazigou. There was a garrison of around 700 American-equipped Nationalist soldiers at Qitamu. The soldiers’ morale was low (many of them were new recruits), but the position was well-defended: two mountain guns, abatis, pillboxes, and barbed wire entanglements on the perimeter, and over a hundred bunkers at street intersections inside the town. The Communist First Column, Third Division, responsible for the attack, had 6,300 men, but lack of training offset their numerical advantage. Column and divisional commanders seriously underestimated the enemy, partly because they were unaware of the concept of defense in depth—they assumed that if they broke through the enemy’s front line, the battle would be over. This confidence led them to assign the task of the attack to a single regiment; the regimental commanders in turn ordered two battalions to conduct the attack itself, one each from two different directions. Each battalion used only one company for its assault. This error, combined with poor choice of terrain over which to advance and failures of communication, meant that although the Communist soldiers (many of them Koreans) fought bravely, they suffered heavy casualties. On 6 January, with Qitamu under attack, Nationalist reinforcements (two battalions and other miscellaneous units) made their way slowly along the road from Jiutai toward Qitamu, armored cars in the lead. The Nationalist commander did not know that Communist intelligence operatives had tapped the Nationalist telephone lines and knew that he would pass through Zhangmazigou the next day. That night, Communist soldiers got into position and lay patiently in ambush, eating snow to slake their



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive75

thirst and chewing on roasted rice. The next morning, the Nationalists walked right into the trap and were wiped out. With no hope of reinforcement, the Nationalists withdrew from Qitamu on 8 January. The Communists failed to pursue. Also on 8 January, Communist forces attacked the Nationalists at Jiaojialing. Here too, tactical errors meant that the Communists suffered setbacks and heavy casualties before they finally prevailed.53 The attack on Jiaojialing marked the end of major operations for the First Expedition. Communist forces retreated back north of the Songhua on 17 January. It was characteristic of Lin Biao that he should act quickly to derive lessons from the experiences of the First Expedition and use them to prepare for future operations. On 9 January, having read reports of the setbacks at Qitamu and the successful ambush at Zhangmazigou, Lin told his commanders throughout the Northeast that since the Nationalists were capable of mounting strong resistance and could send reinforcements out quickly, the Communists should only make a pretense of attacking heavily defended towns and cities while using their main forces to intercept and annihilate reinforcements, preferably through ambush or by tempting them into attacking a Communist position and then cutting them off from behind.54 In tactical terms, the experience of the First Expedition pointed toward the continued need for commanders to grasp the principles of “one point, two flanks” and the “3-3 system” in order to be more effective on the battlefield while reducing casualties. The poor performance of troops at Qitamu and Jiaojialing pointed clearly to the need to do better at concentrating manpower and firepower, at reconnaissance and the use of terrain, and at communication and coordination between units.55 Another lesson that Lin Biao learned from the First Expedition was to wait until the weather got warmer before sending his troops out for a second time. During the First Expedition, he had lost more men to frostbite than had been killed or wounded.56 It was not until 13 February, during a three-day military work meeting during which he outlined the changing situation in the Northeast that Lin announced that the Second Expedition would begin on the twentieth.57 Lin told his men that this second expedition could change the strategic situation: the KMT had a limited number of mobile troops that they could deploy for offensive operations.

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If the NDUA could annihilate one or two divisions, then the Nationalists would lose the initiative.58 The Second Expedition During the Second Expedition, Lin’s forces conducted some of their earliest simple combined arms operations, using infantry and artillery units to attack Nationalist positions. Most of Lin’s men and officers were unfamiliar with this style of combat. Lin himself issued very specific advice, for instance, explaining to his men that they would need at least four hours of daylight so that infantry and artillery commanders could conduct joint observation of the situation on the front lines in order to choose the points from which the infantry would depart and at which they would make contact with and try to break through enemy lines; where artillery fire should be focused; where observation points and artillery positions should be located; and so on.59 Communist forces conducted two such operations during the Second Expedition: a successful attack on Chengzijie and a failed assault on the town of Dehui. Chengzijie, Dehui, and other Nationalist positions targeted during the Second Expedition lie on the Manchurian plain roughly between Changchun and the Songhua River. As in the First Expedition, the Communist goal was to annihilate Nationalist units by attacking enemy positions and drawing out reinforcements. Chengzijie and Dehui were the two primary targets. At Chengzijie Lin Biao—whose intelligence units reported that the enemy troops were preparing to abandon the city—cut through the chain of command, ordering the First Column’s Second Division to depart from their original plan in order to make a forced march to cut off the enemy’s route of retreat, which they accomplished on 21 February.60 Other units from the First and Sixth Columns completed the envelopment of Chengzijie, attacking and capturing the town on 22 February.61 With Chengzijie captured and Nationalist units retreating from nearby positions at Jiutai and Nong’an, the Communists had an opportunity to focus on a harder target: the town of Dehui. The attack on Dehui was a disaster. The battle came at a time when Lin Biao was trying to change the combat style of the NDUA away from small-scale operations toward “big battles.” Telling his cadres that the masses had been mobilized, that the basis of logistical support had been



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive77

laid, and that great progress had been made in building and training the army and raising its morale while the enemy was weaker and spread more thinly than before, Lin wrote: “With the circumstances of the enemy and ourselves in this condition, our army’s spirit of combat should be bold: there is no need to be timid or cautious . . . as long as you do a good job at conducting reconnaissance (as opposed to blind impetuosity) and concentrate superior firepower and manpower on the enemy’s weak point and conduct fierce, repeated, unstoppable in-depth breakthrough, then there is no reason not to achieve victory.”62 On the same day that he gave this advice, Lin told his commanders at and around Dehui that Du Yuming was sending Nationalist reinforcements toward the town, but that it would take them four days to get there. Therefore: “Our forces must capture Dehui within four days of today.” In order to achieve this goal, Lin sent a few more artillery units.63 As it turned out, Lin’s initial confidence had been based on faulty intelligence. On 26 February he told Sixth Column commander Hong Xuezhi that the Nationalists had only one battalion of regular troops, supplemented by some local units. That evening he learned that the Fiftieth Division command was at Dehui—total enemy troop strength was around 4,000–5,000.64 Still, Lin was confident of success. Hong Xuezhi, as commander on the ground, was determined to wipe out the Nationalists. None should escape. Accordingly, he attacked the town from all four sides. The Sixteenth Division, supported by eighteen mountain and field guns, struck from the southwest; the Seventeenth Division, with twenty-three mountain and field guns and three Japanese light tanks, would attack from the east; the Eighteenth Division, with twenty-one mountain and field guns, was on the northwest; and the Independent Second Division, with eighteen mountain and field guns, was to hit Dehui from the southeast. The assault began at 5:00 pm on 28 February. Ninety artillery pieces, evenly distributed among four divisions, opened up, attempting to prepare the way for each of the four divisions to make a breakthrough in its sector of the Dehui perimeter. The results were less than satisfactory. Dehui was strongly defended, not by two brigades, as originally thought, but by two regiments of the crack New First Army, along with local Peace Preservation units—a total of around 7,000 men.65 The Nationalists mounted a strong counterattack on 1 March, driving the Communists back from the city.

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To make matters worse, Nationalist reinforcements, using the railway line, were advancing faster than expected.66 On 1 March, Lin decided to order his troops to withdraw from Dehui back north of the Songhua River before the enemy could make contact with them.67 Nationalist forces under the command of Sun Liren pursued the Communists but ignored Du Yuming’s order to outflank them and cut them off.68 As the fleeing Communists crossed back north over the frozen Songhua River, the Nationalists opened the sluice gates on the Xiaofengman dam upstream, sending water cascading down over the ice in an attempt to block the Communist retreat. The Communist soldiers struggled on, finding their footing on the original frozen surface of the river, fending off huge chunks of ice as they waded through the waist-high, frigid floodwaters.69 On 2 March, with his men in full retreat, an apparently chastened Lin Biao told the Central Military Commission: “This operation demonstrates three characteristics of our army’s situation: 1) we cannot move with secrecy, nor can we swiftly discover the enemy’s movements; 2) the enemy can use the railways to move reinforcements quickly; 3) the New First Army has greater powers of resistance than the other enemy forces.”70 Lin’s comments to Hong Xuezhi and the other cadres of the Sixth Column were more direct: With regard to the battle at Dehui, I hope that you will conduct a deep and acute critique, not with the goal of pursuing individual responsibility, but because without a thorough understanding of the importance of concentrating manpower and firepower on a single point, I can guarantee that in the future, you will still fight this kind of messed-up battle. Your style of fighting may sometimes still work against bandits, weak armies and defeated armies, but if you fight a strong enemy, it will certainly lead to defeat. This time, when you divided four divisions up in four different directions and used 90 artillery pieces in a dispersed fashion, it was inevitable that you would attack everywhere without being able to break through anywhere, or that having broken through, you would be unable to build on the breakthrough. According to the correct way of fighting, you should have used the second independent division along with eight artillery pieces to conduct secondary attacks while you should have used three divisions and 80 artillery pieces to hit one point (not to attack across a broad front), with two divisions as the first echelon, advancing shoulder to shoulder, covered by 80 artillery pieces, saving one division as the second echelon, and then there would be absolutely no reason not to achieve victory.71



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Lin further noted that most of his column and divisional commanders had still not resolved the problem of dispersing their forces when they should be concentrating them. The problem was that the vast majority of cadres are just afraid of crowding up their soldiers, and they haven’t thought of the fact that although the advance force attacking a narrow sector cannot have too much manpower at once, no matter what their numbers, all the firepower can be used [to protect them], and at the same time, they haven’t been aware that in the process of battle, the first echelon may be thrown into chaos after charging the enemy position a few times, and after they have fallen into chaos you have to send in the second echelon, and then the third echelon in order to conduct a series of assaults on the breakthrough point, otherwise, your operations will grind to halt.72

He urged all his cadres to take these lessons to heart: “From the standpoint of responsibility to the revolution, you should study with a modest heart, because war is a bloody affair, an affair bearing on the lives of soldiers and Communist Party members, and it is essential that every commander should have a sincere attitude and a spirit of responsibility.”73 The Third Expedition Despite the loss at Dehui, the Second Expedition had weakened the Nationalists in the area between Changchun and the Songhua River. Sensing an opportunity to attack isolated Nationalist units, Lin Biao sent his forces back south across the river only days afterward on 7 March.74 This time Lin and a few staff officers also crossed the river to set up a frontline command post at Nong’an.75 Lin was also present at one of the key battles of the Third Expedition, an attack on the village of Kaoshantun, in which Lin used the Second Column’s Fifth Division (some 10,000 men), supported by four tanks, to conduct a surprise attack against a single Nationalist battalion, annihilating them within three hours.76 Then with more Nationalist troops headed for Changchun from southern Manchuria and with the Songhua River about to thaw, Lin ordered his troops to withdraw back north on 16 March.77 As they had throughout the Three Expeditions Campaigns, the Nationalist troops failed to effectively pursue and outflank the Communists.78 In late March, Lin Biao held two meetings (each three to five days) to summarize the lessons of the Three Expeditions/Four Defenses

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Campaign—one a military work meeting, the other a political work meeting.79 There was much to discuss. The Communists had gained weapons and inflicted thousands of casualties on the Nationalist forces (Communist sources claim 19,000 KMT casualties and 40,000 captives), but they had also lost perhaps 12,000 men.80 The Communists could replenish their ranks by recruiting young men from the Northeastern countryside; the Nationalists, stretched thin both in Manchuria and in North China, would find it more difficult to rebuild their forces.81 But the Communists needed to do more than recruit men—they needed to teach their men and their cadres to fight effectively. The main goal of the military and political work meetings was to draw useful lessons from the successes, but also from the failures of the Three Expeditions/Four Defenses. In his talks and directives around this time, Lin outlined the accomplishments made since January, but he also cautioned against overconfidence, warning that the Nationalists were still a formidable enemy and that they were capable of launching another offensive: Communist cadres should not become self-satisfied and lazy.82 As a warning, Lin pointed explicitly to the botched attack on Dehui and urged his cadres to do a better job of organizing manpower and firepower, coordinating artillery and infantry, and using explosives.83 Lin also added two more tactical principles to his growing set of guidelines. Earlier, he had put forward “one point, two flanks” and the “3-3 system.” Now, he suggested “four teams, one unit” and “four fast, one slow.” “Four teams, one unit” was a simple organizational principle that called for the men of each company to be divided into four combat teams: a firepower team, a strike team, a demolition team, and a reserve team.84 The principle of “four fast, one slow” was meant to address the tendency to attack without having made sufficient preparations. As Lin himself described the problem: “In the past, many of our comrades’ general way of fighting was that they were accustomed to a combat technique which was simply to charge [the enemy]; this technique of fighting is simple and gratifying, and it is assured of victory when attacking an enemy who is in retreat or who is weak, but if you run into a strong enemy, it will leave you broken and bloodied.”85 “One slow” referred to the need for commanders to take the time to understand the enemy’s situation and the terrain and to get all their troops and artillery prepared and in place before attacking



Breaking the Nationalist Offensive81

an enemy position. Lest there be any misunderstanding on this point, Lin emphasized that “one slow” did not mean to work slowly: the actual work of preparation should be done fast, the troops should advance fast, and after an attack had made initial gains, they must follow up fast. The End of the Marshall Mission Back in December 1946, when Du Yuming’s armies were beginning their offensive against the Communist South Manchuria Base Area, Chiang Kai-shek had assured George Marshall that he could eliminate the Communists within three to eight months.86 Marshall thought otherwise; he was concerned that Chiang’s continuing military action was standing in the way of any resumption of the negotiations, which, as we have seen, had effectively ground to a halt in mid-November.87 But Chiang’s confidence was so great that he even believed that he could change Marshall’s mind. On 15 December he wrote in his diary: “According to Marshall’s comments, he feels that his attitude toward our government has not been very appropriate, and he worries that it will be difficult for us to have any future cooperation. He no longer insists on refusing to be advisor to our government, and he seems to have been moved by my sincerity.”88 Chiang was, of course, completely mistaken. He and Marshall continued to advance along increasingly diverging paths. Chiang, as we have seen, continued with his military operations, apparently oblivious to the fact that his lack of progress in the battlefield confirmed his American allies’ doubts. In the political arena, he pushed forward with the National Assembly that (still without Communist participation) adopted a constitution on 25 December 1946. The Americans regarded this as “a primitive step toward democracy.” Ambassador Stuart, characteristically, was more optimistic about this “primitive step” than Marshall, and hoped to capitalize on it in order to improve Chiang’s image in Washington.89 Stuart’s optimism was rooted in his personal feelings for China and his friendship with Chiang: it did not reflect the positions of Marshall or of President Truman. On 18 December, Truman had reaffirmed the American belief that a united, democratic China was important for world peace, expressed his regret that China had been unable to achieve unity through peaceful means, and reminded all concerned that the United States would not get involved in a Chinese civil war. It was a speech that left much open

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to interpretation. The Nationalist press, not surprisingly, chose to interpret it as an endorsement of the Nanjing government’s policies.90 In fact, the Americans believed that Chiang had completely mishandled China’s financial and security problems. Marshall explained to John Robinson Beal (as Beal recalled): “It was China’s fault that she was in this hole. They had told him [Marshall] in June that it would take them only two months to clear the Communists out of northern Kiangsu [ Jiangsu] and they weren’t out yet, he repeated how he had told them their military miscalculations had created a financial vacuum into which they were expecting the U.S. to pour taxpayer’s money, and he refused to recommend that.”91 On 6 January, President Truman announced that he had summoned Marshall back to Washington to report on the situation in China. Marshall departed on 8 January, issuing a very frank statement in which his intention was to strengthen liberal elements within the Kuomintang, but Chiang and his supporters took this as Marshall blaming them for the failure of his mission.92 Both Chiang and the Communists regarded Marshall’s departure as a diplomatic victory. The Communists saw the end of the Marshall Mission and the subsequent withdrawal of the three-man cease-fire teams as an end of any excuse for the continued presence of American troops on Chinese soil.93 Chiang was pleased that he could make quick decisions on how to deal with the Communists now that Marshall was gone. In his diary, he reflected that for the past year, he had spent most of his time on political, economic, and foreign affairs questions and that he had not been able to give his concentrated attention to military issues. Now, he hoped to be able to rectify that problem.94 As we have seen, Chiang and Du Yuming had been unable to achieve their strategic goal in Manchuria—by April Lin Biao’s Three Expeditions/ Four Defenses Campaign had stymied the Nationalist “first south, then north” strategy. But Chiang remained optimistic. In those parts of China that he controlled, his personal popularity and the legitimacy of his government were still quite high.95 Without Marshall to worry about, his government made mass arrests of undesirables in Beiping. Among the 2,000–3,000 rounded up were liberal and left-wing students and professors and the publisher of the Sino-American Press.96 On 14 March, Chiang’s armies initiated an offensive against Mao Zedong’s base at Yan’an.



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Mao, who placed little value on holding the city, withdrew; the Nationalists entered with great fanfare on 19 March, declaring (not for the first time) that the Communists would be defeated in a matter of months.97 Such predictions of imminent military victory had long since lost any value. The Americans had no faith at all in Chiang’s military capabilities, but neither did they believe that an outright Communist victory was imminent. In early 1947, President Truman “told one friend that nothing could be done to prevent Russian domination of Manchuria.”98 In March, Truman had put forth the Truman Doctrine, calling on the United States to assist governments threatened by Communist insurgencies. Aid was accordingly extended to Turkey and Greece. When challenged by Representative Walter Judd as to why the United States was not doing more to help Chiang’s government, Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained: “The Chinese government is not in the position at present time that the Greek Government is in. It is not approaching collapse. It is not threatened by defeat by the Communists. The war with the Communists is going on much as it has for the last 20 years.”99 In the relative privacy of a cabinet meeting, President Truman explained the reason for the difference in American policy toward Greece and China in more straightforward language: “Chiang Kai-shek will not fight it out. Communists will fight it out—they are fanatical. It would be pouring sand down a rat-hole.”100

If these two places, Changchun and Shenyang, don’t waver, then we can still keep the situation in the Northeast under control. —Chiang Kai-shek, 20 June, 1947, in Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong

Militarily, I view the situation in Manchuria as practically untenable for the Nationalists. —General Albert C. Wedemeyer to War Department,   8 August 1947. Wedemeyer Papers, Box 096

Five

The Summer Offensive and the Wedemeyer Mission ★★★

May–August 1947

As the ice-bound rivers of the Northeast thawed and spring mud of 1947 replaced the receding snows of winter, Chiang Kai-shek and his generals reassessed their situation. Chiang had placed his faith in a short war strategy of taking points and lines, extending out to capture the spaces in between, and annihilating Communist forces in quick, decisive battles. That strategy had failed. The Nationalists had captured a number of Communist positions in southern Manchuria and had even driven Mao Zedong out of his base area at Yan’an in North China, but Chiang’s commanders had never been able to outflank, pin down and annihilate Communist armies. In accounting for this failure, Chiang’s generals pointed to a lack of coherent planning and preparation, a tendency to conduct too many broad offensives with too few troops, and a divided, chaotic command system.1 In light of the failure of the “first south, then north” strategy in the Northeast, Chiang’s advisor Chen Lifu urged the Generalissimo to abandon Manchuria for the time being and focus his military efforts on North China.2 Chiang’s response was to concentrate on a single theater: Shandong province. Following Chen’s advice, he would put Manchuria on the back burner. Du Yuming would have to remain on the defensive, holding the line on the south bank of the Songhua River, keeping control over the 85

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crucial Bei-Ning line and Rehe, and defending the area on either side of the China-Changchun line between Shenyang and Changchun.3 As of late June 1947, Chiang still believed that if his forces in the Northeast remained determined and held their positions, the situation would remain stable. As usual, Chiang tried to put a positive spin on the situation when he spoke with his American friends. In early May, he told Ambassador Stuart that he would achieve his military objectives by September. As usual, the Americans, who had heard this sort of talk before, did not take him seriously. Instead, they urged Chiang to carry out the liberalizing political reforms, which they believed were the key to undermining the Communists and building legitimacy for his government.4 Privately, Chiang was very angry about American criticism of his air and ground forces; he also resented American pressure to conduct political reforms. He felt that the Americans were, by and large, an infantile people and that they were adopting an attitude of imperialist superiority toward China.5 He remained convinced that there was only one solution to the Communist problem: the military solution. He did, however, take Chen Lifu’s advice: since he could not fight the Communists everywhere, he would go on the defensive in the Northeast and focus on Shandong. Unfortunately for Chiang, he could focus on Shandong only if the Communists allowed him to do so. Mao and the Communist Party leadership saw North China, Shandong, and Manchuria as interrelated parts of a whole: they realized that it was in their interest to coordinate operations in all these different theaters in order to prevent Chiang from focusing on any one. So while Chiang was planning to put Manchuria on the back burner, the Communist Party Center was pressing Lin Biao to deliver a victory, both in order to relieve Nationalist pressure on Liu Bocheng and Chen Yi’s forces in North China and Shandong and to give a boost to Communist morale, which had suffered a blow with the loss of Yan’an.6 Lin and the Northeast Bureau made the final decision for the new offensive on 5 May, when they directed their cadres to prepare for an “all-out counter-offensive to annihilate a large number of enemy troops, recover a large amount of territory and enlarge the liberated area.”7 The offensive was originally seen as a forty-day campaign in which divisions from the Northeast Democratic United Army’s regular columns and four independent divisions were to operate individually and flexibly, taking the



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initiative to seek out opportunities to attack and annihilate isolated enemy units. The plan was that over time, each Communist division would eventually wipe out the equivalent of a Nationalist division, one small unit at a time.8 However, once the action began, the Summer Offensive actually unfolded in two stages. In the first stage, from 13 March to 3 June, NDUA units did target weak points, isolated units, towns, and small cities. Success then led Lin Biao (possibly at Mao Zedong’s urging) to attack a larger target: the Nationalist forces under Sun Liren’s command at Siping.9 The results of this new offensive would convince General Albert Wedemeyer and other American observers that the Nationalists would soon lose their remaining positions in the Northeast. The Summer Offensive Begins The Communists began the Summer Offensive with a serious handicap: Lin Biao’s intelligence section was in shambles. Several key intelligence cadres had gone over to the Nationalists. In addition, the Nationalists had just changed all their codes and stepped up their level of secrecy. On 6 May Lin told all his army units that it would be another twenty days before he would be able to receive reliable intelligence reports. In the meantime, they should operate carefully in the Changchun-Huaide-Nong’an area (i.e., not venturing too deeply into enemy territory) and look for opportunities for battle.10 Communist units performed well despite the lack of intelligence. Crossing the Songhua River on 8 May, the NDUA Second Column quickly identified the Nationalist position at Huaide as a target. By 14 May they had enveloped the town and positioned one division to the south to block reinforcements.11 Huaide was a walled city on the west side of the China-Changchun line, functioning as a screen for the segment of the railway between Siping and Changchun. If Huaide fell, the Communists would be able to advance toward Siping—and if Siping fell, Changchun would be cut off from Shenyang. The attack on Huaide was a textbook example of Lin Biao’s tactical style. Having enveloped the enemy position on 14 May, Second Column Commander Liu Zhen and his cadres spent three days observing, planning, and exchanging information with Lin Biao himself. Lin positioned the First Column north of Huaide to block enemy reinforcements out of

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Changchun. At Huaide itself, Liu applied a version of Lin’s “one point, two flanks” principle: he chose two primary breakthrough points and one secondary point, or “flank.” When the attack began early in the morning of 17 May, it took Liu’s men only a few minutes to break through the Nationalist defenses and enter the town. What followed was more difficult—a day and night of fighting through heavily defended streets, alleyways, and walled compounds. The most difficult target was (appropriately enough) the temple of Guandi, the Chinese god of war, which the commander of the Nationalist Ninetieth regiment defended with 400 troops.12 While the Second Column focused in Huaide, other Communist units were attacking Nationalist positions in southern, eastern, and western Manchuria, in Rehe province, and south of the Great Wall in eastern Hebei province. Lin Biao made it clear that he expected commanders on the ground to operate flexibly, acting with initiative and creativity, without waiting passively for orders, in order to take advantage of any opportunity to annihilate enemy units.13 As the campaign developed, it became obvious that the Nationalists were badly overextended. On 20 May, with Huaide and related Nationalist positions in his hands or under attack, Lin was sure that the enemy forces at Siping were “in a state of terror and chaos.”14 Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, feared not only for Siping, but also for Changchun. The Americans had shown their lack of confidence by pulling their consulate out of the city on 20 May. On 21 May, Chiang, having reviewed the situation, concluded that his commanders in Manchuria were devoid of knowledge and skill. In his diary entry the next day, he noted that the situation was terrible and expressed the hope that God would protect China and that things would somehow take a turn for the better. That evening, he comforted himself with a movie.15 Although he appealed to the mercy of God in his diary, Chiang still exuded confidence and decisiveness in public. On 30 May his flew to Shenyang, where he told Xiong Shihui and Du Yuming that he would not accede to their request to transfer the Fifty-third Army to the Northeast. Still determined to focus on Shandong, he ordered them to withdraw from vulnerable positions (such as Andong, Tonghua, and Chifeng) and to concentrate on defending key points.16 And while he condemned his generals as ignoramuses in private, Chiang still noted in public that the Nationalist forces were superior to the Communists in every respect—equipment,



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combat skills, experience, air power, supplies, logistics, and natural resources.17 There was still hope for success. The Third Battle of Siping Because Chiang had chosen to stay on the defensive in the Northeast, success in that theater would be defined as holding on to key positions. One of those positions, Siping, now lay open to Communist attack. If it fell, then both Changchun and Shenyang would be in danger. Siping was a modest-size city by Chinese standards. At the time, it had a population of around 100,000.18 The city itself was divided into two sectors, west and east, with the north–south China-Changchun railway line running between. The railway station faced west toward the Tiexi (“west of the railway”) district, where the city’s sturdy, multistory government and commercial buildings and wealthier neighborhoods were located. On the other side of the tracks was Tiedong (“east of the railway”). Tiedong was a working-class district of simple, single-story houses. The most notable buildings of any size were the Catholic church and bishop’s compound and a school, all staffed by French Canadian missionaries. Communist troops had captured Siping once before, back in March 1946. But their enemy in the First Battle of Siping (and in similar seizures of cities including Changchun and Harbin) had been small numbers of irregular local Nationalist forces who had not had time to build defenses and had very limited combat capabilities. In the Second Battle of Siping (April–May 1946), Lin Biao, at Mao Zedong’s insistence, had defended the city for a month before finally retreating to Harbin. The Nationalists had now controlled Siping for more than a year and had used that time to build extensive defensive works. Chen Mingren, the commander of the Nationalist Seventy-first Army, had his headquarters and main force (two divisions) in the city, as well as one division of the Sixteenth Army and other miscellaneous units—a total of 35,000–37,000 men. Chen’s approach to the defense of Siping was quite different from that of Lin Biao. When Mao ordered him to defend Siping in April 1946, Lin Biao knew that lack of weapons and lack of experience would put his forces at a disadvantage if they simply dug in and tried to fight a positional defense. His first instinct was to conduct mobile operations in the countryside and smaller towns south of the city in an attempt to stop or at least

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The Summer Offensive91

delay the Nationalist advance. When that failed, he established a long line of defense just south of the city, extending for tens of kilometers east and west. He placed relatively few troops in the city itself. When the Nationalists broke through his defenses, captured high ground, and threatened to outflank him, he withdrew. Chen Mingren, confident of his soldiers’ training, experience, and superior firepower and air support, concentrated his forces inside Siping and prepared for a bitter in-depth defense. Siping did not have a traditional city wall, so Chen’s engineers built an earth wall, dry moat, and barbed wire entanglements around the city. Inside the wall, the city streets and buildings were incorporated into a multilayered defensive network, linked together with trenches and punctuated with pillboxes and bunkers. The city was divided into five sectors for defense, each with a command post. The strongest defenses—including the Seventy-first Army headquarters—were in Tiexi. The Nationalist defensive works were so extensive that Communist soldiers who had defended the city themselves just a year earlier found that the terrain in some areas had changed beyond recognition.19 Communist forces were operating in the Siping area as early as 21 May, but they did not move definitively against the city until 2 June, with the actual attack coming twelve days later. This delay gave Chen Mingren time to further strengthen his defenses.20 In his memoirs (written and published in China), Nationalist general Zheng Dongguo reflected that if Lin Biao had attacked Siping earlier, the battle might have gone differently.21 Why, then, did Lin not attack Siping earlier? The answer appears to lie in the relationship between Lin Biao and Mao Zedong. Lin Biao was an operational and tactical, not a strategic, thinker. He was very cautious and had a strong preference for mobile operations over positional warfare, possibly because his troops were poorly prepared to defend or attack cities. Lin’s directives to units operating in and around Siping in late May suggest that he was preparing to make a feint at the city in order to draw Nationalist reinforcements out of Shenyang and to tempt Chen Mingren to send forces out of Siping to meet them, thus giving Lin opportunities to isolate and ambush enemy units.22 As Lin explained on 25 May: “The enemy has already concentrated a relatively large force at Siping, thus it is not convenient to attack him directly, in addition to which there is news that troops will be sent from south of the

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Wall, therefore our army will wait until the enemy at Siping has dispersed along the China-Changchun line and then annihilate him.”23 Chiang Kai-shek interpreted Lin’s hesitation as evidence of his own success. On 26 May he reflected that his air force (Chiang had always been an enthusiastic proponent of air power) had prevented the Communists from attacking Siping and that Changchun and the nearby city of Jilin were now out of danger.24 But just a few days later, Lin Biao was putting the First and Seventh Columns in position to attack Siping (he warned them to conceal their intentions) and cutting the high voltage electrical line to the city.25 Something had happened to change Lin Biao’s mind about attacking Siping. It may have been that Mao Zedong (who was more of a strategic thinker and risk-taker than Lin Biao) pressed Lin to attack the city itself, rather than just conduct mobile operations on the periphery.26 Lin Biao’s commander on the ground at Siping was Li Tianyou (1914– 1970). Li had grown up in a poor family in Guangxi province in southern China, cutting wood, fishing, and gathering edible plants to survive. He joined Chiang Kai-shek’s National Army around the age of fifteen. The next year, he and his unit went over to the Communists. Over the following ten years Li rose up in the ranks, but the experience seems to have taken its toll: in 1939 he was sent to the Soviet Union for treatment of “severe neurosis.” Li stayed in Russia for around four years, undergoing medical treatment and then studying as a special student at the Frunze military academy. In 1943 he and another man returned to China disguised as Mongolian merchants, complete with four camels and a load of leather goods.27 Li Tianyou prepared carefully (or so he thought) for the attack on Siping, communicating regularly with Lin Biao. Lin told Li to choose breakthrough points correctly (they should be where the Communists’ artillery and yellow blasting powder could best be brought into play), to act decisively, and to be mentally prepared to fight for several days and suffer heavy casualties. He specifically warned Li not to repeat the mistakes that Hong Xuezhi had made during the attack on Dehui.28 Mao Zedong may have pushed Lin Biao to undertake this risky operation, but on 13 June, the eve of the attack, Lin and political commissar Luo Ronghuan described the coming battle as a potential turning point. If Li Tianyou succeeded in defeating the Seventy-first Army and capturing Siping, it would lay the



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foundations for an all-out offensive on the Nationalists, beginning with attacks on Changchun and Shenyang.29 Luo Ronghuan was willing to sacrifice 10,000 to 15,000 men in return for a victory.30 Seeing that Chen Mingren had put his strongest forces, including his own Seventy-first Army headquarters, in the more easily defended Tiexi area, Li Tianyou decided to focus his attack on that sector first, while his troops were fresh and rested. If he could eliminate the Nationalist defenders in Tiexi and wipe out the command post, the weaker forces in Tiedong would fall easily. Li accordingly chose the two weakest points in the defensive perimeter around Tiexi as his initial breakthrough points, deploying his own First Column to one and Deng Hua’s Seventh Column to the other. A smaller force was assigned to hit a secondary breakthrough point at Tiedong. The attack began on the afternoon of 14 June. Li expected to finish the battle in three or four days. What followed was sixteen days of bitter combat, heavy losses, retreat, and then a round of criticisms, self-criticisms, and summaries of lessons learned. In hindsight, it became clear that the attack on Siping had been plagued by problems from the start. First, there was the delay from 21 May, when the Communist troops first began operating in the area, to 2 June, when they began deploying to attack the city, and then until 14 June, when the attack began. Second, the Communist intelligence operatives had still not cracked the Nationalists’ new codes. Intelligence reports led Li Tianyou to believe that he was facing 15,000–20,000 men. One of his reconnaissance teams actually did get information suggesting that there were 30,000 troops in the city, but the information was considered unreliable and never got passed any further up the chain of command.31 A third problem was lack of experience and training. Most of the Communist soldiers and cadres had never attacked a heavily defended city. Knowing that they were not prepared for what lay ahead of them, many of them lacked confidence.32 As a result, although the Communist force of seven divisions (the First and Seventh Columns and other units) was twice the number of the Nationalists and had many more artillery pieces, they had only a slim advantage in actual combat power.33 These weaknesses became evident when the attack began. It had rained the night before. Bogged down in the mud, and having failed to dig enough trenches and to adequately camouflage their field command

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posts, the Communists suffered heavy casualties from the Nationalist air force’s strafing and bombing. Li Tianyou had not been able to get all of his artillery in place, and Deng Hua’s Seventh Column was not even ready to conduct their part of the operation, since they had not yet cleared several enemy positions outside the city. Nonetheless, the shock troops of the First Column created a breach in their sector of the enemy perimeter within twenty-eight minutes. The Seventh Column, however, did not break through in their sector until four days later. The fighting within the city went much more slowly than Li Tianyou had expected, particularly during those first four days when his troops were advancing alone through the heavily defended streets of Siping, trying to reach and destroy Chen Mingren’s headquarters. The long days and short nights of mid-June limited the time available for night combat, at which the Communist troops excelled: every day, sunrise left them exposed to Nationalist artillery and to attack from the air. Casualties were heavy and gains were few.34 Still, the Communists pressed on, wearing down Chen Mingren’s troops step by step until, by 21 June, they had driven the Nationalists out of the Tiexi district entirely—although without annihilating enemy units, as they would have preferred. At this point Lin Biao told his column and divisional commanders: “At present, we occupy half the city and have suffered over 8,000 casualties. We are determined to sacrifice 15,000 casualties and fight this battle to the end in a week’s time, completely annihilating the enemy and destroying his will to defend the city.”35 Lin Biao’s soldiers were not the only casualties. Chen Mingren’s decision to conduct an in-depth defense of Siping, fighting street by street, building by building, put the city and its population squarely in the crossfire. There is no way to accurately determine the number of civilian casualties or the scale of physical destruction. Reports were that 85 percent of the city had been demolished, including the Canadian Catholic church.36 After they had withdrawn from Tiexi, the Nationalists used artillery and air power to flatten every building that the Communists had captured or occupied—occasionally with Communist troops inside.37 The destruction continued as the Communists fought slowly through the Tiedong district, paying a heavy price every time they attacked one of the fortified walled compounds that the Nationalists used to defend



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their shrinking territory. Inside their defenses, Nationalist forces were running low on ammunition and morale was wavering. Nationalist officers forced their men to fight on, executing those who tried to retreat.38 Their determination, though brutal, paid off. On 28 June, with Nationalist reinforcements closing in, Lin Biao gave up any hope of defeating Chen Mingren. His forces withdrew on 1 July, marking the end of the Summer Offensive. Lin, Political Commissar Luo Ronghuan, and Chief of Staff Liu Yalou were quick to tell their men that the Summer Offensive had drawn to a victorious conclusion, but they noted that cadres should not allow their celebrations of victory to let them lose sight of the need to look objectively at the NDUA’s performance and to draw lessons from its errors, and particularly from the errors made at Siping.39 The inevitable postmortem came in July. Lin Biao led the way with a self-criticism, acknowledging that his headquarters bore responsibility: he had allowed the victories of the first stage of the Summer Offensive to lull him into a false sense of confidence; he had underestimated the enemy, revealed his own inadequate combat strength by delaying the assault in late May, devoted too little time to planning, and not deployed enough troops to block enemy reinforcements.40 Li Tianyou, too, offered a critical analysis of his performance as the frontline commander at Siping. On rereading the telegrams that he had sent to the Northeast command, Li admitted that “subjective hopes were greater than the objective possibilities of the time.”41 Li and the other commanders at Siping admitted to multiple failures of intelligence, which had led them to underestimate Chen Mingren’s forces, their defenses and their determination, and to be unaware of the role that air power would play. In a self-criticism that may have been aimed at Mao (if it was indeed the case that Mao pressed Lin Biao into conducting the attack on Siping), Li Tianyou suggested that at this stage of the war, the Communist forces were simply not ready to attack a heavily defended city like Siping, much less Changchun, Shenyang, or Jinzhou. Instead, they should focus on surrounding the cities and using their main force to attack and annihilate reinforcements—in other words, precisely what Lin Biao had been planning around May 20–25.42 The defeat at Siping seems to have left a very deep impression in Lin Biao and his top commanders in the Northeast. The experience drove

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home to them the need to train and equip their troops better in order to conduct large-scale positional assaults on major cities—a stage of the war that they could see coming, but that they clearly were not yet ready for.43 It also made them very reluctant to conduct such operations again until they were confident that they could win. This hesitation to attack large cities played an important part in Lin Biao’s decision-making right up the eve of the attack on Jinzhou during the Liao-Shen Campaign.44 Still, the Summer Offensive had achieved its basic strategic goals. The Communists had wiped out a substantial number of enemy troops (they claimed around 17,000). They had lost nearly that many themselves, but they could rebuild strength more easily than the Nationalists.45 They had forced the Nationalists to give up some of their more vulnerable positions in order to shorten their lines and focus on a few key cities, including Changchun, Siping, Shenyang, and Jinzhou.46 The Third Battle of Siping itself was a tactical defeat for the Communists, but by attacking the Nationalists at Siping, and thus threatening Changchun, the Communists had forced the Nationalists to withdraw troops from Rehe and eastern Liaoning in order to reinforce Siping and protect the China-Changchun line. The Nationalists had not established permanent political institutions and local militia in Rehe and eastern Liaoning; when their troops left, the Communist Party quickly moved in to fill the vacuum. The Wedemeyer Mission While Chen Mingren fought desperately to defend his tenuous position at Siping, the Americans continued to lose faith in Chiang Kai-shek. Not even the eventual victory at Siping could convince them that Chiang could defeat the Communists in the Northeast. Angus Ward, the U.S. consul in Shenyang, noted that the Nationalists had failed to eliminate the Communists’ main force at Siping. Fearing that overconfidence would once again lead to “over-extension of essentially weak Nationalist forces badly supported by a wrecked communications system,” Ward concluded on 14 July: “In sum Nationalist position in Northeast has notably deteriorated in past year and Communist position has considerably strengthened.”47 Under these circumstances, the question facing the United States government in the early summer of 1947 was, as State Department China hand John Carter Vincent wrote at the time: “Is it good and feasible American



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policy to give direct and substantial American military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek in his attempt to eliminate Communism from China by force?”48 The Pentagon’s answer to this question was an emphatic “yes.” Secretary of War Robert Patterson and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal were particularly strong advocates for a more vigorous American support of Chiang’s government and military.49 Vincent, State Department personnel in China, and Secretary of State George Marshall thought otherwise. In their view, Chiang’s government was so corrupt and his military so incompetent that no reasonable amount of military aid would enable the Nationalist armies to defeat the Communists. Such assistance would only heighten anti-American, anti-Chiang sentiments among the Chinese public and elicit an “undesirable reaction” from the Soviet Union. In order to be effective, American military assistance would have to “be on a very large scale and would lead to our direct participation in the civil war.”50 Vincent and the State Department were also concerned that military assistance on such a scale would divert limited American resources away from Europe.51 China was simply not that important to American national security. Vincent argued that even if the Communists took over China, the country was too poor and backward to be a significant strategic asset to the Soviet Union. Thus “a USSR-dominated China is not a danger of sufficient immediacy or probability to warrant committing ourselves to the far-reaching consequencies [sic] which would arise from our direct and large-scale involvement in the Chinese civil war.”52 For the Department of State, the key to Chiang Kai-shek’s survival, and the necessary condition of any further economic or limited military aid, continued to be reform—economic, political, and military.53 With the Pentagon and the Department of State at loggerheads, George Marshall had to find a way forward for American policy in East Asia. In order to do so, he appointed General Albert Wedemeyer to go to China and Korea. In China, Wedemeyer was to gather information and opinions not only from Chiang and his civilian and military officials, but also from a broad cross-section of the Chinese public. Marshall may have hoped that Wedemeyer would push Chiang Kai-shek into instituting the military and political reforms that Marshall believed were essential if China was to be saved from Communism.54 A more cynical interpretation

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is that Marshall regarded the Wedemeyer Mission as a “temporary expedient” designed simply to take political pressure off the Truman administration.55 Wedemeyer agreed with great reluctance since, as he noted at the time, he “had never agreed with U.S. policy since the war’s end.”56 The Wedemeyer Mission got off to a rough start. Chiang Kai-shek regarded the mission as an insult to China’s dignity and sovereignty, and to himself personally, both because Wedemeyer was going to Korea as well as to China and because the White House had not consulted with him in advance.57 John Leighton Stuart and his staff at the American Embassy in Nanjing learned about the planned mission from Chinese press reports on 15 July. Stuart, understandably miffed, told Marshall “I am confident that you have good reason for not informing me in advance of your intention to send this mission and its purpose; however, I cannot but feel that press releases upon such an important mission could have been made in such a way to save embarrassment for myself and staff.”58 Stuart also reported that initial Chinese reaction to the impending Wedemeyer Mission was positive, but warned that the Chinese were assuming that the mission was a prelude to a substantial increase in American aid. Chiang and his government were, of course, trying to figure out how to make the Wedemeyer Mission work to their best advantage. Chiang had issued a national mobilization order on 4 July, giving him broad powers to mobilize China’s military, economic, and human resources for all-out war with the Chinese Communist Party.59 Increased levels of American economic and military aid would be essential. In order to push the Wedemeyer Mission in what Chiang would consider the right direction, the Chinese government sent Wedemeyer a preemptive memorandum asserting that they had already implemented the various internal reforms that the Americans had previously recommended.60 Wedemeyer and his retinue arrived in Nanjing on 22 July. Over the next month they received an avalanche of information. Wedemeyer took his charge to listen to a broad range of Chinese opinion seriously. He met with Chinese from all walks of life, representing a variety of business, social, and political organizations. His meetings with Chinese citizens and with officials from Chiang’s government collectively gave Wedemeyer the distinct impression that everyone he met was trying to use his mission to advance their own agenda. “Members of the Mission,” he wrote to George



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Marshall, “have been subjected to every artifice in Chinese attempts to elicit reaction on my part to their particular proposals. . . . My mission unfortunately is considered by Chinese at large as a panacea of all Chinese ills.”61 T. V. Soong even told Wedemeyer that “if our Mission failed to promote timely and realistic assistance, the fall of the Chinese Government would be inevitable. There would be retrogression, warlord domination of regions or provinces, and concomitantly, Communism would spread rapidly and unabated throughout Asia.”62 The attempts at manipulation continued during Wedemeyer’s visit to the Northeast. Part of the strategy was to make Wedemeyer and his staff as comfortable as possible by putting them up in the Mukden Railway (formerly Yamato) Hotel in Shenyang—as Angus Ward described it: “Accommodations very good, service good, food (unless special effort made) poor, drinks poisonous local concoctions.”63 In order to accommodate the Americans, the Chinese authorities in Shenyang ordered all the guests on the first floor of the hotel to vacate, redecorated the rooms, and gave the employees new uniforms.64 Such treatment fell well within the norms of Chinese cultural expectations. But to Wedemeyer, it was simply more evidence not only that the Chinese were trying to manipulate him, but also that Chiang’s men in Manchuria acted with no consideration for the local people.65 Visits to various sites in and around Shenyang and meetings with Xiong Shihui and other officials simply confirmed Wedemeyer’s negative impressions. While his various Chinese interlocutors simply alienated Wedemeyer, his briefings from American diplomatic and military personnel in China further sharpened the dilemma that his mission was supposed to address. The diplomats gave Wedemeyer a very pessimistic assessment as to the competence of Chiang, his government, and his military. Stuart and his staff had no illusions as to the nature and goals of the Chinese Communist Party, whose leaders they described as “thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin,” with a predilection toward “following closely the Soviet Party line” and acting as “an arm of Soviet foreign policy.”66 Angus Ward advised that the fighting in Manchuria was a part of the Soviet Union’s plan to dominate or even absorb all of Asia from the Yellow Sea to the Dardanelles; but he also emphasized that the Communists in Manchuria “cannot be exterminated by military action

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alone.” The only hope of Nationalist victory was “political and moral rehabilitation of the Northeast.”67 First Secretary of the Embassy William Turner added that all-out aid to Chiang’s government would “critically heighten friction between the United States and Russia in the Far East” and “grievously compromise our political objectives in Western Europe.”68 Wedemeyer’s military briefers, too, were pessimistic about the situation in the Northeast. Chiang’s troops had lost much ground, and they suffered from serious logistical problems.69 But the Pentagon worried that if Chiang Kai-shek lost Manchuria, North China would follow. Soviet domination of the resources of Manchuria would enable the Soviets to strengthen the North Korean economy, making it impossible for the United States to use economic aid to South Korea as a way of putting “economic pressure on the Soviet zone, and would seriously reduce any possibility of achieving U.S. objectives in Korea.” The loss of strategic leverage and the loss of U.S. prestige if Manchuria came under Soviet domination “would discourage those small nations now relying on the U.S. to support them in resisting Soviet pressure. The repercussions in Japan would be serious and an increase in Communist strength and activity could be expected.”70 Military personnel in China reflected these concerns when they met with Wedemeyer. Admiral Cooke, commander of U.S. naval forces in the western Pacific, made the case for increased economic and military assistance to Chiang’s government.71 Assistant military attaché Colonel David Barrett argued that although time was short and the Nationalist position in Manchuria seemed untenable, “tactically unsound as an attempt to hold in Manchuria may appear, I believe it should be made at all costs.”72 At the same time, Barrett recommended a slew of military reforms: appointment of “a competent commander-in-chief of Government forces in Manchuria,” immediate shipment of arms, ammunition, and equipment, improvements (including a change in leadership) in the Chinese air force, and a thorough reorganization of the Nationalist administration of the Northeast—beginning with the firing of Xiong Shihui.73 Drawing on what he had learned from his interactions with Chinese and Americans, Wedemeyer concluded that Washington should give China substantial economic and military aid in order to combat Soviet influence; but he also believed that Chiang’s government would have to



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conduct some serious reforms in order to convince Washington that the aid would not be wasted.74 When Chiang Kai-shek invited him to speak to the State Council (sixty-some leading Kuomintang officials) at Chiang’s own residence, Wedemeyer took the opportunity to give them a blunt talk about “the defects in organization, the short-comings of officials and the inefficiency and ineptitude I had discovered.”75 Wedemeyer hoped that his tough talk would shock Chiang and the Nationalist leadership into making significant reforms and thus help him to make the case for American aid back in Washington. Instead, they were deeply offended, so much so that Chiang canceled a dinner with Wedemeyer, and the members of the State Council suggested that nobody should see the impertinent guest off at the airport when he departed.76 Although he was angry and suspected that the Americans were thinking about replacing him (why else would Wedemeyer have said that China was in need of “inspirational leadership”?) Chiang was diplomat enough to part with the American in a “friendly, if not cordial atmosphere.”77 As a parting shot, Wedemeyer declared that “in China today I find apathy and lethargy in many quarters. Instead of seeking solutions of problems presented, considerable time and effort are spent in blaming outside influences and seeking outside assistance.”78 Wedemeyer may have been critical of Chiang Kai-shek, but in the final analysis, he was an ideologically driven Cold Warrior, convinced that Soviet expansionism in China (of which the Chinese Communist Party was an agent) posed a serious threat to America’s vital interests. In his report to President Truman, Wedemeyer recommended an extensive package of American economic and military assistance.79 He agreed with the State Department that “until drastic political and economic reforms are undertaken, United States aid cannot accomplish its purpose.”80 But at the same time, Wedemeyer thought that “The situation in Manchuria has deteriorated to such a degree that prompt action is necessary to prevent that area from becoming a Soviet satellite.”81 As he had told Ambassador Stuart earlier, political and economic reforms were laudable long-term goals, but “we are confronted with an immediate problem.”82 Wedemeyer suggested United Nations action to end the fighting in Manchuria and a U.N. trusteeship over the region, with China, the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and France as the trustees.83

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Wedemeyer’s report reached President Truman’s desk on 19 September. Wedemeyer thought that Truman and Marshall would act quickly on his recommendations. Instead, Marshall classified the report as top secret, filed it, and ignored it. Wedemeyer’s recommendations were simply unrealistic. He was calling for extensive economic and military aid to a regime perceived in Washington as weak, morally bankrupt, incompetent, and uncooperative, and in a secondary theater of the Cold War, at a time when the United States was hard-pressed to deal with deteriorating military, economic, and social conditions in Europe—the area of primary strategic concern. Wedemeyer’s idea for a U.N. trusteeship over Manchuria (something that he had suggested back in 1945 as well) was out of the question. Nobody concerned, including Chiang Kai-shek, would have accepted the proposal. Wedemeyer’s mission had accomplished nothing. American China policy remained as it had been, wavering indecisively between political reform and military aid. When he looked back on this episode, Wedemeyer declared that accepting George Marshall’s assignment to go to China was “the greatest mistake of my life.”84

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To rely on the peasants, build rural base areas and use the countryside to encircle and finally capture the cities—such was the way to victory in the Chinese revolution. —Lin Biao, “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!”

Six

Encircling the Cities ★★★

The Autumn and Winter Offensives, September 1947–March 1948

Famous quotes are rarely good history, but there is often a grain of truth to them. The Communist Party did not achieve victory over Chiang Kai-shek simply by building bases in the countryside and then surrounding the cities. As Mao Zedong himself had observed back in 1939: “Stressing the work in rural base areas does not mean abandoning our work in the cities.”1 The growth of Lin Biao’s military power in the Northeast owed much not only to rural base areas (though they were important), but also to the Communists’ control of towns, small and medium cities, and branch railway lines, and to their access to urban resources in Soviet-controlled Lüshun and Dalian. But at the same time, there is something to the idea that the Communists gained victory in the Northeast by using the countryside to encircle the Nationalists in the three cities of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou, thus setting the stage for the Liao-Shen Campaign. Lin Biao had begun to lay the foundations for success with the Summer Offensive. He completed the job with his next two campaigns: the Autumn Offensive (14 September to 5 November 1947) and the Winter Offensive (15 December 1947 to 15 March 1948). By early March 1948, the Northeast Democratic United Army (NDUA) had forced the Nationalists to withdraw to just a few positions centered on the cities of Changchun, Siping, Shenyang, and Jinzhou. All that held these four areas together were 105

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the fragile strands of the China-Changchun Railway (connecting Changchun to Shenyang via Siping) and the slender thread of the Bei-Ning line (running from Shenyang to Jinzhou and then down the Liaoxi Corridor to Shanhaiguan). Then, at the end of the Winter Offensive (in mid-March 1948), Lin attacked Siping again—this time successfully. Changchun was now cut off from Shenyang; Communist operations along the Bei-Ning line had also cut the land connection between Shenyang and Jinzhou. All that held these three remaining Kuomintang positions in the Northeast together was a strained and vulnerable air transport system centered on Jinzhou. Jinzhou itself was connected tenuously to China south of the Great Wall by the single port of Huludao and the Bei-Ning line. The situation was far more serious than Chiang Kai-shek or the Americans would have predicted only a year earlier. Chen Cheng Takes Command If there was one thing that Wedemeyer, the Pentagon, and the American diplomats in China could all agree on, it was that they despised Xiong Shihui and Du Yuming. As they Americans saw it, Xiong presided over a bureaucracy of southern Chinese carpetbaggers whose self-seeking corruption was driving the people of the Northeast into the arms of the Communists. As for General Du Yuming, he was simply incompetent.2 Chiang, too, was disappointed in Xiong and Du’s performance in Manchuria. In August 1947, perhaps in reaction to Wedemeyer’s criticisms, Chiang recalled Xiong and Du, eliminated the Northeast Peace Preservation Command, folded it into the Northeast Field Headquarters, and put General Chen Cheng in as the new director.3 Chen Cheng (1867–1965) had been serving as Chiang’s chief of staff. Barely five feet in height, he had a reputation for being “bold, impetuous, intolerant and impatient.”4 Americans liked Chen because he seemed energetic and honest, and because he had worked well with them during the war against Japan.5 Chen was also a veteran of the Bandit Annihilation Campaigns (1931–34), the last of which had succeeded in driving the Communists out of their Jiangxi Base Area and sent them on the Long March to Yan’an. On the downside, Chen, like Du Yuming, had a serious health problem. For Du, it had been a bad kidney. Chen’s affliction was duodenal ulcers.6



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Arriving in Shenyang on 1 September, General Chen first moved to attack the problems of corruption and lack of discipline in the Nationalist forces. The anticorruption drive initially made a good impression, particularly among the civilian population and the Americans, but it soon ran into trouble.7 Chen, a graduate of Baoding Military Academy, had difficult relationships with officers who had come out of Chiang Kai-shek’s Whampoa Military Academy. Whampoa men accused Chen of victimizing them while covering up the misdeeds of officers from his own “Tumu” faction.8 In the end, as historian Suzanne Pepper notes, Chen’s “dictatorial workstyle, and the passive behavior it produced in his subordinates, was criticized as yet another factor underlying the Government’s weakening position in the Northeast.”9 Chen took the same aggressive approach to military issues as he did to battling corruption. Du Yuming’s “defend and wait for reinforcements” strategy (a strategy dictated by Chiang himself) was too passive.10 In discussions with Chiang Kai-shek, who visited Shenyang in late September, Chen made the case for beefing up Nationalist strength. Chiang agreed to transfer more armies to Manchuria in order to bring total troop strength to over 500,000. With the additional forces at his command, Chen hoped to guarantee the security of the Liaoxi Corridor and the major cities (Shenyang, Jinzhou, Jilin, Changchun, and Siping), to open the rail connection between Jinzhou and Chengde, and to drive a wedge between the NDUA forces north of the Songhua and those operating northeast of Siping. If all went according to plan, this would have allowed Chen to “destroy the southern part of the PLA in Manchuria, before pushing the remaining Communist units toward the Northwest and the Soviet/Mongolian border.”11 The Autumn Offensive There were two problems with Chen’s plan. The first was that the Communists knew about it. Lin Biao’s intelligence officers had broken the new Kuomintang codes and were now listening carefully to Nationalist radio traffic.12 The second problem was that Chen’s plan rested on the assumption that with additional forces and resolute action, he would be able to recover the strategic advantage. This proved to be impossible. Despite their defeat at Siping, the Communists still grasped the initiative, not only

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in Manchuria, but also in northern and central China. In September 1947 Mao Zedong laid out his vision for a “country-wide counter-offensive.”13 In this stage of the war, Mao expected Communist forces to focus on dispersed, isolated enemy units, to capture medium and small cities as well as rural areas, and to “make wiping out the enemy’s strength our main objective.”14 In terms of operational style, Mao advised his commanders to “strive to draw the enemy into mobile warfare, but at the same time lay great stress on learning the tactics of positional attack and on stepping up the building of artillery and engineer corps in order to capture enemy fortified points and cities on a large scale.”15 In doing so, the Communists would make the transition from internal to external line operations.16 Mao could issue overall strategic guidelines and operational principles, but it was up to his field commanders to put them into practice in the context of their own concrete circumstances. In Manchuria, Lin Biao’s forces had spent July and August fighting minor engagements and assimilating the lessons of the Summer Offensive. Their training and reorganization was designed to prepare them to attack enemy positions and to make the transition from small units conducting combat operations in a dispersed fashion to larger units conducting operations in coordination with each other. This involved not only training in Lin Biao’s tactical principles, but also organization of Communist Party committees at all levels of the army in order to strengthen Party control and oversight.17 Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou also ordered all units to use ammunition more efficiently. During the Summer Offensive, NDUA units had expended ammunition at an alarming rate—in one particularly egregious case, a single unit was estimated to have used 588 bullets, 5.1 artillery shells, 9 hand grenades, and 5.7 jin of explosives for each enemy soldier killed.18 Lin’s awareness of the situation on the ground in the Northeast and the limited capabilities of his troops meant that when Mao asked him to conduct an Autumn Offensive in order to support Communist operations in China Proper, Lin would conduct operations his own way.19 At this stage, Mao was still thinking in terms of a long war of attrition characterized by guerrilla raids deep in enemy territory.20 What he envisioned in the Northeast was attacks on Nationalist positions in central and southern Manchuria. Lin Biao rejected this idea. Instead, he chose to use lightly equipped troops to penetrate and break up Nationalist-held territory,



Encircling the Cities109

cutting railway lines, surrounding isolated, weak Nationalist positions in order to draw out and attack reinforcements, consolidate his own positions, and further isolate the Nationalists in the major cities—cities that he was not yet prepare to attack.21 From 14 September through 5 November, Communist forces conducted a bewildering series of operations throughout Manchuria south of the Songhua and in neighboring Rehe province. Lin’s command headquarters paid particular attention to railway sabotage, and especially to the task of cutting the Bei-Ning line between Shenyang and Jinzhou and the China-Changchun line between Changchun and Siping.22 These operations threw Chen Cheng’s strategic plan into disarray. Chen still had only 300,000 troops (the promised reinforcements had not yet arrived), and he had just begun to conduct his own offensive.23 Now, he was forced onto the defensive, reacting to Lin Biao’s moves. Lin, for his part, was not only isolating Nationalist positions: he was using attacks on railways and on smaller and medium cities in order to force the Nationalist troops into movement. For example, cutting the railway connections between Shanhaiguan, Yingkou, and Shenyang, and between Shenyang and Siping, and between Siping, Changchun, and Jilin had the effect of cutting off the supply of coal to Shenyang, Changchun, and Jilin. With winter coming on, this was no small problem. Nationalist forces would need to come out of the cities in order to open up these essential supply lines—and as they did so, they would give the NDUA opportunities to attack.24 Observing Chen Cheng’s struggle in the Northeast, Chiang Kai-shek himself flew to Shenyang on 8 October in order to bring the situation under control. Under his direction, Chen’s forces moved to consolidate Shenyang and its transportation lines to China Proper and to strengthen positions north of Shenyang.25 This Nationalist redeployment gave the Communists an opening in the Jilin-Changchun area.26 The final stage of the Autumn Offensive was a series of Communist operations with their focal point being the city of Jilin, and their primary purpose to draw Nationalist reinforcements out of Changchun and attack them.27 Lin considered attacking Jilin itself, but concluded that it was too hard a target.28 The Autumn Campaign came to a conclusion on 5 November. In fifty days of operations, Lin Biao could claim to have wiped out enemy units

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amounting to around 68,000 men, of whom 50,000 were captured, 18,000 killed or wounded.29 He had shattered Chen Cheng’s planned offensive and compressed the enemy into twenty-four cities.30 Chiang Kai-shek cannot have been pleased with the situation. On 11 October, soon after his own visit to Shenyang, Chiang met with members of the Military Affairs Committee of the American House of Representatives. He told his guests that “the predicament in Manchuria was an American responsibility” and that “if [the Nationalist] Government were finally defeated it would not be because of Russia or the Chinese Communists, but because the United States had failed to give promised assistance at a time of desperate need.”31 The Chinese government could, in fact, have purchased arms and ammunition from commercial American arms dealers starting on 26 May 1947. However, Chiang’s cash-strapped government preferred to wait for the Americans to deliver military aid at American government expense. As American observers saw it, Chiang was hoping that his deteriorating military situation would bring him large transfers of surplus American equipment.32 In late October, under political pressure from the American “China Lobby,” Congress approved a grant of $27.7 million in economic aid to China. In November, the Truman administration sent Major General David G. Barr to lead the U.S. Army Advisory Group in China. These two decisions mark what political scientist Tang Tsou refers to as a policy of “limited assistance” to Chiang’s government—the result of a “compromise between two conflicting views” on China policy: those of George Marshall and others who believed that “American interests in China were not worth a war” and those of Republicans, who favored a more aggressive support of China, although they, too, stopped short of advocating direct American involvement in China’s civil war.33 Chiang’s allegation that lack of American aid had weakened his forces in the Northeast in the autumn of 1947 was not entirely without basis. Reports at the time and historians’ later analyses suggest that American-equipped divisions in Manchuria “had no likely source of ammunition, parts or replacements for their American weapons and equipment, and their inventories were running dangerously low.”34 Against this must be balanced the fact that Chiang’s forces had received, and would continue to receive, substantial amounts of American aid. The Nationalists also had



Encircling the Cities111

access to large amounts of weapons, ammunition, and supplies that the Japanese Imperial Army had left on the battlefields and in the warehouses of China Proper. Moreover, the Communists had their own serious problems with regards to weapons, ammunition, equipment, and even food. In the summer of 1947 some of Lin Biao’s forces had been so short of grain that he gave individual divisions permission to move around in order to look for grain that they could requisition.35 Communist soldiers fighting in Rehe during the Autumn Offensive were poorly fed and often marched and fought in bare feet.36 Communist units had shortages of ammunition; they also had problems with the faulty ammunition produced by their own nascent arms industry: a report of 8 October 1947 alleged that 40 percent of hand grenades were duds.37 If the Nationalists were losing, it was not simply because their American friends were not giving them enough support. The Winter Offensive Begins Despite his difficulties and setbacks, Chiang Kai-shek somehow found reason for optimism as winter arrived. What encouraged him was his reading of American politics. Recent statements in Congress had given Chiang the impression that pro-Kuomintang sentiments were on the rise in the United States. Congress’s recent inclusion of some China aid provisions in a bill regarding aid to Europe was surely, he thought, a reprimand to the Truman administration.38 In December the State Department’s China policy came under attack in a joint session of the Senate-House Committee on China Aid. When the Senate and House finally passed an international aid bill that included $180 million in aid for China, Chiang observed that although the amount was small, it reflected the efforts of friends including Time magazine publisher Henry Luce.39 While things were apparently looking up in Washington, Chiang did worry about the Northeast. Chen Cheng had prepared a rather upbeat assessment of how his forces had dealt with Lin Biao’s Autumn Offensive, claiming that he had successfully defended every point that he intended to defend when the Communist offensive began. Still, Chen pointed out that he would need more soldiers to open the Bei-Ning line and to enlarge the territory under his control in order to gain access to more resources, including grain, cotton, and livestock.40 Chiang’s response was to transfer

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the New Third, New Fifth, and New Seventh Armies and other units to the Northeast, bringing Chen Cheng’s total troop strength up to thirteen armies (forty-four divisions), some 580,000 men.41 Chiang was also advising Chen Cheng that while remaining on the strategic defensive, he must conduct offensive tactical operations. His orders of 18 November read: “From now on, you must always seize the initiative, taking every opportunity to concentrate a significant degree of combat force, constantly attack, and only then can you defend by attacking, preserve your current positions . . . boldly concentrate your troops and strike repeatedly at each of the bandits’ weak points.”42 But no matter how many troops Chiang poured into Manchuria, the Kuomintang remained weak on the ground because it had never built a stable, efficient political structure in the Northeast. Chen Cheng did not have a network of local governments that could mobilize human and material resources at the grassroots level to support the Nationalist forces.43 The Communists, who excelled at building baselevel government and Communist Party institutions, had increased their access to resources and had pushed their troop numbers up to 730,000. They now had both a qualitative and a quantitative advantage.44 With another round of Communist operations under way and his troops fighting in extreme cold, Chiang Kai-shek asked in his diary: “Why does God not wipe the Communist bandits out?”45 By the end of December, Chiang was lamenting that “reports of danger and defeat in all quarters have been falling like snowflakes.”46 While Chiang fretted about danger and defeat and wished for God to annihilate the Communists, Chen Cheng was exhibiting a curious self-confidence. In November, Chen had adopted a defensive plan in which he assembled his main force in the Shenyang area and along both sides of the Bei-Ning line between Shenyang and Jinzhou.47 With Chen concentrating his forces to defend a few key positions, the Communists chose to attack the smaller positions while leaving the heavily defended major cities for later.48 In the first stage of the Winter Offensive, beginning on 15 December, the Communists attacked a number of the more vulnerable Nationalist positions, including the cities of Faku and Zhangwu. By the end of the month, Lin Biao’s forces had wiped out reinforcements, had Faku under siege, and had captured Zhangwu, thus posing a threat to Shenyang itself.

Encircling the Cities113



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6.16.1. Disposition of Forces in thelate Northeast, Map Disposition of Forces in the Northeast, April 1948.





late April 1948

When he lost Zhangwu, Chen Cheng evidently believed that the Communist forces were now widely dispersed and vulnerable. In a public announcement, he proclaimed that “combat preparations have been completed, and the period of danger in the Northeast has passed.”49 This was a stunning misreading (or at the least, misrepresentation) of the strategic situation. Nonetheless, Chen assembled five armies (over ten divisions) and advanced along three vectors from Shenyang, Tieling, and Xinmin toward Zhangwu and Faku. This was exactly what Lin Biao wanted. With the enemy on the move, Lin would have an opportunity to attack. His target was the New Fifth Army. Deploying the Second, Third, Sixth, and Seventh Columns (a total

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

of twelve divisions and an artillery unit), Lin isolated, enveloped, and attacked the main force of the New Fifth Army at Gongzhutun on 3 January. On 8 January, Chen Cheng reported to Chiang Kai-shek that the New Fifth Army’s 195th and 43rd divisions had been wiped out.50 The loss of the New Fifth Army came as a shock to Chiang Kai-shek. Two other Nationalist armies, commanded by generals Liao Yaoxiang and Li Tao, had been in the vicinity, but neither had made a move to render assistance as the New Fifth was surrounded and wiped out. On 10 January a furious Chiang flew to Shenyang to look into the situation. Chen Cheng initially laid the blame squarely on Liao and Li, who had disobeyed his orders to go to the rescue of the New Fifth. But when Liao and Li countered that they had received no written orders, only a telephone call, Chiang turned his wrath on Chen Cheng. Chiang Changes Commanders—Again No doubt angry and disappointed with all concerned and convinced that they simply did not understand what the Communists were doing, Chiang decided to reorganize the Nationalist military and political leadership of the Northeast yet again. This time, he would divide military and political authority (which he had combined under Chen Cheng’s leadership only a few months earlier). For the time being, Chen Cheng would remain as director of the Northeast Headquarters, nominally responsible for economic and political issues. But military affairs would now be put under a new “Northeast Bandit Suppression General Headquarters.” The new commander would be Wei Lihuang.51 When he returned to Nanjing, Chiang summoned Wei Lihuang and asked for his assessment of the situation in the Northeast. Wei, who had just returned from an extended trip to the United States and Europe, demurred. His wife and friends all advised him not to accept an assignment to the Northeast. Chiang persisted, sending officers to brief Wei on the situation and to convince him to go to Manchuria. According to one source, Chen Cheng’s wife was deployed to beg Wei to take the assignment so that her ailing husband could return to Shanghai for treatment of his ulcers.52 In the end, Chiang simply ordered Wei to go to Manchuria, which he did on 12 February. The choice of Wei as commander of Nationalist forces in the Northeast may have sealed Chiang Kai-shek’s fate. Wei had a



Encircling the Cities115

difficult relationship with Chiang Kai-shek, saw the strategic situation in the Northeast differently, and was determined to establish his own authority in the area and to make his own decisions based on his understanding of the local conditions. The disagreement between Chiang and Wei centered on the question of which city was more strategically important: Shenyang or Jinzhou. Chiang saw Jinzhou as the key to the defense of southern Manchuria and as the guarantee of potential escape routes (by land via rail to Shanhaiguan and by sea from the port of Huludao) for his armies if their position in the Northeast should become untenable. Even before Wei took over in Shenyang, Chiang had been warning Chen Cheng to pay special attention to strengthening the defenses of Jinzhou and to transfer more troops to the city.53 At this point, Chiang was contemplating a withdrawal of Nationalist forces from Shenyang to Jinzhou. But when Wei Lihuang took over on 12 February, he immediately opposed the idea of abandoning Shenyang. As he saw it, his task was to preserve the status quo in the Northeast: to defend Changchun, Shenyang, and the nearby smaller cities, which were indispensable to the defense of Shenyang itself. The Communists had already cut the rail link from Jinzhou to Shenyang, leaving Shenyang dangerously short on grain.54 Changchun and Siping, too, had been isolated. With few resources available on the ground and no hope of reinforcements, Wei would do nothing other than remain on the defense and hope that the Americans (whom he took pains to cultivate) would send more aid, or even get directly involved in the civil war if Shenyang came under attack.55 While Chiang Kai-shek changed commanders, Lin Biao continued with operations designed to further isolate the Nationalists in their dwindling number of positions. Rather than attack Shenyang, Lin went around it, attacking the peripheral cities, which formed important parts of the overall defense of Shenyang. Xinlitun, Liaoyang, and Anshan fell in late January and February.56 On 14 February, a Communist attack on the port city of Yingkou deprived Shenyang of its sole outlet to the sea. As they conducted these operations in southern Manchuria, the Communist forces gained valuable experience in the art of positional assault. At Liaoyang, a traditional walled city, the Communist Fourth Column faced

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16,000 Nationalist troops. Deploying over 80,000 soldiers, the Communists reconnoitered the area carefully, taking advantage of the ice-bound Liao River, trenches, and even a wall of snow in order to draw as close as possible to a weak point in the defenses. Opening fire on 6 February, the Communist artillery soon blasted the top two or three meters off the city wall. With the rubble forming ramps on either side of the wall, the infantry charged in. Once inside the city they found that the Nationalists had not prepared to defend the city in depth.57 On that very day, Chiang Kai-shek, who was keeping an eye on developments in Manchuria, ordered Wei Lihuang to find some way of reinforcing Liaoyang—but it was too late.58 When Liaoyang fell, the city of Anshan was cut off from Shenyang. Although it was clearly ripe for the picking, Anshan was a different kind of target. Liaoyang had a traditional city wall and north–south grid-work of streets: Anshan was a modern industrial city. Since there was no wall, the Nationalist Twenty-fifth Division (reconstituted after having been wiped out at Xinkailing in 1946) depended on key positions on high ground and on in-depth defenses inside the city itself. Deploying forces from the Sixth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Columns in four echelons in order to be able to keep up constant pressure against the enemy, the Communists focused first on capturing the 300-meter Tiejia Mountain, which screened the city from the east. Tactical errors and the challenge of clambering up icecoated rocks (the Nationalists had poured water down the mountainside) meant that the Communists suffered heavy casualties before they finally captured the high ground. The 90-meter Shenshe (Shinto shrine) Mountain, from which Nationalist artillery controlled southeastern Anshan, was also challenging—partly due to poor infantry-artillery coordination on the part of the Communists. Nonetheless, the Communists managed to capture all the key peripheral positions, albeit at a high cost. Once that was accomplished, it took only eighteen hours to capture the city itself on 22 February.59 When Anshan fell, Yingkou was the sole remaining target of opportunity in southern Manchuria. Defending Yingkou was the Fifty-second Army’s temporary Fifty-eighth Division—a unit whose officers were not products of Chiang Kai-shek’s Whampoa Military Academy. Dissatisfied with the way in which his units was treated and already secretly in contact with the Communists, divisional commander Wang Jiashan arranged for



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his 8,800 men to switch sides, transferring Yingkou to Communist control on 25 February.60 As he observed the situation in the Northeast deteriorate even further, Chiang Kai-shek worried that a spirit of pessimism was sweeping through China, causing people to lose confidence in the struggle against the Communists and to lose confidence in him, their leader.61 In southern Manchuria Chiang hoped to reverse this decline in morale by getting his generals to transfer the bulk of their troops from Shenyang to Jinzhou, where they could go back on the offensive or (if necessary) be withdrawn from the Northeast and saved for fighting in North China. Chiang still believed that it was possible to reverse the strategic situation in the Northeast by tempting the Communists to attack, drawing them into untenable positions, and then counterattacking, combining many small victories that would add up to a major victory.62 Whether Chiang’s plan would have worked or not will never be known. Chiang could and did tell Wei Lihuang to pull his troops together, strike out from Shenyang, and fight his way through to Jinzhou.63 He could, and did, tell generals Fu Zuoyi and Li Zongren, commanding armies around Beiping, to prepare to send troops into the Liaoxi Corridor to support the planned drawback from Shenyang to Jinzhou. But men like Li and Fu were not simple underlings to be ordered around: they were former warlord generals who owed Chiang no personal loyalty and maintained a high degree of independence from the Generalissimo. Chiang could apprise them of his strategic decisions and desires, but whether or not they would do as he wanted remained to be seen.64 Wei Lihuang, too, showed an independent streak. Explaining that the Nationalist troops were spread too thinly to respond to the multiple threats posed by the Communists and that the American-equipped units were short on ammunition for their mortars and machine guns, Wei argued that any attempt to go on the offensive would surely fail.65 Wei’s preference was to continue to defend Shenyang. He assured Chiang that all units were training diligently and that the commanders were in high spirits, determined to wipe out their shame by achieving victory—but that they faced a basic problem: they were running out of grain. Wei asked Chiang to airdrop money so that he could purchase enough grain to keep his troops supplied through late April.66 By the end of February,

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Chiang was, on the one hand, aware that the loss of Yingkou made it necessary that he make a final decision with regard to the Northeast; but on the other hand, Wei and the other generals were unwilling to move, fearing that any attempt to retreat from Shenyang to Jinzhou would end in disaster. All Chiang could do was to allow Wei Lihuang to defend his positions and wait.67 The Fourth Battle of Siping One of the constraints on Wei Lihuang’s freedom of action was the fact that he still had to defend positions to the north of Shenyang: Siping, Changchun, and the smaller cities of Yongji and Jilin. Lin Biao and Mao Zedong were keenly aware of the limitations that this placed on Wei Lihuang. As Lin told Mao on 10 February, Wei would not withdraw from Shenyang as long as his forces were still holding on in Jilin and Changchun. With this in mind, Mao and the Party Center were already imagining the strategic approach they would take eight months later in the Liao-Shen Campaign: “Trap the enemy in the Northeast and annihilate him in detail.”68 By the end of February, with all the easy targets in southern Manchuria taken, and confident that Wei Lihuang would not retreat while he still had troops in the north at Changchun, the Communists shifted their attention away from Shenyang, to Yongji, to Jilin, and, most important, to Siping.69 Siping had been quiet. As Bishop La Pierre, a Canadian missionary described it in late February: “Not a single sound of cannon was heard since June 1947. Situation not too bad, but we live in anxiety and uncertainty . . . what will be the fate of Szepingkai, I cannot tell.”70 Bishop La Pierre would soon discover the fate of Siping. Lin Biao had decided to capture the city in what would be the last act of the Winter Offensive, completed just before the rivers thawed and the mud season set in. With Li Tianyou once again in command, the Communist forces moved into positions around the city on 28 February. From 4 to 8 March, they eliminated Nationalist positions on the edge of Siping and placed troops to the north and the south of the city to prevent the Nationalist soldiers in Siping from retreating and to block any relief forces that might be sent from Shenyang. Siping itself was lightly defended: worried about a Communist attack on Shenyang and confident that Lin Biao would not attack Siping again, the Nationalists had left the city with a garrison of only 17,000. Li Tianyou began his assault at



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6:30 on the morning of 12 March. By 7:00 the next day, the battle was over. The KMT forces had been trapped and annihilated (killed, wounded, and captured). At the same time, the Nationalist Sixtieth Army, stationed at Jilin, withdrew to Changchun, as will be further described in chapter 12. Season of Indecision With the right equipment, an army can deal with ice and snow. Communist tanks, trucks, and artillery could cross the frozen rivers to conduct operations against the Nationalists. The spring thaw was another matter. When the ice and snow melted, rivers and streams became raging torrents. Roads turned into rivers of mud, next to impossible for men, horses, oxen, trucks, or tanks to negotiate. As the coming of mud season restricted the mobility of both Nationalists and Communists, a degree of peace settled on Manchuria. Nanjing and Washington, too, seemed to have been immobilized, though not by anything as simple as mud. In Washington, the American government continued with its policy of “limited assistance” to Chiang’s government—the result of a compromise. The Pentagon was still convinced that aid to Chiang Kai-shek was essential in order to stop the tide of Soviet Communist expansionism from sweeping over East and Southeast Asia and even Europe. The State Department’s China experts argued that no aid could save Chiang’s government unless he undertook significant reforms and that a Communist victory in China would not, at any rate, be a serious blow to American’s national interests.71 Reporting from Nanjing, Ambassador Stuart suggested that some degree of aid was, in fact, necessary: “Apart from the loss of morale, the military disasters derive from bad generalship and shortage of equipment. In Manchuria it is now chiefly the latter. . . . General Wei Lihuang is a good man but his desperate need for ammunition has been fully reported by us.”72 If shortage of equipment was indeed a factor in Manchuria (and, as we shall see, not all American observers would agree with this assessment), the question remained: what would Chiang do if he did get the aid that he desired? In early March, American military advisor General Barr had suggested that Chiang withdraw from Manchuria entirely. As he later recalled, Chiang “was aghast at this proposal, stating that no circumstances would induce him to consider such a plan.”73 Later in the spring of 1948,

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Chiang presented a two-stage strategic plan for Manchuria as a part of his justification for $125 million in military aid: Phase 1 ( January–September 1948) ·· hold Shenyang, Jinzhou, and Changchun ·· reopen the land route between Shenyang and Jinzhou Phase 2 (October–December 1948) ·· reinforce CNA [Chinese Nationalist Army] forces with transfers from North and Central China ·· destroy all Communist forces in Manchuria ·· regain control of Manchuria74 This simple plan ignored a number of problems, one of which was the fact that Chiang’s generals would not always listen to him. He had already asked several times for Chen Cheng, Wei Lihuang, Liao Yaoxiang, and the other generals in Shenyang to pull troops out of Changchun and Shenyang, regroup in the Jinzhou-Huludao area, keep Lin Biao’s forces from entering North China, and then, when North China was pacified, turn back around and take control of Manchuria—as envisioned (more or less) in the two-phase plan that he presented to the Americans. But neither Chen Cheng nor Wei Lihuang had been willing to give up Changchun and Shenyang.75 Under the circumstances, it was difficult to be optimistic. After the loss of Siping, Ambassador Stuart, who had now lost faith in his old friend Chiang Kai-shek, observed: “Political and military disintegration is now rapidly approaching the long expected climax.”76

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Our Party’s present task in the Northeast is to build base areas, stable military and political base areas in eastern, northern and western Manchuria. To build such base areas is no easy job; it requires hard and bitter struggle. Three or four years are needed to build such base areas. But a solid preliminary groundwork must be laid in the year 1946. Otherwise we may not be able to stand our ground. —Mao Zedong, “Build Stable Base Areas in the Northeast,”   28 December 1945

Seven

The Battle behind the Lines ★★★

Building the North Manchuria Base Area

The Nationalist situation in the Northeast would never have reached the climax of “political and military disintegration” that Leighton Stuart foresaw if the Communists had not been able to build a secure base area in northern Manchuria. Mao Zedong had long emphasized the importance of constructing rural base areas and the use of land reform as a technique both to build popular support and to extract human and material resources from the countryside. But when the Communist forces first entered Manchuria in August–September of 1945 they did very little in terms of building base areas. This was partly because Peng Zhen, the first leader of the Party’s Northeast Bureau, was more experienced in urban than in rural work and relied on the support of the Soviet Red Army to gain quick access to the plentiful resources concentrated in major cities and along the major railway lines of the Northeast.1 When the Communists first entered the Northeast, they had no presence and no natural base of support in the countryside. In November 1945, before they had a chance to get established, Chiang Kai-shek’s armies broke through the Communists’ defenses at Shanhaiguan and pushed them out of southern Manchuria. At the same time the Soviets, under international pressure to live up to their promise to transfer sovereignty over the Northeast to Chiang Kai-shek’s government, forced the Communists out of the major cities 123

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including Shenyang, Changchun, and Harbin. It was then that Liu Shaoqi, speaking for the Communist Party’s Central Committee, ordered Peng Zhen to “abandon any attempt to take control of the major cities” and that Mao Zedong wrote his directive telling the Northeast Bureau that their main task was now to build rural base areas.2 Building base areas would require military action to assert Communist control over territory, land reform in order to gain access to human and material resources, protection and development of the urban economy, and the development of foreign trade, particularly with the Soviet Union. Tiger Mountain and Apricot Tree Village Gongs clash and stringed instruments ring out as the curtain rises on a performance of the Chinese opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. The opera, developed in the 1960s under the direction of Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, has all the dramatic elements that a revolutionary could wish for: the heroic Communist scout platoon leader Yang Zirong, the evil bandit “Vulture,” railway worker Li Yongji, and honest hunter Zhong and his daughter Bao. “Vulture” and his gang (clearly aligned with the Kuomintang) have been robbing and assaulting innocent villagers like Zhong and his family from their well-defended lair high atop Tiger Mountain. Platoon leader Yang, disguising himself as a bandit, inveigles his way into the Tiger Mountain stronghold and wins “Vulture’s” trust. Armed with information in the defenses of Tiger Mountain (information that Yang has secretly passed to them), Communist soldiers, the local people’s militia, railway worker Li, and young Bao (who insists on joining the expedition) storm the bandit stronghold, with Yang Zirong helping from within. After a dramatic battle in which Yang is nearly killed, the Communist troops and the people’s militia emerge triumphant.3 Taking Tiger Mountain is based on a real event that took place in the Northeast in March 1946, in Heilongjiang province, where Communist forces were fighting local bandit forces in the towns and villages north of the city of Mudanjiang. On 22 March, a Communist unit surrounded around four hundred bandits at a place called Apricot Tree Village (admittedly, not as dashing a name as Tiger Mountain). The bandits were well armed and had built a two-meter-high earth wall and other defenses around the village. The Communists’ first attempt to break through these



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defenses ended in failure. Further attempts to capture the village by force would have succeeded (the Communists had more firepower and more resources at their command than the bandits), but the cost in combatant and civilian casualties would have been high. It was at that point that one of the Communist platoon leaders, Yang Zirong, decided to employ a stratagem that could have come out of the pages of the Chinese military classics. Yang Zirong was from Shandong province, but had spent much of his childhood and youth in the Northeast, where his family (like many from Shandong) had migrated in search of work. Yang himself had been a boat hand, a mine worker, and a day laborer in various parts of Manchuria. He was familiar with the culture and the slang of the kind of men who lived their lives on the often hazy boundary between honest work and banditry. This cultural background, plus the knowledge that the four hundred bandits in Apricot Tree Village were from several different gangs, gave Yang the confidence to run straight up to the front line, waving a white towel and asking to meet the bandit leaders. The bandit soldiers brought Yang to the village square and left him there, under guard, while they went to look for their bosses. As he was marched through the village and while he waited in the square, Yang proclaimed loudly to everyone within earshot that the Communists were fighting for the common people, and asked the bandit rank and file why they should fight and die for their bosses. When he met the bandit leaders themselves he continued with his propaganda onslaught, playing on divisions among the leaders and between the leaders and their men, promising that those who surrendered would be welcome to join the Communist army. As a result, the bandit soldiers all laid down their weapons, and the Communists captured the village without a fight.4 Bandits The story of Yang Zirong and the capture of Apricot Tree Village (a story that may itself have been enhanced by a propaganda team) and its dramatization in Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy both conform to the idea that the Chinese “way of war” is characterized by the use of stratagem to defeat the enemy without having to fight a battle, or at least to ensure that the battle will be short and sweet. The very name Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy suggests a dichotomy between the bluntness and brutality of “taking”

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a military position and the smoothness of “by strategy.”5 However, the Northeast Democratic United Army’s anti-bandit operations were, for the most part, neither romantic storming of military positions nor subtle Sunzian stratagem. In fact, the Communist forces’ bandit extermination campaigns strongly resembled the United States military’s definition of counterinsurgency: “military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological and civic actions taken by a government to defeat an insurgency.”6 The Communists’ enemies, however, were not highly politicized insurgents: they were gangs of men rooted in the Northeast’s long tradition of banditry. Like much of China, Northeastern rural society had become highly militarized in the late nineteenth century, when the weak Qing imperial government was unable to provide security for rural communities. In hard times, poor young men and demobilized soldiers easily formed into bandit gangs, finding refuge in the mountains and the forests, and often some degree of support in the villages and towns. Landlords organized their own local militia to protect their communities and/or their own property. Often, the lines between militia, soldiers, and bandits were blurred.7 For example, Zhang Zuolin, the warlord who controlled much of Manchuria from around 1916 until his death in 1928, began his career as a bandit. Banditry continued throughout the period of Japanese occupation, when the line between anti-Japanese resistance and banditry was often unclear.8 Then, when the Kwantung Army and the puppet Manchukuo government, army, and police collapsed in August 1945, they left a power vacuum that the Soviet Red Army simply could not fill. As a result, a wide variety of local armed groups formed (or came out of the woodwork) in the villages and county towns across the Northeast, helping themselves to Japanese weapons and ammunition. At their height there were an estimated 250,000 bandits in the Northeast—two and a half times more men than the Communists originally sent to the region. The strongest of them were equipped with cavalry, tanks, armored vehicles, mortars, and heavy and light machine guns.9 Some of them had more firepower than many Communist units.10 Some of these gangs of armed men were old-school bandits—highly independent, many of them habitual criminals and opium smokers, devoid of any political ideology whatsoever, and led by men with nicknames



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like “Big-Chin Zhang,” “Old North Wind,” and “Big-Hands Zhang.”11 Other groups had their origins in armed peasant resistance against Japan, while yet others were local self-defense forces, some of them created by and serving the interests of the local landholding elite. Some of them identified with the Kuomintang or were even led by Kuomintang agents; others were of indeterminate political character, perhaps waiting to see which side seemed to be getting the upper hand before making a commitment.12 Many of these bandit gangs had substantial support systems in their own rural societies. They had sources of intelligence from the local people, safe areas to which they could retreat, and hidden stores of grain to sustain them.13 If the Communists were to create a stable base area in Manchuria north of the Songhua River, they would have to eliminate all of these rival groups of armed men and their leaders. In late 1945–early 1946, the NDUA made some progress toward this goal, but they also made some significant errors. One problem was that the Communists did not take the bandits seriously enough. All too often, they would set out from their headquarters in a city or a county town, locate, fight, and defeat a bandit gang, and then retire from the field. Defeated but not annihilated, the bandits would regroup and resume their activities.14 In addition to this and other tactical weaknesses (such as failure to coordinate forces across political and military jurisdictions), Communist units also failed to win popular support: when Communist soldiers violated their own rules of discipline, which happened all too often, they undermined their own bandit extermination efforts.15 As late as July 1947, Chen Yun observed: “Although we have worked for several months, our influence among the people is still less than that of the Kuomintang.”16 Another problem was that bandit groups were easily swayed by their perception of Communist strength or weakness. When the Communists first entered the Northeast, they were the only Chinese armed forces on the ground: they had Soviet backing, they were actively recruiting in order to build up their numbers, and they were organizing militia in the rural areas. A number of independent armed groups (be they local landlord militia or bandit gangs of various sorts) took advantage of this opportunity and joined Communist regular or militia units. These men’s commitment to the Communist Party was only as deep as their perception

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of the Communists’ strength. When the Nationalists crushed Lin’s forces at Siping in May 1946 and the Communists retreated to Harbin, “bandit” soldiers and leaders quickly abandoned the Communists, returned to the county towns, villages, and forests, or even declared themselves for the Kuomintang. This led to a second high tide of banditry in the summer and autumn of 1946.17 Counterinsurgency—PLA-style The sudden increase in banditry posed a significant challenge to the Communist Party’s future in the Northeast. The Nationalists had already pushed the Communists out of most of southern Manchuria. If Lin Biao’s forces were to survive in the vast area north of the Songhua River, they would need to build a reliable base area. Beginning in early July, the party sent cadres down to the countryside and mobilized regular and local forces for an all-out bandit extermination campaign.18 The Communist Party strategy for wresting control of northern Manchuria from the bandit forces was to concentrate on one county at a time, consolidating control over a key point in each county and then expanding outward. Taking a lesson from earlier failures, Communist forces established cooperation and coordination across county and provincial lines in order to eliminate safe havens in formerly unpoliced border areas.19 In fighting bandits, the Communists had to recognize and address the bandits’ tactical strengths. Bandit gangs were initially operating in their home rural areas; when under pressure, they retreated to the mountain forests, where there was little room for maneuver and the field of vision was too limited to allow the use of artillery or even hand grenades. In this environment, bandit forces could be fifty meters away, yet safely out of sight and in position to ambush the Communists. Bandits, like the Communists themselves, used guerrilla tactics, concentrating or dispersing their forces as required, hiding, avoiding enemy (i.e., Communist) strong points and attacking weak points, using maneuver to evade contact or capture, and breaking out of encirclements. Bandits targeted Communist local militia, local cadres, supply lines, and railways.20 Communist forces also had difficulty in distinguishing bandits from ordinary villagers.21 The Communist response was to push the bandits out of the county towns and agricultural areas, and then to pursue them relentlessly into



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the mountains. At this stage of operations, the Communists were often pursuing bands of only ten to thirty men. To ensure speed and mobility, the Communists, too, used small, lightly armed units of ten to seventy men. The key was to maintain an intense pace of operations over a long period of time so that bandit forces would not have any opportunity to escape or rest.22 Anti-bandit operations varied in scale and intensity. Dealing with a small-time traditional bandit like “Big-Hands Zhang” was fairly simple. In early February 1947, Communist troops chased “Big-Hands” and his twenty-odd opium-smoking idlers into the mountains until the bandits were exhausted. “Big-Hands” surrendered: his men, on the other hand, went down in a hail of gunfire.23 While they faced a number of local bandits like “Big-Hands” Zhang, the Communists also had to deal with a number of larger, better organized, and more overtly politicized bandit gangs and their leaders. One of these was the gang—some might call it a small military force—led by Xie Wendong. Xie Wendong was an opportunist. Back in 1936–38, he had been a member of a Communist-led anti-Japanese force resisting the Japanese. Then he surrendered and joined the Japanese-controlled Manchukuo army. In November 1945, when the Communists were aggressively expanding their forces, Xie brought his former Manchukuo army unit into the NDUA. A month later, he turned against the Communists and declared himself a supporter of the Nationalist government, which seemed to be winning at the time.24 Xie and his forces were trained, well-armed soldiers. When they attacked two county towns that Xie had occupied, the Communists used infantry and four tanks.25 Ultimately, Communist forces drove Xie off of the plains and into the mountains, locating and destroying his stockpiles of food, attacking relentlessly, so that Xie’s forces had to be constantly on the move. As the days wore on and the weather grew colder, the bandits’ determination flagged and they began to abandon their leader. When Xie was captured, praying outside a Buddhist mountain temple near the Mudan River, he was down to six men, one of whom was his son. In late November, Communist soldiers hauled Xie Wendong and his son up in front of the temple of the God of Wealth in Yilan, one of the county towns that Xie had formerly controlled. The temple forecourt was jammed with spectators who had come to see and

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shout at the two prisoners, and to demand their execution. After a similar public display in the neighboring county town of Boli, Xie and his son were executed in front of the nearby Communist Martyr’s Tomb.26 Winning Mass Support The public display and dramatic execution of Xie Wendong point to another aspect of the bandit extermination campaign: the need to attack the bandits’ relationships with the people. David Kilcullen, one of the American military’s leading experts on counterinsurgency, noted that insurgents rely on the population and that counterinsurgents therefore have to “restructure the environment to displace the enemy from it” and to “win the hearts, minds and acquiescence of the population.”27 Here, too, as with purely military operations, the Communists would have to recognize and deal head on with the bandits’ strengths. Common bandits like “Big-Hands” Zhang had no clear ideological commitment, and even more sophisticated leaders like Xie Wendong were opportunists, lacking any clear political agenda. They did, however, have roots in the society and economy of the Northeast. In order to thoroughly exterminate banditry, the Communists would need to build trust and relationships in local societies in which they, the Communists, were outsiders. Building trust was difficult when the Communists themselves were one of the sources of banditry. In 1945, when the Communists seemed to be strong, bandits joined them. But when the Communists looked weak, former bandit gangs turned against the Communists, going back to their independent ways or even declaring themselves part of the Nationalist army. There were tens of thousands of such turncoats in December 1945, and tens of thousands more in the spring of 1946.28 One part of the bandit extermination campaign of 1946–47, then, was for the Communists to stop bringing surrendered bandit gangs into their own ranks. Common bandits who surrendered were to give up all their weapons and be returned to their homes; their leaders were to be held for reeducation or, in some cases, execution.29 While they stopped recruiting bandits, the Communists also undertook to cleanse the ranks of their regular and militia forces, eliminating unreliable former bandit elements.30 While cleansing of the Communist ranks addressed one aspect of the bandit problem, the fundamental solution would require intensive



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political work directed both toward the bandits themselves and toward the broader society. The two were, in fact, closely linked. Bandits had family and supporters in the villages and towns of the Northeast. They also had the acquiescence of broad sections of society who may have feared or hated them, but nonetheless accepted them, however reluctantly, as a part of life. Political work in the Northeast was closely related to military operations: it was most effective when the people and the bandits themselves were convinced that the Communists were winning.31 Mass support for the Communists did not come naturally. Bandits like Xie Wendong had intelligence networks that could warn them when the Communists were approaching, family and other supporters who could deliver grain and other supplies to their mountain hideouts, and willing recruits from a pool of strong, but poor and desperate, young men. Even self-defense forces that defended their local communities from banditry were also opposed to the Communists and therefore (from the Communists’ point of view), slid easily into the category of “bandits.”32 The Communists used a variety of techniques to undermine the bandits’ sources of support, to build support for the Communist Party, and to create divisions among the bandits themselves. Communist troops that were engaged in bandit extermination operations regularly distributed propaganda and painted slogans on walls and buildings. Some of the propaganda explicitly linked Chiang Kai-shek to American imperialism in order to explain to the people why the current war (including the struggle against the bandits, whom the Communists generally characterized as being in cahoots with Chiang) was different from the war of resistance against Japan.33 Communists cultivated local sources of intelligence (particularly hunters and herb-gatherers, who were familiar with the mountains) and recruited bandits’ family members to persuade their sons and brothers to surrender.34 Propaganda work teams visited remote mountain villages with links to banditry, bringing grain to feed the poor, giving people the right to cut firewood in the forests, and promising that they would not be taxed if they opened new fields.35 The Communists established party organizations throughout the region, and continued to build and train local militia. The local militia helped to maintain security over vast stretches of the countryside so that the regular Communist forces could focus on serious trouble areas. They were also more tactically sophisticated than

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traditional rural self-defense forces, which did not like to operate outside their own communities and tended to stubbornly hold their ground and be slaughtered when surrounded by stronger bandit forces.36 With bandit extermination operations, propaganda, militia-building, and the establishment of local party and government institutions, the Communists were doing precisely what American counterinsurgency experts recommended in a different context over sixty years later: establishing a presence in local areas, befriending the people, providing security for their communities, and providing essential services, in essence, not simply defeating but also “outgoverning” their opponents.37 However, unlike American counterinsurgents, the Communists were not working with existing local elites: the Communists’ road to power involved the overturn of the traditional socioeconomic structure. Local elites were dispossessed and destroyed (sometimes literally). This process of creative destruction, which gave the Communists unequalled access to human and material resources, was achieved through land reform. Base Area Economics The Communist Party had been using land reform as a way of gaining access to human and material resources since 1927 when Mao Zedong wrote his famous “Report on the Hunan Peasant Movement.”38 As Mao described it at the time, the Chinese peasants had a hunger for land and a deep hatred for a small, but oppressive, stratum of landlords and rich peasants. The Communist Party, he argued, should place itself at the head of this powerful tidal wave of revolutionary fervor, giving it direction. Under Mao’s leadership, the Communist Party did indeed exercise leadership over grassroots peasant movements (even creating them where they did not exist) in order to make these movements serve the party’s own short- and long-term interests.39 The Chinese peasants did not necessarily understand the Communist Party’s long-term goal of socialism, which would include collectivized agriculture. But that was irrelevant at the time. During the Chinese civil war, land reform represented an intersection of the peasants’ immediate interests (getting their own land) and the Communist Party’s interests (gaining access to resources). The Communist Party in Manchuria needed two sorts of resources: human and material. On the one hand, the party needed a strong base



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of popular support. It needed the people of the Northeast not only to passively accept party rule, but to actively support the party, contributing their labor, their cooperation in gathering intelligence and in sending their sons and husbands to join the Communist forces. The Communists also needed to lay their hands on the surplus wealth (mostly grain and soybeans) of the countryside, which they did through a combination of taxes and purchase at set prices. In addition, they needed to ensure that the urban economy—commercial and financial establishments, artisanal and industrial production—remained healthy. None of these were easy tasks. When they first entered the Northeast, the Communists were concentrated in the cities and along the major railway lines. Then, from November 1945 through June 1946, they were preoccupied with fighting the advancing Nationalist armies. As a result, they had done relatively little in regard to rural base building and land reform. The Communists had initially addressed their financial needs by confiscating wealth and resources from the former Manchukuo government and from Japanese settlers and land companies, which, together, owned 10–15 percent of Manchuria’s cultivated land and a wide array of other properties and businesses, and by issuing paper money.40 Individual Communist military units resolved their own supply problems by confiscating Japanese and “puppet” property, buying grain on the local market, and collecting ad hoc “taxes,” leaving the farmers with a receipt or an IOU.41 But by the winter of 1946–47, the Communist administration in North Manchuria stood at the brink of financial disaster: the military consumed over 80 percent of the budget, and three-fourths of the provincial governments under Communist control were running deficits. The North Manchuria Base Area also had serious deficits of textiles (essential for an army, especially one that had to fight in the winter) and of various industrial and military goods. North Manchuria had only 10–20 percent of Manchuria’s total industrial production and almost no textile industries.42 The Communist Party solved this fiscal crisis by rebuilding and restructuring the Northeast’s foreign trade. During their eighteen years of colonial administration, the Japanese had linked the economy of Manchukuo closely to Korea and Japan: over 60 percent of exports and 85 percent of imports had come from Japan. One of the fundamental characteristics of the trade was that Manchuria exported soybeans and grain

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and imported textiles. When Japan was defeated and the Soviet Union occupied Manchuria and North Korea, this economic system collapsed. Manchuria was left with a lack of textiles and a surfeit of soybeans and grain. At the same time, Stalin’s Soviet Union, which had textiles and other goods, needed grain. This gave the Chinese Communist Party the opportunity to resolve their fiscal crisis.43 But first, the party would need to gain access to the surplus product of the countryside, which brings us to land reform. Land Reform One of the key questions in land reform is where you draw the line between those who are the targets of the land reform movement and those who are the beneficiaries. On 4 May 1946 the Communist Party Center issued a fairly moderate “Directive Regarding Settling Accounts and Rent Reduction and the Land Question.”44 On the one hand, this document affirmed the peasants’ desire for land and endorsed the idea of achieving the goal of “land to the tiller” through mass struggle against landowners. But at the same time, the party ordered that the property rights of middle peasants be protected, and even drew distinctions between rich peasants and landlords, and between small and big landlords, prescribing carefully gauged differential treatment of families in these different categories, with the most harsh treatment being reserved for “big landlords.” The goal was to conduct land reform in a moderate fashion so as to gain the active support of 90 percent of the rural population while isolating and attacking the wealthiest 10 percent.45 But on 7 July, the Northeast Bureau issued its own, more radical, land reform directive, ordering the complete expropriation and division of all landlord property (land, livestock, and agricultural equipment) and even the confiscation of rich peasants’ surplus land.46 The July 7th Directive marked the beginning of eighteen months of bitter conflict that sometimes pitted not only class against class, but also clan against clan, village against village, and countryside against city. The summer and autumn of 1946 saw a flurry of land reform activity. Party cadres led work teams into the villages, where they often took charge of the entire process of land reform, putting families into categories (landlord, rich peasant, middle peasant, poor peasant, landless laborer) on the basis of hurried investigation, confiscating and redistributing land and other



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property accordingly, and then moving on to the next village, often within a week.47 In January 1947, the Northeast Bureau reviewed its progress and concluded that in most villages, land reform had been carried out poorly and incompletely: landlords and rich peasants had successfully disguised the extent of their property (sometimes by bribing the work teams). Poor and landless peasants had not taken the initiative to lead the struggle against the rich: they had been passive recipients of Communist Party work team largesse. Neither the economic nor the social power structure of the villages had been thoroughly overturned. The Northeast Bureau referred to the unsatisfactory situation of land reform in these villages as “half-cooked rice.” “Half-cooked rice” was both an ideological and an economic problem. One the one hand, the Communists had an ideological commitment to lead a rural revolution of the poor and disadvantaged against their exploiters. At the same time, the Communists desperately needed to restructure the rural economy in order to direct surplus wealth (particularly soybeans and grain) into party warehouses in a way that would provide the party with a sustainable, long-term source of revenue. This combination of ideological and economic imperatives led to an increasing radicalization of land reform in 1947. First, Communist Party work teams returned to the villages to finish cooking the “half-cooked rice.”48 In July, the Party Center, concerned that poor peasants were not really overturning and suppressing the rural elite, issued the Communist Party’s Land Reform Law and called for another round of land reform. In August, the Northeast Bureau pushed the land reform movement to the next level when it issued a “Directive on digging out treasure.”49 In the countryside, poor peasants began to grasp the initiative, attacking landlords and searching their homes for hidden wealth such as guns, draft animals, gold, silver, jewels, and grain.50 As the violence mounted and land reform became more radicalized, the targets broadened. The lines between “big” and “small” landlords and between landlords, rich peasants, and the wealthier (“upper”) middle peasants became increasingly blurred. This broadening of the targets of attack began to undermine agricultural production itself, destroying networks of financial and commercial relationships and disrupting the supply of agricultural credit.51 It also brought the violent class struggle from the villages into the towns and cities. For example, in the summer

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of 1947, a provincial party leader approached Communist mayor Li Da of Harbin and asked him “How much treasure can Harbin dig out?” The mayor replied that since capitalists are different from landlords, probably not much. The provincial cadre, nonplussed, told Mayor Li to prepare accommodation and food for several hundred peasants who would be coming to Harbin to dig out landlord “treasure” as a part of the land reform movement. Knowing that he was treading on thin ice, Li Da refused to give an answer. Instead, he went to a member of the Northeast Bureau and offered his resignation. Two days later, after heated debate, the Northeast Bureau agreed that peasants would not be allowed to come into Harbin.52 The question of whether to allow peasants to bring the land reform movement into the towns and cities reflected a contradiction in the party’s policies. On the one hand, the party wanted to completely restructure rural society and economy by overthrowing the landowning elite and redistributing their wealth. On the other hand, they did not want to destroy the economy of their base area, particularly not the urban economy, which was essential for trade and industrial production. Mao Zedong himself had said that as the party took over large and medium-size cities, it would need to manage their economies in order to develop industries, commerce, and finance. Private enterprises would play a role in that development. The party’s policy was to protect private enterprises that had not collaborated with the Japanese and to ensure that they would have access to machinery, raw materials, and other resources.53 Landlord families’ rural landholdings and other wealth were defined as “feudal” and thus open to attack, while their urban investments were defined as “capitalist” and therefore not legitimate targets of land reform. These distinctions were not always rigorously defined or respected, but they did help to limit the scope of class struggle in the Northeast.54 The party also took steps to limit class struggle within urban enterprises themselves. The Party Center ordered that “workers’ benefits must be pursued in the context of developing production and boosting the economy; any lopsided or overblown demands will undermine the economy of the liberated areas.”55 When Communist Party forces first entered Harbin in the spring of 1946, Chen Yun ordered them not to take over private enterprises: their role was to restore order, make sure that electrical and



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water services were working, and root out any remaining Manchukuo and Kuomintang forces or agents.56 In order to get production going again, the Communist municipal government gave loans and supplies of raw materials to private enterprises and participated in the wholesaling of finished products.57 While leaders in the Northeast Bureau, including Chen Yun, helped to insulate Harbin and other cities from the most egregious excesses of the land reform movement, they also pushed the movement to extremes in the countryside. The Party Center promulgated its “Draft Land Reform Law” on 10 October 1947. This law, which was symptomatic of the Party Center’s distrust of base-level party organizations, encouraged more direct action by poor peasants, thus helping to move land reform in a more radical direction.58 In a report on land reform work in the Northeast, Chen Yun underlined the need to put power into the hands of poor peasants and hired laborers.59 The immediate effect of the “Draft Land Reform Law” and the policies of Chen Yun and others in the Northeast Bureau was to initiate a new stage in land reform in the Northeast: the “Sweep the Courtyards Movement.” Throughout the fall and winter of 1947–48, mobs from one village would attack the elite families of another village and vice versa, so that ties of kinship, friendship, and neighborliness within villages could no longer exercise any restraint on the choice of targets and the level of violence.60 This sometimes led to pitched battles between villages.61 It also led to concern and morale problems within the Communist forces, as men and officers from middle or rich peasant background began getting reports from back home that their families, far from benefiting from or at least being protected during land reform, had actually become victims of unrestrained violence.62 A review of self-criticisms written by NDUA cadres during the land reform movement revealed that of cadres at battalion level and above, about 70 percent had doubts about the necessity and correctness of land reform. They were dissatisfied with mass struggle techniques and believed that the mass movement was going too far: some even harbored sympathy for landlords.63 Nearly forty years later, Chen Yun frankly acknowledged that he had committed “leftist errors” in regard to land reform policy back in 1947.64

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Foreign Trade The Communist Party Center and the Northeast Bureau began to restrain the land reform movement in early 1948.65 By June, the movement in the Northeast was basically over.66 In spite of (or perhaps because of) its excesses, the land reform movement had accomplished its goals. The social and economic system of the Northeast had been completely overturned: landholding patterns had been fundamentally changed. The revolution in the countryside did not simply redistribute land to the poor peasants: it also gave the Chinese Communist Party a high degree of control over the markets for grain and soybeans. As land reform became more radical, the party was able to tighten its control over commodity grain.67 By 1948, grain taxes and required sales of grain to the Communist government together placed a total burden ranging from 24 percent to as much as 80 percent of a farming family’s total production. This was very difficult for the farmers, but it helped the party to accumulate grain and soybeans for its trade with the Soviet Union.68 Trade with the Soviet Union was initially based on a trade agreement between the Soviets and the Northeast Bureau. Signed in December 1946, the agreement provided for Chinese exports of soy, wheat, maize, sorghum, millet, frozen pork, and frozen mutton, in return for imports of textiles, cotton yarn, newsprint, dyes, motor vehicles, aviation fuel, salt, kerosene, matches, motor oil, and other goods.69 From autumn 1946 to December 1947, 72 percent of imports were for military use, while 28 percent were civilian commodities.70 The agreement was renewed in 1948, with coal joining the list of Chinese exports, second only to grain in value.71 Many cadres who were not involved with the trade did not understand why the Northeast should be exporting grain, nor did they approve of the idea. Indeed, Communist trading companies’ purchase of grain for export to the Soviet Union in 1947 probably contributed to the shortage of grain in the countryside: one historian even speculates that the Northeast Bureau saw the radicalization of land reform not only as a way to solve the problem of grain shortages, but also as a way to redirect popular discontent away from the party and focus it instead on landlords and rich peasants.72



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Nonetheless, the trade with the Soviet Union and a similar, but smaller, trade with North Korea played an important part in supplying the Communist armies with desperately needed textiles and other goods and in helping to stimulate both industrial and agricultural production on the areas of the Northeast under Communist control.73 Beginning in 1948, the Communists also conducted trade with merchants from South Korea, Japan, and Britain. In this trade, conducted on an ad hoc basis at the port of Yingkou, Communist Party policy was to allow the foreign capitalist merchants to make a 25 percent profit. The trade declined in July when Chiang Kai-shek’s navy stepped up its control over the Manchurian coast.74

Guerrilla-ism has two aspects. One is irregularity, that is, decentralization, lack of uniformity, absence of strict discipline and simple methods of work. These features stemmed from the Red Army’s infancy, and some of them were just what was needed at the time. As the Red Army reaches a higher stage, we must gradually and consciously eliminate these so as to make the Red Army more centralized, more unified, more disciplined and more thorough in its work—in short, more regular in character. —Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”

Eight

Army of Learning ★★★

The Transition from Guerrilla to Conventional Warfighting Capability

Land reform and trade with the Soviet Union provided the Communists with grain, textiles, and other trade goods. But in order to conduct increasingly large, complex conventional military operations, Lin Biao’s forces would also need to make the transition from guerrilla to conventional operations—in short, the kind of transition that Mao had described as early as 1936. In order to achieve this transition, the Communist troops would have to acquire new weapons and learn how to use them. Their successful accomplishment of both these tasks was possible because of the advantages of their position in northern Manchuria itself: access to Japanese weapons and Japanese technical personnel, Japanese-built industrial infrastructure, and assistance from the Soviet Union and North Korea. In addition, a significant number of Communist officers serving in Manchuria had received military education in the Soviet Union. These included artillery commander Zhu Rui, Deputy Commander Xiao Jinguang, Chief of Staff Lou Yalou, and probably Lin Biao himself.1 Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou’s accomplishment was to take these and other resources and to combine them with successful programs of indoctrination and training in order to produce the armies that ultimately defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s forces in the Liao-Shen Campaign. 141

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Weapons and Ammunition One of the most basic of the Communists’ needs was weapons and ammunition. While they acquired small amounts of weapons and ammunition through their trade with the Soviet Union and were able to fulfill some of their needs with captured enemy equipment, the Communists’ main sources were (1) Japanese stockpiles transferred from Soviet to Chinese Communist hands; (2)  hidden Japanese stockpiles and Japanese equipment abandoned in the field, both of which the Communists acquired through their own scavenging and discovery; (3) the Communists’ own military industries, both in the base areas and in Soviet-controlled Lüshun-Dalian. It is impossible to say with any degree of certainty how many guns, how many rounds of ammunition, how many artillery shells, and so forth were acquired from each source and when. The data available to researchers simply cannot support a detailed quantitative analysis. The best we can do is to look at the anecdotal and existing quantitative evidence, while keeping in mind that all evidence is suspect, and that all conclusions are therefore tentative. Joseph Stalin seems to have been very careful not to ship weapons and ammunition directly from the Soviet Union to Manchuria. Chinese secondary sources occasionally make oblique references to shipments of munitions from the Soviet Union to the Northeast via Korea, or to secret supplies of small numbers of Soviet and Czech weapons.2 However, the bulk of the trade between the Soviet Union and the North Manchuria Base Area was (as described above) in fuel, medicines, textiles, clothing, boots, and other goods.3 In 1947, as tensions mounted between the Soviet Union and the United States in Europe, and as Lin Biao proved that he could win battles, Stalin adopted a somewhat more generous attitude, supplying some weapons (precise amounts unknown) from the Soviet Union and Korea.4 The Soviet Red Army’s transfer of captured Japanese weapons and ammunition directly to their Chinese comrades seems to have been far more significant than any shipments directly from the Soviet Union. When the Kwantung Army collapsed in August 1945, the Japanese failed to carry out a plan to destroy all of their weapons, ammunition, and equipment.5 As a result, they left behind military supplies consisting (according



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to one source) of a maximum of 500,000 rifles, 12,000 machine guns, 600 airplanes, 1,800 artillery pieces, and 160 tanks.6 Of this material (keeping in mind that the numbers are debatable), the Soviets took an unknown amount (particularly aircraft, tanks, and heavy artillery) directly back to the Soviet Union.7 When the first Chinese Communist units entered Manchuria in August–November 1945, they acquired various amounts and types of Japanese weapons, ammunition, and other materiel from the Soviets. At first, the Soviet Red Army was very generous about transferring supplies, even entire warehouses, to the Chinese. Encouraged by the reports of plentiful supplies of weapons and equipment, the Communist Party Center ordered subsequent units heading into Manchuria to leave their old weapons behind, travel light and fast, and reequip later.8 This left them at the mercy of unexpected changes in Soviet policy, which shifted back and forth between more or less open support for the Communists several times from August 1945 through 1947, depending on the Soviet Union’s assessment of the international situation.9 These shifts in policy frustrated individual Communist units at specific times, but they do not negate the overall fact that the Soviets did transfer significant amounts of Japanese weapons and ammunition to Lin Biao’s forces. Sometimes this was done openly. At other times, Soviet forces stood by while Chinese Communist soldiers “raided” Japanese warehouses.10 Most of the evidence for the transfer of weapons and ammunition is anecdotal. In late November 1945, Chen Yun and Gao Gang reported to the Communist Party Center that “the Soviet Union’s assistance to us is secret, and it is limited: 100,000 rifles, 300 artillery pieces.”11 Sometimes weapons were simply lost in the confusion: a shipment of 1,290,000 rounds of ammunition, 150,000 grenades, 30,000 pairs of shoes, 30,000 hats, 10,000 overcoats, 12,000 rifles, and 300 machine guns shipped by rail disappeared somewhere between Shenyang and Jinzhou; “bandits” posing as Communist soldiers occasionally took supplies from the Soviet-guarded warehouses.12 Sometimes Soviet officers had to be cajoled or even threatened before they would give up Japanese supplies. In June 1946 Xiao Jinguang visited the Soviet commander at Lüshun-Dalian to convey Lin Biao’s demand (not request) that the Soviets turn over all confiscated

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Kwantung Army weapons in his possession. This gained Xiao Jinguang fifteen railway cars of weapons.13 The most significant transfers of weapons seem to have come between June 1947 and August 1948. In June 1947 Soviet-trained artillery commander Zhu Rui, while visiting North Korea, took advantage of his personal friendship with a Soviet officer (a former classmate from Zhu’s time in the Soviet Union) to make an arms deal: the Soviets would ship Japanese weapons and other supplies from Korea to Manchuria by night, and the Chinese would give the Soviets grain in return.14 In October, He Changgong, one of Lin Biao’s staff officers, learned that the Soviets had a large number of Japanese weapons piled up in a warehouse in Manzhouli, on the border between Inner Mongolia and the Soviet Union. The Soviets were planning to ship these weapons back to the Soviet Union to be melted down as scrap iron. As he later recalled, He Changgong went to meet the Soviet commander, telling him: “The Chinese people paid for these Kwantung Army weapons with their blood and their lives, so why won’t you give them to us?” When the Soviet officer insisted that the weapons were going to be shipped off and melted down, He responded angrily: “You’re a conservative, you haven’t got a drop of internationalism in you. If you won’t agree, then I’ll take them by force, and I’ll push you along in front, so when the Soviet soldiers guarding the weapons open fire, they’ll shoot you first. If you insist on hauling this stuff away, I’ll fight you for it, I’ll phone Stalin and report you, tell him you’re no internationalist.”15 He combined these threats with a few favors: he organized a couple of dance parties for the Soviet commander, complete with liquor and dance partners. Within three days, the Soviet officer had gotten clearance from above, signed an agreement, and turned the warehouse and its precious contents over to He Changgong. In this way, the Communists acquired perhaps tens of thousands of rifles and a few artillery pieces.16 On 28 December 1947 Lin Biao wrote a letter to Stalin acknowledging past transfers of Japanese weapons and asking for more: 200,000 rifles, 15,000 light machine guns, 7,000 heavy machine guns, 1,700 mortars, 100 antiaircraft guns, 200 mountain guns, large quantities of ammunition, and wireless communications equipment for twenty divisions. Stalin did not fulfill this wish list, but he



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did approve a shipment of substantial amounts of Japanese equipment by train from North Korea.17 So how many Japanese weapons and how much Japanese ammunition did the Soviet Union either give or trade to the Chinese Communist forces? How much of a difference did it make to the outcome of the civil war in the Northeast? Chinese sources present a range of data, much of it loosely defined. For example, some sources say that the Soviets supplied 300,000 rifles; others claim as many as 700,000.18 Sources also cite figures such as “nearly” 20,000,000 rounds of ammunition; 3,000 heavy machine guns; 1,600 (others say 4,000) artillery pieces, mortars, and rocket launchers.19 The reliability of these and other numbers and the question of what (if anything) they really mean is open to debate. In a summary of the three years of fighting in the Northeast, the Chinese Communist Party’s Northeast Bureau acknowledged that “the weapons and material given to us amounted to quite a lot.”20 Chinese historians including Yang Kuisong and General Xu Yan argue that Soviet military aid—which they describe as almost entirely transfers of Japanese weapons in exchange for grain and coal—helped to shorten the time necessary for the Communists to achieve victory in the Northeast, but that it was not the fundamental factor.21 In order to explain the growing strength and firepower of the Communist forces, these and other historians consider not only Soviet transfers of Japanese weapons, but also the Communists’ own military industries. Military Industrial Production During the colonial period, the Japanese had built a sizable industrial base in the Northeast, including military industries. Immediately after the Japanese surrender, the Communist Party Center sent cadres with military industrial knowledge to the Northeast to take over factories in Shenyang, Anshan, Changchun, and other cities. The Soviets had taken most of the best equipment and machinery, but what was left was still useful. Then in November 1945, the Soviets forced the Chinese Communists out of Shenyang and other major cities. They hurriedly removed what little equipment they could to Tonghua, and then, when Tonghua came under attack, to more remote areas in northern Manchuria. In mid-July 1946, the

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Northeast Bureau decided to build military industries both in the North Manchuria Base Area and in Soviet-occupied Lüshun-Dalian.22 Between August 1946 and October 1947, the Communists established fourteen military industrial factories in Harbin, Jiamusi, Hunchun (a city near the Soviet and Korean borders), and other small cities.23 Most of these facilities manufactured artillery shells, hand grenades, and ammunition. Some of the factories used buildings and machinery left by the Japanese. They also used Japanese technicians and skilled workers. In Harbin, over three hundred small, privately owned metal and machine workshops produced artillery shells, swords, and other weapons on a contract basis.24 Production, though increasing, remained highly decentralized. By the autumn of 1947, Lin Biao’s rapidly expanding armies (now over one million men) needed more reliable sources of weapons and ammunition. The Northeast Bureau’s response was to create a Bureau of Military Industry under the leadership of He Changgong.25 He brought the military industries under centralized leadership, expanded the use of Japanese personnel, and improved quality control.26 By the summer of 1948, the Northeast had fifty-five large and small military industrial factories. In addition to repairing existing weapons (particularly artillery pieces), these factories had an annual production of 2,000 60mm mortars, 500,000 rounds of mortar shells, 1,500,000 grenades, and 17,000,000 rounds of ammunition.27 Technical personnel and quality control were still problems, but overall, the Communists had built a significant productive capacity, which was able to support not only Lin’s armies, but also Communist units in Shandong and other theaters.28 The city of Dalian played a particularly important role in the development of Communist military industrial capacity. A small port in the late nineteenth century, Dalian had been taken over by the Russians in 1898 and then captured by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). By 1945, the Japanese had built Dalian into a major industrial and port city with over 1,800 factories (including oil, steel, machine tool, explosives, and chemical industries) and a population of nearly one million.29 The Soviets ransacked these factories in 1945–46, but the remaining buildings, machinery, tools, and, most importantly, skilled workers comprised a basis upon which the Communists could rebuild Dalian’s industrial production in a relatively short time.30 The Soviet authorities



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in Dalian, leery of anything that would give the Americans an excuse to get involved in Manchuria, forced the Chinese Communists to keep a low profile. This led to tension and even, in 1947, clashes between Communist cadres and Soviet officials.31 Despite these restrictions and tensions, the Soviet Union’s fundamental policy was to support, or at least tolerate, Chinese Communist activities. In the summer of 1946, representatives from various Communist liberated areas in China proper and from the Northeast came to Dalian with investment capital to set up arms factories, an electrical equipment (i.e., telecommunications) factory, and hospitals.32 In January 1947, Lin Biao’s Soviet-trained chief of staff, Liu Yalou, used his personal connections with Soviet commanders to help arrange the transfer of a number of military industrial factories to Communist control.33 Much of the Communist Party’s business was done through front companies with innocuous-sounding names—the Jianxin (“Building Anew”) Company, the Guanghua (“Glorious China”) Electrical Company, the General Public Security Department, Industrial Section, the Guandong Electrical Engineering Specialist School, and so on. The opening of Dalian University in the winter of 1947 specifically for the purpose of Russian language instruction suggests the importance of the Soviet connection.34 By 1948, Lüshun-Dalian was the biggest of the Chinese Communists’ seven military industrial bases in the Northeast, manufacturing artillery shells, gunpowder, radio sets, handcranked generators, and other weapons, ammunition, and equipment.35 Artillery and Armor From the moment they entered the Northeast, the Communists understood that they would need artillery and armor if they hoped to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s armies and take control of all of China. In their first months in the area, some individual Chinese units incorporated a few former Manchukuo army artillery officers and soldiers into their ranks, mostly on an ad hoc basis in order to meet specific needs in combat against Nationalist or bandit forces. These first artillery units were generally disbanded once they had served their purpose.36 In late November 1945, Zhu Rui, the Soviet-trained commander of the Yan’an Artillery School, arrived in the Northeast with 1,069 men—nearly the entire staff and student body. These men were initially dispersed throughout the Northeast Democratic

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United Army. The result was widespread development of small artillery units, but without any centralized command, control, or planning.37 One of the challenges facing Zhu Rui and his small cadre of artillerymen was the almost complete lack of artillery. During the winter of 1945– 46, artillery units’ major responsibility was to comb the towns, cities, and countryside for Japanese warehouses, hidden stockpiles of artillery shells, and leftover artillery pieces in various states of damage and disrepair.38 By May 1946, according to one count, they had recovered 700 artillery pieces of various types, 500,000 rounds of artillery shells, and a large amount of spare parts and other miscellaneous equipment.39 The resulting hodgepodge of artillery forces was not satisfactory. In July 1946, Lin Biao reported a series of problems to the Central Military Commission: (a) many of his cadres did not understand the importance of artillery and thus did not give enough attention to overcoming the problems that their artillery units were facing; (b) artillery units in the Northeast were fragmented, weak, and armed with an eclectic collection of artillery pieces that did not work well together from a tactical point of view; (c) in using artillery, commanders in the field either had unreasonably high expectations or simply did not understand the use of artillery and therefore set it aside and relied solely on infantry; (d) there was an extreme shortage of men trained in artillery skills.40 Lin took steps to build a stronger, more centralized artillery command within the Communist forces, establishing an Artillery Command Headquarters, with Zhu Rui in charge, and holding artillery work meetings in March 1947 and April 1948. By the time of the second meeting, the Northeast Field Army (as the Communist forces were known from January 1948) had a total of 572 mountain, field, and heavy artillery pieces (including 123 still under repair).41 In terms of technique, the artillery had moved from an emphasis on direct fire and close combat in the spring of 1947 to a new emphasis on indirect fire beginning in July 1947.42 All this hard work led to dramatic— and decisive—results. As historian Li Chen notes, “In Manchuria between the years 1947–1948, during all major engagements the Communist artillery was at least four times that of the Nationalists (in numerical terms).”43 The incorporation of armor into the Communist forces followed the same pattern as the construction of artillery, but on a smaller scale. As with the artillery, the first stage in the building of armor capability was to



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have Communist soldiers scrounge up tanks and spare parts from Japanese warehouses in Shenyang, Siping, and other cities, and from battlefields where Japanese soldiers had abandoned tanks in various states of damage and disrepair. Soviet-trained Chinese Communist personnel played leading roles in the early development of the NDUA armor capability. The Soviets in Dalian also agreed to train Chinese soldiers in tank skills—but when Mao Zedong sent them seven hundred students, the Soviets reneged on the offer. After some discussion with Liu Yalou and Xiao Hua, they agreed to train around thirty men; the others had to be transferred to different assignments.44 The NDUA’s first few tanks, including a Japanese tank acquired from a warehouse in Shenyang, saw action in the Three Expeditions Campaign, the Liao-Shen Campaign, and the Ping-Jin Campaign.45 Indoctrination—Speak Bitterness In September 1947 Mao Zedong both laid out his strategic vision for Communist operations over the next year and suggested basic guidelines for the achievement of that vision. As historian William Whitson notes, what Mao articulated was a combination of his own views on war with those of his Russian-oriented professional commanders’ interpretations of Kutuzov, Shaposhnikov, and “the military science of Stalin.”46 “Our basic task,” Mao observed, “is to launch a country-wide counter-offensive.”47 From a tactical point of view, this would require Communist forces not only to “strive to draw the enemy into mobile warfare” but also to “lay great stress on learning the tactics of positional attack and on stepping up the building of the artillery and engineering corps in order to capture enemy fortified points and cities on a large scale.”48 Mao tempered this call for a move toward conventional operations by underlining that “wiping out the enemy’s effective strength [is] our main objective: do not make holding or seizing a place our objective,” and by advising his commanders to “take medium and small cities and extensive rural areas first; take big cities later.”49 Mao’s strategic vision and broad tactical guidelines clearly drew on the experience of the Northeast. With the Summer Offensive, Lin Biao had already made the transition from the defensive to the counteroffensive. In that campaign and in the Autumn and Winter Offensives Lin (as we have seen in chapter 4) did exactly as Mao suggested, using mobile

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operations and, increasingly, positional attacks to wipe out enemy forces and take control of rural areas, small and medium cities, while leaving the large cities to one side. As the NDUA moved from small- to largescale operations and began to attack medium cities, Lin Biao and his commanders became increasingly aware of the need for indoctrination, education, and training. On an ideological level, newly recruited soldiers and officers had to be taught why they were fighting. They had to be integrated with men who had served the Communist armies for years in order to form cohesive combat units. In practical terms, soldiers and officers accustomed to guerrilla warfare had to learn to live with the greater levels of discipline and centralization required of a conventional army. They also needed to learn the combat skills and tactical principles that they would need to conduct large-scale operations and especially to attack heavily defended cities like Changchun, Jinzhou, and Shenyang. The Communist forces addressed the ideological issue through the familiar mechanism of a political campaign—the Speak Bitterness Movement. They dealt with the problems of professionalization and training by adopting Soviet techniques, opening schools for professional military education, and conducting a massive “Big Training” during the summer of 1948. The Communist party had used the “speak bitterness” technique during the land reform movement of the 1930s, when poor peasants were urged to tell moving stories of their suffering as a part of the process of raising their consciousness of oppression and conducting violent mass “struggle meetings” against their landlords. The PLA had also used “speak bitterness” on an ad hoc basis in the past. In January 1947, some units of the NDUA Third Column began to use “speak bitterness” in order to raise morale and build unit cohesion during the First Defense of Linjiang. That summer, Lin Biao’s political commissar Luo Ronghuan began to apply the Third Column’s experience to the whole NDUA. He also sent a report to the Party Center, which Mao then edited and distributed to the entire People’s Liberation Army. As a result, Speak Bitterness campaigns became a standard technique of indoctrination.50 In the Northeast, Speak Bitterness was carried out on a large scale from winter 1947 through summer 1948.51 The Speak Bitterness Movement was necessary because NDUA units were not homogeneous groups of committed Communists from poor



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peasant families. NDUA units were complex amalgamations of veteran soldiers, new recruits (some of them from middle peasant family backgrounds), and former KMT soldiers. If there was a common denominator, it was that the vast majority of the soldiers, including former KMT soldiers, were from poor families. The purpose of the Speak Bitterness Movement was to operationalize that common bond in order to create a sense of shared identity between the soldiers from poor farmer and worker backgrounds while forcing those of other class backgrounds to abandon their class and stand with the farmers and workers.52 As a practical matter, the Speak Bitterness Movement was carried out at meetings of tens or hundreds of soldiers. The key to conducting a successful Speak Bitterness meeting was to find one or more exemplary soldiers to take the lead—men who had experienced poverty and suffering, whose families had been exploited and abused, and who were able to tell their stories to a large audience in a convincing, moving way, so that they would inspire others to “spill out bitter water” and “dig out the roots of bitterness.”53 The stage had to be properly prepared for a Speak Bitterness meeting. This might involve setting up a wreath, like those used at memorial services for the dead, with spirit tablets representing the souls of family members of the Speak Bitterness meetings’ exemplary soldiers—family members who had been killed, committed suicide, or died of hunger due to mistreatment by cruel landlords. Banners with revolutionary slogans would be hung from the walls: “Never forget suffering rooted in class status.” “Firmly remember hatred written in blood and tears.” “If you have bitterness, speak bitterness; if you suffered injustice, appeal for redress.” “Blood debts must be repaid in blood.” “All poor people under heaven are one family.” “Defeat Chiang Kai-shek, liberate all of China.” The meeting, which might include the performance of a revolutionary opera or play like The White-haired Girl, Blind Granny, or Enmity of Blood and Tears, would also involve the swearing of oaths in front of the wreath and spirit tablets. Collective crying was the emotional high point.54 As a report on the movement observed: “Speak Bitterness is the kind of scene in which grief and anger are intermingled; when the speaking is done well, there is usually wordless sobbing and the entire audience is moved to tears. In many units’ Speak Bitterness meetings, up to 95 percent of those present are crying bitterly.”55

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The Speak Bitterness Movement was a positive technique designed to produce a common identity, a common goal, and a common understanding of why the Communist soldiers were fighting Chiang Kai-shek.56 But not all soldiers could be indoctrinated. The inevitable follow-up to the Speak Bitterness Movement was the use of the “Three Inspections and Three Rectifications” movement to purge the ranks of unreliable elements. By “inspecting class, inspecting work, inspecting fighting spirit” and “rectifying discipline, rectifying work-style, rectifying systems,” the Communist forces tried to rout out captured Nationalist officers masquerading as common soldiers and men from the landlord or other unreliable class backgrounds. At times, this movement got out of hand: soldiers were known to embarrass, harass, tie up, and beat cadres from bad class backgrounds. Some were driven to suicide: others were beaten to death.57 The Big Training While political indoctrination was an important part of the training process, political correctness alone would not enable the Communists to prevail on the battlefield. As Lin Biao noted: In the past, some people believed that we Communists only cared about political factors and did not care about technological factors—this is the opposite of the Communist party’s thinking. You need to be aware that technology can lead to the change of an entire society. Before, in the days of the rifle and the machine-gun, we could only fight guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare; now that we have artillery we can fight this kind of large-scale positional assault. In addition to this, in the past, we didn’t have explosives. Now we have yellow powder explosives. This has caused us to make changes in strategy, tactics, order of battle and modes of command.58

Changes in strategy, tactics, order of battle, and modes of command required a top-down transformation of the Communist forces. At the center, Chief of Staff Liu Yalou drew on his Soviet education to improve the quality of staff work throughout the Northeast Field Army. Liu’s own translation of the Soviet Red Army’s “Regulations on Field Army Staff Work” became the fundamental guideline for Northeast Field Army staff officers. Liu emphasized that the Soviet model could not be mechanically applied to the situation in the Northeast, but it could clearly serve as a useful reference point as the Communists began to undertake large-scale operations in which different combat branches (infantry, artillery, and



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demolition) would need to be coordinated with each other.59 The result was an effective command system. As Yan Zhongchuan, a senior staff officer in Lin Biao’s headquarters described it: Staff officers must be very familiar with the quality and characteristics of all units. They should identify the location of all units at and above divisional level, what they are doing at any given time [ . . . ] The divisional and regimental commands should take measures to speed up the flow of information up the chain of command. For example, companies and battalions must collect information before they camp anywhere. Once camped, they should immediately produce a report with a map and then submit it to the regimental and divisional headquarters within 20 minutes. A division should submit a report to the general headquarters within one hour when its troops have reached a given location.60

In order to increase the number of trained personnel, Liu also oversaw a reorganization of professional military education in the Northeast. The Communists had begun to establish various specialist schools when they entered the Northeast: the Signals School was established in November 1945 and the Surveying School and Engineers School in 1946.61 In December 1947 Lin Biao’s headquarters amalgamated a number of small-scale schools of military instruction to form a Military College. The Military College was to research and compile materials relevant to the Communist force’s transition to conventional operations. It was also to train company and platoon cadres. In its first seven-month course of instruction, the Military College put 289 company commanders and assistant commanders, 1,990 platoon commanders and assistant commanders, and 532 squad leaders through a curriculum that began with two months of political education and then shifted to technical and tactical training. Technical and tactical training included the “Five Big Combat Skills” (grenade throwing, bayonet combat, engineering, explosives, and marksmanship), Lin Biao’s “Six Principles of Combat” (with an emphasis on positional attack), command techniques, and management skills.62 On 16 April 1948, at the conclusion of a twenty-two-day meeting of over four hundred staff officers, Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou summed up the situation of staff work. While recognizing that improvements had been made and that the Northeast Field Army troops were now able to fight and win against American-equipped units, Lin, Liu, and Luo pointed to the continued need for a greater degree of centralization,

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respect for rules, and discipline; more “scientific” organization of command headquarters; better understanding of Mao’s “Ten Military Principles” and Lin’s “Six Principles of Combat”; and better management of troops (desertion, for example, was still a problem).63 The Northeast Field Army worked to address these and other problems in an intensive “Big Training” conducted for around three months in the summer of 1948. The “Big Training” aimed to prepare soldiers and cadres to conduct large-scale mobile operations and (especially) simple combined arms operations in which infantry, artillery, and a small number of tanks and armored vehicles would be able to attack major cities like Changchun or Jinzhou without making the mistakes and suffering the unnecessarily heavy casualties that they had experienced in the failed attack on Siping in June 1947. The Big Training included both political and practical components. On the political side, the army continued to use the Speak Bitterness Movement to raise consciousness and create a sense of mission and commitment among both cadres and soldiers. While building class consciousness and morale, the party also conducted the “Five Rectifications and One Inspection” in order to purge the ranks of politically unreliable men. This movement called on all units to “rectify” their thought, work-style, discipline, relationships, and order of battle, and to “inspect” the class background of soldiers and cadres.64 Particular attention was paid to rectification of cadres. Some of those who had entered the army after the Japanese surrender (when the Communists were hurriedly expanding their forces) had bad leadership habits such as beating, swearing at, and belittling their soldiers.65 Old veterans, too, could sink into corruption. Some of the cadres of the Eighth Column’s Twenty-third Division, which had its roots in the Long March, had begun dealing in opium when they were stationed in an opium-producing area of Shaanxi province during the war against Japan.66 In Manchuria, the Twenty-third Division grew opium, and a number of the divisional cadres (including the divisional commander and his wife—who allegedly hid opium in her children’s cradle) were opium dealers.67 Political problems had to be addressed not only among the cadres, but also among common soldiers. Special attention had to be paid to the political indoctrination of former KMT soldiers and officers. In some



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companies these now accounted for 30–40 percent of total manpower. The Speak Bitterness Movement was particularly useful in producing a sense of class consciousness in these men.68 Soldiers of middle peasant origin also had to be targeted for special political indoctrination during the Big Training. Many of these soldiers were developing strong misgivings about the Communist party because their families had been victimized during the radical stage of land reform. Cadres had to make special efforts to explain that the party’s policy was to unite with middle peasants.69 In all cases political indoctrination hinged on family. Bad family background was cause for suspicion. Perceived mistreatment of family during land reform led to alienation that had to be addressed. Political indoctrination emphasized that the interests of the soldiers’ families were identical with the interests of the revolution itself: “Without the thorough victory of the revolution, there cannot be thorough liberation of the family.”70 Western observers who do not share the Communist party’s ideology tend to dismiss political work as an irrational phenomenon contrary to the ideas of modernization, efficiency, and professionalization. This is a mistake. Men whose cadres mistreated them would not have the morale and unit cohesion necessary to sustain them in extended, intense combat operations. Units whose leaders set an example of corruption, arbitrary violence, and mistreatment of civilians could not be trusted to carry out the party’s policies with regard to the generous treatment of prisoners and the protection of civilian property, including industrial and commercial enterprises, when they entered the cities.71 Political work in the Communist forces was not simply ideology for ideology’s sake: it had real operational significance. Building Combat Skills The Big Training was typically around 40 percent political education, 60 percent military training.72 The military training took Lin Biao’s Six Principles of Combat as its basis. The first four of these principles (“one point, two flanks,” the “3-3 system,” “four teams, one unit” and “four fast, one slow”) have been described above in chapter 4. The principle of “three ferocities” called on the troops to fight with ferocity, charge the enemy with ferocity, and pursue a retreating enemy with ferocity. “Three types of situation, three types of fighting” prescribed different ways of dealing

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with enemy forces depending on their situation. In facing an enemy who was determined to defend his position, the Communist troops should act with deliberation, surrounding the enemy position, preparing carefully, and then attacking. If the enemy was on the verge of retreat, Communist forces should act quickly to surround him, weaken him with small-scale assaults, and then hit him with their full force. But when an enemy was actually in flight, the Communist commanders on the ground should not wait passively for orders or hesitate in any way: they should pursue the enemy quickly and tenaciously in order to inflict maximum casualties.73 Lin Biao had articulated the Six Principles between 1945 and 1947, but by the spring of 1948 they had still not been thoroughly incorporated into the combat practice of all Northeast Field Army units. In order to rectify this problem, the Big Training began by training cadres in the theoretical and practical understanding of the Six Principles of Combat. At the column level, the focus was on learning how to coordinate operations with other columns and coordination of infantry with artillery and armor.74 At divisional level, the emphasis was on coordination with other units and on the principles of “one point, two flanks,” “four fast, one slow,” and “three ferocities.”75 At the battalion and regimental levels, the training was conducted by selecting three company and/or platoon leaders and giving them intensive training for a certain number of days, during which they would study the 3-3 system and other tactical principles, with particular emphasis on techniques to be used in positional assaults.76 Issues of command, organization of firepower, use of explosives, application of “four teams, one unit,” construction of defensive works (including the dreary but essential task of entrenchment) were essential components.77 These men would also be instructed in the pedagogical techniques that they were expected to use when training their soldiers.78 Techniques of group or team learning were applied at all levels. For example, the need to use the 3-3 system flexibly, taking terrain and other physical features of the battlefield into account, could be taught through a process of discussion, supplemented by practical exercises.79 Training of cadres also involved critical analysis in which cadres who had played leading roles in previous battles would describe their experiences and lead discussions in which they and the other participants would try to identify the reasons behind specific successes or failures. Discussion and analysis



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would make use of sand tables and of exercises at the actual battle sites.80 These sessions were not mere exercises of praise and appreciation: there was also severe criticism of units that had fought poorly and whose work was in other respects was considered “backward.”81 Not everyone liked training or knew how to conduct it well. Liu Yalou pointed out that there was a difference between learning and training: learning how to do something is one thing; practicing it over and over again until you get good at it and can perform under pressure is quite another. As Liu saw it, this could best be accomplished through exercises that began with small units and simple tasks. Training should be “simple first, complicated later; techniques first, tactics later.”82 Inevitably, there were problems: cadres trying to outdo their peers by forcing their men to train at unsustainable rates of over ten hours a day (where eight to nine was considered more reasonable), inappropriate use of high-pressure competitions between units, and soldiers who dragged their feet or played sick in order to get out of training.83 At the base level, techniques of training were not limited to instruction, discussions, and exercises led by cadres: there was also the use of more experienced soldiers in order to teach practical skills to new recruits and “liberated” former Nationalist soldiers. In some units, each older, more experienced soldier was assigned to mentor several new or “liberated” soldiers. The soldiers responsible for the mentoring were carefully chosen with reference not only to their skills but also to their political reliability as assessed according to their class background and participation in the Speak Bitterness campaign.84 And although their political reliability was questionable, “liberated” soldiers were often better trained than the regular recruits: Liu Yalou urged that they be used appropriately in training so that they could pass their skills on to their fellow soldiers.85 For ordinary soldiers, the practical skills involved included things such as marksmanship, grenade throwing, the use of explosives, use of the bayonet, the care and maintenance of their weapons.86 One of the guiding principles of base-level training was “less talk, more practice.”87 Practice included mock attacks on previously captured Nationalist positions, complete with signals, explosives, and first and second echelons going through the entire process of breaking into a city through enemy defenses and conducting urban warfare.88

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The kind of positional assault that the Northeast Field Army was preparing for would require an improvement in artillery as well as infantry skills. Artillery men had to become better at targeting and destroying enemy bunkers and gun emplacements in order to protect the infantry and allow them to get up close to the enemy walls and other defenses to place explosives.89 The first step of artillery training was to show company and squad cadres how to teach indirect fire techniques to their men and how to organize training and practice at the company level.90 Soviet instructors are said to have assisted, particularly in training with heavy artillery.91 The result of the training was that most artillery combat units could handle both direct fire in close combat and indirect fire in distant combat.92 Training, acquisition of new weapons, the incorporation of “liberated” Nationalist soldiers into the ranks, and some degree of Soviet assistance all contributed to the transformation of the Northeast Democratic Army. The Communist soldiers and officers who entered Manchuria in 1945 had been (for the most part) guerrilla fighters. They were now making the transition to conventional mobile and particularly positional warfare, both of which required coordination of infantry, artillery, and occasionally armor at an entirely new level. This transformation was a long process that continued on into the Korean War. However, the results of the transformation were evident to the Nationalists as early as August 1947, when General Liao Yaoxiang wrote to Albert Wedemeyer to describe the Communist armies: “They are now fighting as regular army do. The Communists now employ concentration of artillery fire in time of attack. Daytime attacks and the Battle of Szeoping show that the Communists have strong and offensive weapons. They have abandoned the 18th century assaults, and they have adopted the dispersed attack.”93

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[When] the collected ministers are intimately close; the common people are harmonious; superiors and inferiors are of a single mind; ruler and minister unite their efforts. The Lords of the Land submit to your might and the four directions cherish your Moral Potency. —Liu An, The Dao of the Military

Nine

Contention Within ★★★

Summer 1948

Unity of purpose is easy to prescribe, but difficult to achieve. In the summer of 1948, both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong struggled not only to unify the Chinese people behind their respective causes, but also to get their commanders in the Northeast to agree on a clear strategy for the next stage of the civil war. The task of achieving unity was complicated by the fact that in April 1948, nobody, including Chiang and Mao, knew exactly what the next stage would be. Chiang’s forces held only the three mutually isolated positions centered on the cities of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou, only around 1 percent of Manchuria.1 Would the Nationalists continue to defend these three “points?” Or would they draw back from Changchun and Shenyang to consolidate their forces at Jinzhou, or even withdraw from the Northeast entirely? The Communists were, as we have seen, busy training. But which of the three Nationalist positions would Lin Biao attack first? Or would he bypass all of them, break through the Great Wall passes, and attack Chiang’s armies in northern China? The Communists’ relative inactivity in the spring and summer months left both the Nationalist government and the Americans confused.2 Then there was the matter of allies. Would the Soviet Union continue its policy of providing aid and advisors in return for grain and other goods, 161

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but otherwise remain aloof from the struggle? Or would the Soviets be drawn more deeply and directly into the war in Manchuria? Would the Americans provide more aid, especially military aid to the Nationalists? Or would disillusionment with Chiang Kai-shek and concern about possible Soviet actions, not only in China, but also in Europe, further dampen Washington’s already lackluster enthusiasm for supporting Chiang’s government? Would Chiang be able to handle the economic problems and political unrest that were eroding his support in the United States? Or would he and his government continue to alienate the Americans, as they seemed to do at every turn? Chiang Kai-shek and Wei Lihuang The question of what Chiang would do next in the Northeast hinged on his relationship with Wei Lihuang. As we have seen, Chiang Kai-shek forced a reluctant Wei Lihuang to take command of the Nationalist forces in the Northeast in January 1948. But from the beginning, Wei and Chiang fundamentally disagreed on the most basic of strategic questions: should the Nationalists withdraw from Changchun and Shenyang and concentrate their forces in Jinzhou, from where they could hold the Bei-Ning line, Shanhaiguan, and other passes, thus blocking Lin Biao’s access to Rehe and North China or, if necessary, withdraw from Manchuria altogether? Or should they continue to hold on to the three cities and wait for the national or international situation to change so that they could go back on the offensive? Chiang Kai-shek favored the former strategy, Wei Lihuang the latter. Wei resisted Chiang’s orders for months. When he and Liao Yaoxiang finally did move their main force out of Shenyang to relieve the embattled defenders of Jinzhou during the Liao-Shen Campaign (see chapters 11 and 14), they acted with excruciating slowness. On the one hand, as field commander on the ground in Shenyang, Wei saw the situation in the Northeast very differently than Chiang did from his perch in faraway Nanjing. On the other hand, Chiang himself displayed a lack of resolution that made him willing shift several times between ordering Wei to withdraw from Shenyang and accepting Wei’s arguments for continued defense of the city.



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As we saw in chapter 6 above, the disagreement between Wei and Chiang began virtually from the time that Wei took up his post in Shenyang. In February Chiang sent two officials from the Ministry of Defense to tell Wei to pull his main forces back to Jinzhou. In return, Wei sent General Zheng Dongguo to Guling to make the case to Chiang that if the Nationalists tried to move out of Shenyang, the Communists would wipe them out before they could get to Jinzhou. Chiang reportedly countered: “During the Northern Expedition the Revolutionary Army had the revolutionary spirit to win against all odds, and the Northern Expedition was a success. . . . Why can’t our Whampoa forces fight their way to Jinzhou?”3 Wei’s argument, however, was not without basis: the Communists had made something of a specialty of drawing Nationalist troops out into the field, identifying weak points, and attacking them mercilessly. From his perspective on the ground in Shenyang, Wei Lihuang weighed this Communist tactical advantage in the field against the Communist forces’ weakness when it came to attacking major cities. Secure as he was in Shenyang (the site of the Shenyang Arsenal), with control of surrounding agricultural areas (from which he could requisition some grain) and of the oil wells at Fushun and the coalfields of Benxi, why should he undertake a risky withdrawal that, even if it should prove successful, would end with him taking the blame for having lost Shenyang and Changchun?4 For the moment, Chiang accepted Wei’s arguments. He agreed that Wei could maintain the status quo while the Nationalists rebuilt their transportation facilities and trained more troops. Hopefully, American military equipment and loans would help to strengthen the army and the economy and thus create conditions in which the Nationalists could go back on the offensive.5 At any rate, Chiang was confident that he had a thorough understanding of Mao Zedong’s strategy: as long as the foundations were properly laid and his commanders carried out his orders, the Nationalists were sure to achieve victory.6 “Carrying out orders” remained a problem. By mid-March, Chiang was once again telling Wei Lihuang to move his main forces out of Jinzhou.7 On 1 April, he even summoned Wei to Nanjing to tell him that China’s limited airlift capacity could no longer sustain the isolated cities of Changchun and Shenyang. Wei argued that he could get the Americans

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to keep Shenyang supplied. Once again Chiang compromised: Wei could hold out in Shenyang until his troops were strong enough to fight their way to Jinzhou.8 The same scenario was replayed in May.9 Wei was sure that Lin Biao would not dare to attack Jinzhou or Shenyang: any major operations in South Manchuria would leave the Communists with long, fragile supply lines to their base areas in the north—surely Lin Biao would not accept that level of risk.10 The Americans, too, were at a loss as to what the Communists were planning. Stuart reported: “Manchuria Communists continue to regroup, and rehabilitate rail communications. On bases [sic] present information, their intentions regarding next offensive move are unpredictable.”11 What they did know was that Chiang seemed to be dithering on the vital question of what he should be doing in Manchuria. General Barr believed that Wei Lihuang should hurry up and open the rail link between Shenyang and Jinzhou—but if not, then Barr would “recommend to the Generalissimo that Mukden be evacuated quickly before the Communists could start their summer offensive, since Mukden and Changchun could not be indefinitely supplied by air.”12 But Chiang continued to prevaricate. Stuart speculated that Chiang was focusing his attention on political issues—he was (as we shall see below) embroiled in a nasty dispute related to the National Assembly and its choice of a vice president. Perhaps, Stuart suggested, Chiang was simply not paying much attention to military affairs.13 In fact, while the situation in Manchuria looked precarious in May, developments in June and July gave both Wei Lihuang and then Chiang Kai-shek some grounds (slim, it must be admitted) for hope. In June, the Nationalist New First Army conducted a “mopping-up” operation in the area around Liaozhong (a small city near Shenyang). Their goal was to increase the rural territory under their control in order to requisition grain to sustain the troops in and around Shenyang.14 The operations met with little resistance.15 This convinced Wei’s generals, particularly Liao Yaoxiang, that they should carry out Chiang Kai-shek’s orders and advance along the Bei-Ning line toward Jinzhou. If they ran into strong resistance, Liao argued, they could always swing south to recapture the port city of Yingkou, and then either move from there toward Jinzhou or withdraw from Manchuria by



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sea.16 As we shall see, Liao Yaoxiang continued to favor the Yingkou option in the coming months. Wei Lihuang, however, drew a different conclusion from the Liaozhong mopping-up operation: he remained convinced that he could defend Shenyang.17 Wei’s confidence meant that he was still at odds with Chiang Kai-shek. On 3 July, Chiang wrote in his diary that the war had reached a grave point and that preparations must be made to withdraw forces from Changchun and Shenyang.18 But on 15 July, Wei Lihuang’s troops recovered the city of Liaoyuan. The Americans later observed that having taken the city, the Nationalists did nothing to restore its shattered industries or improve the lives of the people: they simply wanted to “hold onto the city for two months until the gaoliang [sorghum] crop is in.”19 Chiang, however, interpreted this as a significant victory.20 Two days later, he met with He Yingqin, Gu Zhutong, and Wei Lihuang to discuss the situation in the Northeast. Wei once again made a forceful argument against any attempt to withdraw from Shenyang. To do so would lead to losses, shatter morale, and leave Shenyang weaker than before. But Wei was confident that if he stayed in Shenyang he could defend the city. He assured Chiang that he could resolve the problems of fuel and food supply. Chiang agreed that as long as Shenyang could keep itself supplied with grain and coal, it would be all right to allow the forces there to defend their positions and wait for three months. As they did so, they could build their strength before the rivers froze in November, and then await orders to withdraw to North China. In the meantime Chiang hoped (as always) that the international situation would change for the better.21 Domestic Politics, Domestic Problems Unfortunately for Chiang Kai-shek, the international situation was closely linked to his handling of domestic political challenges. As he saw it, failure to assert strong control over the public sphere would undermine national morale, unity, and strength of purpose. The Americans, on the other hand, believed that more democracy was the magical solution to China’s problems and that heavy-handed suppression of political dissidents and manipulation of the political system created more sympathy for the Communists and undermined the legitimacy of the Nationalist regime both in China and among the American public.

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One of the things that both the Americans and Chinese intellectuals had been demanding was that Chiang call a meeting of the National Assembly and put the Republic of China’s government onto a constitutional footing. Chiang had serious misgivings about the entire enterprise, but he took the path of least resistance, which was to go through the exercises of writing a constitution, holding elections, and calling a meeting of the National Assembly while trying to control both the process and the outcome. Chiang’s attempts to control the democratic process while still allowing multiple political parties and maintaining only partial control over the press was messy, to say the least. Indeed, critics argued that the entire process, from the ratification of the draft constitution in 1946 to the elections of November 1947 to the meeting of the National Assembly in the spring of 1948, was a complete farce. The elections for representatives to the National Assembly took place in mid-November 1947. Chiang’s goal was to produce a National Assembly that would be characterized by multiparty membership but dominated by the Kuomintang. The two most powerful opposition parties, the Communists and the China Democratic League, were excluded from the election. In order to guarantee that the more cooperative Youth Party and China Democratic Socialist Party would gain a certain number of seats, the Kuomintang’s national leadership agreed with the leaders of those parties that KMT candidates would not compete in certain electoral districts, so that the end result of the elections would be 1,758 Nationalist Party representatives, 288 from the Youth Party, and 238 from the Democratic Socialist Party.22 Local Nationalist Party branches refused to respect this agreement and ran candidates for some of the seats that were supposed to be reserved for the two smaller parties. When these unapproved candidates won, the Nationalist Party leadership tried to rectify the situation by ordering them to step down. Only through this autocratic measure, which led to deep dissatisfaction in the Kuomintang itself, could the fiction that the Republic of China was becoming a multiparty democracy be maintained. Chiang capped the year off by announcing in December that the Constitution of the Republic of China would go into effect on Christmas day. “The characteristic of our Constitution,” he explained, “is that it guarantees that the basic elements



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of Christianity, that is, the dignity and freedom of the individual, will be given universally to our fellow Chinese throughout the country.”23 The first session of the new National Assembly opened on 29 March. Among its tasks was to choose the president and vice president of the Republic of China. Chiang was elected president, as expected. But the election of a vice president did not go as planned. Chiang favored Sun Yat-sen’s son, Sun Ke. The National Assembly, in a show of dissatisfaction with Chiang, elected his rival, Li Zongren. Chiang’s struggles in the formal political theater of the National Assembly were paralleled by and intertwined with a struggle that had been unfolding in the streets. As we have seen, popular protests against Chiang’s government, the civil war, and the presence of American troops on Chinese soil had been going on since the December First Movement of 1945 and the protests over Wen Yiduo’s assassination in 1946. At first, these popular movements included people with a range of political opinions. Most politically engaged students did not initially identify with either the Nationalists or the Communists, and while the Communist party was involved in various student demonstrations, there had always been counterdemonstrations by students loyal to the regime.24 In February 1947, Zhou Enlai formally proposed that the Communist party take a more active role in organizing and leading student demonstrations and workers’ movements in Nationalist-controlled cities, making these into a “second front” in the struggle against the Kuomintang.25 By the middle of 1947, the Communist strategy was bearing fruit. Radical students now completely dominated the student movement. Even the Western press, which had previously been supportive of the government, began to show sympathy for student protesters.26 In April 1947, university professors and students who linked increases in the prices of rice and other commodities to the astronomical costs of the civil war launched an “Anti-Hunger, Anti-Civil War Movement.” Although the government suppressed the movement by June, the protests helped to create a nationwide network of connections between activist students and intellectuals at campuses across China.27 These networks came into play the next year when the “Anti-Oppression, Anti-Hunger Movement” and the “Movement Protesting United States Support of Japan” combined to form

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a nationwide protest movement directed against both Chiang’s government and the United States that lasted from April through June.28 Crimes committed by American troops, including the rape of a female student at Beijing University in December 1947 and an incident in which two drunken American military policemen threw two innocent Chinese soldiers off a bridge in Nanjing, did nothing to improve the Americans’ image.29 Loss of Faith The wave of anti-American demonstrations presented Ambassador Stuart with a difficult conundrum. As he told Secretary of State Marshall at the end of June 1948: “Although it is more obvious than ever that there can be no improvement in military affairs without persistent American advice yet the swelling of anti-American temper is a reminder that this given in disregard of other factors will merely serve to aggravate the problem.”30 Stuart’s belief was that “no amount of military advice or material from us will bring unity and peace to China unless there are reforms sufficiently drastic to win back popular confidence and esteem.”31 This was, of course, the same assumption that the Truman administration’s China policy had been based on since the failed Chongqing peace talks of August–October 1945 and the equally unsuccessful Marshall Mission of December 1945 through January 1947. But by this time, even the naturally optimistic Stuart was on the verge of completely giving up hope that Chiang Kai-shek was capable of undertaking the political reforms that Stuart and other Americans imagined might be able to win back Chinese hearts and minds. By this time, Stuart believed that Chiang was completely dominated by the hard-core reactionaries in his own government and unable to “accept and act on American advice, particularly military advice” even if he wanted to.32 As early as May, Stuart was considering the possibility that Chiang would be removed from power and that this might, perhaps, allow “reform forces” to “rally the country to check the Communist tide and eventually to eliminate it as a force in China.”33 But ultimately, Stuart and Department of State personnel in Washington tended at this point to think that China’s many problems—poverty, corruption, low educational levels, economic backwardness, and the Communist insurrection—were simply insoluble. Stuart suggested that the fundamental problem went



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deeper than Chiang’s own lack of capability: “traditional Chinese concepts” themselves, deeply rooted in society, made constructive change impossible.34 Believing that China’s problems were deeply rooted in its own backward and inferior culture, Stuart, Marshall and others in the State Department were confident that China would not be a significant strategic asset to the Soviet Union even if it did fall to a Soviet-leaning Chinese Communist government. Furthermore, the example of Tito in Yugoslavia, whose strong sense of nationalism had caused him to split from the Soviet Union, gave Americans hope that a Chinese Communist regime would do the same.35 To this must be added the fact that George Kennan, then chief of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, was convinced that China was an insignificant sideshow compared to Europe.36 All these factors combined to make the Truman administration unwilling to commit large amounts of aid, particularly military aid, to China. Chiang continued to be frustrated with what he considered to be an endless stream of interference and insults from the Americans in general and Marshall in particular.37 Throughout the spring and summer and on into the fall, Chiang was sustained by the hope that Truman would lose the upcoming presidential election in November. In the meantime, he continued to pursue contacts in the Republican Party, the China Lobby, and the American military, apparently in hopes that they could compel the Truman administration to give him more support. The Republicans were receptive allies, but the depth of their commitment to Chiang’s regime was questionable. As diplomatic historian Michael Schaller observes, “Cynical members of Congress discovered that China was a ‘hot button issue’ that they could use against the Democratic administration.”38 It is important to note that Truman’s most vociferous Republican critics never called for direct American intervention in China.39 Their strong point was rhetoric, not action. On the ground in China, Ambassador Stuart opined that Republican gadflies (specifically William C. Bullitt, the former American ambassador to the Soviet Union) were undermining American efforts to push Chiang and his government in the direction of political reform and strengthening the “more fascist type of [Chiang’s] associates in their reliance on military force for crushing the Communist rebellion.”40

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Inasmuch as he was, indeed, relying on military force to crush the Communists, Chiang continued to try be any means possible to squeeze whatever military assistance he could out of the Truman administration. Congress did pass the China Aid Act of 1948 in April, but the aid itself would be months in coming.41 In June, Major General Yang Chitseng asked General Wedemeyer directly for quick delivery of military aid, warning that if munitions and other supplies were not shipped to China “now or very soon,” “disastrous results” might follow.42 The American response on 25 June was not encouraging: “Unfortunately, it appears that few, if any, of your requirements can be met from stocks now in surplus. . . . This will mean that items to satisfy your needs must be manufactured especially for you.”43 The Americans could not assemble and ship large amounts of arms and ammunition at the drop of a hat. Requests for arms would be followed by availability studies, computation of prices; then would come the inevitable bargaining when the Chinese tried to drive the prices down. The bargaining alone could take weeks.44 While Chiang’s government and the “China Lobby” argued for rapid delivery of large amounts of military aid, the Truman administration and even some experts in the Pentagon questioned the need for more weapons and ammunition. Unlike the State Department diplomats, American military commanders like Vice Admiral Oscar C. Badger, commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Western Pacific, foresaw dire consequences if the Communists should defeat Chiang Kai-shek. In a conference at the U.S. Embassy, Badger “expressed conviction that Communist occupation Manchuria and North China would increase strategic advantage of Soviet Union in Far East to point where American interests would be threatened and to point where, in event of war between Soviet Union and United States eastern defenses of Soviet would be impregnable.”45 On the other hand, Vice Admiral Badger and General Barr joined with Stuart in emphasizing that the fundamental cause of the National Army’s setbacks in Manchuria and North China was not lack of ammunition: it was lack of competent leadership and planning.46 As the summer of 1948 dragged on, it became increasingly clear that the Americans did not know what was going to happen in China and therefore did not know what to do. They did know that they were stuck with Chiang Kai-shek: “Universally, the Generalissimo is criticized for his



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ineffective leadership and universally no one can suggest any one to take his place.”47 The stopgap measure was to keep Chiang in power, prevent the formation of a coalition government (because the Communists, with their superior political skills, would soon dominate any coalition), and hope for the best.48 Privately, George Marshall is reported to have said: “I wash my hands of the problem which has passed altogether beyond my comprehension and my power to make judgments.”49 On the record, he observed in more diplomatic and measured language: “While the Department [of State] will keep actively in mind the questions raised, it is not likely that the situation will make it possible for us at this juncture to formulate any rigid plans for our future policy in China. Developments in China are obviously entering into a period of extreme flux and confusion in which it will be impossible with surety to perceive clearly far in advance the pattern of things to come and in which this government must preserve a maximum of freedom of action.”50 At summer’s end, the Americans, then, were paralyzed by doubt, unsure of what to do in a fluid situation in which there seemed to be no good choices. In China, Chiang faced political dissent throughout the country and factionalism within the Nationalist Party and the army. When it came to Manchuria, he and Wei Lihuang continued to cherish opposing views of the strategic situation with Chiang, as we have seen, periodically accepting Wei’s arguments and then shifting back to his own position. Mao Zedong versus Lin Biao The ongoing disagreement between Chiang Kai-shek and Wei Lihuang had its counterpart in the debate between Mao Zedong and Lin Biao. In both cases, central command advocated a more daring, adventurous operational strategy in Manchuria, while the theater commanders preferred more conservative options. Mao Zedong, like Chiang Kai-shek, saw the Northeast in the context of the overall strategic situation. As early as February 1948, Mao and the Central Military Commission had told Lin, Luo, and Liu that “with regard to our army’s strategic interests, the advantage lies in sealing the Chiang forces up in the Northeast and annihilating them one after the other.” This would prevent the Nationalists from withdrawing their best armies from the Northeast and deploying them against the Communists in the

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North and Central China theaters.51 To accomplish this, Lin would need to deploy his main force along the Bei-Ning line between Jinzhou and Shanhaiguan to cut the railway and to control the ports of Huludao and Yingkou.52 Lin, Luo, and Liu agreed with this strategic vision and told Mao that they would do what they could to make it a reality, but at this point neither Mao nor Lin envisioned a decisive operation on the scale of what was to become the Liao-Shen Campaign.53 While Lin agreed with Mao in principle, as theater commander he found it difficult to envision an operational plan that would translate Mao’s strategic vision into reality. When the Winter Offensive came to a conclusion in March, Lin had a choice of three targets: Changchun, Shenyang, or Jinzhou. Shenyang was out of the question. The city was defended by Wei’s main force. Besides, Jinzhou was the key strategic point of South Manchuria. If Jinzhou fell, Shenyang would naturally follow. The real choice, then, was between Jinzhou and Changchun. On 18 April, Lin informed the Central Military Commission that he would attack Changchun next. He would deploy seven columns to attack the city itself, place two columns south of Siping to intercept relief forces if they were sent out of Shenyang, and position three columns in the area bounded by Shenyang, Jinzhou, and Siping in order to block any movement of enemy forces between those areas. Lin also suggested that Communist troops in the Jin-Cha-Ji area send three or four columns to wipe out Nationalist forces north of Shanhaiguan so that they would not be able to reinforce Changchun.54 “The above,” he explained, “is our fundamental point of view; we have considered other ideas, but all of them are disadvantageous.”55 Lin’s arguments in favor of attacking Changchun first were that the enemy forces in Changchun were weaker than those in Jinzhou; that operations along the Bei-Ning line in South Manchuria and eastern Hebei, far from his base in northern Manchuria, posed significant logistical challenges, and consequently would lead to high rates of desertion; and that if he deployed his main forces in the south, the Nationalists in Changchun would break out and retreat to Shenyang.56 Just as Chiang Kai-shek had bowed to the wishes of his theater commander, Mao Zedong agreed with Lin Biao’s proposal to attack Chang­ chun first. However, he phrased his agreement in such a way as to indicate strong reservations:



Contention Within173 Our reason for agreeing that you should attack Changchun first is because attacking Changchun is relatively more advantageous than attacking other places first; it is not because attacking other places first would be especially disadvantageous, or because it would involve insuperable difficulties. The difficulties that you describe in attacking places around Shenyang, the difficulties in attacking Jinzhou, the difficulties in attacking the railway between Shanhaiguan and Jinzhou, and the difficulties of campaigning beyond the pass [i.e., in North China], some of these are hypothetical difficulties, which may in fact not be real, while some are real difficulties that you will encounter when you initiate campaigns south of Changchun, particularly in the unlikely event that you are unable to capture Changchun. Therefore, you yourselves, especially among the cadres, should not emphasize the difficulties of campaigning to the south, in order to avoid you and your cadres from getting into an unsettled psychological state.57

Having decided to focus on Changchun, Lin sent two columns and seven independent divisions in a preliminary operation aimed at the Dafangshen Airport in the suburbs of Changchun and at two Nationalist divisions that had ventured out to requisition grain from nearby villages. Although they captured the airport, the Communist troops performed poorly in this operation, allowing most of the Nationalists to escape back into the city.58 This unsuccessful operation convinced Lin and the rest of the Northeast Bureau leadership that they were not ready to attack such a large city as Changchun itself. Instead, they would put Changchun under extended siege. This decision sparked an angry exchange of telegrams between the Party Center and the Northeast Bureau. On 1 June, Mao, writing for the central Military Affairs Commission, posed a series of pointed questions about the conduct of operations outside Changchun: “In attacking fortifications, are the troops still using the old tactical method of charging en masse, or have they switched to the new techniques of small assault teams? In eight days of combat, have you yet employed the techniques of trenches and explosives? Where is your command post? Have you not yet called in the divisional commanders to meet and critically review their experiences? Do you have someone to represent you directing the battle on the front lines?”59 In response, Lin and Luo pointed out that their forces had gained some experience in positional assault in the 1947 attack on Siping and during the Winter Offensive, but that while most units now used the 3-3 system and explosives teams, they were not confident of their ability to capture Changchun. They

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also had to admit that their command headquarters was still in Harbin, far from the front lines.60 Not all the leaders of the Military Affairs Commission were convinced. Zhu De fired off a report to Mao Zedong, arguing that many conditions were, in fact, favorable for an attack on Changchun.61 Nonetheless, the Party Center agreed to put Changchun under siege, thus subjecting the city, its defenders, and its civilian inhabitants alike to months of hunger, as will be described below in chapters 12 and 13. With Changchun under siege, the option of operations in South Manchuria and Rehe was back on the table. The question was precisely where and when to attack. Lin’s initial idea was to take out Nationalist positions around Jinzhou and the nearby town of Yixian: Jinxi, Xingcheng, Suizhong, and Shanhaiguan. Then with Jinzhou’s access to the land and sea routes out of Manchuria completely cut off, he would leave the city to wither on the vine, cross the Great Wall into Rehe, and attack the Nationalists at Zhangjiakou.62 This plan reflected Lin’s deep reservations about attacking any major city, be it Changchun, Shenyang, or Jinzhou. Lin was also very concerned about the possibility that Fu Zuoyi’s Nationalist forces in the Beiping area would interfere with his operations along the Bei-Ning line or at Chengde. In order to reduce this risk, Lin asked the Party Center to order the Communist North China Field Army to attack Datong, a major city west of Beiping, in order to force Fu Zuoyi to send reinforcements in that direction.63 These expressions of caution drew a sharp “I-told-you-so” from Mao: “When you were preparing to attack Changchun, we told you not to exaggerate the difficulties of a campaign in South Manchuria, because to do so would limit you psychologically and cause you to lose the initiative.” Now that Lin was directing his attention toward the south, he would need to explain to his commanders and cadres why the circumstances favored an attack along the Bei-Ning line, but, Mao noted, he must also warn them realistically of the difficulties that they would encounter. For instance, grain would be in short supply, the masses would not welcome the CCP as warmly as in North Manchuria, and some enemy forces might put up strong resistance.64 Mao emphasized the need for confidence, assured Lin that Communist forces were tying down Fu Zuoyi’s troops in North China, and suggested that the main target should be Jinzhou itself.65



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The tension between Mao and Lin continued to build throughout late July and into August. Lin spent hours sitting in front of his maps, thinking. He was still hesitant to attack Jinzhou, preferring smaller targets like Yixian and Shanhaiguan.66 Citing the danger of attack from Fu Zuoyi, Lin declared that the timing of his operations depended on when Yang Chengwu’s troops in North China could attack Fu Zuoyi at Datong—which Lin regarded as a precondition for his own action.67 Mao continued to push Lin to attack larger cities, Jinzhou and Tangshan (in Hebei province), asking pointedly when he would begin operations.68 He assured Lin again that Yang Chengwu would take care of Fu Zuoyi. Finally, on 9 August, Mao drafted a stern reprimand, telling Lin to stop making excuses, criticizing him for his apparent failure to have requisitioned enough grain, and lambasting him for his apparent enthusiasm for sending Yang Chengwu’s troops into harm’s way while he (Lin) held his own troops back: “May I ask, if you hesitate indefinitely while demanding that [Yang’s] lone unit set out early, Fu Zuoyi will have no worries on his east flank, so he will be able to send strong reinforcements to Suiyuan, chase Yang Chengwu out, then turn back east and deal with Yang Dezhi, Luo Ruiqing and you . . . how does that benefit the war situation? It is very wrong for you to take such a cavalier attitude toward Yang Chengwu’s forces.”69 Lin countered that heavy rains had washed out railway tracks, roads, and bridges: under those circumstances, how could he haul grain around Rehe and Manchuria? He refused to give a firm date for the commencement of operations until he was sure that his troops were ready.70 Only on 3 September did Lin, Luo, and Liu finally give Mao their plan of action for operations aimed at the smaller cities along the Bei-Ning line.71 Mao agreed, but reemphasized that the focal point should be Jinzhou.72 Logistics One of the reasons for Lin Biao’s caution was that he was faced with solving the massive logistical problems attendant upon launching a major combat operation in enemy territory hundreds of miles from his base area. This was not the idle worry of a neurotic or timid commander. Internal documents reveal that in the spring of 1948, the Communist forces in the Northeast faced serious problems with regard to manpower, ammunition, grain, and transportation infrastructure.

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One of the fundamental sources of the logistics problem was Lin Biao’s style of operations and the string of victories that his forces had racked up since their withdrawal north of the Songhua in the summer of 1946. Lin’s way of war was to concentrate a large number of troops in a relatively small area and to conduct continuous, fast-moving mobile operations over a period of weeks or even months. The sheer number of troops concentrated in a single area put tremendous demands on the civilian population, from which both grain and labor had to be requisitioned. The intensive pace of operations went through materiel, from horse-fodder to ammunition, at astounding rates. From January through March alone, the Communist forces in the Northeast had gone through more ammunition than all the Communist armies together had used in eight years of war with Japan. Communist logistics units were hard-pressed to deliver grain and war materiel to support this level of operations and to keep pace with a front line that moved at lightning speed.73 Three years of war had also begun to strain the civilian population’s capacity to support the growing Communist military machine. According to one report, the burden of military service (not including civilian laborers and stretcher-bearers) had risen to about 4 percent of the population. The maximum capacity a society could bear was pegged at 6 percent. Every year the Northeast PLA’s twelve columns were losing around 120,000 men in casualties and desertions. The Northeast’s population could maintain a mobilization rate of 4–6 percent for only another two years.74 Lack of grain was a fundamental problem, and one that had a direct bearing on the timing and conduct of the Liao-Shen Campaign. Indeed, when Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou rejected the idea of conducting operations along the Bei-Ning line in May 1948, they specifically cited their concerns about the lack of grain to feed their soldiers, particularly if the attack turned into a siege of Jinzhou and/or Shenyang.75 Grain supply was a problem for three reasons. First, the war itself was drawing labor away from grain production as able-bodied young men were recruited into the army and rural men and women were mobilized for logistical support. The contradiction between the need for soldiers and civilian laborers at the front and the need for workers to produce grain in the rear areas was fast approaching the crisis point.76



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A second factor was that grain production had declined over the preceding two years and was expected to decline again in 1948. Drought and floods accounted for some of the decline, but Lin Biao’s logistics chiefs themselves pointed to the negative effects of land reform, which both had reduced the farmers’ incentive to increase production and also had transformed a large-scale, export-oriented agricultural economy into a less efficient system of small-scale farmers.77 A third problem was that as the Communist forces captured cities, they also became responsible for distributing relief grain and repairing urban infrastructure. These responsibilities further strained the Communists’ limited resources.78 While the logistics units requisitioned, purchased, and stockpiled grain in the North Manchuria Base Area, military operations, once started, could continue only if the troops could requisition grain from the areas in which they were operating, but do so in a way that struck the right balance between fulfilling the troops’ need for food and not alienating the local population. The Communist Party Center’s policy on this was that such requisitioning was permissible as long as it placed no more than a “reasonable burden” on the people. Writing to the Center in mid-August, Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan suggested that if they followed the Center’s guidelines too rigorously, they would not be able to collect enough grain to keep their troops supplied. They added that the concept of “reasonable burden” was too vague and asked the Center for clarification.79 Receiving no answer, Lin informed the Center that he would devise his own guidelines, which were to send teams out to the villages and requisition grain at the rates of 35–40 percent of the grain stockpiles of a landlord family, 25–30 percent for rich peasants, 10–15 percent for middle peasants, and 5 percent of the grain of poor peasants.80 In addition to the supply of grain itself, there were the tasks of managing grain and other resources (everything from ammunition and fuel to medicines and boots) and delivering it to the front lines. The PLA had never paid much attention to logistics. Mao’s concept of “people’s war” assumed that the People’s Liberation Army could solve any logistics problem by mobilizing the masses.81 As a result, logistics units and management practices were rudimentary at best, and all too often characterized by inefficiency and poor leadership. Men who were used to commanding

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small, highly independent guerrilla units tended to look after their own unit’s interest first, regardless of the interests of the army as a whole. For example, if a particular unit captured a factory, it would try to run the factory on its own. The result was a lack of central coordination and poor management as untutored soldiers tried to run what had been sophisticated capitalist enterprises.82 The only solution to this problem was a greater degree of centralization and discipline. As logistics chief Huang Kecheng explained: “Back in the guerilla days, the upper levels were far away, so naturally you only listened to the orders of your direct superior. You get used to that and you don’t see anything else, but now the army has gotten bigger, it’s becoming standardized, and we have to obey not only the orders of every level of leadership, but we also have to obey the orders of the democratic government. Some people may say ‘can the government control me?’ You tell them yes, it absolutely can control you!”83 Centralized planning and management was particularly important when it came to the transportation of supplies from the North Manchuria Base Area to the staging points from which the Communists would launch their attacks on Yixian, Xingcheng, and other towns and cities along the Bei-Ning line, and ultimately on Jinzhou itself. To be sure, the Communist forces continued to rely on local requisition of grain and on captured weapons and ammunition for a substantial part of their needs.84 Nonetheless, men, artillery pieces, tanks, and fuel, as well as weapons, ammunition, and grain, had to be shipped south. Mass mobilization did play an important role. In the preparation for and conduct of the Liao-Shen Campaign, the Communists mobilized 6,750 horse carts and over 1,600,000 civilian laborers, of whom nearly 100,000 followed the troops to the front lines.85 In this sense, the Liao-Shen Campaign was still a Maoist “people’s war” operation. The historical displays in the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall include the obligatory oxcart, a tangible symbol of the people’s support of the People’s Liberation Army. However, mass mobilization and oxcarts alone could not support the series of large-scale operations that Lin Biao would have to conduct in order to translate Mao’s strategic vision for the Northeast into reality. Along with an oxcart, the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall displays also include the decorative front-piece of a steam locomotive named in honor of Chairman Mao Zedong. The Mao Zedong was one of a number



Contention Within179

Figure 9.1. The locomotive Mao Zedong and its crew.

of Japanese-made locomotives that the Communists had recovered and repaired in 1946, after their retreat north of the Songhua River to Harbin. The Mao Zedong and other locomotives made multiple trips from Qi­ qihaer down to Zhangwu in the weeks before the Liao-Shen Campaign, hauling trainloads of supplies and ammunition.86 The Mao Zedong’s dangerous runs south to Zhangwu were part of an intensive effort to repair and use the war-battered Manchurian railway system. Communist railway administration bureaus were among the most efficient bureaucracies in the Communist-controlled areas of the Northeast, using professional management practices in order to bring in revenue and to keep the railway lines, engines, and rolling stock running. Soviet advisors played a major role in this logistical effort. Stalin’s commissar of transportation, General Ivan Vladimirovoch Kovalev, himself led an effort in which over 300 Soviet railway engineers and technicians both worked on repairing railway lines and bridges and trained nearly 5,000 Chinese soldiers in railway technology. By the end of 1948, Soviet personnel had worked on 15,000 kilometers of railway and repaired over

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sixty bridges.87 Repair of railroads helped the Communists to ship key supplies to the front lines in advance of the Liao-Shen Campaign. These included 8,000 barrels of oil (141 kg/barrel), one million rounds of ammunition, and 200,000 rounds of artillery shells.88 As Huang Kecheng noted in April 1948: “If it were not for the railroads, our problems would be unimaginable.”89 Nationalist and American intelligence sources took note of the fact that the Communists were busy repairing the railways.90 But neither the Americans nor the Nationalists knew exactly what the Communists intended to do with this logistical capacity. In some cases, Nationalist commanders seem to have discounted the intelligence entirely simply because it did not fit their preconceived ideas of how Communist armies behaved. In July, frontline Nationalist units from the Ninety-third Army reported observations of railway repair to their commanders. The Ninety-third Army headquarters responded: “The Communists only destroy railroads, they don’t repair them. This intelligence is faulty.”91

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He who is skilled in battle builds up an overpowering configuration that he [releases] with instantaneous timing. The configuration that he constructs is like a fully drawn and cocked crossbow; the timing of his release is like pulling its trigger. —Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair)

Ten

Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy ★★★

September 1948

In September, after five months of debate between Lin Biao and Mao Zedong, the plan for operations along the Bei-Ning line was finally set. The Communists would trap the remaining Nationalist forces in Manchuria and wipe them out, or “close the door and beat the dog,” as the saying goes. Communist forces already controlled the port of Yingkou, thus cutting Shenyang’s route of escape by sea. If Lin could hold Yingkou and capture Jinzhou, then he could eliminate the Nationalists in the Shenyang and Changchun sectors one after the other. As October approached, the Chinese Communist forces were, in Sunzi’s analogy, drawing the crossbow, building the “configuration” (shi) that, when released, would bring their force crashing down on the enemy. By the first week of October, the question was: when would Lin Biao pull the trigger? None of this was easy, nor was the outcome an inevitable Communist victory. The Nationalist forces did not simply collapse. Once Chiang Kaishek understood what Lin Biao was doing, he personally visited Shenyang and Huludao in order to encourage his troops and to devise a plan of operations that could have led to a very different outcome—and very nearly did. Indeed, there was a point early on when Lin Biao, aware of the steps that Chiang was taking, came close to suspending the entire campaign. But in the end, Lin persevered despite the risk of what could have been a 183

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devastating defeat. And while some Nationalist units fought bitterly and inflicted heavy casualties on the Communists, the top commanders were not willing or able to carry out Chiang’s plans as he had imagined. Cutting the Bei-Ning Line At this stage, both Lin Biao’s and Chiang Kai-shek’s focus was on the city of Jinzhou. Lin’s first task was to isolate Jinzhou by (1) cutting the Bei-Ning line; (2) occupying positions around Jinzhou itself; and (3) capturing the county town of Yixian. These three operations, conducted in roughly the same time frame—September 1948—left the Nationalist forces at Jinzhou cut off from all sources of support by air, land, and sea, and without any route of retreat. Operations along the Bei-Ning line actually began in June 1948, when Lin sent the Eleventh Column through the Great Wall to eastern Hebei province to help units from the Communist North China Field Army to cut the railway near the town of Luandong. The Eleventh Column’s operations at Luandong and other points in eastern Hebei tied up Nationalist general Fu Zuoyi’s troops, keeping them out of Manchuria and thus contributing to the relatively peaceful summer during which Lin’s main forces conducted their “Big Training” (see chapter 8).1 The Eleventh Column’s operations blended into the Liao-Shen Campaign itself when Lin began transferring troops down to the Bei-Ning line between Jinzhou and Shanhaiguan in September. The transfer of troops to the Bei-Ning line illustrates both Mao Zedong’s adventurous strategic style and Lin Biao’s tactical caution. On 7 September Mao told Lin, Luo, and Liu to set Shenyang and Changchun to one side and deploy their main forces along the line from Jinzhou to Shanhaiguan to Tangshan (a major railway city in eastern Hebei province, near Tianjin). Mao’s thinking was that if the Communists attacked the mutually isolated Nationalist positions at these cities, they would very likely succeed—and in doing so, they would very likely tempt the Nationalists to send reinforcements out of Changchun and/or Shenyang—forces that Lin Biao could easily cut off and wipe out.2 On the contrary, if Lin Biao were to put his main force in the Xinmin area, which was the logical place from which to intercept and wipe out reinforcements coming out of Changchun or Shenyang, then the enemy would probably not dare to

Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy185



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10.1 Operations along the Bei-Ning Line and the Battle of Yixian

Map 10.1. Operations along the Bei-Ning Line and the Battle of Yixian.

send the reinforcements out in the first place. Positioning the Communist main forces at Xinmin would also leave Lin Biao at a disadvantage when it came to attacking Jinzhou, Shanhaiguan, and Tangshan.3 Mao’s strategic plan illustrates his willingness to take calculated risks in order to manipulate the enemy. If Wei Lihuang really did send a strong force out of Shenyang while Lin was attacking Jinzhou and other targets on the Bei-Ning line, they would pose a serious danger for the Communists, operating as they would be at the end of a long fragile logistical line. This was a risk that Mao was willing to take. Lin Biao, who clearly had doubts about the strategy, did as he was instructed. In order to minimize the risk, Lin kept his troop movements shrouded in secrecy for as long as possible. Men, tanks, and supplies moved down to positions near the Bei-Ning line, traveling at night by rail, by truck, and by foot. Many of the soldiers had no idea where they were going. Others knew only that they were going to conduct operations along the Bei-Ning line, but not that they were going

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Figure 10.1. Communist troops sabotaging the Bei-Ning railway line, September 1948.

to attack Jinzhou.4 In order to deceive the Nationalists, Northeast Field Army units moving south used their regular radio equipment and codes to communicate false information about their location and movements— information that they knew the Nationalists were listening in on.5 Operations aimed at cutting the Bei-Ning line took place from 12 to 29 September. In Hebei, the Eleventh Column, moving from west to east, hit targets from Changli to the port towns of Beidaihe and Qinhuangdao to Shanhaiguan.6 The Seventh Column captured positions between Jinzhou and Jinxi, including the village of Tashan (about which more will be said later), thus cutting the route from Jinzhou to the port of Huludao.7 The Fourth Column attacked the Nationalists at the city of Xingcheng, a key point on the Bei-Ning line between Jinzhou and Shanhaiguan. At Xingcheng, the Communists faced a city surrounded by Ming dynasty walls twelve meters high and five to six meters wide. Putting Lin Biao’s principles of combat into practice, the column commander delayed his attack by a day and a night so that his men could get a good understanding of the terrain, the defenses, and their weak points. When they did attack, on 29 September the Communist soldiers used explosives to blast open the



Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy187

city gates, entering from two directions in order to divide the enemy. The only disappointment in this operation was that poor reconnaissance and tactical errors allowed most of the Nationalist soldiers to escape back to Jinzhou.8 The Americans took note of Lin’s operations along the Bei-Ning line, but did not realize that they were the beginning of a major campaign.9 Surrounding Jinzhou While the Eleventh, Eighth, Seventh, and Fourth Columns were cutting the Bei-Ning line, other units were taking up positions around Jinzhou itself. Communist forces were able to infiltrate the area in part because the four Nationalist divisions that were responsible for the periphery could not cover the area in a 50-kilometer radius of the city.10 As we have seen, the Seventh Column had occupied Tashan, cutting the route to the sea. In the meantime, the Second Column attacked the Nationalists at Maoershan, a mountain to the north of the city. Rising to a height of eighty meters, Maoershan affords a clear view of the entire city of Jinzhou. The Nationalists, aware of the danger, sent reinforcements toward Maoershan, but to no avail: Communist forces hiding behind the “green curtain” of sorghum ripening in the fields took the reinforcements by surprise. Fan Hanjie committed 40 percent of his forces to an attempt to recover Maoershan and related high ground. When it was clear that the effort was failing, he pulled them back, but not before having incurred heavy casualties that made it more difficult for him to defend Jinzhou itself.11 With Maoershan and other high ground around the city under his control, Lin Biao could place his artillery in positions from which he could hit targets anywhere in the city.12 This put the Nationalist forces at distinct disadvantage. The Nationalists at Jinzhou had fewer artillery pieces than the Communists and, since they were surrounded in the city and its immediate periphery, fewer places to conceal them. Their intelligence system had not warned them that the Communists had Type 38 75mm field guns (a Japanese gun with a maximum range of around 10,000 meters). The Nationalist artillery could not target and silence the Communist guns, nor was the Nationalist air force able (although they tried) to pinpoint and hit Communist artillery placements.13 As the Communists attacked and captured one position after another along the Bei-Ning line, both the Americans and Chiang Kai-shek began

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to understand that Lin Biao was putting Changchun and Shenyang to one side, and that he would soon attack Jinzhou.14 On 26 September, Chiang ordered Wei Lihuang to take action to reinforce Jinzhou. To be sure that his orders were carried out, Chiang sent Chief of Staff Gu Zhutong to Shenyang to supervise General Wei. Gu and Wei then began to airlift the Forty-ninth Army from Shenyang to Jinzhou.15 To make the point perfectly clear, Chiang sent a handwritten note to his commanders at all levels in Shenyang, telling them that the Liaoxi Campaign (as it was called from the Nationalist perspective) was a crucial element of the entire civil war, and that they should devote their entire strength to the defense of Jinzhou.16 He also told Fan Hanjie, commander at Jinzhou, to hold all the positions around the airport so that the troop transfer, scheduled to begin the next day, could proceed.17 Lin Biao had already anticipated that Wei Lihuang would try to airlift reinforcements to Jinzhou. On 25 September, he ordered the Eighth Column to deploy a division (the Twenty-third) to shut down the enemy airport. This simple directive led to confusion. At the time, there were two airports at Jinzhou, one, in unusable condition, on the east side of the city and the second, which was in current use and where Nationalist aircraft were taking off and landing, on the west. The Eighth Column commander was puzzled: which airport was he supposed to attack?18 At a loss, he asked Lin’s headquarters. Lin, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou were furious: they drafted three telegrams in response. The first asked, with unconcealed sarcasm, “Is there any need to control an airport that is unusable?” The second ordered the Eighth Column to send a division to occupy high ground to the northwest of Jinzhou immediately and position artillery there in order to seal off the airport. The third telegram was a reprimand: “You are failing to resolutely carry out your orders to control the airport.” Luo Ronghuan (who was more diplomatic than either Lin Biao or the famously short-tempered Liu Yalou) held this telegram back. Instead, he visited the Eighth Column himself, personally delivering criticisms from both Lin Biao and Mao Zedong and encouraging the column commanders to improve their work in the future.19 The Eighth Column’s error and the subsequent delay in positioning artillery to control the airport gave Wei Lihuang enough time to fly 5,425 soldiers from Shenyang to Jinzhou.20 In the meantime, Lin Biao, frustrated



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Figure 10.2. Communist artillery outside of Jinzhou, September–October 1948.

with the Eighth Column’s incompetence, had ordered the Ninth Column to capture high ground from which their artillery could control the airport. On 29 September the Ninth Column was firing on the airport with deadly accuracy. The airlift was over.21 The Battle of Yixian With the capture of Xingcheng and the closing of the airport, both on 29 September, Lin Biao had accomplished two of the three tasks essential to the isolation of Jinzhou. What remained was to capture Yixian. Mao, as always, was impatient: “Our forces began moving out on the ninth, which is now twenty days ago, and yet you have not begun to attack Yixian; you are really moving too slowly and should reflect critically on this.”22 Mao further observed that “if you are able to capture Yixian and Jinzhou quickly, then you will have grasped the initiative. If not, you may create a situation similar to that of the past half year, in which you were in a passive position, stuck between the two enemy forces in Changchun and Shenyang, with neither presenting a good target.”23 To say that Lin Biao had not yet attacked Yixian was, strictly speaking, correct, but not entirely fair. Yixian, a county town with a formidable

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Ming-era city wall, was a key strategic point just 45 kilometers from Jinzhou. From Yixian, one could strike west toward Chengde and Chifeng in Rehe province or north to the railway towns of Zhangwu and Fuxin, where the Communist forces were stockpiling weapons, ammunition, food, and fuel in preparation for the attack on Jinzhou. The Nationalist Ninety-third Army, Temporary Twentieth Division (some 7,000 men, half of their equipment American), was well prepared to defend Yixian.24 Preparing to attack were four regular Communist divisions (the Third Column plus the Second Column’s Fifth Division), an independent division, and the bulk of the Northeast Field Army’s artillery column, including artillery commander Zhu Rui.25 Lin’s forces went about the task of preparing to attack Yixian in a careful, methodical fashion characteristic of Lin’s approach to warfare. From 11 to 25 September the Communist Ninth Column conducted a series of challenging operations between Jinzhou and Yixian, some of which pitted Communist infantry against Nationalist forces equipped with tanks and armored personnel carriers and supported by the Nationalist air force.26 The result was to cut Jinzhou and Yixian off from each other. In the meantime, the forces responsible for the actual attack on Yixian itself captured one peripheral position after another. Then, on 20 September, the fighting died down, leaving the Nationalists in Yixian to wonder what the Communists were up to.27 Lin, in fact, ordered his troops to pause so as to leave the enemy guessing while his artillery division made its way to the front line.28 In the meantime, the infantry dug a network of trenches that brought them right up to the city walls.29 The Nationalist defenders at Yixian watched as the noose tightened around them, unable to do anything about it. Chiang Kai-shek himself sent words of encouragement on 17 and 29 September, urging them to persevere and promising that Fan Hanjie would send reinforcements from Jinzhou.30 Fan, for his part, had been putting a positive spin on the situations at Jinzhou and Yixian in his reports to Chiang Kai-shek: all Communist assaults on Jinzhou had been repulsed; the defenders of Yixian were holding their ground.31 At Yixian itself, the divisional commander issued a statement to his troops, telling them that “Yixian is the gate to Jinzhou; if Yixian is not held,



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Jinzhou will fall into danger; if Jinzhou is lost, then the whole Northeast is lost; if the Northeast goes, then North China is finished. The fate of the country rests on this battle.”32 But when the battle came, it was short and (from the Communist perspective) sweet. The artillery arrived on 28 September; Zhu Rui himself looked over the defenses and positioned his guns where they could best blow holes in Yixian’s city wall. The Nationalist air force bombed Communist positions but was unable to knock out the artillery.33 The action began at 9:30 am on 1 October. Zhu Rui’s artillery battered Yixian’s city wall; the Communist infantry charged in, using Lin Biao’s 3-3 formation.34 Four hours later, it was over. During the battle, the Nationalists had two airplanes overhead, but the Communists broke through the Nationalist lines so quickly that it was impossible for the airmen to distinguish between enemy and friendly troops as the soldiers closed for hand-to-hand combat.35 Artillery played a key role in breaking through the Nationalist defenses at Yixian.36 This was only the third time that the Communists had used artillery (rather than explosives, as at Xingcheng, for example) to blast through a traditional city wall.37 In this instance, they had experimented with the use of close fire—that is, Zhu Rui had brought his big guns as close to the city wall as he could and brought the muzzles down nearly parallel to the ground, and then opened fire, aiming at the middle of the wall—the theory being that when you blow a hole in the middle of a wall, the upper part will crumble, forming ramps of rubble on either side.38 After the battle, Zhu Rui himself went up to the front lines to inspect the type and scale of the damage that he had inflicted on the city wall. While he was making his inspection, he stepped on a land mine and was killed.39 Zhu Rui’s death was a sad loss for the Communists, but it had no effect on their combat capability. By this time, the artillery force that Zhu Rui had built from scratch was far more important than its creator. When he entered the Northeast, Zhu Rui had to scrounge weapons and ammunition from Russian-controlled stockpiles and to send troops out across the countryside on a grand scavenger hunt for abandoned Japanese guns and tanks. When he died, he left an artillery force that would soon train hundreds of guns on Jinzhou, along with the artillery doctrine that they would need to use those guns effectively.40

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Chiang Kai-shek’s Plan for Victory In early September, just as Mao was prodding Lin Biao into action in the Northeast, Chiang Kai-shek was pondering the relationship between economic recovery, political reform, and the military situation. At this particular point, Chiang believed that if the military problem posed by the Communists was solved, then various political problems related to the government and to the Kuomintang would resolve themselves naturally, and that if the country’s economic problems were resolved, the soldiers’ morale would improve and they would fight the Communists more effectively. Chiang therefore resolved to set political reform aside (a decision that his American friends certainly would not have approved of) and to focus first on economics, and secondly on military matters.41 Chiang’s resolution came to nothing. Events soon forced military affairs back to the top of his agenda. The first problem was not Manchuria: it was the loss of Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Nationalist and Communist armies had been fighting for control of Shandong since March of 1947. The Communists’ Shandong Campaign, while significant in and of itself, had also kept a large number of Nationalist forces tied down: this was one of the main reasons why Chiang had been unable to transfer more armies to Manchuria.42 In mid-September the Shandong Campaign reached its climax with the Battle of Jinan (17–24 September 1948). As the battle got under way, Chiang was already deeply worried about the strength of the Communist attack and an evident lack of preparation on the part of his commanders. At this point, however, there was little he could do other than to hope that God would help him to defend Jinan.43 On 19 September, one of the Nationalist commanders at Jinan, Wu Huawen, defected. His 50,000 soldiers were immediately incorporated into his Communist opponents’ forces.44 Wu Huawen’s defection and Communist commander Su Yu’s highly professional and efficient conduct of operations combined to earn the Communists a great victory.45 The loss of Jinan gave Chiang Kai-shek a number of sleepless nights during which he was consumed with worries about how this defeat would affect his government both domestically and internationally. Writing in his diary the day after the defeat, Chiang blamed himself for failing to properly understand and use his subordinates and for having trusted them



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too much.46 Chiang was apparently determined not to repeat this mistake when it came to the Northeast. As we have seen, Chiang gave the situation in Manchuria his own close personal attention in the days immediately following the loss of Jinan, when he pressed Wei Lihuang to airlift reinforcements to Jinzhou and sent his chief of staff, Gu Zhutong, to Shenyang to supervise Wei’s execution of orders. Chiang, who regarded Wei as inept, but somehow could not find anyone better to serve in the Northeast, also wanted the forces now under siege at Changchun to retreat south and the main forces in Shenyang to strike out toward Jinzhou by land.47 This, of course, was the plan that he had been trying—unsuccessfully—to push on Wei Lihuang for months. By the end of September Chiang, fed up with Wei’s indecisiveness and worried that the Northeast was another disaster in the making, decided to fly to Beiping and Shenyang to take matters into his own hands.48 After flying to Beiping on 30 September, Chiang spent nine days meeting with commanders there and in the Northeast. During this time he devised and gave orders for the execution of a plan that called on Wei Lihuang not only to defend Jinzhou, but also to fight and win a major decisive battle that, if it were brought off as Chiang envisioned, would completely change the situation in the Northeast. In Beiping, Chiang met with General Fu Zuoyi. Fu’s troops were tied up fighting Communist forces under Nie Rongzhen: Fu could not spare enough units to fight their way up through the Liaoxi Corridor from Shanhaiguan to Jinzhou. The best that could be done was to send the Ninety-fifth Division and other forces to Huludao.49 The forces (a total of four armies) comprised the first part of Chiang’s plan for victory. This “East-Advancing Army Corps,” taking up positions at Huludao and nearby Jinxi, would move inland to reinforce Jinzhou. In doing so, they would, of course, have to break through the Communist position at the village of Tashan—as we will see in more detail in chapter 11. This force was not as strong as Chiang would have liked because Nationalist commanders in Shandong and in Beiping each refused to send an army to Huludao.50 The second part of Chiang’s plan would be a “West-Advancing Army Corps” coming out of Shenyang. On 2 October Chiang flew to Shenyang in order to make this perfectly clear to Wei Lihuang, who had been

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rejecting just such an idea all along. That evening, Chiang gave Wei, Liao Yaoxiang, and the other generals at Shenyang a dramatic and angry lecture. Wei Lihuang, of course, still wanted to hunker down and defend Shenyang—he predicted that if troops advanced west toward Jinzhou, the Communists would cut them off and wipe them out. Liao still preferred to recapture Yingkou and use it as a base from which to either reinforce Jinzhou or retreat from the Northeast altogether. Chiang was not having any of it. He told his generals that he had come to Manchuria to save them. In the past, they had tried and failed to force the Communists into decisive battle. Now, Lin Biao had put his main force in the Liaoxi Corridor: this was the opportunity to fight and annihilate them. Chiang’s orders were that Liao Yaoxiang should assemble and lead the main forces out of Shenyang and strike west, capturing Zhangwu (which Chiang knew was a key point in Lin’s supply line), and then rush forward to assist Fan Hanjie at Jinzhou. They were to achieve victory, or die trying.51 According to one account, Chiang told them, “If you can’t fight your way out, then we will meet in the next life.”52 While Chiang was working to grasp victory (so he hoped) from the jaws of defeat in Manchuria, another crisis was brewing in Shanghai. Under pressure to clean up the epic corruption that characterized his regime and its connections with the business world, Chiang had assigned his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, to crack down on currency speculators and hoarders who were seeking to profit from the government’s recent currency revaluation.53 The idealistic younger Chiang went about his “tiger-hunting” expedition in Shanghai with more enthusiasm than anyone had bargained for. Among those caught up in his dragnet were Du Yuesheng’s son and a young financier named David Kung. Du Yuesheng, the boss of the Green Gang, was a leading figure in Shanghai’s criminal underworld and an important ally of Chiang and his family. David Kung’s father, H. H. Kung, was the head of a very wealthy banking family: he had served in a number of posts in Chiang’s government (including finance minister), and was married to Madame Chiang’s eldest sister, Soong Ai-ling. When Madame learned that her nephew David was under house arrest, she summoned Chiang back from Beiping to get Ching-kuo under control.54 When Chiang left Beiping on 8 October, his plan for victory in the Northeast was complete. The forces of the East-Advancing Army Corps



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were assembling at Huludao and Jinxi under General Que Hanqian. Liao Yaoxiang had brought the West-Advancing Army Corps together at Xinmin on 3 October and was moving toward Xinlitun and Zhangwu. (We will return to their story in chapter 14.) Fan Hanjie, reassured that help was on the way, had passed up on the option of retreating to Jinxi; he was sure that he could defend Jinzhou until the reinforcements arrived.55 If all went as planned, Fan’s men at Jinzhou would keep the Communist forces occupied. The East- and West-Advancing Army Corps, moving out from Huludao/Jinxi and Shenyang, would trap them in a pincers movement and wipe them out. In his diary, Chiang admitted that the situation was tense, but expressed his confidence that the difficulties could be overcome: there was no reason, he wrote, that the Communist bandits could not be defeated, and the day of that defeat was not far off.56 This may sound like bravado on Chiang’s part, but even Chiang’s American military advisor, General Barr, writing after the fact, remarked: “The plans made and the orders given were sound and had they been obeyed, the results would probably have been favorable.”57 Lin Biao’s Hesitation The feasibility of Chiang’s plan of action can be gauged by Lin Biao’s reaction: it nearly caused him to call off the attack on Jinzhou. To understand why, and what happened, we need to backtrack again, to 26 September, when Lin’s forces had still not completed the three tasks essential to any attack on Jinzhou: the cutting of the Bei-Ning line, the occupation of key positions around Jinzhou, and the capture of Yixian. As those three tasks were under way, Lin Biao and Mao Zedong continued to debate their operational plans. Lin, Luo, and Liu suggested that after taking Yixian, they would target Jinxi, Xingcheng, and then Shanhaiguan, which was still under Nationalist control: if the Nationalist forces abandoned Shanhaiguan voluntarily, then Lin would attack Jinzhou instead.58 Mao responded that Lin should either attack Jinzhou and Shanhaiguan simultaneously or, if that were not feasible, then attack Jinzhou first, “because if you attack Shanhaiguan and bring your troops back to attack Jinzhou, it is more exhausting for the troops, and it gives the enemy in Shenyang a chance to reinforce Jinzhou. If you attack Jinzhou first, the enemy in Shenyang won’t have enough time to reinforce Jinzhou; they will sink into paralysis,

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whereas we can move on to attack Shanhaiguan, Luanxian, Tangshan and, if possible, occupy Huludao and Qinhuangdao.”59 This convinced Lin, Luo, and Liu that they should make Jinzhou their next target. By 29 September, they saw the possibility that this operation would be more than just another stage in the long struggle for supremacy in the Northeast: it had the potential to be a major decisive battle in which they would capture both Jinzhou and Changchun and wipe out the Nationalist reinforcements coming out of Shenyang.60 Mao, who knew that Chiang had been meeting with Wei Lihuang and the other generals, believed that Wei was planning to extract his troops from Changchun because (as Mao saw it), this was the only way he could get enough troops to reinforce Jinzhou. As we have seen, Chiang’s plan to send the West-Advancing Army Corps out of Shenyang was not predicated on a withdrawal of troops from Changchun (although Chiang certainly wanted that to happen as well). But what is important here is Mao’s belief. Mao’s estimate was that it would take ten days for Wei to extract the forces from Changchun, and another ten days to deploy them to Jinzhou: Mao warned Lin Biao to keep this twenty-day time frame in mind when it came to his plan of attack for Yixian, Jinzhou, and Jinxi.61 As these discussions progressed, Lin Biao was moving his headquarters from Harbin south toward the front line. This required two trains. The first train, six passenger cars and four freight cars, carried radio equipment and Lin’s intelligence staff—six teams of men and women serving in shifts, monitoring Nationalist radio traffic twenty-four hours a day. Lin, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou, and other staff officers and personnel followed in a second train. As the two trains moved south, they stopped regularly—as many as two times or more every hour—so that Lin could listen to briefings from his intelligence officers.62 On 30 September, these reports and the ongoing correspondence with Mao kept Lin convinced that the conditions were favorable for an attack on Jinzhou and that this battle, unlike the stalemate at Changchun, would be quick and decisive.63 Then, on 2 October, Lin received an intelligence briefing that caused him to reconsider his plans. His trains had stopped just west of Zhangjiatun. There, his intelligence officers gave him the news that Chiang had flown to Shenyang and had set up the East-Advancing and West-Advancing Armies in a bid to trap and annihilate the Communist main forces at Jinzhou. As part of



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this plan, the Nationalist New Fifth Army and Ninety-fifth Division were preparing to land at Huludao to beef up the East-Advancing Army Corps, which would be attacking Tashan with naval and air support.64 As he considered the implications of this report, Lin Biao is said to have observed, “We prepared a feast for one table, but now we have two tables of guests—what are we to do?”65 Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou discussed their options, and then, as was their routine, all signed off on a joint telegram to the Party Center, a telegram probably drafted by Lin himself, but certainly approved by the other two men. In this telegram, Lin, Luo, and Liu expressed their reservations about attacking Jinzhou under the new circumstances: they also raised the possibility of returning north to attack Changchun as an alternative course of action.66 Early the next morning (3 October), Luo Ronghuan, who perhaps had harbored reservations about the decision of the night before, convinced Lin Biao that it was not possible to change plans at this stage. Luo argued from his perspective as political commissar that operations had already begun along the Bei-Ning line: things were going well, and morale was high. To suspend the campaign all of a sudden and head back north would be a disaster.67 It had been only hours since Lin, Luo, and Liu had signed off on their telegram to the Party Center. Having now changed their minds, they asked their radio operators if the telegram had been transmitted. Of course, it had. There was no way to recall the message. All they could do was to send a follow-up telegram to tell Mao and the Central Military Commission that they had reconsidered the situation and that they were, in fact, determined to go ahead with the attack on Jinzhou.68 But before he received this second telegram, Mao had already read and responded to the first one. He was (as Lin, Luo, and Liu had feared) very angry: Five months ago (in April, May) the enemy at Changchun was vulnerable, but you did not dare to attack him; two months ago (in July) the enemy at Changchun was similarly vulnerable, but again you did not dare to attack him. Now, your troops are positioned to attack Jinzhou, and the [Nationalist] 8th and 9th Armies have pulled away from the Jinxi-Luanxian line, and again, just because of the really not very significant deployment of the New Fifth Army and the 95th Division from Tianjin to Huludao, you are having second thoughts about attacking Jinzhou and want to go back to attack Changchun. We think that this is extremely inappropriate.69

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Mao also asked pointedly where Lin’s headquarters was, telling him: “We expect you to move to the front line at Jinzhou as soon as possible and to deploy your troops in order to attack and capture Jinzhou quickly. You have delayed for too long, and you are in danger of losing the initiative.”70 Lin, Luo, and Liu had, of course, already abandoned the idea of returning north to attack Changchun when they received these and other highly critical messages from the Chairman. They followed up by recommitting themselves to the attack on Jinzhou.71 Mao responded with approval, noting that “you have finally put your focus on the Jinzhou-Jinxi area, thus correcting the long-standing mistake of dividing your forces between north and south without having any focal point (the idea of turning back around to attack Changchun was absolutely an even more mistaken idea, but since you quickly abandoned that idea, it did not actually have an adverse effect on the situation).”72 Mao, speaking as a mentor to the younger Lin, suggested that he and his comrades should learn two lessons from this experience: first, to put their command post close to the front, for “otherwise you can’t see clearly what the situation is”; and second, “in general, you have to concentrate your forces on a single point, not divide them up evenly.”73 In retrospect, it seems that Lin’s hesitation on 2 October was not unreasonable. Qiu Huizuo, who served on Lin’s staff at the time, remarked decades later (after the end of the Cultural Revolution): “I believe that there is nothing to criticize about a theater commander being thoroughly attentive to changes in the enemy’s situation; to have sent any kind of report to Chairman Mao after a change in the enemy’s situation is completely normal, and to suggest to Chairman Mao that they turn around to attack Changchun was one possible plan.”74 Historian Odd Arne Westad suggests that Lin’s caution was justified, as “the Guomindang forces in the region were still strong enough to defeat him if he was not careful in his planning.”75 But Mao, though aware of the dangers, was confident of success. On 5 October, he reassured Lin, Luo, and Liu that the Nationalists’ deployment of reinforcements out of Shenyang was very tentative and reflected their fear that the Communists were going to “assault Jinzhou and attack the reinforcements.”76 As we have seen, this is precisely what Wei Lihuang did fear. Mao also advised Lin that the Nationalist soldiers of both the



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West- and East-Advancing Army Corps had no appetite for taking the offensive. That said, Mao wanted to know: “How many more days are needed to complete preparations, and what day will the assault begin? Awaiting your response.”77

To bring about victory or defeat a decisive battle between the two armies is necessary. Only a decisive battle can settle the question as to which army is the victor and which the vanquished. —Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War.”

Eleven

Close the Door and Beat the Dog ★★★

The Battles of Tashan and Jinzhou, October 1948

Mao would not have to wait much longer. The Northeast Field Army began to capture Nationalist positions on the immediate periphery of Jinzhou on 8 October. The assault on the city itself began on the morning of 14 October. From then, it took only thirty-one hours for the Communists to annihilate Fan Hanjie’s armies and capture the city. However, none of this could have proceeded according to plan if Communist forces had not blocked the Kuomintang’s East-Advancing Army Corps at Tashan. The Battle of Jinzhou—an offensive operation—was thus inextricably tied to the Battle of Tashan, in which the Communist forces conducted a determined defense of a small, vulnerable area that if lost would have enabled Chiang Kai-shek to regain the initiative and inflict a serious defeat on the Communist forces. Accordingly, we will look first at the Battle of Tashan, and then at the Battle of Jinzhou. Terrain and Deployments Tashan is a 10-kilometer-wide parcel of land between a ridgeline and the sea, less than 30 kilometers from Jinzhou—close enough that artillery fire at Jinzhou could be heard at Tashan, and vice versa. A village, then numbering around 110 families, was situated just south of the ridgeline, which runs east to west and reaches its highest point at Baitaishan, only 201

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261 meters above sea level. The terrain presents challenges to both the attack and the defense. An attacking army at Tashan cannot deploy troops for a broad frontal attack, nor can it maneuver around the defenders’ flanks: there is simply not enough space. Nor was there any alternate route from the Kuomintang’s base at Huludao and Jinxi to Jinzhou: if the East-Advancing Army was to relieve Fan Hanjie at Jinzhou, they would have to go through Tashan. The only way to do so was to attack head-on with limited force. If the attack should succeed, then the victorious army, having broken through the defenses at Tashan, could be at Jinzhou in less than two hours. For the defender, the greatest challenge of Tashan is the lack of any natural barriers. A defending force must rely on its own construction of bunkers, pillboxes, trenches, and obstacles in order to ward off the enemy. The advantage, however, is that the narrowness of the position meant that the Communists, even with the limited force at their disposal, could build multiple layers of defensive works and keep a substantial portion of their manpower in reserve, thus achieving a defense in depth that made it more difficult for the Nationalists to break through.1 The Battle of Tashan developed in three stages. The first, which concerns us here, was from 10 to 15 October and coincided with the Battle of Jinzhou. We will discuss the second and third stages (16 to 26 October and 27 October) in chapter 14.2 The Communist forces at Tashan (the Fourth and Eleventh Columns, two independent divisions, and an artillery regiment) had only three days to prepare to defend their positions.3 The Fourth Column, responsible for the key area from the coast to Baitaishan and including the village itself, hurriedly assigned all available personnel to dig trenches and build bunkers, pillboxes and other defensive works and obstacles. Their inexperience and lack of construction materials meant that some defective or incorrectly placed structures had to be pulled down and rebuilt and that not all the key points along the line were connected by trenches when the fighting began.4 Nonetheless, the Fourth Column’s men and commanders were determined to defend their positions as ordered. The troops were deployed in such a way as to make the front as narrow and deep as possible, so that the column command could hold somewhere from one-third to two-thirds of its men back as reserves. One hundred and ten artillery pieces directly behind the front lines were positioned so that they could



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fire on both the enemy troops as they advanced and at their second echelon, making both advance and retreat dangerous.5 The Eleventh Column, responsible for a secondary sector on the Fourth Column’s west flank, made similar preparations. Here too, the lack of experience led to errors in the placement of firing positions, substandard construction of defensive works, and failure to connect positions with trenches.6 Sunzi observed that if a commander puts his troops on “desperate terrain” where defeat would mean annihilation, they will fight for their very lives and ultimately prevail.7 This is what Lin had done to the Fourth and Eleventh Columns. If they were defeated, all was lost. The column commanders, keenly aware of the difficulty and danger of their assignment, were determined that they should not go down in history as modern-day versions of Ma Su, a general under the legendary Three Kingdoms–era strategist Zhuge Liang; Ma failed to hold his position and was executed as a result.8 To ensure that they would not fail him, Lin Biao required four reports a day. He also sent his own chief of staff, Su Jing, to the front lines to observe and report back independently, as he was afraid that his commanders might give him inaccurate information.9 As we have seen above, Chiang Kai-shek had also put his troops in the Northeast on “desperate terrain” when he visited Shenyang on 6 October and told his generals that the time had come for them to defeat Lin Biao or die trying. As he organized the East-Advancing Army and gave them their orders, Chiang similarly emphasized the vital importance of their assignment, reportedly saying: “The battle now before you is of decisive significance, so you have to fight it well: if it is lost, then everything is over, even history itself will be overturned. The glory that you have won in the past as my followers in revolution and in the resistance to Japan will have turned to ashes, and your own future will hold nothing other than annihilation.”10 Less poetically, but perhaps more to the point, Chiang allegedly told Que and Chen: “If you mess up again, I’ll have both your heads.”11 Chiang, like Lin Biao, distrusted his frontline commanders, but his resolution of the problem was less clear and less effective than Lin Biao’s dispatch of Su Jing to supervise and report on his commander at Tashan, Wu Kehua. There were four Nationalist commanders at Huludao. Wei Lihuang had sent one of his generals, Chen Tie, to Huludao to establish

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the “Huludao Bandit Annihilation Headquarters.”12 Chiang, who distrusted Wei, put another man, Que Hanqian, in command of Huludao temporarily. But Chiang did not trust Que either; he was in charge only until a third man, Hou Jingru, could be transferred in from his current post in Shandong. In the meantime, Chiang also sent Luo Qi to serve as his personal representative, supervising and reporting on the work of all the other three men.13 The Battle of Tashan The first two days of fighting at Tashan (10–11 October) demonstrated both the Communists’ adaptability and the Nationalists’ disorganization. On 10 October Nationalist forces struck with superior numbers at the Fourth Column’s core ten kilometer line of defense centering on Tashan village, using human wave tactics to try to overwhelm the Communist positions.14 Wu Kehua responded with determined defense and with artillery fire directed at the Nationalists’ second echelon.15 The Nationalists attacked without air support, reportedly because their commanders initially believed that air power would not be necessary.16 The Nationalist infantry did have the support of naval artillery from four ships, including the cruiser Chongqing anchored offshore, but the naval guns were of limited use because the gunners were too far out to see their targets—they could only use indirect fire based on map coordinates.17 By the end of the day, the Nationalists had made no significant progress. The next day, 11 October, the Nationalist Ninety-fifth Division dispatched soldiers with light equipment (forty machine guns and some tens of assault rifles) to attack the Communists at the village itself. The soldiers were promised five gold yuan each if they could break through. The Communists failed to observe the attack force as it assembled virtually under their noses. However, they quickly recovered their footing. Once again, the Nationalists ended the day without any success.18 After two days of failure at Tashan, the Kuomintang forces were exhausted and depressed.19 Hou Jingru, who had arrived to take command of the East-Advancing Army Corps met with Que Hanqian, Luo Qi, and the other commanders to assess the situation. Luo Qi, speaking as Chiang’s personal representative, took a positive view: “We have four armies in Huludao, there are five armies advancing westward from Shenyang,



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plus the two armies in Jinzhou, eleven armies altogether, plus naval and air superiority. Whether it be in terms of numbers, firepower or equipment, we have absolute superiority over the Communists. As long as our men and others put their hearts into it and have the spirit of sacrificing their lives for a righteous cause, there is no reason why we should not be able to complete this mission.”20 Que Hanqian had a less rosy view of the situation, reportedly responding to Luo Qi: In theory, our army emphasizes advantages in naval and air power and its numerical superiority to the Communist armies, but when the fighting starts, the air force doesn’t send planes, and there are limits to the naval gunners’ ability to support us. When it comes to the land forces, we do have eleven armies, but the five armies of the West-Advancing Army from Shenyang are several hundred li away, the two armies in Jinzhou have been surrounded by the Communists, the 39th Army in Yantai has not yet arrived [at Huludao], the troops at Huludao also need to shoulder the responsibility for defending the transportation lines between Jinxi, Huludao and the port, and so in fact, less than two armies can be used to attack the enemy.21

Que’s analysis was clearly more accurate than Luo Qi’s inspirational but empty words. Nonetheless, the attack on Tashan had to continue. Chiang himself advised Hou Jingru that his right flank, which could be best supported by the naval guns and air power, stood the best chance of making the breakthrough. Cautioning Hou against distributing his forces evenly across the front, Chiang urged that they break through to Jinzhou: there was no reason to hesitate.22 Que and Hou had to obey Chiang’s orders, but they clearly had serious misgivings about the entire operation. Hou even observed: “In the current situation, we should not break through into the region of Tashan and Jinzhou, because if we enter we cannot extricate ourselves. If we don’t enter the region we can sustain the fight for some time.”23 Over the next four days (12–15 October), the Nationalists tried repeatedly to create an opening in the tightly defended Communist line. The attacks, though launched against varying sectors of the Communist defenses, acquired a certain predictability. The Nationalists would begin with an artillery bombardment; then the infantry would charge forward. For these infantry attacks, Hou Jingru employed a human wave technique: each regiment would be divided into three waves of attack, each wave being composed of a battalion that would charge in close formation. The

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Communist response was to keep most of their forces behind the front lines until the artillery bombardment was over. Then, as the Nationalist infantry advanced, the Communist soldiers would resume their positions, wait until the enemy was thirty to fifty meters away, and then envelop them from two sides.24 This mode of combat led to heavy casualties on both sides.25 The Nationalists occasionally made small gains (for example, they broke into Tashan village on 13 October), but they were always driven back. Since the Nationalists fought during the day and rested at night, the Communist soldiers were able to keep on repairing their increasingly battered defensive works. Que Hanqian and Hou Jingru’s lack of commitment to the entire operation was surely related to the predictable, conservative pace of Nationalist operations.26 Que Hanqian’s continued failure must have been a matter of tremendous frustration and concern for Chiang Kai-shek, who was watching Fan Hanjie’s position at Jinzhou deteriorate by the hour. Pinning his hopes on the East-Advancing Army Corps, Chiang ordered troops from North China and Shandong to prepare for transfer to Huludao as quickly as possible while instructing Luo Qi to see to it that Hou and Que continued to attack with determination.27 With Luo Qi threatening “if anyone fails to vigorously carry out orders, I’ll report them for punishment,” Hou and Que planned attacks for 14 and then 15 October.28 The attack on 14 October began on a sour note: the Nationalist air force accidentally bombed Nationalist infantry units.29 On 15 October, the Nationalists achieved tactical surprise by attacking the exhausted Communist soldiers at dawn, without the usual artillery barrage. However, the Communists pulled themselves together and held their positions. The Nationalists, having made no gains, halted the attack around noon.30 By this time (15 October), both Chiang Kai-shek himself and the Nationalist commanders at Huludao had lost contact with Fan Hanjie at Jinzhou. Incoming reports soon confirmed what they already suspected: Fan had fled and Jinzhou had fallen to the Communists. The Communist and Nationalist forces at Tashan would engage in another ten days of standoff and then one final day of combat (see chapter 14), but the real battle was over. The East-Advancing Army had failed to achieve its mission. Chiang allegedly observed that “our generals are really useless—with three armies and superiority in air power and artillery we flattened Tashan,

Close the Door and Beat the Dog207



 







 

 







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Map 11.1. The Battle of Jinzhou and the Tashan Blocking Operation.

but they still weren’t able to fight their way in; it’s a shame I wasted so many artillery shells.”31 On the Eve of Destruction In early October, with the noose tightening around Jinzhou, General Fan Hanjie had very few options, and none of them were attractive. With the airport closed, the city depended on air drops for further supplies of food and ammunition.32 Air drops could not meet the city’s needs: an entire day’s air drop of artillery shells would be fired off in twenty minutes.33 The city, crowded with refugees (some of them students whose wealthy families had fallen victim to the Land Reform campaign) could not have withstood an extended siege.34 Fan had around 118,000 soldiers with which to defend the city. Altogether, these are among the weaker of the Nationalist units in Manchuria.35 About half were troops from the Ninety-third Army.36 These soldiers and officers, originally from a Yunnan warlord army, had poor relations with Chiang Kai-shek and his Whampoa-clique units. Back in 1946, some Yunnan forces had even gone over to the Communists. However, the commander of the Ninety-third Army declined Lin Biao’s invitation to switch sides when Communist agents contacted him in late September.37 Fan Hanjie, as we have seen, considered the idea of withdrawing from Jinzhou to Jinxi in early October, but, confident that the West-Advancing and East-Advancing Armies

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would come to his rescue, he had decided to stay put and defend his position with determination. Lin Biao was equally determined to attack Jinzhou and annihilate Fan’s armies. Lin had moved his headquarters to Mangniutun, a small village in the mountains not far outside Jinzhou. From there, Lin, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou, and the other members of Lin’s staff made multiple visits to the front lines, closely observing the terrain and deploying the Communist forces for the final assault.38 Before the attack on Jinzhou could begin, the Communists had to capture several pieces of high ground on the immediate periphery of the city. Fighting was intense, with some positions changing hands multiple times before the Communists prevailed. To underline the importance of each position, the Communists exercised strict discipline: when a company of the Eighth Column’s Twenty-third Division Sixty-eighth Regiment fled from a recently captured position under enemy fire, divisional command (acting with Lin’s approval) executed the company commander at a meeting of all the Sixty-eighth Regiment’s cadres.39 Two of the most difficult struggles took place at the water distribution station and at nearby high ground of Liangjiashan. The water distribution station was located on an outcropping of high ground on the northern edge of the city. The Nationalist defenses in this area included the water distribution station itself (a small steel-reinforced concrete building) and nearby bunkers, pillboxes, trenches, and other defensive works. Defending the position was a Nationalist strengthened battalion of around 800 men. To boost their morale and emphasize the importance of their task, some of the Nationalists soldiers had painted “The water distribution station is a second Verdun” on the side of the building.40 It took the Communist Third Column’s Seventh Division multiple attacks made over a period of eight hours to capture the Nationalists’ “Second Verdun” on 12 October.41 It took another two days of combat for the Third Battalion to capture Liangjiashan. By the second day of combat, the Third Battalion was down to 130 men.42 As they captured the last of the high-ground positions immediately outside of Jinzhou, the Communist forces prepared to attack the city itself. The experience of the attack on Yixian on 2 October had proved the usefulness of trenches when it came to attacking a walled city. At Jinzhou,



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Figure 11.1. Communist soldiers digging trenches outside of Jinzhou, October 1948.

two-thirds of the Communist soldiers were assigned to dig trenches, which they did by day and by night, under enemy fire. By 14 October they had completed a network of 10,000 to 20,000 meters of trenches, some of them deep and wide enough to accommodate artillery pieces.43 A veteran of the battle later recalled that the trenches came to within 60 meters of the Nationalist front lines: “If you raised your voice a bit while talking, the other side could hear you as clear as can be, so besides heightening our caution, we even had to be careful about coughing and spitting.”44 Other preparations included assigning a number to each enemy bunker, setting up clear rules for the use of flags with which the infantry on the battlefield could communicate with the artillery, and laying telephone lines from divisional command headquarters to the frontline units.45 On 11 October, Lin Biao decided that the assault on Jinzhou would begin on the fourteenth.46 The attack would involve the Second, Third, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Columns, the Sixth Column’s Seventeenth Division, and the main force of the artillery column—a total of around 250,000 men.47 The First and Third Columns, along with the

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Figure 11.2. Communist soldiers charging the walls at Jinzhou, October 1948.

Seventeenth Division, most of the artillery, and a tank regiment, all under the command of the Third Column, would take responsibility for the main thrust of the attack, hitting Jinzhou from the north. The Seventh and Ninth Columns, with some artillery, under the command of the Seventh Column, would attack from the south. The Eight Column, also with some artillery support, would attack from the east.48 The initial goal was to eliminate the Nationalist forces in the western half of the city.49 Mao, who realized that the battle would be crucial had already told Lin to report regularly.50 The Battle of Jinzhou The assault itself began as planned on 14 October—a clear, crisp autumn day. At 10:00 am, nine hundred Communist artillery pieces opened fire. Within twenty minutes they had blown a breach in the wall on the north side, where the Second Column’s infantry forces, protected in their trenches, waited for the order to attack. At 10:45, the frontline commander ordered the tanks forward from their concealed positions in the rear. What he meant was for them to take up positions just behind the front lines and



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Figure 11.3. A Japanese-made tank in action in the Battle of Jinzhou, October 1948.

wait there in readiness. The tank commander misunderstood—he thought that he had received the signal to storm the breach. The tanks accordingly sped toward the wall. Seeing the tanks roll forward, the shock troops, too, thought that the assault was beginning, so they began to charge. At this point, the entire plan of artillery-tank-infantry coordination was thrown into chaos. The infantry and artillery commanders hastily conferred, called off the planned second artillery barrage of the wall and other defenses, and instead had the artillery hit targets two hundred meters behind the enemy lines.51 This mix-up meant that the infantry and tanks faced obstacles that would have been cleared up by the now-canceled second artillery barrage. Nonetheless, the first echelon managed to break through the Nationalist defenses and enter the city, with the second echelon following quickly behind. On the south side of the city, fewer than ten minutes were required for the artillery to blast through the wall and the infantry to move in. On the east side the Eighth Column launched its assault somewhat later than scheduled, was held down by enemy fire, and broke into the city only after multiple attempts.52

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Once they were within the walls, the Communist soldiers began to fight their way through the streets of the western half of Jinzhou’s new city district. By noon the Nationalists had been thrown into complete chaos. Fan Hanjie had lost two-thirds of his force in the attempt to defend Jinzhou’s periphery. The remaining troops could not continue to defend Jinzhou for any length of time.53 With the Communists inside the walls, Nationalist air support was rendered useless.54 Radio communications between ground forces and the air force were broken.55 Telephonic communications within the city had collapsed; each unit was on its own, out of contact with Fan Hanjie’s headquarters.56 The Nationalists had run out of ammunition for their mountain and field guns; they were also short on rifle ammunition and hand grenades.57 The Communists advanced along multiple vectors in small teams, dividing, surrounding, and annihilating Nationalist units. Rather than charge straight up the streets, they blasted holes through buildings and walls—a process that they called “cutting tofu”—in order to create paths through which they could advance and outflank enemy units.58 They met with strong resistance in some areas, particularly at substantial buildings like the provincial capital building and the movie theater.59 Communist accounts of the Battle of Jinzhou refer explicitly to the use of Lin Biao’s 3-3 system to maintain dispersed troop formations, avoid crowding, and reduce casualties.60 The accounts also describe the use of camouflage and deception. For example, in one instance a Communist company found itself pinned down by enemy fire in the vicinity of their target: the railway station. Armed with a prisoner’s description of the Nationalist position (a minefield, a bunker, a gun emplacement, and various obstacles), the company commander sent three men, each with a rifle and some explosives, to infiltrate the enemy position under cover of the night. The soldiers cut the barbed wire and were walking boldly forward when a Nationalist sentry challenged them: “Who goes?” “Us,” the Communist team leader replied. When ordered to “stand!” the Communist soldier responded, “Fuck! Don’t you even recognize your own men?” The sentry, evidently confused or weak of will, let them pass. Within minutes, they had located a large bunker—the Nationalist command post for this particular position—and blown it up. The rest of the company, who had been waiting nervously, then charged forward, shouting at the disoriented



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Figure 11.4. “Cutting tofu”—an NEPLA soldier going through a wall in Jinzhou, October 1948.

Nationalist soldiers: “Put down your weapons! The People’s Liberation Army is generous to captives!”61 When the Communists quickly achieved their initial goal of capturing the western half of the city, Lin Biao decided that they should keep going.62 The fighting continued past sundown. Late that night, a Communist intelligence officer was still monitoring Nationalist radio traffic from his base at Guagu Temple in the mountains outside of Jinzhou. By this time, there was very little radio traffic to be monitored. Suddenly, he picked up a signal. It was a Nationalist radio operator with Hou Jingru’s East-Advancing Army Corps—the forces that had failed to break through the Communist position at Tashan in time to prevent the attack on Jinzhou. Through the Communist soldier’s headset came the mournful sound of singing: “Stray fireflies roam the empty hall, a wildcat cries across the stage; alone with his solitary lantern, the night watchman knocks the fifth watch; desolate wind, soaking rain, flowers falling in confusion, leaves whirling in the wind; through this long, long night, who waits for me at dawn?” It was

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the theme song from the popular 1937 Chinese film Music of the Night, an adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera.63 By the next morning, the Communists were in control of almost all of Jinzhou’s new city district. Ten thousand Nationalist soldiers had retreated to the old city, hoping to rely on this area’s separate wall and moat to hold the attackers off.64 In order to create clear lines of fire in this densely populated area, the Nationalists tore down houses and other buildings and blockaded streets and alleys.65 These preparations did little to delay the by now inevitable defeat. Despite some tactical blunders (a regimental commander who hesitated to lead his troops into battle, poor coordination of infantry and tanks, and a tank that wound up in the moat), the Communists soon brought this last act of the Battle of Jinzhou to a victorious conclusion. By 6:00 pm on 15 October, it was all over. Nineteen thousand Nationalists were dead or wounded. Another 80,000 had surrendered or been captured.66 Defeat and Determination Defeat, for the field commander, has a sense of immediacy: it implies the very real possibility of capture, injury, or death. This potential for career-ending or even life-ending finality hovers over the man who sees his troops being annihilated before his very eyes. For the commander in chief, in his post well removed from the action, perhaps in his presidential palace in the capital, defeat in one battle, one campaign, or one theater lacks the same sense of immediacy and finality. Defeat experienced in this way, from a distance, though bitter, may strengthen his determination to fight on, even against what seem to be impossible odds. For Fan Hanjie, the loss of Jinzhou was personal. By the afternoon of 14 October, he knew that he was finished. With the city’s defenses collapsing around him, Fan brushed tears from his eyes as he told his commanders how ashamed he was.67 His goal at that point shifted from defending the city to saving his own life. At 2:00 pm, as combat raged in the new city district, Fan hopped into a jeep and sped toward the airport. From their observation post on a hilltop outside the city, Communist commanders Wu Faxian, Liu Zhen, and Qiu Chuangcheng could see the jeep. They also saw an airplane coming from the direction of Beiping land at the airport. At that moment, they received a telephone call from Lin Biao,



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who ordered artillery commander Qiu to hit the airplane as it waited on the tarmac. When the artillery had fired off twenty rounds without hitting their target, Lin called back: “Your skills are terrible! You have to knock it out, failure is unacceptable!” Qiu ordered his men to try again. This time, the airplane burst into flames. The jeep, which had stopped short of the airport when the shells began to fall, turned back toward Jinzhou.68 Unable to escape by air, Fan Hanjie slipped out of the city on foot, accompanied by his wife, some tens of soldiers, and several of his subordinates, who hoped that if they fled with their commander, they would not be accused later of having abandoned their posts.69 As they tried to find their way to safety in the dark while avoiding Communist troops, the group of ninety fell apart. Some twenty-four hours later, a Communist militia force brought four captives to a unit that was handling the prisoners who were now pouring in from all directions. As the Communist cadre in charge later recalled, these particular prisoners included a middle-aged woman, a chubby middle-aged man, and two strong young men. The woman, he thought, looked like the wife of a rich peasant, dressed in a winter coat—but the gold ring on her left index finger suggested that she was wealthier than she appeared. The “old fat man,” who was wearing a coat and a typical Northeastern winter hat, “was always hanging his head, and he had a depressed expression on his fat face.”70 Under interrogation, the woman, who seemed to do most of the talking, claimed that she and her husband were merchants from the south (she had to explain their southern accents somehow), and that they had been trying, and failing, to do business in Shenyang. When they were caught, they had been on the way to Huludao, she said, to try to get passage on a southbound ship so that they could return home. The story was unconvincing. The idea of merchants from Shenyang returning home to south China with nothing but the clothes on their backs seemed unlikely. On further questioning, Fan and Madame Fan broke down and revealed their identities. Fan was sent to Harbin, where he joined a growing number of Nationalist officers undergoing thought reform. Madame Fan was allowed to proceed to Huludao.71 For Fan Hanjie, defeat and capture meant the end of the civil war. Chiang Kai-shek could not and would not allow the loss of Jinzhou and the annihilation of Fan’s armies to be the end of the struggle for Manchuria.

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On 15 October, he flew to Shenyang, still hoping that Jinzhou could be saved. Even if Jinzhou was lost—which happened by the time Chiang’s airplane landed that afternoon—he still believed that the West-Advancing Army Corps and the East-Advancing Army Corps should continue their operations, trap the Communists, and recover the city. Otherwise, there would be no way to extract his remaining forces from the Northeast.72 Arriving in Shenyang at 5:00 pm, Chiang issued orders to Wei Lihuang and Liao Yaoxiang regarding the operations of Liao’s West-Advancing Army Corps.73 We will discuss those orders and the story of the West-Advancing Army Corps in chapter 14. The next morning, Chiang flew to Jinxi, where he met with Hou Jingru, Que Hanqian, and Luo Qi. Chiang’s anger mounted as Que briefed him on the unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Communists at Tashan.74 As a witness later described it: “The old man’s face was flushed with anger as he demanded a map to look at. . . . [He] pointed to the map, saying: ‘with Tashan so close by, how could the enemy construct such strong defenses and obstacles so quickly? Commander Que was stationed at Huludao, he should have discovered the situation from the beginning. Why did he not take preventive and destructive measures?’ The more the old man talked the angrier he got. He pointed to Que, threatening to execute him, and berating him: ‘You’re no Whampoa student, you’re an insect, an insect!’ ”75 Chiang himself reflected in his diary that he should have punished Que Hanqian for failure to fight the enemy on previous occasions, but that Fan Hanjie had always protected him. Chiang had entrusted Que to handle the attack on Tashan, hoping that with Luo Qi’s supervision, Que would be up to the task. He now regretted that decision, but it was too late.76 After shouting at Que and discussing further operational plans with Hou Jingru, Chiang flew back to Beiping.77 If the West-Advancing and East-Advancing Army Corps could recover Jinzhou, then at least he would be able to withdraw his remaining troops from Manchuria and use them to fight the Communists elsewhere. But for this plan to work, the armies now in Changchun would need to break out of the Communist encirclement and head south. This, too, must have weighed heavily on Chiang’s mind as he returned to Beiping.

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A prolonged war wears down the soldiers and dampens their ardor. If they are made to attack cities, their strength will be exhausted. . . . The method of attacking walled cities should be resorted to only when there is no other option. —Sunzi (trans. Mair), The Art of War

Twelve

Putting Changchun under Siege ★★★

March–June 1948

Although Sunzi warned against them, Chinese military history is littered with examples of sieges, many of them of epic proportions.1 For example, when the Mongols sought to break through the Southern Song dynasty’s riverine defenses the Han River in 1268 they had to put the city of Xiangyang under siege for five years.2 With sufficient resources, logistical support, explosives, and gunpowder weapons, troops could, despite Sunzi’s words, lay siege to walled cities for short or even extended periods of time without exhausting their strength. But sieges and attacks on cities inevitably inflicted suffering and death on civilian populations as well as on enemy soldiers. In one particularly notorious instance, when the Manchu Qing armies, having captured the Ming capital of Beijing, marched south to defeat the remaining Ming armies, they encountered strong resistance at the city of Yangzhou, where a Ming general had foolishly decided to make his last stand. After a brief siege, the Qing forces slaughtered the city’s inhabitants.3 The Massacre of Yangzhou raises another problem with attacks on cities. What degree of civilian suffering is acceptable? At what point does the price paid in civilian casualties undermine the moral justification for the war itself and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the victorious army? How do the victors deal with the historical memory of civilian casualties? 219

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The Qing general in command of troops at Yangzhou probably believed that the larger goal of reestablishing order under the Qing dynasty justified the conquest of the city, and that inasmuch as the city had resisted, its citizens deserved the horrendous punishment that he inflicted on them. Nonetheless, the casualties at Yangzhou tarnished the Manchu leaders’ attempt to paint the Qing as a dynasty of virtuous Confucian rulers who had accepted the Mandate of Heaven. The Qing tried to ameliorate the damage by banning descriptions of the massacre. Subsequently, the Manchu emperors did win legitimacy in the eyes of their Chinese subjects, not only because they did their best to cover up what had taken place at Yangzhou, but also because they really did restore order, expand the empire, patronize Confucian culture and learning, and preside over a long period of relative peace and prosperity. But in the late nineteenth century, when the Qing state was in decline and unable to defend China against Western and Japanese imperialism, Han Chinese revolutionaries plucked old accounts of the Massacre of Yangzhou out of the dustbin of history, made them a living part of Chinese historical memory, and used them as a part of their effort to undermine the legitimacy of their foreign Manchu Qing rulers. The suffering of civilians during the siege of Changchun casts a shadow over the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist revolution similar to the way in which the Massacre of Yangzhou tarnished the virtue of the Qing. To be sure, when Communist soldiers finally captured Changchun, they did not indulge in an orgy of looting, burning, pillage, rape, and murder such as the Qing troops had been guilty of at Yangzhou. But the flight of approximately 150,000 refugees from the city and the deaths of an estimated 120,000 civilians during the siege (and the figures are certainly conservative) hardly squared with the Communist Party’s carefully constructed image as a force working for the liberation of the common people from the depredations of the Chiang Kai-shek regime and its American imperialist supporters.4 So while accounts of the siege of Changchun have been published in China, the Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army have generally treated the topic with a good deal of reserve.5 Typical of the approach taken in officially approved memoirs and histories is Han Xianchu’s dry understatement: “Of course, the long siege . . . caused some difficulties for the people of the city.”6 The “difficulties” were of a



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degree that the people of Changchun could scarcely have imagined when the Nationalist army took control of their city in May 1946. Changchun, the Garden City Changchun was originally a small Qing administrative and market town.7 After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), in which Japan displaced the Russians to become the dominant power in southern Manchuria, Changchun, which lay at the border of the Russian and Japanese spheres of interest, became the place where the railway systems of the two foreign powers met. Since the Russian and Japanese railways ran on two different gauges, this created a demand for laborers to transfer cargo from one railway to the other. Changchun also became a center for the soybean trade (Manchuria was the world’s largest producer of soybeans in the 1920s and 1930s).8 In 1932, when they took over all of Manchuria and transformed it into the “independent” state of Manchukuo, the Japanese began to rebuild Changchun into a new capital city to be named (appropriately enough) Xinjing (literally, “New Capital”). Drawing on Ebenezer Howard’s idea of the “Garden City,” Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacres City” concept, and Le Corbusier’s penchant for authoritarian architecture, and inspired by the examples of New Delhi and Canberra, Japanese city planners built a modern city with impressive, solid Euro-American style buildings, wide streets, underground telephone and electrical lines, spacious parks, and plenty of trees.9 The parks and trees would, as we shall see, come to play a grim role during the siege. But in 1945, when the Soviet Red Army liberated it from the Japanese, Changchun was a large, sophisticated city. Changchun women followed the same fashions in hairstyle and clothing as their sisters in the port cities of China’s south and southeast coasts—Western-style permed hairdos and Western clothing and shoes were popular. It was the kind of place where the trendy thing to do was to get your photograph taken posing in front of an automobile, and where the movie theater showed feature films like Kismet, starring Marlene Dietrich.10 When the Nationalist New First Army entered Changchun (which the Communists had briefly occupied, but then retreated from) on 23 May 1946, the people gave them a warm and evidently heartfelt welcome. A victory arch was set up on the route through which the Nationalists entered the city; the

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streets were lined with cheering crowds of people holding welcoming signs with slogans like “Support the supreme leader Chiang Kai-shek.”11 There followed a wave of weddings as New First Army soldiers and officers, believing that peace was at hand, took the opportunity to get married, while Changchun families, looking forward to a new, prosperous future under Chiang Kai-shek’s government, regarded Nationalist army men as prime son-in-law material.12 Changchun and the New Seventh Army before the Siege By the early spring of 1948, the people’s optimism had evaporated. In February 1948, the United States withdrew its consulate from the city. Soon afterward, in an effort to gain some understanding of the situation, diplomats in the American embassy in Nanking perused a report written by a Japanese informant, one S. Sakamura.13 What Sakamura described was a city that had been isolated from all other points in Manchuria by the Communist Summer Offensive in May–June 1947 and then thrown into chaos by the Autumn Offensive in October. The loss of coal mines and the cut-off of electricity from the Xiaofengman hydroelectric station had brought everything electrical or mechanical to a halt: streetcars, lights, manufacturing, and even the large clocks that adorned the sides of some of the major buildings.14 The loss of coal and electricity had also left people without heat in the bitterly cold Manchurian winter. In desperation, people tore down houses for firewood and bought up books, which could be used for fuel as well. Still, during the worst weeks of winter, an average of five people died of cold every day. Food, too, was a problem. The loss of territory around the city had reduced the sources of grain to less than 10 percent of what they had been a year before. The price of grain rose to astronomical levels. Soybeans and soy cake (the latter generally used as animal fodder or fertilizer) were available in large quantities. These became the food of the poor. Those who were somewhat better off ate gruel of sorghum and sorghum bran, which they cooked like rice. Only the wealthiest of families could eat rice. If this was the situation even before the Communists had actually put Changchun under siege, it is no wonder that the people’s political



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orientation had shifted decisively away from the Kuomintang. Intellectuals and especially university students tended to be sympathetic to, or even supporters of, the Communist Party. When the winter examinations finished on 20 January, many students took advantage of the vacation to slip out of the city and join the Communists. The National Changchun University estimated that by next term, they would lose about 1,000 of their 2,500 students. The turn toward the Communists was evident even in small things like the price of used books: as late as December 1947, the price of one English-language book was equal to that of two books in Russian. By February 1948, the ratio had been reversed. Of course, all this was irrelevant to the majority of the people. They did not care about ideology: what they wanted to know was, which side will guarantee cheaper sorghum and firewood? The word on the streets was: “It doesn’t matter if the [Communist] Eighth Route Army comes or not, just as long as there’s no fighting.”15 The collapse of civilian confidence was accompanied by a decline in the morale of the Nationalist soldiers defending Changchun. In November 1947, a second lieutenant expressed his feelings in mediocre, but heartfelt poetry: You damned Changchun, you dead city; With your city center that people long to obliterate; You degenerate city, you desolate flower garden; People curse you as a graveyard, and I want to curse you too.16

In that winter, the New First Army—the army that had marched into Changchun in glorious triumph in May 1946—was transferred from Changchun down to Shenyang. But the army’s Thirty-eighth Division was left behind. This single division, along with some miscellaneous units, was redesignated as the New Seventh Army, and put under the leadership of Li Hong, formerly commander of the Thirty-eighth Division. This relatively weak force was now to be responsible for the defense of Changchun.17 The Sixtieth Army Comes to Changchun When Li Hong took command of the New Seventh Army, the Nationalists still controlled the city of Jilin, around 98 kilometers east of Changchun. Defending Jilin was the Sixtieth Army, commanded by Zeng Zesheng.

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Because Zeng and the Sixtieth Army would play a crucial role in the siege of Changchun, it is important that we understand their background and the nature of their relationship to Chiang Kai-shek and the New Seventh Army. The Sixtieth Army, like the Ninety-third Army, which had fought at Yixian and Jinzhou, was originally from Yunnan province. Both armies had been part of the Yunnan warlord Long Yun’s forces. In 1945, Chiang Kaishek had engineered the removal of Long Yun (whom he distrusted—not without reason) from power, named one of Long’s subordinates, Lu Han, as governor of Yunnan province, and put Long under house arrest.18 In 1946, Chiang transferred the Ninety-third and Sixtieth Armies from Yunnan to Manchuria, not only because he needed more armies in the Northeast, but also in order to weaken Lu Han.19 In Manchuria, Chiang and Du Yuming further weakened these former warlord armies by deploying their constituent divisions to different locations and putting them temporarily under the command of other units.20 Chiang Kai-shek and Du Yuming’s distrust of the Yunnan troops was justified, but their attempts to control them seem to have exacerbated the problem. In the spring of 1946, Pan Niduan, commander of the Sixtieth Army’s 184th Division, disgusted at the way he and his men were treated by Du and other Whampoa-clique units, went over to the Communists, bringing a substantial number of his men and officers with him. A year later, in the summer of 1947, Chiang still worried that Long Yun, although under house arrest, was instigating the Yunnan forces in Manchuria to go over to the Communists.21 Zeng Zesheng, the commander of the Sixtieth Army, was also suspect in Chiang’s eyes. Zeng, born in 1902 in Yunnan, began his military career in 1922. In 1927, he enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy. For some men, study at Whampoa was a life-defining experience in which they established a strong sense of personal loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek and camaraderie with their fellow cadets, which lasted throughout their careers as they climbed through the ranks to become leading commanders in the Chiang’s army. Zeng was an exception to this rule. In his case, provincial identity trumped the Whampoa experience. Arrested and briefly jailed by Chiang Kai-shek in 1929, Zeng returned to Yunnan and the Sixtieth Army, rising from regimental commander to divisional and then army commander.22



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The Sixtieth Army was not only unreliable; it was also understrength. When deployed to Jilin in June 1947, the Sixtieth Army had only one good combat division.23 Still, Zeng Zesheng managed to hold on until early March 1948, when Wei Lihuang decided to give up Jilin in order to shorten his lines of defense and concentrate troop strength in Changchun. On 8 March, the Sixtieth Army pulled out of Jilin in what the Nationalists grandly labeled “Dunkirk on the land.”24 Zeng Zesheng tried to keep the retreat a secret until the last minute, but because his men were billeted in civilian homes, news of their preparations spread quickly throughout the city and, presumably, to the Communists as well. As a result, “Dunkirk on the land” was a poorly coordinated mess. Deep snow still blanketed the roads. Artillery, trucks, and other vehicles got stuck and had to be destroyed to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Zeng Zesheng himself ignored orders to destroy infrastructure, including the Xiaofengman hydroelectric plant, which, along with the city, soon fell into the hands of the Communists. The New Seventh Army failed to send promised forces out of Changchun to support the retreat, thus confirming the Yunnan men’s belief that Whampoa-clique forces like the New Seventh were no friends of warlord “miscellaneous” units like themselves. When the New Sixtieth Army arrived in Changchun on 11 March, having run the gauntlet of cold weather, snow, and Communist harassment, their combat strength, never the best, was significantly reduced.25 Soon after the Sixtieth Army joined the New Seventh in Changchun, Chiang Kai-shek ordered General Zheng Dongguo to take command of the two armies now comprising the First Army Corps. Zheng initially resisted the idea of going to Changchun, but Chiang and Wei Lihuang insisted.26 To defend Changchun, Zheng had 60,000 regular troops from the New Seventh and Sixtieth Armies and another 40,000 soldiers from various local units. This gave him six divisions on paper, but only three were considered to be combat ready, and even these were weak, and their morale was low.27 In addition, there was bad blood between the New Seventh Army and the New Sixtieth. The feelings of mutual distrust and alienation were exacerbated by the fact that the New Seventh had been in Changchun for a long time and had accumulated significant stores of coal and grain, while the Sixtieth had just arrived, having lost a large amount of its equipment and supplies on the way.28

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Despite these weaknesses, the New Seventh and the Sixtieth Armies were strong enough to make the Communists very cautious about attacking. As a modern city, Changchun had no city wall, but it was surrounded by a moat, eight feet deep and twelve feet wide, which the Nationalists had dug with conscripted civilian labor in the summer of 1947. A network of pillboxes and dugouts controlled the moat and its approaches.29 Within the moat, Zheng Dongguo divided the city into two sectors. The Sixtieth Army was responsible for the defense of the eastern sector, the New Seventh Army for the west.30 As he shouldered what he knew would be the very heavy responsibility of defending Changchun, Zheng Dongguo understood that control of grain would be a matter of crucial importance. In addition to his 100,000 troops, Zheng had a civilian population of around 500,000 to feed and control.31 In mid-April, Zheng conducted a thorough review of household registrations and also registered extra grain supplies to the best of his ability (people inevitably tried to conceal grain from the authorities). He estimated that there was enough food to last until late August at the most.32 A Failed Operation and the Decision for a Siege When he surveyed the situation in late March 1948, Lin Biao initially believed that Changchun was so thoroughly isolated and its defenders so weak that the time had come to attack. On 18 April, he submitted his plan to the Central Military Commission. Six columns would surround and attack Changchun, while another three columns and an independent division would block any enemy reinforcements coming out of Shenyang and/ or Jinzhou. Lin estimated that after a period of preparatory operations, the assault itself would take ten to fifteen days.33 This decision marked the beginning of a series of clashes in the area immediately around Changchun. On 18 April Communist troops sabotaged the Dafangshen Airport, located outside of the city itself, but they withdrew immediately afterward, leaving the airport still under Nationalist control.34 On 14 May, Nationalist forces in Changchun attacked the Communist Twelfth Column as part of a larger operation in which Zheng Dongguo attempted to secure the airport and to requisition grain from the villages around Changchun.35



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Lin Biao responded by sending the First and Second Columns and the Independent Second Division to cut off the Nationalists’ route of retreat back to Changchun and to capture the airport. This operation produced mixed results. The Sixth Column did capture the airport. Commander Xiao Jinguang immediately ordered his men to blast massive craters in the runway.36 Unfortunately for the Communists, the attempt to cut off and wipe out the Nationalist troops did not go as well. Insufficient preparation, careless reconnaissance, and poor organization of firepower meant that the Communists inflicted a disappointing 6,000 casualties on the Nationalists, while taking heavy casualties themselves.37 In the immediate aftermath of this operation, Lin Biao continued to contemplate an attack on Changchun.38 But even as preparations were under way, Lin began to have second thoughts. On 30 May, he decided that his best option was to put Changchun under siege. Grain and fuel would not be allowed into the city; civilians would not be allowed to leave. The goal, clearly articulated, was to “make Changchun a dead city.”39 Surrounding the City On 30 May, the same day that Lin Biao decided that he would put Changchun under siege, Long Gaojun, chief of staff of the New Seventh Army, wrote to a friend: The situation in the Northeast is tense yet again. Half a month ago we conducted a sweeping operation outside the city to gather grain, and we gained a few victories, but last week the bandits unexpectedly put together over 100,000 so that they could use big units to overwhelm smaller units, and attacked our forces defending the airport. There was heavy fighting for two days and nights. We were afraid that the city would be left without sufficient defense, so we had no choice but to pull back to our already existing defenses around the city. The bandits see that we are avoiding decisive battle outside the city, but they don’t dare attack, so in the last three days the situation has become less tense. Right now the relations between the army and the civilians in the city are friendly, and morale is high, which is useful. But isolated 500 li behind enemy lines, it will not be easy to maintain grain and coal supplies.40

We may discount Long’s comments about high morale, but other than that, it is clear that he and his fellow commanders in Changchun knew very well what was happening to them. Preparing for the worst, they sent small forces out of the city whenever they could, taking grain from villages

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Figure 12.1. Communist troops during the siege of Changchun.

in a 30–40 li (20–30 km.) radius. They also took wood from houses, and even ripped off the straw roofs to use as fodder for their draft animals.41 On the Communist side, even as the siege got under way, Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou in Manchuria and Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and the Central Military Commission at the Party Center continued to debate strategy for the Northeast. This discussion continued all the way through mid-June. As we saw in chapter 9 above, Mao and Zhu De were skeptical about Lin’s decision to put Changchun under siege. They suggested that Lin, Luo, and Liu were exaggerating the difficulties of attacking Changchun, urged them to reassess the situation, and raised the possibility that Lin might be able to capture half or two-thirds of the city and put the rest under siege.42 But on 7 June, Mao had agreed to the idea of a threeto-four-month siege, followed by an attack.43 On 15–20 June, Lin’s Northeast Command held a meeting of cadres of divisional level and above to discuss and finalize this decision. The message conveyed at this meeting was that Changchun was so well-defended, and the Communist forces’ equipment and tactical skills so limited, that an attack on Changchun, in which they would have a less than



Putting Changchun under Siege229

three-to-one advantage in numbers, would be costly and carried a high risk of failure.44 In his report at the meeting, Luo Ronghuan pointed out that a failed attack would have a negative effect on both army and civilian morale. “Errors” in the handling of land reform earlier in the year had already led to negative feelings among the civilian population. A debacle at Changchun would cause popular support for the Communists to decline even further.45 Liu Yalou, for his part, spoke on the need to conduct two months of training in order to prepare to attack Changchun and to lay the foundation of technical and tactical skills that the Northeast Field Army would need in future operations.46 As we have seen, the “Big Training” that Liu was talking about became training for the attack on Jinzhou. When this meeting took place, the siege of Changchun had already begun. This was the first time that Lin Biao’s forces had attempted a siege of such a large scale and extended period of time. The goals of the siege, as articulated at the mid-June meeting referred to above, were to cut off the enemy’s supplies of grain and fuel, to prohibit anyone from entering or leaving the city, to close off all the airports, both inside and outside city limits, disrupt the airdrop of supplies, annihilate any enemy units that might try to break out of the siege, and prepare eventually to attack and capture Changchun.47 On the ground, Communist forces constructed multiple layers of surroundment. First was a ring of trenches, barbed wire, and fortified defense works, then a second line of defensive works, with particular attention paid to the area between the city and the airport and to the railway line to the southwest.48 The circle was at first 150 li (97 km.) around Changchun. This circle was too long and too loose: in August, the Communists pushed forward, particularly in the open terrain on the west side of the city, using tunnels and explosives to destroy Kuomintang forward positions, thus tightening the circle down to around 100 li (65 km.).49 Along the front lines, the Communists stationed at least one man every fifty meters.50 Communist and Nationalist forward positions were no more than one thousand meters apart, and sometimes as close as four hundred to five hundred meters.51 The area between Communist and Nationalist lines comprised a dangerous “no-man’s-land,” which we shall have more to say about in chapter 13. By Lin’s command, Communist forces sent small teams of four to five

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men forward into this no-man’s-land by day, putting pressure on the enemy’s front lines and preventing civilians from leaving the city. By night, they were to press even closer to the enemy, and to fire warning shots if they spotted any enemy soldiers. From the beginning, Lin told his column commanders at Changchun that they must constantly send officers out to inspect the situation and warned that the troops must be instructed not to allow their natural sympathy for civilians to interfere with the conduct of the siege.52 While they kept Changchun under siege, the Communists continued to plan for an attack on the city. Soldiers and spies collected intelligence through personal observation and by debriefing citizens who had escaped from the city as well as surrendered or captured Nationalist soldiers. This information was used to produce maps and diagrams of Changchun and its defenses as well as a brief pamphlet (apparently designed for soldiers), entitled “Report on the Situation of the Bandits in Changchun.”53 “Bandits,” of course, was the label that the Nationalists attached to the Communists. In their own propaganda, the Communists returned the compliment. Propaganda, though it sometimes seems laughable when read out of cultural context, was an important part of the siege operation. As Xiao Jinguang explained in late June at a political work meeting: “Attacking the enemy’s spirit is first priority, attacking the city is secondary; psychological warfare is primary, combat is secondary.” Xiao pointed specifically to the need for Communist propaganda to play on the contradictions between the Yunnan troops, the Whampoa-clique New Seventh Army, and the miscellaneous local units, to encourage turncoats, and to appeal to the soldiers’ natural desire to go home—especially those soldiers (mostly in the local units and New Seventh Army) who had been recruited in Manchuria and whose homes, consequently, were not far away.54 To this end, the Communist forces bombarded Changchun with propaganda, both figuratively and literally. Communist soldiers on the front lines shouted slogans and messages to Nationalists, sometimes using homemade megaphones or bamboo tubes stretching out toward enemy lines. In some places, they set up propaganda stations with loudspeakers. The appeals could be framed in general terms, but when they could, the Communists called out to individual Nationalist officers by name. The Communists also combined propaganda with food, either by sending



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food and propaganda pamphlets over to the Nationalists or by inviting Nationalist soldiers over to the Communist side for a meal. Propaganda messages were also brought into the city by Communist agents, floated across the moat in small wooden boats, or even fired into the city in artillery shells. The Nationalists posted commissars to frontline units and used three-man mutual responsibility teams in an effort to prevent men from going over to the Communist side.55 As the siege dragged on and the anticipated attack never came, the Communist soldiers’ morale began to decline. On the one hand, they were impatient. They had successfully blocked several Nationalist attempts to break out of the encirclement in early July, but other than that, there had been no combat to break up the monotony of the siege.56 By mid-August, some of the soldiers wanted to attack right away. Cadres on the front lines openly voiced their belief that their superiors simply did not understand that the enemy had lost so many men to desertion, and that conditions were so bad inside the city, that the time for action had come. At the same time, soldiers and cadres alike were spiritually numbed. As a result, there were increasing instances in which Communist troops failed to conceal their positions sufficiently and therefor suffered unnecessary casualties.57 Holes in the Encirclement It was important that the Communist troops maintain their morale and their vigilance, because Nationalist forces and ordinary civilians, both inside and outside of Changchun all (for their own various reasons) had strong motivations to create holes in the siege. The Communists could not simply stand guard around the city and wait for the people within to be starved into submission: they had to actively prevent, or at least minimize, attempts to get food into the city by air and by land. Lin Biao and siege commander Xiao Jinguang were acutely aware of the need to prevent supplies from being airlifted or airdropped to Changchun. Airlift was relatively easy to prevent. Xiao had captured the Dafangshen Airport and destroyed its runway even before the siege began. All through the siege, Xiao stationed strong forces in between Changchun and Dafangshen to make sure that Zheng Dongguo would not be able to recover and repair the airport. Xiao also used artillery to prevent Nationalist aircraft from landing or taking off from smaller airports inside city limits.58

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With the airports closed, Chiang Kai-shek had to rely on airdrops to get much-needed supplies to Zheng’s armies. The Communists could not completely prevent airdrops, but they did their best to limit their number and effectiveness by transferring antiaircraft artillery regiments to Changchun, but the relatively small number of antiaircraft guns and their distance from the city center limited their effectiveness.59 Still, the Communist gunners were able to make the airdrops more dangerous than they would have been otherwise. The Nationalists devoted substantial resources to the airdrops, using C-46 and C-47 cargo planes, B-25s, P-51s, P-38s, and L-5s in hundreds of missions, flying primarily out of Jinzhou and Shenyang, secondarily out of Beiping.60 On 17 August, Chiang reiterated the importance of this mission, telling air force commander Wang Shuming that the resupply of Changchun by air was his first priority task and that he must fulfill Chiang’s promise, made to Zheng Dongguo, that the air force would drop sixty to eighty tons of supplies to Changchun starting 20 August.61 For all its efforts, the air force was unable to keep Changchun adequately supplied. In his memoir, Zheng Dongguo speculates that the air force purposely botched airdrops because they held a grudge against the New Seventh Army.62 There are, however, many other reasons why the airdrops did not and could not do everything that Zheng would have wished for. Nationalist historians note that the air force suffered from shortages of airplanes, spare parts, ammunition, and aviation fuel—shortages that they argue were the result of the American arms embargo and general American unreliability.63 Fear of Communist antiaircraft fire was another factor. Nationalist pilots did not dare to fly at low altitudes over Changchun: they dropped the supplies from between eight and ten thousand feet.64 Fear in the air, of course, translated into frustration on the ground. In his diary, a young Nationalist officer griped: “An airplane flew over to drop grain, and the Eighth Route fired off a few tens of rounds of their anti-aircraft guns, and even though the airplane wasn’t touched at all, no planes dared to come for the next three days. These damned pilots are real cowards.”65 All these limitations meant that the airdrops, although tremendously expensive, fell short of supplying Changchun’s needs. Estimates were that it would take twenty airplanes flying two missions a day to drop enough supplies to keep Changchun going. In practice, the Nationalists were able



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to sustain only eleven or twelve flights a day at best, and sometimes as few as four.66 At this rate, roughly three days of missions were required to drop one day’s worth of grain.67 Accuracy was another problem. Bags of grain, some of them dropped without parachutes (which were also in short supply) often damaged houses and sometimes fell on and killed random civilians.68 In August, the American consul in Shenyang estimated that 20 percent of the tonnage fell in Communist-controlled areas outside the city and that civilians in Changchun managed to lay their hands on another 20–30 percent before the Nationalist soldiers could retrieve it. Another estimate suggests that two-thirds of the grain dropped was lost or unaccounted for.69 The Communists’ attempts to minimize airdrops were warfare carried out from a distance: antiaircraft guns firing at airplanes. The struggle to maintain a tight cordon around Changchun was up close, personal, and far more complicated. The goal of the siege, as expressed in a slogan of the time, was “don’t give the enemy a single grain of food or a single blade of grass; starve Changchun’s Chiang army to death in the city!”70 Civilians were to be prevented from leaving the city because they would consume food and also because the tensions between civilians and the military within the city would cause social unrest, thus increasing the burden on Zheng Dongguo.71 But by blocking off Changchun in this fashion, the Communists created a tremendous demand for grain inside the city: prices skyrocketed, particularly in relation to textiles and manufactured goods. This caused a good deal of suffering. It also created some very lucrative business opportunities for those who were willing to take the risk necessary to smuggle grain into the city. Profits could be as much as ten times the initial investment.72 Communist soldiers were unable to seal off the city completely, in part because the terrain was complex and therefore difficult to police. Leaks in the cordon were particularly serious in the first few weeks, but continued on some scale throughout the siege. Part of the problem was that the Communists had never conducted such an operation before. The commanders complained that the men on the front lines did not take their responsibilities seriously enough and that the soldiers were even affected by a “one-sided sense of compassion” that led them to allow food to be smuggled through the lines.73 Some units even colluded with smugglers

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in return for a share of the profits.74 Another problem was that the Communists had only recently captured the area in the immediate vicinity of Changchun. The people, by and large, did not yet identify with or support the Communist Party.75 Due to these weaknesses in the blockade, Nationalist troops were still able to send small units out to purchase twenty to thirty tons of grain a month from smugglers in the first months of the siege. In some places, fifty to sixty civilians at a time were crossing the fields outside the city by night, buying up grain, and hauling it back into the city.76 In response, Communist forces reorganized and tightened the blockade, establishing inspection stations at all crossroads leading toward Changchun, confiscating smuggled grain, and offering incentives (30–50 percent of the grain confiscated) to informants who turned in smugglers.77 Despite these measures, the smuggling was still going on in August, when Communist reports lamented that entire cartloads of grain were getting into Changchun, some of it relief grain that the party had distributed to refugees.78 In September, when the harvest came in, the siege forces took measures to make sure that none of it would get into Changchun. The Communist Party and army mobilized all available manpower—soldiers, refugees, even petty criminals and “habitually lazy” people—to help farmers living in the area 30–50 li (20–32 km.) around Changchun to harvest their grain. Families living within 50 li of Changchun were allowed to keep only three months’ worth of grain for themselves: anything else, they had to store with relatives or friends outside the cordon area.79

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In the psychological sphere the general concept is . . . to hold out. To do this it is essential that the morale both of those fighting and of the population should be raised and kept at a high level. —Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy

Thirteen

Death, Treason, and Surrender in the Garden City ★★★

June–October 1948

The amounts of food and fuel trickling into Changchun by air and over land were not enough to make any significant difference to the soldiers and civilians trapped in the city. This posed a difficult challenge for Zheng Dongguo, who had both to keep his troops fed and to maintain social order under extremely trying circumstances. In an attempt to achieve centralized control over the city’s limited food resources, Zheng ordered that all grain in civilian hands be collected and managed by a “Wartime Grain Management Committee.” Inevitably, civilians (sometimes with the encouragement of Communist agents) did their best to conceal grain. Grain prices in the city rose dramatically. They also fluctuated wildly, falling after large airdrops and rising in response to Communist artillery fire.1 In order to maintain civilian morale and discipline, Zheng also organized potentially troublesome refugees (some of them landowning families who had fled their villages during land reform) and youth into militia units, which allowed him to feed them from military grain stores and to keep them under military discipline.2 But in the end, the pressures exerted on the Nationalist forces and civilians in Changchun were too much—neither was able, in the French strategist Beaufre’s phrase, “to hold out.” Instead, they wanted to get out. 237

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Starvation What the people, and even the Nationalist soldiers, wanted to get away from was starvation. No matter how he organized resources and people, Zheng Dongguo could not solve the fundamental problem: severe lack of food and fuel. During the summer, fuel was not such a serious issue, but when autumn came, and trees had been felled outside and inside the city, people began digging coffins out of the ground to use for firewood; asphalt torn from the streets functioned as a substitute for coal.3 Food was the most serious problem. People’s Liberation Army historians Zhang Zhenglong and Liu Tong describe people eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, birds—anything that could be killed and eaten. Human corpses were collected “to feed the dogs.” The dogs, of course, were destined to be eaten by the remaining people. Young girls were sold as brides for as little as some flat bread or sorghum.4 Refugees who made their way out of the city in August reported: “The grass and the bark on the trees have all been eaten up.”5 Indeed, the price of leaves in late June was reported to be 4,000 yuan per jin.6 The Japanese-designed “Garden City” had truly become a city of death, the trees and grasses of the parks now the food of last resort. The starvation of Changchun’s civilian population was something that the Communist Party and army leaders had expected. Indeed, it was a key part of their strategy. In late June, at a political work meeting to discuss the siege, Xiao Hua observed that if the Communists could continue to cut Changchun off from air and land communications with the outside, then, “it will create hunger and difficulty for the enemy. The army and the people alike will be forced into dire straits, the soldiers will plunder, the people will be filled with resentment, morale will crumble, social order will fall into chaos, and we will control the means of survival.”7 In order to maximize the political impact of civilian suffering, a Communist leader pointed out that “we should place the blame for the ordinary people’s starvation and poverty squarely on the shoulders of the enemy army and the enemy government, exaggerate the contradiction between them and the masses and isolate them.”8 Inevitably, there were civilians in Changchun who concluded that the risk of trying to escape the city was preferable to the near certainty of starving to death where they were. In mid-June, when Northeast Field



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Army cadres at a political work meeting asked Chief of Staff Liu Yalou what their troops should do if civilians tried to leave Changchun, Liu reportedly answered: “Keep one eye opened and one eye closed.” Everyone laughed. Political Commissar Luo Ronghuan followed up: “Take the masses in and resettle them.”9 This is not precisely what happened. As we have seen, conditions in Changchun were already desperate back in February, before the siege began. In early June, as the siege took hold, Lin Biao’s headquarters received reports that two to three hundred people were fleeing Changchun every day. In some areas, the starving people were even raiding Communist food supplies.10 Some hanged themselves within sight of Communist sentries; others pleaded with the Communist troops to let them through the cordon.11 By late June, amid rumors that Zheng Dongguo was preparing to drive the elderly, the disabled, orphans, and suspicious elements out of Changchun, Xiao Hua concluded: “We must stop anyone coming out of Changchun, but we must not beat up or abuse the masses, and there will always be a few on the verge of starving that we will have to deal with, but the regimental [level] should bear this responsibility; it should not be handled by ordinary units, much less should it become the state of mind of the troops conducting the siege.”12 In practice, what this meant was that when civilians escaped from Changchun, Communist soldiers would not allow them through their lines. As Luo Ronghuan described it: “Our main countermeasure was to prohibit passage, putting sentries every fifty meters plus tightly interlocking barbed wire and trenches to eliminate gaps, not allowing refugees to come out, and exhorting those who did come out to return.”13 The Communist soldiers on the front lines clearly had ambivalent feelings about their duty to turn back refugees. As one refugee described it: “You could kneel down to them, but they would kneel down with you and tell you that they had orders from above that they dared not violate, and beg your forgiveness.”14 Despite these misgivings on the front lines, the blockade against refugees leaving the city remained extremely tight until early August.15 Nevertheless, as Luo Ronghuan himself observed, the flow of refugees increased as conditions in Changchun deteriorated. Unable to pass through Communist lines to safety, and with Nationalist soldiers blocking the way back into Changchun, the refugees were caught in a noman’s-land known as the “checkpoint zone.”

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Life and Death in the Checkpoint Zone The checkpoint zone was a band anywhere from fifty to one thousand meters across between Communist and Nationalist lines. It was a dangerous, lawless place. Both Nationalist and Communist troops sent small teams into the area regularly, sometimes in civilian clothing, to collect intelligence.16 Bandits preyed on refugees, robbing them of food, controlling access to wells (many of which had been poisoned), and guarding fields of grain or other crops. Gunfire could be heard night and day. Starving people stripped the trees of bark and leaves to eat.17 An American consular report describing the situation as of late summer or early autumn noted: “The area is permeated by the stench of numberless cadavers. These are preyed upon by those dogs which escape the clutches of the hungry refugees.”18 By late August, there were tens of thousands of refugees starving to death in the checkpoint zone. Zheng Dongguo, acting on Chiang’s orders, was expelling civilians (particularly the old and weak) from the city in order to decrease the number of people he had to feed.19 At this point, Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and the other Communist leaders were aware that the spectacle of human suffering could both undermine the Communist Party’s legitimacy in the eyes of the people and lead to morale problems among the soldiers responsible for enforcing the blockade. In the words of a Communist Party cadre, the siege had “created a severe situation of starvation and death, tragic beyond description.”20 The starving refugees in the checkpoint zone were not harming the Nationalists in Changchun in any way, but their presence was harming the Communists. In a report to the Party Center, Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou observed: “Not allowing the starving people to leave the city and pushing back those who have left is extremely difficult to explain to both the starving people and to the soldiers. The starving people are dissatisfied with us and complain vociferously that ‘the Eighth Route sees the dying yet does nothing.’ They kneel in groups in front of our sentries, begging to be allowed through; some of them leave their babies and children and then run away; some bring rope and hang themselves in front of our sentries.”21 The Communist soldiers, their hearts torn by the contradiction between their orders and the suffering unfolding before their eyes,



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sometimes allowed people through the lines; at other times, they swore at, beat, tied up, or shot refugees.22 Beginning in August, the Communist response to this problem was to allow limited numbers of refugees to pass through at specific places along the front line. Allowing too many to pass through at once would lower the pressure on those left within the city and thus weaken the siege. As Luo Ronghuan described it: “In early August we let some of them out, and within three days we’d received over 20,000 refugees; inside the city, they immediately pushed another few tens of thousands out, so the checkpoint zone was filled up again. At that point the price of sorghum in the city tumbled from seven million to five million, but when we restored the blockade, it quickly recovered and went back up to ten million.” Luo concluded that the Communists would have to let refugees out of the checkpoint zone in a carefully gauged incremental fashion, because “if we don’t let any out, then too many die, and it doesn’t look good.”23 As described in a Communist Party document of mid-August 1948, the criteria for allowing refugees through the blockade were: ·· Let those who are starving to death through the blockade and give them assistance. ·· Do not let large numbers out indiscriminately: specify particular places where people will be let through, and send teams into the checkpoint zone first to assess the situations of different groups of refugees. ·· Students, workers, and people with particular skills that the Communist forces needed should be incorporated into Communist units as appropriate.24 There were also however, other, more materialistic criteria at work: under certain conditions, refugees could buy their way out of the checkpoint zone. As described in an American consular report: “The usual Communist tariff for exit permits consists of one rifle or pistol for five persons, a pair of field glasses or 100 rounds of ammunition for one person, pharmaceuticals or cloth in quantity commensurate with the refugees’ ability to pay. This tariff nets the Communists about 50 firearms per day, and naturally is most easily met by Army deserters. Persons obviously in

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   Map 13.1. The Siege of Changchun. the direst need are permitted to pass without charge, and Japanese refugees generally have been accorded better treatment than Chinese insofar as exit requirements are concerned.”25 One way or another, something on the order of 150,000 refugees made it out of Changchun.26 About ten Communist refugee processing centers gave them shelter and food, then dispersed them to various locations around Changchun. Some were smuggled back into the city as spies or propaganda agents.27 As Luo Ronghuan reported to the Party Center, the processing of refugees helped to counter Nationalist propaganda about how the Communists were starving the people of Changchun to death and to place the responsibility on the Kuomintang instead. When they



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first got out of Changchun the refugees, Luo admitted, were very unhappy with the Communist Party, but their attitude improved somewhat after they received aid.28 Most of them were probably thankful to have survived. A Communist soldier whose unit was training in a nearby city described seeing groups of these refugees every day, “dragging along on their starving, weary legs, adults and children shouldering large and small bundles, muttering Buddhist prayers as they went.”29 The Sixtieth Army ’s Uprising The Communist strategy of putting Changchun under siege and placing emphasis on psychological warfare rather than actually attacking the city worked just as planned. The calculated infliction of suffering and death on the civilian population contributed to the exhaustion of the grain supplies in the city and to the decline of Nationalist soldiers’ morale.30 Soldiers, unlike civilians, did not starve to death.31 Nonetheless, soldiers in both the Sixtieth and the New Seventh Armies saw their rations dwindle as the siege went on.32 But while all units suffered, the perception—and probably the reality—was that the suffering was not equally shared. The New Seventh Army had its own warehouses with supplies of grain. In addition, Zheng Dongguo’s policy was that all airdropped grain be collected and then centrally stored and disbursed. This led to accusations that Zheng favored the New Seventh Army in the distribution of airdropped supplies. By September, reports reaching Lin Biao’s headquarters indicated that the New Seventh Army’s elite Thirty-eighth Division was being supplied with grain directly, but that other units were given money and expected to purchase grain on the market, where they faced decreasing availability and skyrocketing prices.33 When soldiers from the Sixtieth Army saw airdrops of grain they quickly lit their cooking fires and got cauldrons of water boiling. Their goal was to lay their hands on as much airdropped rice and sorghum as possible and throw it into the cooking pots before Zheng Dongguo’s airdrop retrieval teams could get there.34 On some occasions Nationalist units armed with machine guns fought each other for possession of airdropped grain.35 They would also keep their eyes out for smoke rising from civilian homes. Smoke meant fire; fire meant cooking; cooking meant grain, which

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the soldiers could forcefully “purchase,” presumably at prices of their own choosing.36 None of these efforts was sufficient to keep the soldiers adequately nourished. By September, the men of the Sixtieth Army were eating wild plants, thin gruel, chaff, brewers’ grains, and soybean cakes. Men and officers alike were suffering from diarrhea, dizziness, fainting, and edema. The New Seventh Army, despite its reported advantages, was not much better off.37 Communist propaganda played heavily on the soldiers’ suffering and on the divisions between the New Seventh and Sixtieth armies and also those between the two regular armies on the one hand and locally recruited miscellaneous units on the other.38 The depth of these contradictions was such that a number of officers from the Sixtieth Army and from local Northeastern units were in contact with the Northeast Field Army, providing the Communists with intelligence and helping Communist agents to infiltrate into the city.39 By mid-September, the Communists’ efforts and use of contacts in the Nationalist armies had induced an estimated 13,700 soldiers and officers to cross over to the Communist side: roughly 3,700 from the New Seventh Army, 3,800 from the Sixtieth, and 6,200 from miscellaneous local units.40 These deserters were welcome, but most of them came individually or in small groups. The Communists’ goal was to get an entire division or an entire army to switch sides. Their target, of course, was the Sixtieth Army. The Communists used soldiers from Yunnan, especially deserters from the Sixtieth Army, to shout propaganda across the lines in Yunnan dialect, playing heavily on the themes of home and family, particularly during the Mid-Autumn Festival (a time traditionally associated with family gatherings).41 The Communists also used personal connections. Pan Niduan, the former Sixtieth Army divisional commander who had gone over to the Communists back in 1946, wrote personal letters to his former commander, General Zeng Zesheng, and to divisional commander Long Yao and to other officers, his former comrades and friends.42 From the Communist Party Center Zhu De, commander of the PLA and himself a former officer in the Yunnan army, also wrote personal letters to key Yunnan commanders, inviting them to come over to the Communist side.43 The Northeast Field Army also propagandized prisoners and then released them back to



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the Sixtieth Army, where they served both to spread propaganda about Communist policies and as potential points of contact.44 By September, the siege had put the Sixtieth Army in an intolerable position. The propaganda onslaught had convinced Zeng Zesheng and his leading officers that there was a way to escape their situation. The existence of personal connections made an uprising feasible and reassured Zeng and his men that they would be treated fairly when they changed sides. On 22 September, Zeng called his two divisional commanders, Bai Zhaoxue and Long Yun, to a confidential meeting. By the time the meeting was over, both men had agreed to Zeng’s proposal that they make contact with the Communist forces to arrange an uprising.45 Although the initial decision had been made, it was not until 13 October that Zeng, Bai, and Long felt that the time was ripe. On that day, they decided to send two emissaries to take a letter to the Communists, choosing two officers whom the enemy had previously captured and released.46 Oddly enough, on the same day, the American consul general in Shenyang reported to Secretary of State George Marshall that the rumor on the street was that the Sixtieth Army had defected to the Communists.47 The rumor mill was ahead of the curve, but not by much: Zeng’s emissaries slipped out of Changchun on 14 October. While Zeng Zesheng was plotting an uprising, Chiang Kai-shek, as we have seen, had stationed himself in Beiping, where he was personally commanding the troops in Manchuria. In early October, with the situation at Yixian and Jinzhou steadily deteriorating, Chiang knew that Zheng Dongguo’s armies would be lost if they could not get out of Changchun. Zheng himself agreed in principle that a retreat to Shenyang was the only hope for survival, but the officers serving under him were convinced that the troops were too weak to break out and that even if they did, the only thing preserving any sense of unity was the fact that they were all stuck in Changchun together: if they managed to break through the encirclement, discipline would collapse, and it would be each man for himself.48 Indeed, an intelligence report reaching Chiang Kai-shek stated: “If we are ordered to break out of the siege, it is to be feared that we would not get farther than 30 li [20 km.] away.”49 Thus Chiang’s handwritten order of 10 October telling Wei Lihuang to order Zheng to break out of Changchun came to nothing.50 Wei Lihuang’s advice at this stage was that the

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forces in Changchun should recover control over the airport and rely on airdropped supplies to hold their positions. Then, when Lin Biao was focused on the Shenyang area, Zheng Dongguo could take the opportunity to counterattack.51 On 15 October, just as the Battle of Jinzhou was coming to a disastrous (for the Nationalists) conclusion, Chiang flew to Shenyang. Rising at 5:00am the next morning, he composed another handwritten order, this one directly to Zheng Dongguo. In his missive, Chiang explained that due to the tense situation in Europe (i.e., the Berlin Airlift), the Americans had reduced their shipments of aviation fuel to China. As a result, the Kuomintang could no longer sustain the airdrops of supplies to Changchun. Chiang’s orders were that Zheng must break out of Changchun and get to Shenyang within the next ten days. If he failed, it might be too late.52 The orders were airdropped to Changchun later the same day.53 When Zheng Dongguo met with his officers to discuss the situation with them, they told him that a breakout was impossible. But faced with Chiang’s explicit orders, Zheng had no choice. He in turn ordered his men to prepare for a dangerous, last-ditch attempt to break through the siege at dawn the next day, 17 October.54 While Chiang Kai-shek was in Shenyang, dealing with the loss of Jinzhou and sending orders to Zheng Dongguo in Changchun, Zeng Zesheng was still waiting anxiously for the return of his two messengers. Zeng waited all day on the fifteenth. By noon on the sixteenth, there was still no sign of the two men. Zeng was worried. Had they been able to make contact with the Communists? Would the Communists accept the idea of an uprising? Had the New Seventh Army intercepted his emissaries and discovered his plot? When Zeng received an urgent call from Zheng Dongguo, demanding his attendance at a meeting, Zeng’s nerves must have been at the breaking point. But, of course, the meeting was simply to discuss Chiang’s handwritten orders.55 Zeng’s messengers had indeed made contact with the Northeast Field Army siege command and delivered a letter signed by Zeng, Bai, and Long. At first, the Communists feared that Zeng was making a pretext of surrendering in order to lay the foundations for a breakout. But the intelligence and propaganda teams that had been working with the Sixtieth Army were convinced of Zeng’s sincerity. Xiao Jinguang thus agreed to take Zeng’s



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offer seriously, while maintaining a high degree of vigilance in case it did turn out to be a trick.56 The messengers finally returned to Changchun on the evening of 16 October. At this point, Zeng had to act fast. Zheng Dongguo had already ordered him to take action in preparation for the breakout planned for dawn the next day. Zeng quickly announced the uprising to his officers. By 8:00 pm, the Sixtieth Army had redeployed its forces to defend their positions, not against the Communists, but against the New Seventh Army. There ensued a day of tense standoff, during which Zheng Dongguo sent representatives in a vain attempt to change Zeng’s mind. At midnight on 17 October, Northeast Field Army forces entered the eastern sector of Changchun as arranged. Zeng’s Sixtieth Army withdrew slowly toward the Communist rear, where they would rest, regain their strength, and be reorganized and incorporated in the PLA.57 They were so weak from hunger that they could march no more than six miles without resting.58 The New Seventh Army ’s Surrender and Zheng Dongguo’s Last Stand On 17 October, Chiang Kai-shek was back in Beiping. Perhaps in need of some diversion from the disasters that had befallen him in Manchuria, the Generalissimo, his wife, Soong May-ling, and some friends took a relaxing excursion to the Azure Cloud Temple complex on the outskirts of the city. They had a pleasant outdoor lunch at the Dragon King Temple fishing pavilion and then climbed the nearby pagoda, where Chiang danced with his wife and posed for a few photographs. On the way back, they stopped at the famous Reclining Buddha Temple. By that time, it was 3:30 pm. Chiang, as was his habit, took an afternoon nap. That evening, he received the news: Zeng Zesheng and the Sixtieth Army had betrayed him. Realizing that Zheng Dongguo’s situation was even more dangerous than before, Chiang decided that Zheng must nevertheless persist with the planned breakout, though using a different route. Chiang would send air support.59 What followed were a debacle and a farce. After the Sixtieth Army’s uprising, Xiao Jinguang tried to persuade Zheng Dongguo to lead an uprising as well. To get Zheng, a graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy’s first class and thus a close follower of Chiang Kai-shek, to switch sides would have been a tremendous propaganda coup. Appeals from some of

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Zheng’s own officers and a telegram from Zhou Enlai (who argued that the Communists better exemplified the ideals of the Whampoa Military Academy) all fell on deaf ears. Zheng’s response to a telephone call from the Communist siege headquarters, advising him to withdraw, was allegedly: “Since we are defeated, then there’s nothing left to say other than to fight to the death; laying down arms is out of the question.”60 While Zheng expressed his determination to resist, his officers in the New Seventh Army were planning their surrender. Already on the morning of 17 October, frontline units had set up direct telephonic communication with the Communist forces and agreed not to take any aggressive action.61 At 10:00 pm on 19 October, the Communists peacefully took over the New Seventh Army’s positions in the western half of Changchun. Only Zheng Dongguo and his personal guard forces continued to hold out, in the Central Bank building.62 At this point, Communist commander Xiao Jinguang could have easily overrun the Central Bank building and obliterated Zheng Dongguo and his men. But Xiao preferred to give Zheng one last chance, largely in order to make the point that the Communists were sincere about accepting surrenders and gaining the support of as many Nationalist men and officers as possible.63 For their part, Zheng’s assistant chief of staff and other officers did not want to see Zheng fight to the death (and perhaps did not want to join him in realizing that lofty ideal). Instead, they struck a face-saving deal with Xiao Jinguang. The Communists would let them hold out for two days. At the end of that time, they would fire in the air in a final token act of resistance and then surrender.64 On 20 October, Zheng sent an impassioned message to Chiang Kaishek, pledging to fight to the death.65 At dawn the next day, wild gunfire erupted from the Central Bank building. Inside Zheng (according to his own account) relayed a final message to Chiang Kai-shek: “Zeng has gone over to the enemy, [New Seventh Army commander] Li has surrendered, we have exhausted our ammunition and grain and are retreating from the Central Bank building.”66 This final charade of resistance over, Zheng and his remaining men laid down their arms. The siege of Changchun was over. Four days later, Chiang Kai-shek reflected in his diary on the sorry turn of events in Manchuria, events that, he observed, had combined with economic and diplomatic problems and social unrest to generate waves of



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refugees and wounded soldiers. But at the same time, Chiang took comfort, he said, in the loyalty of men like Zheng Dongguo, who, when faced with defeat in Changchun, had holed up in the Central Bank building with the last of his troops and fought to the end, upholding the Whampoa spirit and winning—so Chiang thought—incomparable glory.67

An army goes down in defeat like a mountain collapsing. —Chinese saying

Fourteen

Avalanche of Defeat ★★★

October–November 1948

On 15 October, when he learned that the Communists had completely defeated Fan Hanjie, Chiang wrote in his diary: “Jinzhou has fallen; the enemy is not strong, it should be easy to recover it.”1 That very day, Chiang flew to Shenyang, bringing General Du Yuming with him. On 16 October, Chiang, Du, and Wei Lihuang discussed their painfully limited options. Chiang believed that the East-Advancing Army Corps in the Huludao/ Jinxi area and Liao Yaoxiang’s West-Advancing Army Corps out of Shenyang should continue to advance toward and recover Jinzhou in order both to inflict a final defeat on the enemy and then to extract the KMT forces from the Northeast.2 Chiang left Du Yuming in Shenyang to oversee Wei Lihuang. Two days later, when Zeng Zesheng had gone over to the Communists and the remaining Nationalist troops in Changchun held on by a slender thread (a thread that was about to snap, as we have seen), Chiang flew to Shenyang once again. At this point, he was still determined to recover Jinzhou.3 Chiang’s determination was rooted not simply in his character (although that was certainly a major factor), but also in his fundamental misreading of Lin Biao’s capabilities and intentions. As suggested by his diary entry of 15 October, Chiang evidently believed that the Communist forces had exhausted a significant portion of their strength at Jinzhou and 251

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were incapable of mounting another major operation or of defending the city.4 In his memoirs, Du Yuming also suggests that Chiang still had not really grasped the fact that the Communist forces had made the transition from guerrilla to conventional operations and were now ready to attack, capture, and even defend major cities.5 Chiang was not the only one in the dark. Lin’s rank and file did not always know what was going on either. For example, the soldiers of the First Column’s Second Division, who had fought hard at Jinzhou, thought that they would get a good, long rest. They did enjoy some downtime in Jinzhou until 25 October, when they learned that their cadres—everyone from battalion commander on up—were in a meeting. This led to heated discussion in the ranks. Some said that the higher-ups were definitely going to let them stay in Jinzhou. Others scoffed: “Impossible! I guess they’re going to move us somewhere way outside the city to rest.” That evening, they found out that more rest was completely out of the question: they were to march as fast as possible toward Liaoxi, where Communist forces were already well on their way toward annihilating Liao Yaoxiang’s troops.6 To understand why, we, too, must return to Liaoxi—the area west of the Liao River—and to the story of Liao Yaoxiang and the ill-fated West-Advancing Army Corps. The West-Advancing Army Corps Chiang and Wei Lihuang had argued all summer about whether or not to put Wei’s main forces under Liao Yaoxiang’s command and send them out to Jinzhou. Wei preferred to remain in Shenyang and wait for the situation to change. Liao wanted to retreat to Yingkou. Chiang dithered. Finally, on 24 September, he ordered Wei to send the West-Advancing Army Corps out toward Jinzhou while (as we have seen) the East-Advancing Army Corps at Huludao was to move toward Jinzhou via Jinxi and Tashan.7 Wei and Liao continued to resist the idea, arguing with Gu Zhutong, whom Chiang had sent to Shenyang to make sure that they obeyed his orders. Finally, on 26 September, Wei agreed to put one-half to two-thirds of his forces under Liao’s command and send them out to capture the city of Zhangwu—a key point at the southern end of Lin Biao’s long, fragile supply line. Cut off from shipments of food, fuel, and ammunition from



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the north, the Communist forces at Jinzhou would be easily defeated (or so Wei and Chiang hoped).8 Liao and Wei now assembled the West-Advancing Army Corps, composed of five armies (twelve divisions, many of which had fought in Northern Burma) and other miscellaneous units, a total of some 250,000 men.9 They acted with maddening slowness. On 2 October, Chiang was once again in Shenyang, urging Liao to do his utmost to engage with and annihilate Lin’s main force in a decisive battle.10 Liao, once again making the case for a withdrawal via Yingkou, told Chiang: “If we go out through Yingkou, we won’t lose so much as an army cook-pot.” Chiang allegedly replied: “The question now is not purely one of withdrawing the main force from Shenyang, but of conducting a decisive battle with the Communists in the Northeast before we withdraw, to give them a heavy blow.”11 As Liao later recalled, Chiang declared: “I give you full responsibility for this expedition from Shenyang into Liaoxi to break the siege at Jinzhou. If there is any delay or bungling, there will be nobody to blame but you alone.”12 Liao clearly did not agree with Chiang’s orders. Some of the other generals at the meeting found the situation so depressing that they all wound up at a club afterward, where they consoled themselves with gambling, mahjong, and prostitutes.13 Whatever their misgivings, Liao and the West-Advancing Army Corps swung into action on 7 October, advancing from Shenyang toward Zhangwu. Their progress was slow, not only because of Communist resistance, but also due to the lack of bridges along their route. As a result, the troops sometimes advanced only 5 kilometers a day.14 Blocking Liao’s route to Zhangwu was the Northeast Field Army’s Fifth Column, commanded by Han Xianchu. The Communist soldiers had plenty of determination and creativity. For example, their way of dealing with Nationalist tanks was to let them get up close (fifty to one hundred meters), before opening fire, while simultaneously sending men around to attack the Nationalist infantry who were following the tanks. With the tanks isolated and pinned down, small teams of Communist soldiers armed with grenades and other explosives took advantage of the terrain and the smoke and dust of battle to approach or even clamber onto the tanks, setting the explosives to blow them up.15

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Neither Han Xianchu nor Lin Biao was under any illusion that the Fifth Column could prevent Liao Yaoxiang from capturing Zhangwu. But that was not only impossible: it was also unnecessary. All Han Xianchu had to do was to inflict casualties on Liao’s forces and slow their advance while the Communists transferred supplies out of Zhangwu and worked to open alternative supply lines.16 Liao captured Zhangwu on 11 October. Mao Zedong observed that the KMT had acquired a useless place. The Nationalists’ cautious use of force suggested to Mao that Wei Lihuang was trying to draw the Communist troops away from Jinzhou but that he did not dare to send reinforcements directly to Jinzhou for fear that Lin Biao would cut them off and wipe them out.17 Mao understood Wei Lihuang and Liao Yaoxiang very well. Once in Zhangwu, Liao did indeed hesitate. The fact that the East-Advancing Army Corps was stuck at Tashan worried him. Chiang, no doubt exasperated, pushed Wei and Liao to continue on to Jinzhou, telling them that the faster Liao could advance, the safer he would be. He should reach Jinzhou by 19 October at the latest. With more forces landing at Huludao, Chiang still hoped to trap and crush Lin Biao’s army.18 When Liao seemed unenthusiastic, Chiang responded: “If there is any delay you will be handled according to military law.”19 Liao nevertheless proceeded with deliberation, hoping that somehow, Fan Hanjie would hold on to Jinzhou for a few more days.20 On 15 October, the same day that Lin Biao captured Jinzhou, Liao was advancing toward the village of Heishan. Here, he and Wei Lihuang would need to make a decision: continue to advance toward Jinzhou? Or retreat to Yingkou? Either way, Liao Yaoxiang would have to deal with the Communist forces that were even now hastily reinforcing their positions at and around Heishan and the neighboring Dahushan. What followed was five days of indecision. As we have seen, Chiang visited Shenyang on 15–16 October and again on the eighteenth. During these visits, Chiang, Wei, and Liao rehashed the same debate that they had been having for months. Wei wanted Liao to retreat back to Shenyang; Liao contended that if he returned to Shenyang, he and Wei would be going down the same road as Zheng Dongguo in Changchun. Liao still argued for a retreat to Yingkou, the sooner the better.21 Chiang still hoped that Liao could fight his way through to Jinzhou and defeat Lin Biao.22 Du Yuming agreed that Liao should retreat from his present position to



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Yingkou, but thought that Liao could then advance from Yingkou north toward Jinzhou to link up with the East-Advancing Army Corps.23 Du’s approval of Liao’s plan to withdraw to Yingkou presented Wei Lihuang with a conundrum. Chiang had made it clear that he wanted Liao to continue on toward Jinzhou. Wei “resolved” the problem by issuing no orders at all.24 This left Liao paralyzed. He thought that Wei now agreed with the idea of retreating to Yingkou (because Wei had not said otherwise), but he had no orders on which to act. All he could do was to make preliminary preparations and then wait. While they waited, some of the Nationalist units took the opportunity to loot vast amounts of grain from Communist warehouses, using conscripted civilian labor, carts, and army trucks to ship it back to Shenyang for sale. Reflecting on this some weeks later, a Nationalist officer opined: “With such a lack of energy in combat and such bravery when it came to looting, defeat was inevitable.”25 The state of paralysis lasted for three days. While Liao was awaiting orders, Wei, Du, and Chiang continued to debate. On 19 October, Chiang summoned Wei and Du to a five-hour meeting at the Yuan’en Temple in Beiping. Wei was now fully on board with Liao’s plan to retreat to Yingkou and had no intention of trying to recover Jinzhou. Chiang, on the other hand, still hoped to recover Jinzhou and then extract the Nationalist forces from Manchuria.26 At some point in the meeting, Chiang apparently exploded: “Marshall destroyed our country! In the beginning, after our victory over Japan, I decided that our army should stop advancing after we reached Jinzhou. But then Marshall insisted that we should take over the entire Northeast, and I moved all my best forces to the Northeast. Now it’s to the point where I don’t even have enough troops to defend Nanjing.”27 Whatever the truth of his angry accusation of Marshall might be (and it is highly debatable), Chiang now faced the very real possibility of losing what remained of the forces that he had sent to Manchuria.28 In light of Chiang’s continued determination to at least try to recover Jinzhou, Du Yuming came up with a compromise plan: Liao Yaoxiang’s main force would secure the route to Yingkou and then attack the Communist positions at Heishan and Dahushan. If they succeeded in capturing those positions, then they would continue on to Jinzhou. If not, Liao would retreat to Yingkou. In the meantime, a small force would continue to hold Shenyang, while the KMT Fifty-second Army would be sent from

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Shenyang to capture Yingkou from the small Communist force that was currently in control of the city. Chiang gave his approval.29 After some arm-twisting, Du Yuming agreed to return to the Northeast to supervise Wei Lihuang and to take command of the East-Advancing Army.30 After five days of delay, Liao finally had his orders. But by now, as he observed in his memoirs, it was too late.31 The Heishan Blocking Operation While the Nationalists debated their next move, Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou reassessed their own situation. Their original plan had been to follow up on the victory at Jinzhou by attacking the East-Advancing Army Corps at Jinxi and Huludao. This plan was based on the assumption that Liao Yaoxiang’s West-Advancing Army Corps would not try to recapture Jinzhou. But when Liao continued to move toward Heishan, Lin, Luo, and Liu saw a new opportunity: they could wheel around and cut off and wipe out Liao’s forces—which now comprised the bulk of the Nationalist forces in Manchuria. On 19 October—the same day that Chiang, Wei, and Du had their long meeting at Yuan’en Temple in Beijing—Mao Zedong approved Lin, Luo, and Liu’s suggestion: “If, after the Changchun Incident, Chiang Kai-shek and Wei Lihuang still do not change their strategy of seeking battle with us from the two different directions of Jinxi-Huludao and Shenyang, that will be most advantageous. Under that sort of circumstance, it is absolutely correct that you should adopt a strategy of drawing the enemy in deep and fighting a decisive battle of annihilation.”32 In fact, Lin had already been purposely drawing the West-Advancing Army Corps forward. From 14 to 19 October, the Fifth Column defended and then abandoned one position after another, until, by 19 October, Liao no longer made any major advances.33 At the same time, Lin’s other forces were on the move, preparing to cut Liao’s route of retreat back to Shenyang and to defend the critical Heishan-Dahushan area—the gateway to Jinzhou.34 Communist units moving to Heishan, Dahushan, and other positions in the Liaoxi area endured four days of forced march. Lin ordered his cadres not to worry about soldiers who dropped out of the ranks on the way. The point was to get as many men as possible into position as fast as possible. Those who could not endure the pace of the



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forced march would simply be left behind.35 On 20 October, Lin ordered an all-out mobilization to completely annihilate Liao Yaoxiang’s army.36 Annihilation was not what Liao Yaoxiang expected. His orders were to attack the Communists at Heishan and Dahushan. These two mountainous areas were like the doors to a 20-kilometer-wide corridor—the only direct route from Shenyang to Jinzhou. If Liao was to recover Jinzhou, as Chiang still wanted, he would need to blast his way through. If he were to retreat to Yingkou (as he preferred), he would still need to attack Heishan and Dahushan in order to cover his west flank as he withdrew south. Either way, battle at Heishan and Dahushan was inevitable.37 Liao initially thought that Heishan (the key position in the Communist defenses) was lightly defended and would be easy to take. After all, he had twelve American-equipped divisions, tanks, over one thousand heavy artillery pieces, and air support.38 Defending Heishan was Communist commander Liang Xingchu’s Tenth Column (three divisions), plus a division from the First Column and an Inner Mongolian cavalry division. The Communist troops were equipped with rifles and grenades, and included a recently established artillery unit—three mountain gun divisions with a limited number of shells.39 The Communists did, however, derive great advantage from the mountainous terrain. They also had the advantage of mass support. Liang Xingchu mobilized the civilian population of Heishan and other villages. Men, women, and children were all put to work digging tunnels and trenches. In places where bare rock outcroppings made digging impossible, soldiers and civilian laborers used sandbags, timbers, doors taken from houses—anything they could get their hands on—to construct makeshift defensive works.40 This was “people’s war” in the sense that the Communists mobilized the entire population in support of military operations. However, it was not “people’s war” in the sense of fluid hit-and-run guerrilla operations. At Heishan, as earlier at Tashan, the Communists, badly outgunned, would have to rely on defensive works, tactical skill, and sheer determination to hold their positions against multiple assaults. They would also have to grasp the initiative, conducting an active defense whenever possible, and then make the transition to offensive operations in order to wipe out Liao’s army. During the battle, Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan told their column commanders: “Before every assault, cadres at all levels must all go in front

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Map 14.1. The Destruction of Liao Yaoxiang’s West-Advancing Army Corps.

of their units and quickly look over the terrain. The mark of courage and initiative in a commander is that he is willing to be in the lead of his unit on his own initiative, personally looking over the terrain and laying out deployments for the assault. But this does not mean that a commander should easily reveal his goals, or that he should run up to the front lines when his unit is going over the top. This is mere individual bravery, and makes little contribution to the direction of the battle.”41 The Nationalist onslaught began on 20 October. During the first three days of intense combat, some positions changed hands as many as six or seven times. In some areas, Nationalist artillery raked Communist positions systematically from left to right, forward and backward, for half an hour at a time, like a woman combing her hair, as Communist commander Qiu Huizuo later described it.42 The Communists endured heavy casualties, but their endurance and their skills at hand-to-hand combat paid



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off. By the evening of 22 October, Liao was ready to give up the idea of recovering Jinzhou (an idea that he had never liked to begin with). With Wei Lihuang’s agreement, Liao ordered his generals to retreat toward Yingkou.43 The Destruction of the West-Advancing Army Corps The decision to retreat still required attacks on Heishan and Dahushan— not to open the route to Jinzhou, but to cover the Nationalist forces as they headed for Yingkou.44 Liang Xingchu and the Tenth Column would have to fight on at Heishan for another three days, during which they conducted some of the bitterest hand-to-hand combat of the entire blocking operation. On two key pieces of high ground outside Heishan—hills 92 and 101—the Communists sustained heavy casualties on 25 October, losing and then recovering both positions. The Nationalists tried to wrest control of the hills away once again, sending entire battalions and regiments in mass formation, but to no avail. By the time it was over, both sides had suffered heavy casualties. Even the better-equipped Nationalists were running short of ammunition and drinking water.45 While the fighting raged on at Heishan, Lin Biao was transferring troops from Jinzhou and Changchun to Liaoxi as fast as they could move. Much of what happened over the next few days unfolded on an ad hoc basis as Lin, Luo, and Liu and their commanders on the ground worked within the context of a constantly changing situation.46 The fact that Lin Biao’s intelligence section was listening in on all of Liao Yaoxiang’s radio traffic gave the Communists a distinct advantage. Lin even had Cantonese-speaking intelligence staff who could understand the telephone conversations of Liao Yaoxiang’s many Cantonese officers.47 Liao, meanwhile, suffered from an inferior intelligence system: cavalry units that should have been guarding his northern flank neither fought nor submitted intelligence reports when Communist troops advanced in their direction. Consequently, Liao’s route of retreat back to Shenyang was cut off before he realized it.48 At this point, Liao’s command center at the village of Hujiawopeng was losing control of the situation. Communications systems were falling apart; orders and intelligence were not getting through.49 At dawn on 26 October, Communist forces took advantage of the Nationalist troops’

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confusion to attack Liao’s headquarters itself, slipping through a gap created when two Nationalist units handled a transition of guard duties badly. Liao, who had left not ten minutes before, was only four hundred to five hundred meters from the nearest Communist soldier. With bullets flying overhead, he escaped to the Thirtieth Division’s command post, a few miles away.50 When Wei Lihuang learned that Liao’s headquarters was out of commission, he contacted Liao’s individual army and divisional commanders, directly ordering them to return to Shenyang. Wei repeated the order later that afternoon, when he had reestablished radio communications with Liao.51 Plans were hurriedly laid for a retreat along the north and south flanks of the Bei-Ning railway line, but by this time, there was no way to coordinate the movements of the constituent elements of the still very large West-Advancing (perhaps it should now be called “East-Retreating”) Army Corps. The result was chaos. Communist forces had now almost completely enveloped the Nationalists. Lin Biao, who was aware of every order that Liao was giving, told his commanders to “take the initiative to seek out and annihilate the enemy.”52 As the KMT soldiers retreated, they lay mines along the main roads to Shenyang in an attempt to slow down the PLA pursuit. On the roads, the motor vehicles, mules, and horses of various units got all snarled up. Nobody was directing the movements of any of the men and units attempting to withdraw.53 Soldiers and officers wrapped their boots in socks and walked along the loose earth on the sides of their trenches in order to avoid making too much noise, abandoning mules, horses, carts, motor vehicles, and ammunition as they went.54 Communist troops attacked the Nationalists throughout the day, cutting off, isolating, and wiping out one unit after another. By this time the Nationalists were trapped in an area around 80 kilometers across and shrinking. There were no front lines or rear areas—Communists and Nationalists were thoroughly mixed up on the battlefield. The fighting continued on into the next day, with Nationalist soldiers losing the will to resist, their units falling to pieces in the confusion. In some cases, divisional and even army commanders ran away, leaving their men to fend for themselves.55 As Nationalist discipline collapsed Communist soldiers shouted slogans, calling on Nationalist soldiers to lay down their arms.



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On the Communist side, everyone from signals officers to bodyguards to cooks was mobilized to help take surrendering enemy soldiers into custody.56 By the evening of 27 October, Lin Biao could report to Chairman Mao that Liao Yaoxiang’s forces had been split up and defeated, with several tens of thousands already captured.57 The last of Liao’s troops, surrounded and with no hope of escape or rescue, surrendered at 5:00 am on 28 October.58 Only a few remnants made it back to Shenyang, where they began looting.59 Liao’s command itself, along with the New Twenty-second Division and the New Sixth Army command had been surrounded and wiped out on the 27th. Liao himself escaped.60 Over a week later, he was captured by Communist forces who were quite unconvinced by his attempt to pass as a Hunanese merchant.61 Liao was soon on his way to Harbin, where he joined the rapidly increasing number of Nationalist officers enjoying Communist Party hospitality—and thought reform. Wei Lihuang’s Escape At his headquarters in Beiping, Chiang watched helplessly as Lin Biao surrounded and annihilated Liao Yaoxiang’s army. As the situation worsened, those around Chiang observed that he was “beginning to show signs of the terrific strain upon him in increased irritability.”62 As Liao’s communications system collapsed, Chiang had to rely on the air force for intelligence reports. On 26 October, obviously misreading what they saw on the ground, air force analysts reported that Liao’s troops were out of danger and headed for Shenyang.63 A few days later, when he understood what had happened, Chiang wrote that with the loss of Jinzhou, the rebellion and surrender of the Sixtieth and New Seventh Armies in Changchun, and now the complete annihilation of Liao’s forces, he had lost a total of thirty-two divisions since 15 October: “This is the greatest defeat and the greatest shame of my life.”64 Who was responsible for this debacle? In his diary, Chiang blamed the shocking defeats on the incompetence and corruption of his generals, on their selfishness and lack of discipline. He particularly blamed Wei Lihuang for his failure to withdraw the main force from Shenyang to Jinzhou as Chiang had ordered months earlier.65 For his part, Wei Lihuang made it clear that (in his opinion) all the current, disastrous operations

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in the Northeast were Chiang’s responsibility. On 27 October a visibly strained Wei told American consul general Angus Ward that he had submitted his resignation seven times in the past few weeks, and that he still believed (contrary to Chiang Kai-shek) that all government troops should be concentrated in the Shenyang defensive zone.66 The trouble with Wei’s idea of defending Shenyang was that by the summer of 1948, Shenyang was indefensible. The city itself is in an utterly exposed position on the Manchurian Plain. The only way to defend it is from its satellite cities—Fushun, Benxi, Liaoyang, Xinmin, and Tieling.67 Communist forces under Cheng Shicai had been surrounding and harassing the Nationalist positions in these satellite cities throughout the summer, deliberately tying Nationalist forces down and weakening them.68 At the end of October, as Liao Yaoxiang’s army collapsed, Communist forces moved in for the kill, capturing the satellite cities and then advancing toward Shenyang itself.69 Another problem with the defense of Shenyang was that Wei simply did not have enough men for the job. During the last stage of the Liao-Shen Campaign, Wei’s Eighth Group Army, responsible for the defense of Shenyang, had around 100,000 men: the Fifty-third Army (three divisions), the 207th Division, and a local defense column responsible for Fushun and Benxi, the KMT Second Column between Shenyang and Fushun, the New First Army’s temporary Fifty-third Division at Liaozhong, the Fifty-second Army (two divisions) in the Liaoyang-Anshan region, and a cavalry division at Faku.70 As conditions deteriorated at the end of October, Wei withdrew most of these forces back to Shenyang itself. Wei realized that he did not have enough troops to defend the city. Consequently, after the fall of Changchun, he asked Chiang for ten more divisions to defend Shenyang. Chiang had refused.71 Chiang Kai-shek found it incomprehensible that Wei Lihuang should ask for more troops to continue to defend Shenyang. As far as Chiang could see, Shenyang was just another Changchun in the making.72 He was, of course, absolutely correct. Beginning in June, Lin Biao had been systematically sealing Shenyang, Benxi, Liaozhong, Fushun, Tieling, and Xinmin off in order to cut off grain shipments to these cities.73 To make matters worse, a plague of locusts hit the Shenyang area during the summer, wiping out grain and vegetable crops. Strangely enough, the Nationalist-controlled



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areas were harder hit than the Communist-controlled territories. Communist soldiers jokingly called this a portent from heaven.74 By early October, Wei was reduced to buying grain in Shenyang at highly inflated market prices. Chiang’s government warned him that if he continued to do so for another four months, he would burn through China’s entire issue of currency to date.75 It was more than the lack of grain that gave Shenyang the potential to be another Changchun. The Nationalist armies in Shenyang, like the Sixtieth Army in Changchun, were thoroughly infiltrated by fifth-columnists who were actively plotting insurrection. The fundamental problem was that all of the units defending Shenyang, other than the 207th Division, had their origins in the Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang’s former Northeast Army. This in itself meant that their loyalty to Chiang Kaishek was questionable at best and that they would be favorably inclined toward the Communist Party.76 The Communist forces easily turned this situation to their advantage, using former Northeast Army officers and former schoolmates of KMT Fifty-third Army officers to establish contacts with Nationalist officers, including divisional commanders. Even Zhao Guoping, the vice commander of the Fifty-third Army, was in contact with Communist agents in Shenyang.77 The Nationalist militia in Shenyang, organized in March 1948 to help defend the city, leaned toward the Communists from the beginning: the militia leaders were working with Communist underground agents.78 Thus even before Lin Biao’s troops had completed the annihilation of Liao Yaoxiang’s army, Shenyang was already prepared to surrender. The opportunity to surrender came faster than anyone had expected. Communist forces—the First, Second, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Columns—crossed the Liao River on 28 October and hastened toward Shenyang and Yingkou.79 Time was of the essence. The Nationalist Fifty-second Army had retreated to Yingkou already: Lin feared that if his troops did not act quickly to attack Shenyang and to cut the route from Shenyang to Yingkou, the Fifty-third Army, too, would escape.80 Although exhausted from ten days of marching and combat, Communist units hastened toward Shenyang at the sharp pace of 9 kilometers an hour.81 Advance units had already posted signs at all the crossroads—big, crudely drawn arrows with the words “Forward to Shenyang!”82

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The first Communist soldiers (from the Twelfth Column) approached the suburbs of Shenyang on 29 October.83 By this time, the leaders of the Shenyang militia were ignoring orders and even talking about kidnapping Wei Lihuang and forcing him to negotiate an uprising with the PLA.84 Communist underground workers were posting handbills at night, appealing to the people to remain calm, warning against looting and sabotage, and promising that foreign lives and property would be protected. The American Consulate reported: “Although population tense, no rioting or disorder. No mass hysteria. Populace resigned to Communist occupation city and actually appear eager for such event. Very little fear of Communists being displayed by persons other than staunch Kuomintang members.”85 One of those displaying fear was Wei Lihuang himself. Wei had been anxious to escape from Shenyang for days. On 30 October, when Chiang finally told Wei that he could move his command to Jinxi if the situation at Shenyang got too dangerous, Wei jumped at the chance.86 Perhaps he had heard rumors about the plot to kidnap him.87 In any case, Wei wasted no time in getting to Shenyang’s Hunhe Airport. When he arrived, the airport was already crowded with Nationalist government officials, military officers, and family members hoping to flee the city. When a single airplane landed and the cabin doors opened, the crowd swarmed forward, stuffing themselves and their baggage on board. Unable to board, Wei had a few quiet words with the pilot, who told him to go to another airport. The pilot then pretended to try to start the airplane, announced to the passengers that there was a mechanical problem, and told them that they would all have to get off and push to help him get the plane started. They could leave their luggage on board. When the passengers had all gotten off, the pilot slammed the cabin door shut, started the engines and took off, leaving the hapless passengers—minus their belongings—standing on the tarmac. Arriving at the alternative airport, the pilot opened the cabin door only after Wei had arrived. Wei and his entourage boarded: other high-ranking officials and their bodyguards fought each other for the remaining seats, even exchanging gunfire. When the plane took off, there were still people clinging to the outside, only to be thrown to the ground as the aircraft accelerated down the runway.88



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Surrender at Shenyang When Wei Lihuang abandoned Shenyang, he left his second in command, Zhou Fucheng, to bear responsibility for the defense and inevitable loss of the city. Zhou cannot have been pleased about the situation. He reported to Chiang that after a hard day in which he had personally been at the front directing the defense of Shenyang, he had returned to headquarters only to find that “Commander Wei Lihuang, Mayor Dong and Chief of Staff Zhao had all left Shenyang. I am determined to conduct the defense of Shenyang, but look forward to receiving orders with regard to strategy.”89 Zhou may have been determined, but he had little to work with. His second in command, Zhao Guoping, and his divisional commanders were already in contact with the Communists and ready to switch sides. Various friends and even Zhou’s own daughter, herself a Communist Party member, advised Zhou to stage an uprising, but he refused, allegedly saying: “Damn it, you guys talk a good talk, but if I did that, how could I face President Chiang?”90 In a display of loyalty, Zhou retreated with a few loyal forces to the Bank of China building.91 With Zhou Fucheng isolated and militia units scrambling to negotiate uprisings or to surrender, the time had come for the Communists to wrap things up. The general assault began on the morning of 1 November. Within twenty minutes, Communist forces had broken through the defenses of those few units that were still inclined to resist.92 In an attempt to retain some measure of self-respect, many of the Nationalist units insisted on conducting proper surrender ceremonies.93 When soldiers from the Communist First Column reached the Bank of China building, where Zhou Fucheng had taken refuge, an impeccably dressed officer strode out of the door and announced: “We are waiting to turn over our weapons.”94 And so they did. All in all, Shenyang was captured with very little fighting. The only unit to offer any significant resistance was the 207th Division. This unit, originally organized by the Generalissimo’s son, Chiang Chingkuo, had a high proportion of former students in its ranks—men who felt a personal sense of loyalty to the Chiang family. As one of the Nationalist Fifty-third Army officers who had already gone over to the Communists observed, nobody could convince them to lay down their arms—the only way to deal with them was to finish them off. (He volunteered to help.)95

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Map 14.2.   
 The Fall of Shenyang and the Nationalist Retreat from Yingkou, October 28– 
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Communist troops crushed the 207th on 2 November, when Lin Biao’s headquarters reported that the battle for Shenyang was over, and the city was liberated.96 Last Act at Tashan On 20 October, while Liao Yaoxiang was waiting for orders in Liaoxi, Chiang Kai-shek appointed Du Yuming as second in command of the Bandit Annihilation Headquarters in Shenyang and concurrently as commander of the Ji-Re-Liao Border Area Command. This made Du responsible for the East-Advancing Army Corps, which was still in the Huludao-Jinxi area.97 As we have seen, Chiang still clung to the slim hope that Liao would be able to break through the Communist defenses at Heishan and advance to Jinzhou. Therefore, Chiang also wanted the East-Advancing Army Corps to pull itself together and overwhelm the Communists at Tashan so that, together with Liao’s forces, they could trap the Communists at Jinzhou. Du accordingly flew to Huludao, where he told the commanders on the ground (Hou Jingru, Chen Tie, and Que Hanqian) that their task was to outflank the Communists at Tashan, pin them on the coast, and annihilate them—thus securing the route forward to Jinzhou.98 Hou and the others were less than enthusiastic about this plan, and in his memoirs, Du himself claimed that in fact, he was only making a pretense at carrying out Chiang’s orders, and that in fact, his real goal at this point was to cover Liao Yaoxiang’s retreat to Yingkou, which Du believed was entirely feasible.99 We may never know what Du’s true intentions were. What is clear is that on 26 October, the Nationalists launched a strong attack on the western end of the Communist line at Weijialing—precisely where the Communists expected it. The Communist Eleventh Column had positioned extra artillery to defend the area, but even so, the Nationalists captured the position after a day of intense fighting in which they used human-wave tactics, throwing entire regiments en masse against the Communists.100 The next day, the Nationalists followed up on this victory by throwing three divisions and over thirty artillery pieces against the sector defended by the Eleventh Column’s Thirty-third Division.101 Nationalist artillery soon obliterated the Thirty-third Division’s poorly constructed defensive works. Nationalist artillery, which the Communists found “surprisingly

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accurate,” effectively suppressed Communist artillery fire. The Communist soldiers fought stubbornly on, using whatever features of the terrain they could to their advantage while engaging the Nationalists in hand-tohand combat. By the end of the day, the situation had developed into a stalemate. What ended the standoff at Tashan was not anything that happened on the ground there, but rather, the final annihilation of Liao Yaoxiang’s army on 28 October. With Liao’s army gone, Lin no longer needed to worry about being trapped at Jinzhou. Tashan was consequently no longer important to him. The Communists quietly retreated during the night.102 The next day the Nationalists walked into an empty Tashan village—no soldiers, no civilians: only the corpses of Nationalist soldiers, to which the Communists had affixed signs reading: “You died for the four big families.” “Why were you sent to die like this?” “Your wife and children at home are thinking of you.”103 Holes in the Net: Yingkou and Huludao When Hou Jingru occupied Tashan, he initially intended to advance quickly northward to Jinzhou. A message from Du Yuming soon put an end to that plan. The fate of Liao Yaoxiang’s West-Advancing Army Corps was still not entirely clear to Du, but he feared the worst: Hou must return to his original position at Jinxi and await orders.104 By 30 October, the situation was quite clear. Liao’s armies were gone, Shenyang was about to fall, and Wei Lihuang had fled to Jinxi, where he and Du apparently agreed that the imminent loss of the Northeast was entirely Chiang Kai-shek’s fault.105 Du’s job now was to extract as many of the Nationalist forces as he could from the two ports of Yingkou and Huludao. The retreat from Yingkou had been in the cards for a long time. Liao Yaoxiang had been arguing for just such a retreat for months. Mao Zedong and Lin Biao, too, had foreseen that the Nationalist forces at Shenyang might very well run to Yingkou and try to escape by sea. Indeed, on 19–20 October, Mao repeatedly ordered Lin to send troops (the Twelfth Column) to block the Nationalist route of retreat from Shenyang to Yingkou and to secure the Communists’ fragile hold on the port city: “Immediately order Xiao Jinguang and Xiao Hua to lead the majority of the independent divisions at Changchun and the Twelfth Column via the east of Fushun to



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Yingkou and the area north and west [of Yingkou] to block the enemy’s route of retreat. . . . If only this maneuver is successful, the enemy will have no escape route, and you will have achieved a strategic victory.”106 Lin did indeed send the Twelfth Column and several independent divisions from Changchun toward Yingkou, but they were still far away. The Independent Second Division was closer to hand, and also advancing toward Yingkou, but on 22 October, Lin decided that inasmuch as Liao Yaoxiang was not heading toward Yingkou, the Independent Second Division would be more useful in helping to envelope Liao’s army. They performed this task well. But in the meantime, the Nationalist Fifty-second Army, operating without radio communications in order to deprive the Communists of intelligence, advanced on Yingkou, capturing the city from the small Communist force there on 23–24 October.107 The Nationalist navy also participated in this operation, bombarding the Communists from off shore.108 Mao was furious: “You completely failed to foresee ahead of time that the enemy would make Yingkou one of his routes of retreat; after we pointed this out to you in numerous telegrams then, on the basis of inaccurate information that the 52nd Army was heading west, you neglected to control Yingkou, to the point where the 52nd Army occupied Yingkou on the 24th. This is a not inconsiderable error.”109 The error, though not inconsiderable, had already been made. Two days later, perhaps somewhat mollified by the annihilation of Liao’s army, Mao ordered Lin to send troops posthaste to Yingkou.110 The troops in question—the Eighth and Ninth Columns—were already exhausted from the forced marches and combat involved in wiping out the West-Advancing Army. Faced with another four to six days of forced march, the soldiers persevered—some of them marching tied together on long ropes, like so many kindergarten students, so that if they began to fall asleep, they would continue to stumble along rather than drop out of line.111 It was now a race against time: how many men could Du Yuming evacuate from Yingkou before the Communists overwhelmed the city? The answer was: about 10,000. The Nationalists had begun mobilizing naval and civilian vessels for the Yingkou evacuation as early as 20 October. The evacuations began on the 29th and 30th while Nationalist ground forces held off the Communist Eighth and Ninth Columns, whose advance the Nationalists later described as “over-confident and sloppy.”112

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By 31 October, it was the Nationalists’ operations that were getting sloppy. There were not enough ships to handle all the men and equipment to be evacuated. Vehicles and draft animals were abandoned. Communist prisoners identified as cadres were executed.113 One ship, nearly loaded with nine-tenths of the Second Division, caught fire, killing most of the men trapped in the lower decks.114 At 7:00 am on 2 November, the Communist Ninth Column began the final assault on the fog-shrouded port. By noon, it was over. The last Nationalist ships pulled out to sea under fire.115 Some of the troops leaving Yingkou were shipped over to Huludao, which was, of course, simply the staging point from which they would be evacuated from Manchuria altogether. Chiang ordered Du Yuming to withdraw from Huludao on 2 November. The withdrawal would have to proceed quickly: winter was coming on, the port would soon begin to freeze over, and the Communist Eleventh Column was hovering on the horizon.116 Du conducted the evacuation of Huludao efficiently and with maximum secrecy. The ships’ times of departure and destinations were announced only after they were fully loaded. All communications were by wire telephone, in code. In order to keep the enemy guessing as to his intentions, Du conducted attacks on various Communist positions and kept trains running back and forth along the railway line between Huludao and Jinxi twenty-four hours a day. In all, fifty-one ships were deployed for the evacuation, which took place from 2 to 11 November.117 In the end Du safely extracted 140,000 troops and a large amount of equipment.118 The last ship left on 11 November, using its guns to blast the supplies of gasoline that had been left on the dock. It was nearly three years from the day in early November 1945 when a considerably more confident Du Yuming had broken triumphantly through the Communist defenses at Shanhaiguan and marched into Manchuria.119

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Memory, insofar as it is affective and magical, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or symbolic—responsive . . . to every censorship or projection. History, because it is an intellectual and secular production, calls for analysis and criticism. —Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History”

Fifteen

Assessing and Remembering ★★★

The Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall stands proudly atop a hill in the city of Jinzhou. The site, overlooking the old city, was the location of Jinzhou’s Shinto shrine during the years of Japanese colonial administration. Inside the Memorial Hall, tourists walk through a series of displays of artifacts, maps, and explanatory signs that together tell the story of the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army’s struggle to control the Northeast, from the days of guerrilla resistance to the Japanese in the 1930s to the entry of Communist troops and cadres in August 1945 through the Liao-Shen Campaign itself, which takes pride of place. The museum designers have, of course, simplified the story for pedagogical and (as the museum staff freely admit) political purposes. Setbacks, errors, and internal conflicts have been smoothed over or ignored in order to present a seamless history of struggle and victory, all warmly supported by the masses.1 The role of the commander himself, Lin Biao, is noted, but not emphasized. The cautiously constructed historical displays in the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall indicate the challenges of constructing public memory of a crucial historical event—the civil war in Manchuria—when the process of the war (particularly the brutality of land reform and the civilian suffering in the siege of Changchun) and Lin Biao himself have both 273

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been the subjects of political controversy. The caution with which these subjects are handled both in museum displays and in books, paintings, and films calls into question Pierre Nora’s all-too-neat distinction between memory and history. Like Nora, we may prefer to think of history as a passionless “intellectual and secular production,” a realm in which analysis and criticism reign supreme. But in practice, neither history nor memory can escape the grasp of politics, which uses history to create memory, and memory to shape reactions to history. In the People’s Republic of China, both the history and the memory of the civil war in the Northeast and the Liao-Shen Campaign have been constructed, torn apart, and reconstructed multiple times in the context of the intense political campaigns and factional struggles of the 1950s through the early 1980s.2 The Liao-Shen Campaign remains an important part of the mainland Chinese historical memory to this day—a memory purposely kept alive through the publication and mass marketing of popular and scholarly books and magazine articles, through films and television dramas, and through museum displays like that at the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall other, smaller museums and public memorials throughout the Northeast. The Liao-Shen Campaign is, in fact, a part of the foundational myths of the People’s Republic, a heroic, romantic tale of revolution, sacrifice, and determination that acts to legitimize the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese living on the island of Taiwan may remember the civil war very differently—if they remember it at all. Professional historians there, less restricted by politics than their colleagues on the mainland, spin complex analyses of the causes of military failure: inadequate strategy, incompetent command, overreliance on American equipment and a near-superstitious belief that superior firepower could solve any problem.3 But on Taiwan, unlike the mainland, mass-market bookstores do not display piles of popular books on the battles that determined the fate of China. Those who lived through the events of the 1940s, or those who were paying attention in their history classes from the 1950s through the 1980s, share a public memory that was created to explain the Nationalist defeat and to justify the decades-long charade in which the government on Taiwan maintained that its ultimate goal was to return to liberate the mainland from Communist oppression. The core of that public memory



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was the myth that Chiang Kai-shek lost Manchuria because George Marshall and the Americans would not allow him to defeat the Communists. For younger generations who increasingly see themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, the civil war and Chiang’s defeat in Manchuria have no place whatsoever in the public memories that shape their identity nor in the history of their imagined island nation. For Americans too, the headline-making events of 1948 have no place in public memory. But the quiet American forgetting of the Liao-Shen Campaign contributes to the popular American version of the history of the U.S.-China relationship as much as the Chinese Communist Party’s enthusiastic (some might say desperate) preservation of the public memory of those same events. By forgetting, Americans can remove their country from a narrative in which it was deeply involved. But at the time, the battles that took place in China’s Northeast had a direct impact not only on China, but also on American foreign policy and domestic politics. Nowhere was that impact felt more than in Washington, D.C.—as Chiang Kai-shek’s wife soon discovered. Madame Chiang Gets the Cold Shoulder in Washington Chiang Kai-shek received two pieces of bad news in early November 1948. The first was that his forces in Shenyang had surrendered on November second. The second was that Harry Truman had won reelection.4 Truman’s unexpected victory over Thomas Dewey was yet another loss for Chiang. He had been hoping that the American voters would sweep Truman and his administration—including Chiang’s nemesis, Secretary of State George Marshall—out of power. A Republican administration and a Republican Congress would be far more likely to give Chiang the military and economic support that he wanted. Now, like it or not, he would have to continue to deal with Truman. As he observed in his diary, China’s “diplomatic situation will become even worse.”5 Determined to fight on against the Communists and equally determined that American support would be necessary, Chiang sent his wife to Washington in an attempt to extract more aid. Soong May-ling arrived in the American capital to a cold welcome on 1 December. Gone were the days when she and President Roosevelt

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exercised their considerable charm on each other. Harry Truman was neither charming nor susceptible to charm. As Truman’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, observed, there had been “a change in feeling toward her husband and the precious gang of corruptionists surrounding him, who have made a tragic mockery of both American and Chinese hopes for a free and democratic China.”6 President Truman himself later recalled Soong May-ling’s visit with obvious disdain: “She came to the United States for some more handouts. . . . I wouldn’t let her stay at the White House like Roosevelt did. I don’t think she liked it, but I didn’t care one way or another about what she liked and what she didn’t like.”7 In her discussions with Truman, Madame Chiang asked for more military and economic aid, suggesting that if the United States did not help, Chiang would be obliged to move China closer to the Soviet Union.8 The bluff was of no use. Soong May-ling returned to China empty-handed.9 The best that Chiang’s supporters in the United States could report to T. V. Soong was that Madame’s visit had kept China’s situation in the headlines.10 The events of the autumn of 1948 contributed substantially to the cold treatment that Madame Chiang experienced in Washington. American military and civilian officials had observed the battle of Jinan and the unfolding of the Liao-Shen Campaign from their vantage points in Shenyang, Nanjing, and Washington. Collectively, the telegrams from those days, now held in the United States National Archives in Maryland, convey a sense of helplessness as the Americans watched a bad situation go downhill faster and more thoroughly than they had expected. As we have seen, the Americans, including Ambassador Stuart, had been losing confidence in Chiang, his government, and his military for the previous two years. They knew very well that Chiang’s remaining forces in Manchuria were in a precarious position. But they had not expected Wei Lihuang’s and Fan Hanjie’s armies in Jinzhou and Shenyang to collapse as quickly and as thoroughly as they did. Even in mid-October, as Jinzhou fell, the Americans, although they recognized that the outcome would “largely determine fate of Northeast and North China,” they did not believe that Lin Biao was strong enough to attack Shenyang and completely eliminate the Nationalist government in the Northeast.11



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The Americans Abandon Chiang Kai-shek The collapse of Chiang’s armies in the Northeast confirmed the Americans’ doubts about the competence of the Nationalist army. It also confirmed their doubts about the usefulness of any further military aid. This was a significant setback for Chiang. He and members of his government consistently attributed their military defeats to lack of weapons and equipment, thus building the case for more military aid. In October 1948, Chiang begged American emissary Edward Lockett for military and economic assistance.12 In late October General Bai Chongxi complained to an American military attaché that the United States was putting more emphasis on combating Communism in Europe than in China and that Marshall’s mediation had prevented Chiang from crushing the Communists when he had a chance. Bai concluded that “since the United States has harmed us in the past, albeit unintentionally, I hope that in the present crisis she will no longer delay in extending substantial military aid.”13 Chen Lifu, in an interview with Ambassador Stuart, took a different approach, issuing “tearful pleas for U.S. aid to China in the struggle against international Communism.”14 Bai Chongxi’s moral condemnation, Chen Lifu’s tears, and Madame Chiang’s diplomacy all failed because Chiang’s setbacks in Manchuria had further convinced key American decision makers, including Truman himself, that lack of military aid was not the fundamental problem. Neither Nationalist nor American sources convey a clear picture of the extent to which lack of American military aid may have been a factor in Chiang Kai-shek’s loss of Manchuria. American diplomatic correspondence in 1947 and 1948 indicates that shortages of ammunition and spare parts for airplanes and vehicles had a significant impact on the combat capability of Chiang’s American-trained, American-equipped units, many of which were serving in the Northeast.15 Against this must be balanced the fact that the United States did give Chiang’s regime over $1 billion worth of military aid between 1945 and 1949—far more than the Soviet Union gave to the Chinese Communists.16 In addition, Chiang’s armies had access to large amounts of Japanese equipment: rifles, ammunition, grenades, and artillery shells. When Nationalist troops did face shortages, part of the problem was that

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their backward logistics and transportation systems made it impossible for them to deliver existing supplies to their troops in a timely manner.17 Overall, the Nationalist forces in the Northeast were still much better equipped and better armed than Lin Biao’s troops. As a consequence, observers at the time and afterward have in general rejected the argument that shortages of military equipment were a major factor in the defeat of Wei Lihuang, Fan Hanjie, and Liao Yaoxiang’s forces.18 In April 1948, Wei Lihuang reported that the ammunition shortages of his troops in Shenyang had been alleviated. In December, after the Liao-Shen Campaign, General David Barr, commander of the American Military Advisory Group in China, stated flatly that “no battle has been lost since my arrival due to lack of ammunition or equipment.”19 Nationalist General Sun Liren, writing to Albert Wedemeyer in October 1949, pointed to “defects in our supply system and deficiencies in our supplies”; he agreed that “there is a good deal of painful truth in the observation that we failed not on account of the lack of material equipment.”20 If the Nationalist collapse in Manchuria could not be explained by lack of weapons and ammunition, then what was the reason? The Americans pointed to poor leadership on the part of Chiang and his generals. Wei Lihuang had failed to take the offensive in the Northeast; at Jinzhou, Fan Hanjie had dispersed his forces and “permitted isolated garrisons to become surrounded by superior numbers of Communists.”21 Tang Tsou concurs that additional weapons would not have made a difference to the outcome: “The Nationalist forces in Manchuria and the troops sent to reinforce them were totally destroyed in October because they were accustomed to holding fixed points, failed to launch a coordinated attack with all their armies, and thus enabled Mao to concentrate his force to annihilate them one after another.”22 The Americans simply decided that under these circumstances, no reasonable amount of military assistance would suffice to save Chiang Kaishek from defeat. Pentagon and State Department analysts agreed that the only way that the United States could conceivably save Chiang was to send massive, unsustainable amounts of aid and at the same time take over the running of the Chinese government and military to ensure that the aid was not wasted and that military operations were conducted properly. To do so risked Soviet intervention in China and would take up resources that the



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United States would need in Europe. Already in mid-October, the State Department was arguing that “China’s destiny is largely in its own hands” and that the United States “must not become irrevocably committed to any one course of action or any faction in China, and we must be willing to cut our losses when it becomes evident that any involvement is likely to become a losing proposition.”23 The readiness to abandon Chiang to his own limited devices strengthened after the Liao-Shen Campaign. Not only the State Department but also the Pentagon held little hope for Chiang: General Ray T. Maddocks and General Albert Wedemeyer and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all concluded that the military aid program could not save Chiang’s regime. Nonetheless, they favored the continuation of military aid, though at a relatively low priority level (Europe being higher priority) because, as Wedemeyer cynically put it: “The arbitrary termination or reduction of military aid and assistance prior to [military] collapse would precipitate the fall of the Nationalist Government .  .  . such action would subject the U.S. to condemnation.”24 Underlying the American conviction that further military and economic aid could not save Chiang’s regime (at least, not a price that the Americans were willing to pay) was the belief that the Chinese were fundamentally incompetent and helpless. Reporting on Chen Lifu’s “tearful pleas” for American aid, John Leighton Stuart opined that “Chen’s visit to me is indicative of the befuddlement in high Chinese Govt circles, and of obvious inability present Chinese Govt leaders to take any, rpt any, measures to help themselves.”25 Omar Bradley doubted that China had any capable leaders at all. In 1947, Albert Wedemeyer had complained that the Chinese were “spiritually insolvent.”26 Ambassador Stuart believed that having lost Manchuria, Chiang’s armies would be incapable of holding the line at the Yangzi. It seemed that the Nationalist government was hoping that if it “can hold on until U.S.-Soviet war, its problems will be solved for it.”27 Taking Chinese incompetence as a given, “China experts” in the Department of State and in the Central Intelligence Agency argued that even if the Communist Party gained control over China, it would not represent a significant gain for the Soviet Union or a significant setback for America’s strategic interests: “For all their anti-imperialism,” the CIA reported,

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“the Communists cannot cope with the pressing economic problems of China in a state of isolation from the West.”28 State Department experts argued that once in power, the Communists would find it very difficult to administer the country and to socialize and build the economy. Under such circumstances, Mao, they predicted, would come to understand “the desirability, if not the inevitability of gradualness.”29 Personnel in the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA also speculated that Chinese nationalism would, in the CIA’s words, “prove stronger than international Communism.” Thus a Communist regime in China would potentially be both an economic burden and a political challenge for the Soviet Union.30 Dean Acheson was “certain that neither the CCP nor the Soviets could solve China’s immense problems, [and] . . . predicted that the Communists would eventually have to seek help from the West.”31 All in all, by December of 1948, the Americans had convinced themselves that neither Chiang nor China itself was worth saving. Bailing Chiang’s regime out would cost more in men and resources than it was worth. Besides, given the unpopularity of Chiang’s government, John Leighton Stuart suggested that if it propped Chiang up much longer, the United States might well find itself “accused of violating the democratic principle of the right of self-determination by aiding a dictatorship which does not represent the popular will.”32 Blaming the Generals Chiang Kai-shek, of course, could hardly agree that China was not worth saving, much less that he was part of the problem. As we have seen, Chiang blamed the United States (and George Marshall in particular) for the fact that he has committed so many of his troops to Manchuria to begin with. He also believed (wrongly, I would argue) that Marshall’s mediation effort had prevented him from wiping out Lin Biao’s forces back in the summer of 1946.33 But when it came to the Liao-Shen Campaign itself, Chiang reserved his harshest criticism for his generals. Chiang was certainly not the only one to find fault with the various generals who had commanded his armies in the Northeast from November 1945 through November 1948. The Americans thought that Du Yuming and Xiong Shihui were completely incompetent. In 1947, Albert Wedemeyer bluntly recommended that Xiong be replaced by “another military



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man of integrity and creative leadership.”34 Chiang’s generals themselves pointed the finger of blame at each other, both in the 1940s and in memoirs written after the fact. But Chiang placed the brunt of the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Wei Lihuang. Wei, as we have seen, took up his command in Shenyang when the Nationalists were already in dire straits. Once there, he behaved with caution (some would say, with timidity), refusing to take the initiative, arguing against and resisting Chiang’s orders to strike out toward Jinzhou. When Wei finally put his main forces under Liao Yaoxiang and sent them out to Liaoxi, he and Liao acted so slowly that it was impossible for them to break through to Jinzhou in time to rescue Fan Hanjie. Whether Liao could have reached Jinzhou and trapped Lin Biao’s forces there will never be known. Certainly the East-Advancing Army Corps’s failure to break through at Tashan casts doubt on the feasibility of Chiang’s bold strategic plan. But whatever the faults of Que Hanqian and Hou Jingru at Tashan (and Chiang held them fully accountable for their failure), the fact remains that Wei and Liao had not made a serious effort to carry out Chiang’s orders. It is hardly surprising, then, that after the loss of the Northeast, Chiang stripped Wei of all his titles and posts and put him in prison in Nanjing to await trial on charges of corruption.35 Why did Wei Lihuang refuse to carry out Chiang’s orders? One theory is that Wei was, in fact, a Communist agent. According to this story, Wei had been sympathetic to the Communist Party for years, and had even asked to join the party in 1938, when a Communist agent advised him that he could be of more use to the revolution by working under cover.36 The only evidence for a connection between Wei and the Communist Party is the relationship between Wei and his wife’s nephew, one Wang Dezhao. According to one Chinese source, Wei met Wang, a nuclear scientist and Communist Party member, in Paris in 1947. Wei asked Wang to establish contact with the Chinese Communist Party, which he did through the Soviet embassy. Then, in 1948, Wang, at Wei’s request, resigned his position in Paris and went to work as Wei’s personal secretary in Shenyang, presumably so that he could provide a connection to the Communists.37 In their controversial biography of Mao Zedong, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday argue that Wei’s decisions in Shenyang were calculated precisely to prevent Chiang from withdrawing his troops from the Northeast so that

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they would be there for the Communists to annihilate: “Wei’s critical help for Mao is still hushed up,” they argue, “as Mao’s military genius would look a lot less brilliant if it were known that the enemy’s chief commander had offered up so much of his force—and many of Chiang’s best troops— on a platter.”38 Chang and Halliday’s only evidence is a single Chinese secondary work whose author cites no sources for his information. The same author does add that Wang Dezhao had no deep connections with the Chinese Communist Party in China itself and was unable to establish a direct relationship with the Communists in the Northeast (a point that Chang and Halliday neglect to mention).39 There appears, then, to be no evidence for a working relationship between Wei Lihuang and Lin Biao’s headquarters, and no evidence of a working relationship between Wei and the Chinese Communist party’s Central Committee. Thus, the possibility that Wei Lihuang was acting as a Communist agent in 1948 must remain an intriguing, but unproved, hypothesis. The Liao-Shen Campaign and Chinese Ways of War The theory that Wei Lihuang was a Communist agent who purposely arranged to give Lin Biao a victory in the Liao-Shen Campaign and the idea that incompetent leadership and poor morale led the Nationalist armies to collapse without fighting play directly into the American historical memory in which the Liao-Shen Campaign is forgotten and Chiang Kaishek’s loss of the mainland is explained by reference to political, social, and economic factors rather than to the war itself. They also conform to the stereotype that Chinese armies win wars purely through stratagem and psychological maneuver rather than through combat. Such explanations simply cannot accommodate the simple fact that the Communists’ ultimate success in the Northeast came as a result of a series of hard-fought campaigns that involved heavy casualties on both sides. In May 1946, Lin Biao’s battered main forces had withdrawn to Harbin, north of the Songhua River. It was only through determined fighting and considerable sacrifice of life on both sides that the Communists were able to defend their positions in the Three Expeditions/Four Defenses Campaign, to turn the tide with the Summer, Autumn, and Winter Offensives, and then to deliver the coup de grace in the Liao-Shen Campaign. This process stands as a concrete example of Mao’s military thought and of the



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fact that Chinese strategic thinking and operational behavior go beyond the stereotypes that Western analysts too easily derive from superficial readings of Sunzi’s Art of War and Mao’s writings on guerrilla warfare. As described in chapter 1, Mao Zedong saw war as a dynamic process developing through the three stages of the strategic defensive, the preparation for the counteroffensive, and then the strategic counteroffensive. In the process of making that transition, the Chinese Communist troops would make the transition from guerrilla to conventional warfare. Lin Biao’s Northeast Field Army made both those transitions over the course of the civil war in Manchuria. A number of factors contributed to the Northeast Field Army’s ability to do so. These included the presence of officers and technical specialists trained in conventional warfare (including some trained in Soviet institutions or in Soviet-inspired academies in China including the Whampoa Military Academy), Soviet aid and advice, the use of Japanese advisors and personnel, the advantages of the Northeast’s industrial base, the proximity of the Soviet Union, the availability of Japanese weapons (both those transferred by the Soviet Union and those found or scavenged by the Communists themselves), assistance from North Korea (including industrial goods, use of Korean territory as a safe rear area, and Korean soldiers), and the incorporation of  Nationalist officers and soldiers and captured Nationalist weapons and ammunition. As they made the transition from guerrilla to conventional warfare, the Communist forces in the Northeast applied the ideas of Mao Zedong and of Lin Biao to their conduct of operations. Both Mao’s and Lin’s ideas regarding maneuvering, drawing the enemy in, dividing, isolating, and annihilating enemy units, attacking weak points with overwhelming strength (tactical superiority in the context of strategic weakness), and concentrating firepower and manpower can be seen in the battles and campaigns that took place in the Northeast. In all cases the ultimate purpose of reconnaissance, maneuver, deception, siege, ambush, defense of key points (such as Tashan and Heishan), and ultimately attacks on heavily defended positions was to annihilate enemy units. The Communist forces’ extensive use of maneuver on the battlefields of Manchuria and the progressive tightening of the noose in which the Nationalists were squeezed into a decreasing number of mutually isolated positions illustrates both the utility and the limitations of using Sunzi’s Art

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of War as a key to understanding Chinese ways of war. Sunzi is typically seen as the apostle of the indirect approach in warfare: the patient use of maneuver and stratagem (including psychological ploys) to build up the shi (the dynamic situation) in which a successful commander will enjoy an overwhelming advantage such that, ideally, he will cause “the enemy forces to submit without a battle.”40 Henry Kissinger uses the Chinese game of weiqi (better known by its Japanese name, go, in the West) as a metaphor for the Chinese approach to strategy. Weiqi is, of course a subtle game of strategy in which “the balance of forces shifts incrementally with each move, as players implement strategic plans and react to each others’ initiatives” with the goal of achieving the “strategic encirclement” that will quietly eliminate all the opponents’ pieces from the board. Kissinger contrasts this with chess, which is all about “total victory” and “decisive battle,” making chess the metaphor for the “western way of war.”41 While there is certainly some validity to the idea that outstanding Chinese strategic thinkers, including Mao Zedong, and operational and tactical geniuses like Lin Biao placed great emphasis on maneuver, stratagem, deceit, and the use of psychological warfare in order to build an advantageous shi situation, this model fails to capture the full range of their approach to strategy and, particularly, to operations and tactics. For Mao as a strategist, and for Lin as a practitioner of the operational art, the use of maneuver and positioning was not about “winning without fighting.” It was about creating the shi that would enable the commander on the ground to launch an attack that would completely annihilate the enemy. Lin’s tactical principles, too, were all about achieving victory in combat, not about avoiding combat. Kissinger’s bloodless weiqi metaphor for Chinese strategic thinking simply does not capture the violence that inevitably occurs when strategic thinking is applied in operations and tactics on the battlefield. For this, the Chinese game of xiangqi makes a far more suitable metaphor. Xiangqi is similar to Western chess. The game is played on a board divided into squares with a horizontal space across the middle—between the two opponents—called the river. Players maneuver pieces on the board—moving along the lines, rather than (as in Western chess) on the spaces. The pieces—elephants, cannon, and so on—move in different



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ways. As the play develops, the opponents progress from maneuver to the attack—capturing each other’s pieces. And while weiqi is typically played over a long period of time in a contemplative, intellectual silence, xiangqi moves fast and is punctuated by the sounds of players energetically slapping their pieces down on the board as they take up an obviously advantageous position, or as they smash their own piece down on top of that of an opponent, a move often accompanied by a victorious exclamation: “gotcha!” (chile! literally, “eaten!”). In Sunzi’s terms, what has happened when the xiangqi player slaps his piece down on that of his opponent and shouts “chile!” is that the victorious player, through maneuver, has created the shi in which he can then crush his opponent. As Sunzi described it, the goal is to smash your enemy like “throwing a grindstone on an egg.”42 It is a deliberately violent image, in which the smashed egg represents the killed and wounded bodies of the enemy soldiers that you are about to defeat. Mao’s strategic thought, and Lin’s operational plans and tactical principles, all aimed for this kind of victory. Dealing with the Memory of Lin Biao Mao (and, by extension, his comrades at the Party Center) certainly contributed to the strategic vision that culminated in the Liao-Shen Campaign. But it was Lin Biao and his staff who translated that strategic vision into victorious operational reality. Any objective account of Communist strategy, operations, and tactics in the Northeast must address both the genius of Lin Biao and the creative tension that seems to have existed between Lin and Mao Zedong. Unfortunately, the shameful role that Lin played in the Communist Party’s vicious factional struggles from the mid-1950s through his death in 1971 meant that his accomplishments were erased from both the memory and the historical record in China and that Western historians portrayed him as an eccentric, one-dimensional ideologue. Lin’s image was not always as negative as it came to be during and after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Western military professionals including Robert Rigg and William Whitson both recognized Lin’s key role in the civil war in the Northeast, and particularly in the Liao-Shen Campaign. Whitson described Lin’s isolation and capture of  Jinzhou as an

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operation that “must rank in military annals with such major maneuvers as the Schlieffen Plan” and “place Lin among the ranks of military history’s great leaders.”43 Robert Rigg, no fan of Communism, wrote that Lin “is held in first place, by American officers of long experience in China, as the best Communist strategist.”44 Lin was—no surprise here—portrayed positively in China in the 1950s and 1960s, with the Liao-Shen Campaign featuring as the pinnacle of his career. His image was amplified and enhanced during the Cultural Revolution, when he was riding high as Mao’s designated successor. Public memory of Lin Biao and the Liao-Shen Campaign was defined in simple propaganda terms in order to inspire and unify the Chinese people. Internal publications of the People’s Liberation Army presented a different, arguably more objective, view of the civil war in the Northeast and of Lin’s military thought. In the mid-1950s the various armies of the People’s Liberation Army published draft histories of their operations during the civil war. These draft histories, with limited circulation inside the PLA, featured detailed accounts of military planning and operations and frank assessments of weaknesses and mistakes as well as affirmation of strengths and victories. As such, these accounts are far more revealing than those in openly published histories. They indicate not only an interest in historical accuracy, but also (perhaps more significantly) a determination to learn from mistakes. The interest in learning is also evident on a collection of Lin Biao’s military writings published internally in 1964.45 This collection was done while Lin was serving as minister of defense. We can safely assume that the team responsible for assembling the material was interested in making Lin look good. If so, they certainly succeeded. But there is no reason to regard the collection as a set of forgeries. What is interesting about it is not the fact that it portrays Lin in a positive light, but that the documents collectively convey the image of a pragmatic, realistic commander, thus standing in contrast to Lin’s public image as the sycophantic ideologue who mindlessly parroted nonsense about the power of Mao Zedong Thought, the idea that the human element is the key factor in warfare and that spiritual power can trump technology.46 Instead, Lin’s military writings from the period of the civil war in the Northeast indicate a strong interest in the professionalization of the People’s Liberation Army, repeated critiques of



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guerrilla-ism, and an awareness that technological progress is desirable and that it requires changes in strategic operational, and tactical behavior. While these documents enable us to construct a more nuanced, complex picture of Lin Biao and his military thought, they do not touch on another key aspect of the Liao-Shen Campaign: the relationship between Lin Biao and Mao Zedong. There is much about that relationship that remains, and probably will continue to remain, unknown. Certainly the generational difference (Lin was fourteen years younger than Mao) and their long working relationship contributed to the way they interacted and to Lin Biao’s ultimate willingness to defer to Mao, particularly on political matters. Communications between Lin and Mao appearing in a variety of internal and openly published compilations of primary sources suggest that the two men disagreed and argued, and that Mao sometimes scolded Lin Biao and pushed him to take greater risks, while Lin pushed back, resisting Mao’s suggestions. But ultimately, the tension between the two men was creative and led to successful outcomes.47 Nowhere was this tension between Mao and Lin more evident than in the final days before the attack on Jinzhou when (as described in chapter 10), Lin, worried that Chiang would trap his forces and wipe them out, nearly called off the entire operation until Luo Ronghuan apparently convinced him to forge ahead. Lin’s hesitation at such a crucial moment evidently left a deep impression on Mao Zedong. When Luo Ronghuan died in 1963, Mao wrote a poem in remembrance of his old comrade—a poem that included the line: The Long March was not the pinnacle of difficulty; No, attacking Jinzhou was the great challenge.48

When Mao wrote this poem, Lin was still (at least publicly) his close comrade and would soon be a key supporter in the struggles that developed into the Cultural Revolution. As Mao sought to purge every party member who seemed to stand in the way of his vision of China’s future and his hold on power, Lin Biao appears to have harbored serious reservations.49 Nonetheless, he played the game, deeply aware of the fact that in Mao’s China, “whoever did not speak falsely fell from power.”50 Lin managed to ride the tiger of the Cultural Revolution until 1971, when the building contradictions between himself and Mao Zedong exploded. By

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that summer, Mao had decided to get rid of Lin and his faction. On the night of September 12, Lin’s wife, Ye Qun, and son, Lin Liguo, apparently unsure of how to respond to Lin’s (and their own) imminent downfall, hustled an ailing and confused Lin Biao onto a Trident jet at the North China beach resort of Beidaihe (where they were staying at the time).51 The airplane crashed in Mongolia, killing all on board. Lin’s participation in the Communist Party’s factional struggles, particularly at Lüshan in 1959 and then during the Cultural Revolution, followed by his precipitous fall from power, meant that the history of the civil war in the Northeast had to be rewritten three times. In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the contributions of those being initially purged (including Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen) were negated when they were accused of having “flagrantly opposed Comrade Lin Biao’s correct line.”52 When Lin Biao died and was branded a traitor to the revolution, allegedly guilty of a plot to assassinate Chairman Mao, history had to be revised to cast him as a counterrevolutionary from the beginning. This required the rewriting of the entire history of the civil war in the Northeast, including the Liao-Shen Campaign. Lin’s military thought was now condemned as bourgeois, Confucian poison. His Six Principles of Combat were now the product of “rightist opportunism.”53 Lin’s hesitation on the eve of the attack on Jinzhou was now reinterpreted as evidence that Lin had consistently tried to undermine the Communist cause, which succeeded only because of the superior wisdom of Mao Zedong and the loyalty of Luo Ronghuan (who had the good fortune to have died before the Cultural Revolution). Even after 1979, when the Cultural Revolution was over, it was not easy for the Chinese Communist Party to deal with the historical legacy of Lin Biao. In 1979, the Communist Party leadership included many of the victims of the Cultural Revolution—Deng Xiaoping, Huang Kecheng, and Lu Zhengcao. Peng Zhen—who had been at odds with Lin Biao since 1946 and whom Lin had attacked in 1955 as well as during the Cultural Revolution—occupied several leadership positions in the 1980s. On the other hand, Lin’s former generals, men who had remained loyal to him throughout, were still influential—including Wu Faxian and Qiu Huizuo. Thus when it came to writing the history of the civil war in the Northeast and compiling edited volumes of historical documents, both sides had to tread lightly over the controversial subject of Lin Biao. Books published in



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the early 1980s often avoided any mention of Lin Biao’s name by referring, instead, to “the Northeast central command.” The problem of how to portray Lin Biao was the main topic of conversation in September 1984 when Chen Yun and Xiao Hua met at Chen’s house in Beijing to discuss the ground rules for the compilation of a two-volume collection of historical documents and memoirs on the Liao-Shen Campaign. Chen and Xiao agreed that Lin Biao had made important contributions to the Communist victory in the Northeast, and that this fact had to be recognized. But at the same time, they wanted to keep recognition of Lin’s role to a minimum. Accordingly, they decided that Lin’s role could be minimized by spreading the credit between Lin and his staff, and particularly by pushing his political commissar, Luo Ronghuan, to the foreground of the narrative. On a larger scale, Chen and Xiao recommended putting more emphasis on the context in which Lin’s Fourth Field Army fought (particularly the Communist victories in Shandong province) rather than on the exploits of the Fourth Field Army itself.54 The results of this decision are evident in the documentary collections and published histories of the Liao-Shen Campaign. Lin’s role is acknowledged but not celebrated in the displays in the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall. In the feature film on the Liao-Shen Campaign, Lin Biao is portrayed as weak, timid, and vacillating; Luo Ronghuan appears as the brains behind the Lin Biao–Luo Ronghuan–Liu Yalou triumvirate.55 In contrast to Chen Yun and Xiao Hua’s caution, Huang Kecheng, who had both fought under Lin Biao in the Northeast and been attacked by Lin Biao at the Lüshan Plenum and during the Cultural Revolution, argued for a more forthright recognition of Lin’s military accomplishments. Acknowledging that all the commanders, soldiers, and people of the Northeast had contributed to the building of the Fourth Field Army and its victory in the Liao-Shen Campaign, Huang added that “Lin Biao was the main leader, we can’t deny that, otherwise foreigners will say that we don’t respect historical facts when we write history.”56 L’envoi Following the advice of Huang Kecheng, we too should strive for an accurate assessment of the ways in which Lin Biao, Mao Zedong, and the relationship between the two men contributed to the end result of the

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Liao-Shen Campaign. Despite the many flaws, errors, and setbacks (of which Lin was fully aware), and regardless of the later actions of Mao and Lin, the operations that Lin conducted in the Northeast from 1946 through 1948 stand collectively as a textbook example of the transition from guerrilla to conventional war and of the employment of maneuver and the patient use of multiple campaigns in order to create the strategic situation—the shi—in which the Northeast People’s Liberation Army could, in the Liao-Shen Campaign, crush the remaining Nationalist forces in Manchuria. The significance of the Liao-Shen Campaign and the intensity of the combat involved is attested by the fact that Wu Kehua, Hu Qicai, Jiang Mingfeng, and other Communist commanders at Tashan chose to be buried there, at the site of the most difficult and most decisive battle of their lives. At Jinzhou, the graves of the Communist soldiers who died in the assault on the city were initially buried in makeshift graveyards at various points around the city where they had fallen. In 1998, their remains were moved to a single, massive martyrs’ monument and graveyard on a mountainside on the outskirts of Jinzhou. Like any traditional Chinese graveyard, the site was chosen for its good fengshui. The monument and graveyard face in the direction of the sea, with a mountain, Maoershan (the site of Lin Biao’s observation post during the battle) to the rear. The sacrifices of the Northeast Field Army soldiers who died at Jinzhou and Tashan, at Heishan and in Liaoxi, and at countless other sites of battle across the Northeast enabled their comrades to march through the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan on 23 November 1948 and go on to capture Tianjin and Beiping (Beijing).57 This was the beginning of a journey that would take the newly renamed Fourth Field Army from the extremes of the Manchurian winters south to the Yangzi River and onward to Guangdong province and the semitropical Hainan Island. As they left the Northeast behind, they may have held high hopes for the future. If their political commissars had done their jobs, the soldiers would have known (and to some extent believed) that they were fighting not just to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s armies, but to build a new China, strong, independent, free of American imperialism, and characterized by progress and social justice. They certainly could not have imagined that they were helping to create



Assessing and Remembering291

Figure 15.1. Communist Fourth Field Army soldiers entering northern China through Shanhaiguan.

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Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

a regime that would sooner or later devour so many of them and their leaders, even Lin Biao himself. As they witnessed the violence and killings of land reform, experienced discrimination and joblessness as demobilized veterans, and saw the chaos and starvation of the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath, as they endured the violent political convulsions of the Cultural Revolution and then—if they lived long enough—saw the economic progress, but also the growing social inequality and rampant corruption, of the post-Mao decades, perhaps they were disillusioned or confused; perhaps they wondered what the Communist Party stood for and what they and their comrades had fought and died for back on the battlefields of the Northeast.58 But as we ourselves seek to understand those battles and their significance, let us see them not only as America’s failure or Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat, but also as Mao Zedong’s victory, as Lin Biao’s victory, and as the victory of the men and women of the Fourth Field Army as they strode through the war-battered gate at Shanhaiguan, the First Pass under Heaven toward their brave new world, their New China.

Notes

Introduction 1. The Huai-Hai Campaign took place in the area around Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province. In this campaign, Communist commanders Chen Yi and Su Yu destroyed a force of over 500,000 Nationalist soldiers, thus clearing the way across the Yangzi and into southern China. For an analysis of Communist operations in the Huai-Hai Campaign, see Bjorge. Moving the Enemy. 2. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi bianxiezu, ed. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi, 294–295. 3. Wortzel and Higham, Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Military History, 192–193. 4. On the first stage of the Chinese Civil War in Manchuria, see Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China. 1. China 1. Li, “Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi Jiang Jieshi,” 307. 2. Disi yezhanjun zhanshi bianxiezu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi, 296. 3. Li, “Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de Jiang Jieshi,” 307. 4. Wei, “Wei Lihuang jiangjun,” 180. 5. Lew, The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 113. 6. John F. Kennedy, 25 January 1949, quoted in Burns, John Kennedy, 80. 7. Fine and Xu, “Honest Brokers,” 603. 8. Leaming, Jack Kennedy, 202. 9. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 1949. 10. Acheson, “Letter of Transmittal,” XVI. 11. U.S. Department of the Army, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 159. The authors of the Field Manual were clearly aware that Chiang’s forces had suffered military defeats, but they placed primary emphasis on the role of nonmilitary factors. 12. Acheson, “Letter of Transmittal,” XIV. 13. Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare (trans. Griffith), 46. 14. The Art of War was composed during the Warring States period. Like many texts from that era, it is a compilation representing the work of a number of authors, written and assembled over time and then attributed to a fictional author. All references to “Sunzi”

293

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Notes to Pages 16–22

as an author should be understood as references to a fictional character rather than to a historically verifiable author. 15. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Minford), 132, 138, 153. 16. Du Mu, quoted in Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Minford), 153. 17. Waldron, “Foreword,” xxiii. 18. Mair, “Introduction,” 54–55. 19. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Minford), 112, 116, 120–122, 136; Waldron, “Foreword,” xvi–xvii. 20. The idea that there are distinct national ways of war has its inception in the work of Basil Liddell Hart, most notably in Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare. John King Fairbank, clearly influenced by Liddell Hart’s work, including Liddell Hart’s understanding of Sunzi, was the first to articulate the classic model of the “Chinese Way of War.” See Fairbank, “Introduction: Varieties of the Chinese Military Experience.” 21. Keegan, A History of Warfare, 202. 22. Murawiec, “Chinese Grand Strategy and the Chinese Way of War,” 2–3. 23. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 356–357. 24. Liddell Hart, The British Way of War, 109. 25. Ibid. 26. Fairbank, “Introduction: Varieties of Chinese Military Experience,” 11. 27. While Liddell Hart and Fairbank use Sunzi to critique Western ways of war, others clearly seek to reaffirm an imagined unique Western identity by drawing a stark contrast between a Clausewitzian, active, aggressive, masculine Western way of war and a passive, defensive, sneaky, feminine Chinese way of war. As Porter observes, “one-dimensional caricatures of Oriental warfare reflect the anxieties, fears, ambitions, confidence or self-doubt of Western observers”; Porter, Military Orientalism, 195. 28. Lorge, “Sunzi (Sun Tzu) and His Commentators.” 29. Handel, Masters of War; Graff, “China, Byzantium, and the Shadow of the Steppe.” 30. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair ), 87. 31. Ibid., 116. 32. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Minford), 279, 218, 225. 33. Ibid., 178. I have borrowed the phrase “moving the enemy” from Gary Bjorge. See Bjorge, Moving the Enemy, 5–6, 246–247. 34. Minford, “Introduction,” xxv. 35. Waldron, “The Art of Shi,” 39. 36. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair), 92. 37. The term “Mao Zedong’s military thought” was first used by General Chen Yi at the Seventh Communist Party Congress. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 119. 38. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, ix. 39. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 225, 227. 40. For example, see Xiang, Mao’s Generals, ix, 90–91,146. 41. Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare (trans. Griffith), 46, 97. 42. Ibid., 77–93. 43. Mao, “On Protracted War,” 142. 44. Ibid., 119. 45. Heuser, Reading Clausewitz, 136–137, 139, 140. But as Heuser points out, Mao’s emphasis on the development of guerrilla base areas stands in contradiction to Clausewitz. 46. Quoted in ibid., 139.



Notes to Pages 22–34295 47. Mao, “On Protracted War,” 172. 48. Mao, “On Guerrilla Warfare” (trans. Griffith), 42. 49. Ibid., 136–137. 50. Ibid., 138–139. 51. Ibid., 174. 52. Ibid., 182. 53. Mao, “The Present Situation and Our Tasks” (December 25, 1947). 2. The Struggle for Manchuria Begins

1. Paine, “The Chinese Eastern Railway,” 13–15. 2. Mao Zedong, “Speech on the Problem Concerning Electing Alternate Members of the CCP Central Committee, 10 June 1945,” quoted in Yang, “The Soviet Factor,” 22. 3. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 109, 110, 120, 121, 123. 4. Disi yezhanjun zhanshi bianxiezu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi, 32–33. The Chinese Communist Party had no real presence on the ground in the Northeast in 1945. The Japanese had successfully suppressed both Chinese and Korean guerrilla forces, all of which had fled to the Soviet Union. See Lee, Revolutionary Struggle, 305–306. 5. Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria, 44–45. 6. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 239. 7. Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria, 44–47. 8. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 5. 9. Robinson, A Politico-Military Biography, 3–13. 10. Jin, The Culture of Power, 62–63. 11. Ibid., 64–67. 12. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 48; Robinson, A Politico-Military Biography, 33–37. 13. Jin, The Culture of Power, 67; Robinson, A Politico-Military Biography, 39; Westad, Decisive Encounters, 173. 14. Robinson, A Politico-Military Biography, 42–47. 15. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 310. 16. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:180; Tan, Wode huiyi, 16–18. 17. Tan, Wode huiyi, 13, 18; Lin, “Luo Ronghuan tongzhi,” 540; “Luo Ronghuan zhuan” bianxiezu, Luo Ronghuan zhuan, 257; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu v. 1, 198. 18. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu v. 1, 198. 19. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 125. 20. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 73. 21. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu quanli kongzhi dongbei juzhi Jiang jun denglu zhuolu gei dongbeiju de zhishi” [Central directive to the Northeast Bureau on sparing no effort to control the Northeast and check the Jiang armies’ attempts to land or touch down], 28 October 1945, in Zhonggong zhongyang dang’anguan, Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 16:319. In strategic terms, Stalin was still playing a cautious game in Manchuria, hoping to secure Soviet interests through the diplomatic relationship with Chiang’s government while offering limited support to the Communist forces. But within the context of this cautious strategy, Stalin made several adjustments to his level of support for the Communist forces, encouraging greater or lesser degrees of assertiveness depending on his assessment of Chinese Nationalist and, more to the point, American, policy. For discussion of these shifts in policy and their significance, see Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria, 56–57 and Yang, “Guanyu jiefang zhanzheng.”

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Notes to Pages 34–40

22. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Commanding General, United States Forces, China Theater (Wedemeyer),” 18 September 1945, FRUS 1945, 7:565. 23. Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 2:401. 24. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 69–70. 25. “Zhongyang guanyu quanli xiaomie Jinzhou diqu wanjun gei Luo, Lin, Li, Sha, Huang, Liu de zhishi” [Communist Party Center’s directive to Luo, Lin, Li, Sha, Huang, Liu on exerting utmost force to annihilate the enemy armies in the Jinzhou area], 22 November 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian diyiji 1, 484. 26. Chiang Kai-shek to Du Yuming, 1 March 1946. Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-080200-00552-001. 27. Offner, Another Such Victory, 319. 28. “The Ambassador to China (Hurley) to President Truman, Washington,” 26 November 1945, FRUS 1945, 7:722–726. 29. “Sino-American Relations,” 19 June 1945, Chinese Affairs, Box 3. 30. Ibid. 31. John Caughey to Betty Caughey, 7 February 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 79. 32. For example, Ambassador John Leighton Stuart routinely used racist stereotypes in his reports back to the State Department. 33. Zhou Enlai, “Guanyu Guo Gong tanpan” [Regarding the Nationalist-Communist negotiations], 5 December 1945, in Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Zhou Enlai yijiusiliu nian tanpan wenxuan, 1–16. 34. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, 123. 35. “Liujie erzhong quanhui diwuci huiyi sujilu [Shorthand record of the fifth meeting of the second plenary session of the sixth central committee], 5 March 1946, Dangshiguan file no. 6.2/10.1.2; “Liujie sanzhong quanhui disici huiyi sujilu” [Shorthand record of the fourth meeting of the third plenary session of the sixth central committee], 19 March 1946, Dangshiguan file no. 6.2/57.2. 36. Offner, Another Such Victory, 323. In fact, rising Cold War tensions in Europe made the United States less willing to devote resources to China. 37. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, 127; Yang, Zhongjian didai de geming, 431. 38. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu kongzhi Changchun, Haerbin ji zhongdong lu baowei beiman gei dongbeiju de zhishi” [Party central directive to the Northeast Bureau on controlling Changchun, Harbin, and the China Eastern railway and defending north Manchuria], 24 March 1946, in Zhongyang dang’anguan, Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 16:100–101. 39. Ibid. 40. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:358–359. 41. Some scholars argue that if not for the June cease-fire, Du Yuming would have completely defeated Lin Biao’s forces in Manchuria and that the Nationalists could then have turned back to eliminate the Communists in China Proper, south of the Great Wall. For a critical review of this argument see Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria, 6–7, 215–221. 42. Wang, 1945–1949, 152, 308. 43. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 354. 44. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 47. 45. Lew, The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 40, 50. 46. Wang, 1945–1949, 152; Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, 150. 47. Caughey to Betty Caughey, 18 June 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 125.



Notes to Pages 40–51297

48. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 354. 49. Offner, Another Such Victory, 324. 50. “Wojun zidong chechu Siping” [Our army voluntarily withdraws from Siping], Dongbei ribao, 23 May 1946, 1. 51. “Luo Ronghuan zhuan” bianxiezu, Luo Ronghuan zhuan, 253–254. 52. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 194. 53. Tian, Peng Zhen zhuchi, 160–161. 54. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 208. 55. Zhonggong zhongyang dongbeiju, “Guanyu xingshi he renwu de jueyi” [Decision on the situation and tasks], 7 July 1946, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:47. 56. Mao, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” 211–213. 57. Zhang, Xuebai, 179. 58. Mao, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” 215. 59. Ibid., 207, 208, 209, 215, 216. 3. Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction 1. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, pt. 1, 2943. 2. Wang, 1945–1949, 308. 3. Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, xix–xxi. 4. Ibid., 1. 5. Caughey to Betty B. Caughey, 22 July 1946, 28 July 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 139, 142. 6. Caughey to Betty B. Caughey, 18 July 1946, in ibid., 138. 7. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 30 August 1946, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 11–12. 8. Caughey to Betty B. Caughey, 2 August 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 146. 9. Chiang Diaries, Box 45, 10 July 1946, 13 July 1946, 1 August 1946, 31 August 1946. 10. Caughey to Betty B. Caughey, 31 July 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 144. Interestingly enough, Caughey’s image of the Chinese corresponds closely to Sun Yat-sen’s description of the Chinese as extreme individualists who lacked any feelings of national identity. Sun, The Three Principles of the People, 31. 11. Pepper, Civil War in China, 143. 12. Caughey to Betty B. Caughey, 31 July 1946, in Jeans, The Marshall Mission, 145. 13. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, pt. 1, 2970. 14. Chiang Diaries Box 45, 19 August 1946; Jiang Zhongzheng zong tong dang an: Shi lüe gao ben, 66:430–431, 584–585. 15. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, pt. 1, 2992. 16. Harry Truman to Chiang Kai-shek (via Ambassador Wellington Koo and T. V. Soong), 14 August 1946, in T. V. Soong Papers, Reel 44, Box 35, Folder 4. 17. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:428. 18. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 189, 192, 195; Myers, “Frustration, Fortitude and Friendship,” 165; Stuart to the Secretary of State, 7 October 1946, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 21. 19. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 196; Taylor, The Generalissimo, 361; Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:435.

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Notes to Pages 51–55

20. Mao Zedong to Zhou Enlai and Dong Biwu, 10 October 1946, quoted in He Di, “Mao Zedong and the Marshall Mission,” 197. 21. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun disanci guonei geming, 15. 22. “Dongbeiju guanyu jiaofei fadong qunzhong chuangzao genjudi deng wenti gei ge fenju de zhishi” [Northeast Bureau directive to the branch bureaus regarding bandit annihilation, mobilizing the masses to build base areas and related issues], 1 July 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 1:52–53. 23. “Dongbeiju guanyu kongzhi guangda xiangcun kaizhan qunzhong gongzuo gei ge fenju, ge bingtuan de zhishi” [Northeast Bureau directive to all branch bureaus and army units on controlling the rural areas and conducting the work of mass mobilization], 4 July 1946, in ibid., 54–55. 24. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun disanci guonei geming, 18. 25. “Dongzong budui buchong zhengxun gongzuo de xunling” [Northeast Command instruction on supplementing and training troops], 29 August 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:864; “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu jiji huodong jianjue jitui jinfan zhi di gei 7 shi de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to the 7th division on actively working to resolutely repel the enemy’s advance], 10 September 1946, in ibid., 407–408. 26. “Dongbeiju guanyu dongbei genjudi xu guannei peihe xiang zhongyang de jianyi” [The Northeast Bureau’s recommendation to the Party Center regarding the need for cooperation from within the passes in constructing the Northeast Base Area], 7 September 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 1:59–60. 27. “Dongzong guanyu budui buchong zhengxun gongzuo de xunling” [translation], 29 August 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:864. 28. Chiang’s caution about anything involving the Soviet Union was such that he even prohibited Du Yuming and other officers from making public statements to the effect that the Soviets were giving military assistance to Lin Biao’s forces. Chiang Kaishek to Du Yuming, 29 August 1946. Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-080200-00553-076. 29. Tang, “Lun dongbei zhanchang,” 73. 30. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 291, 306. 31. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 392. 32. Sanjun Daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu: kanluan—dierce, suijing shiqi (shang), 613–630. 33. Zhonguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming, 25. 34. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 300. 35. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 197–198. 36. Chiang Diaries, Box 45, 15 October 1946. 37. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:435. 38. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu: kanluan—dierce, suijing shiqi, shang, 639.



Notes to Pages 55–61299

39. “Dongbeiju guanyu shiju de renshi wenti xiang zhongyang de qingshi” [Northeast Bureau request to the Party Center for instructions regarding the understanding of the situation], 22 October 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 1:65–66. 40. “Liu, Peng, Chen guanyu jizhong juedui youshi bingli jiandi de zuozhan fangzhen gei ge zongdui de zhishi” [Lin, Peng and Chen’s directive to all columns on the operational principle of concentrating absolute troop superiority to annihilate the enemy], 14 October 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:417–418; “Lin, Peng, Chen guanyu muqian ying yi baohu wuzi zhuanyi wei zhuyao renwu deng wenti gei Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Deng, Tao de zhishi” [Lin, Peng and Chen’s directive to Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Deng and Tao on making the protection and transfer of supplies the major present task and other issues], 14 October 1946, in ibid., 419; “Lin, Peng, Chen guanyu shixing jizhong bingli gege jiandi de zuozhan yuanze deng wenti gei Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Jie, Tang de zhishi” [Lin, Peng and Chen’s directive to Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Jie and Tang on implementation of the operational principle of annihilating the enemy one by one and related issues], 19 October 1946, in ibid., 420–421. 41. “Lin, Peng, Chen guanyu shixing jizhong bingli gege jiandi de zuozhan yuanze deng wenti gei Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Jie, Tang de zhishi” [Lin, Peng and Chen’s directive to Xiao, Cheng, Luo, Jie and Tang on implementation of the operational principle of annihilating the enemy one by one and related issues], 19 October 1946, in ibid., 420–421; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 291–292. 42. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, part 1, 3038–3039, 3041–3042. 43. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu: kanluan, dierce, suijing shiqi, 1:641. 44. Xiao, “Zhandou zai Liaodong diqu,” 248; Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:370. 45. Xiao, “Zhandou zai Liaodong diqu,” 248. 46. Zhang, Xuebai, 228. 47. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu: kanluan, dierce, suijing shiqi, 1:617. 48. Tang, “Guo Gong juezhu dongbei,” 225. 49. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 52. 50. Ibid., 51–52; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 296. 51. Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 295. 52. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 161–162. 53. O’Dowd, Chinese Military Strategy, 145. 54. For example, see Rigg, Red China’s Fighting Hordes, 1–2. 55. For example, see “Bazong 65 tuan weigong shuita.” 56. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 196. 57. Lin Biao, “Guanyu ‘sikuai yiman’ de liangge baogao” [Two reports on “four fast, one slow”]. Document dated 17 February 1947, in Lin Biao junshi lunwen xuanji ziliao, doc. #24, 16. 58. Lin Biao, “Yi dian liang mian” [One point, two flanks]. Undated document in ibid., doc. #22, 3. 59. “San san zhanshu” [3–3 tactics]. Document composed by the Northeast Command, no date, in ibid., doc. #23, 2. 60. Lin Biao, “Zai junshi ganbu hui de jielun” [Concluding remarks at the military cadres’ meeting]. Document dated 13 February 1947, in ibid., doc. #17, 11.

300

Notes to Pages 61–66

61. The other four tactical principles were “four fast, one slow,” “three types of situation, three types of combat,” “three ferocities,” and “four teams, one unit.” Another tactical principle, “hard-fighting battle,” was not included in the standard list of “Six Principles of Combat.” These various tactical guidelines will be discussed below. 62. Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” 233–239. 4. Breaking the Nationalist Offensive 1. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 250. 2. Cheng Jiawen, “Guo Gong neizhan zhong de dongbei zhanchang,” 79. These numbers include local forces on both sides. 3. Chiang Kai-shek to Xiong Shihui, 6 November 1946. Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-080200-00553-076. 4. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, pt. 1, 3051; Taylor, The Generalissimo, 364. 5. Tsou, America’s Failure, 435–436. 6. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 205. 7. Beal, Marshall in China, 292, 298; Offner, Another Such Victory, 325. 8. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 209. 9. Wang, 1945–1949, 243. 10. Beal, Marshall in China, 299. 11. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu cheng di kongxu daju fadong gongshi zuozhan wenti gei gezong, geshi de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to all columns and divisions on the question of taking advantage of enemy weakness to initiate large-scale offensive operations], 3 November 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:554. 12. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi bianxiezu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disi yezhanjun zhanshi, 160–161. 13. Stuart, Nanking to Secretary of State, 17 November 1946, Department of State Decimal, Box 7268. 14. Tang, “Guo Gong juezhu,” 221–222; “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu fangdi xiangbei jingong zhi ge bu, dongbeiju, zhongyang dian” [Comrade Lin Biao’s telegram to all units, the Northeast Bureau, and the Party Center on preventing the enemy from advancing northward], 9 December 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:268–269; “Lin Biao guanyu xuyao yingfu di gong Hashi de zhunbei zhi ge bu, dongbeiju dian” [Comrade Lin Biao’s telegram to all units and the Northeast Bureau on the need to make preparations for an enemy attack on Harbin], 10 December 1946, in ibid., 569; “Dongbeiju, zongbu guanyu kaizhan dihou youji zhanzheng gei ge dangwei, ge budui shouzhang de zhishi” [Northeast Bureau and General headquarters’ directive to all party committees and unit commanders on conducting guerrilla operations behind enemy lines], 11 December 1946, in ibid., 570–571. 15. “Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, Gao Gang guanyu jianchi nanman gongzuo de zhishi” [Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, and Gao Gang’s directive on persisting with work in southern Manchuria], 2 December 1946, in Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de Tonghua, 412. 16. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 307. 17. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 251. 18. Ibid., 252; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:187. 19. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 308–309; Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 252. 20. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 307.



Notes to Pages 66–73301

21. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 252. 22. Mo, “Qidaojiang huiyi yu sibao Linjiang (jielu),” 817–819. 23. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 251. 24. Ibid., 254. 25. “Guanyu Qidaojiang huiyi,” 14. 26. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 255; Tang, “Chen Yun lingdao women jianchi nanman douzheng,” 830–838; “Chen Yun tongzhi yu Xiao Hua tongzhi,” 6–7. 27. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 255–256. 28. Ibid., 254. 29. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu caiqu weidian dayuan de banfa jianmie diren gei Zhou, Chen, Lai, Tang, Zhong, Xiao, Chen, Xiao de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to Zhou, Chen, Lai, Tang, Zhong, Xiao, Chen, and Xiao on using the technique of surrounding a point and attacking reinforcements in order to annihilate the enemy], 9 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:586. 30. Lin Biao, quoted in Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 315–316. 31. Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 168–169. 32. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 258; Xiao, “Zai nanman de zhandou,” 800–802; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 317. 33. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 257. 34. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming, 19. 35. Peng, “Jiao diren ting wode zhihui,” 853. 36. Zhang, Xuebai, 238; Peng, “Jiao diren ting wode zhihui,” 849–850. 37. Chen Yun gei Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, Gao Gang de xin (jielu) [Chen Yun’s letter to Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, and Gao Gang (excerpts)], 20 December 1946, in Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de Tonghua, 535. 38. “Lin Biao zhuanfa Xiao Jinguang tongzhi guanyu di qinru hou difang wuzhuang qingkuang dian” [Lin Biao’s transmission of Xiao Junguang’s telegram regarding the situation of local militia after the enemy’s incursions], 24 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:887. 39. Peng, “Jiao diren ting wode zhihui,” 855. 40. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:187. 41. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 61–62; Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 258–259. 42. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 61–62. 43. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 258. 44. Ibid., 259; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:151–152. 45. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 260–261. 46. Ibid., 262; “Xiao Jinguang, Chen Yun, Xiao Hua, Cheng Shicai fu Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, Gao Gang dian” [Xiao Jinguang, Chen Yun, Xiao Hua, and Cheng Shicai’s response to Lin Biao, Peng Zhen, and Gao Gang], 31 March 1947, in Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de Tonghua, 547. 47. Xiao, “Sibao Linjiang,” 262–264; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 95. 48. “Chen Yun gei Gao Gang de xin (jielu)” [Chen Yun’s letter to Gao Gang (excerpts)], 2 April 1947, in Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de Tonghua, 551–553. 49. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 306. 50. Zhang, Xuebai, 233.

302

Notes to Pages 73–77

51. “Chen Yun tongzhi guanyu dong xi bei man peihe nanman xingdong xiang Lin Biao tongzhi de jianyi” [Comrade Chen Yun’s suggestion to comrade Lin Biao on east, west, and north Manchuria taking action to coordinate with south Manchuria], in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:581. 52. “Lin Biao guanyu bixu jianchi dihou jianmie xiaogu diren zhi Chen, dongbeiju” [Lin Biao to Chen, Northeast Bureau on the need to continue to wipe out small enemy units behind enemy lines], 3 January 1947, in ibid., 581–582. 53. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 210. 54. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu Qitamu zhankuang ji jinhou zuozhan ying zhuyi shixiang gei gebu de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to all units on the situation at the battle of Qitamu and issues to take note of in the future conduct of operations], 9 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:385. 55. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 94; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:194; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 324. 56. “Lin, Peng, Nie guanyu peihe bei man gongshi zuozhan de bushu gei Li Huang Zhou Chen Lai Xiao Chen Xiao Deng Tao de zhishi” [Lin, Peng, and Nie’s directive to Li, Huang, Zhou, Chen, Lai, Xiao, Chen, Xiao, Deng, and Tao on deployment for combat in coordination with northern Manchuria’s attack], 30 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:596–597. Li Zuopeng’s First Column alone had over 5,000 cases of frostbite injury during the First Expedition. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:193. 57. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:195. 58. “Lin, Peng, Nie guanyu peihe bei man gongshi zuozhan de bushu gei Li Huang Zhou Chen Lai Xiao Chen Xiao Deng Tao de zhishi” [Lin, Peng, and Nie’s directive to Li, Huang, Zhou, Chen, Lai, Xiao, Chen, Xiao, Deng, and Tao on deployment for combat in coordination with northern Manchuria’s attack], 30 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:596–597; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:195. 59. “Lin Liu guanyu bu pao xietong zuozhan wenti gei ge bingtuan de zhishi” [Lin and Liu’s directive to all army corps regarding questions of operational coordination of infantry and artillery], 21 February 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:607. 60. Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:197. 61. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 28; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:197–199; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 95; Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng,” 275. 62. “Lin Biao tongzhi dui muqian qingkuang de fenxi ji jinxing da da zhang de zhandou zuofeng jiaoyu zhi ge bingtuan, dongbeiju dian” [Comrade Lin Biao’s telegram to all army corps and the Northeast Bureau analyzing the current situation and [on] conduct of instruction on the combat style of fighting big battles], 27 February 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2:613–614. 63. “Lin Liu guanyu jiaqiang paobing huoli jianmie Dehui shoudi gei Wan Zhou Li Liu Wu, Zhong Wang Wang Wu Feng Xi, Liu Yan He de zhishi” [Lin and Liu’s directive to Wan, Zhou, Li, Liu, Wu, Zhong, Wang, Wang, Wu, Feng, Xi, Liu, Yan, and He on strengthening artillery firepower to annihilate the enemy defending Dehui], 27 February 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:614.



Notes to Pages 77–80303

64. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 336–337; “Lin Liu guanyu jianjue daji Changchun zengyuan Dehui zhi di gei 1 zong, 2 zong, ge shi de zhishi” [Lin and Liu’s directive to the First and Second Columns on resolutely attacking Changchun enemy reinforcements for Dehui], 28 February 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:615–616; “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu fangqi gongji Dehui budui chehui jiangbei zhi gebu, junwei dian” [Comrade Lin Biao’s telegram to all units and the military commission on abandoning the attack on Dehui and withdrawing the troops north of the river], 2 March 1947, in ibid., 617. 65. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 336. 66. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu fangqi gongji Dehui budui fanhui jiangbei zhi gebu, junwei dian” [Comrade Lin Biao’s telegram to all units and the Military Affairs Commission on giving up the attack on Dehui and retreating north of the river], 2 March 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao dierji, 2, 2:617. 67. “Lin Liu guanyu baituo diren xiang Songhuajiang bei zhuanyi zhi gebu, dongbeiju” [Lin and Liu to all units and the Northeast Bureau regarding disengaging from the enemy and transferring north of the Songhua River], 1 March 1947, in ibid., 616. 68. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 132. 69. Zhang, Xuebai, 235–236. 70. Ibid. 71. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu renzhen shixing jizhong bingli de zuozhan yuanze gei Hong Yang Liu Yan, gebu de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to Hong, Yang, Liu, Yan, and all units on rigorously applying the operational principle of concentrating troop force], 5 March 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao dierji, 2, 2:619–620. 72. Ibid., 619. 73. Ibid, 620. 74. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 210; Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng,” 275. 75. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:374. 76. Ibid., 375. 77. Ibid., 376; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:206. 78. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 140–141. 79. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:377. 80. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 64; Li, Li Zuopeng huiyilu, 1:207. Some Communist units may actually have gained power during the Three Expeditions/Four Defenses. The Third and Fourth Columns are said to have had around 20,000 men each at the start of the campaign, and to have grown to over 40,000 men each, having added not only infantry soldiers, but also more artillery and signals units. See Zeng, “Dongbei minzhu lianjun disan zongdui,” 329. 81. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 64. 82. “Lin Tan guanyu muqian dongbei zhanju bianhua gei ge zongdui, ge shi de zhishi” [Lin and Tan’s directive to all columns and divisions on changes in the strategic situation in the Northeast], 20 March 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao dierji, 2, 2:625–627. 83. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:377. 84. The description of these guidelines draws on “Lin Biao de liuge zhanshu yuanze”; Rigg, Red China’s Fighting Hordes, 201–206; Ebon, Lin Piao, 167–177; Zhang, Xuebai, 326–332; and Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:378.

304

Notes to Pages 80–87

85. Lin Biao, “Guanyu ‘sikuai yiman’ de liang ci baogao” [Two reports on “four fast, one slow”], 17 February 1948, doc. #24, in Lin Biao junshi lunwen xuanji ziliao, 13. 86. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:436; “Stuart to the Secretary of State, 2 December 1946,” in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 47. 87. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 211. 88. Chiang Diaries, 15 December 1946, quoted in Myers, “Frustration, Fortitude and Friendship,” 166. 89. Beal, Marshall in China, 317. 90. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 219. 91. Beal, Marshall in China, 339. 92. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 217; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, kanluan qianqi, shang, 20; Jeans, “Behind the Scenes,” 31. 93. “Zhongyang guanyu Meifang jueding jiesu sanren huiyi wenti gei geju, ge fenju de zhishi” [Communist Party Center directive to all bureaus and branch bureaus regarding the American decision to dissolve the three-man meetings], 30 January 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao dierji, 2, 1:8–9. 94. Chiang diaries, Box 46, 9 January 1947, 11 January 1947, “Reflections on the week.” 95. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 367. 96. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 3 March 1947, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 66. 97. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:450. In late March, Chiang’s chief of staff told the Americans that two months would be time enough to defeat and destroy the Communists’ main armies. Stuart, Nanking to Secretary of State, 29 March 1947, Department of State Decimal, Box 7269. 98. Offner, Another Such Victory, 326. 99. Quoted in Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:49. 100. Quoted in Offner, Another Such Victory, 326. 5. The Summer Offensive and the Wedemeyer Mission 1. Wang, 1945–1949, 268. 2. “Memorandum of Conversation” between Chen Lifu, vice-president of the Executive Yuan, and Mr. Lewis Clark, minister-counselor of the American Embassy, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 5. 3. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 98. 4. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 8 May 1947, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 101; U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 243. 5. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 4 May 1947. 6. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 307. 7. Northeast Bureau’s “5–5 Decision,” quoted in He, He Changgong huiyilu, 413. 8. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:218–219. 9. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:383; Westad, Decisive Encounters, 156–157. 10. Wu, “Liaoshen da juezhan,” 32; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:222. 11. Liu, “Xiaji gongshi,” 287; Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng,” 277–278; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun di sanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 37–38.



Notes to Pages 88–93305

12. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun di sanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 37–43; Liu, “Xiaji gongshi,” 287–293; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:234, 240. 13. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:232; “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu ying jiji fangshou zuozhan gei gebu de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to all units to actively take the initiative and conduct operations with a free hand], 12 May 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:811. 14. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:248. 15. Zheng, “Cong daju jingong,” 514; Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 21 May 1947, 22 May 1947. 16. Zheng, “Cong daju jingong,” 514. 17. Wang, 1945–1949, 263. 18. Chen et al., Sizhan Siping, 8. 19. “Liang Wang Zhang Huang guanyu Siping zuozhan de jingyan zongjie” [Liang, Wang, Zhang, and Huang’s summary of the lessons of the operations at Siping], 12 July 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:842–843. 20. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 308. 21. Zheng, Wode rongma shengya, 457. 22. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:249, 254; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 44; “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu yanggong Siping zhunbei jianmie Shenyang yuandi ji Siping chufan zhi di de bushu gei Li Wan Zhou Li Liu Wu Deng Wu Guo de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to Li, Wan, Zhou, Li, Liu, Wu, Deng, Wu, and Guo on deploying to feint at Siping in preparation for annihilating enemy reinforcements from Shenyang and enemy troops venturing out of Siping], 25 March 1947 in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:820. 23. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu juejian zhongchanglu yi dong zhi di bushu gei Li Wan Zhou Li Liu Wu Deng Wu Gao de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to Li, Wan, Zhou, Li, Liu, Wu, Deng, Wu, and Gao on deploying to resolutely annihilate the enemy east of the China Changchun line], 25 May 1947, in ibid., 821. 24. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 26 May 1947. 25. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:267, 270. 26. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 155–156. 27. Wu, Siye mingjiang, 62–64. 28. “Lin Luo guanyu Siping zhandou ying zhuyi shixiang gei Li Wan Zhou Li Deng Wu Gao de zhishi” [Lin and Luo’s directive to Li, Wan, Zhou, Li, Deng, Wu, and Gao on issues to be aware of in the combat at Siping], 10 June 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliu xuanbian, dierji, 2, 2:828–829; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:277. 29. “Lin Luo Tan guanyu wei zhengqu Siping zhandou de shengli gei Xiao Cheng Wu Mou Liu Wu Hong Yang Liang Liu Xu Yan Jie ge bingtuan de zhishi” [Lin, Luo, and Tan’s directive to the Xiao, Cheng, Wu, Mou, Liu, Wu, Hong, Yang, Liang, Liu, Xu, Yan, and Jie army corps on striving for victory in the battle at Siping], 13 June 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliu xuanbian, dierji, 2, 2:830; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:280. 30. Huang, Luo Ronghuan nianpu, 495.

306

Notes to Pages 93–97

31. “Siping gongjian zhan (disanshibajun)” [The positional assault on Siping (the Thirty-eighth army)], in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun junshi kexueyuan, Zhanshu cankao ziliao, diyiji, 49. 32. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishisijun silingbu, Disishisijun jiefang zhanzheng shi, 37–38. 33. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 100; Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 175. 34. Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng,” 278; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:282, 284, 287–288; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishisijun silingbu, Disishisijun jiefang zhanzheng shi, 57. 35. “Lin Luo guanyu jianmie Siping shoudi ji yuandi gei ge zong shi de zhishi” [Lin and Luo’s directive to all columns and divisions on resolutely annihilating the enemy defending Siping and enemy reinforcements], 21 June 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliu xianbian dierji, 2, 2:836; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:292. 36. Mr. Ringwalt to General Carter, 7 July 1947, in Department of State Decimal, Box 7271; Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 3 July 1947, in ibid. 37. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:293. 38. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 179. 39. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:312, 316–317. 40. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu jinxing zhanlue zhengxun ji jieshou xiaji gongshi de sige jiaoxun gei ge bingtuan de zhishi” [Comrade Lin Biao’s directive to all army corps on conducting combat training and learning four lessons from the Summer Offensive], 16 July 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:844–845; Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:387; Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 309. 41. “Li Tianyou tongzhi guanyu Siping zhandou jiben jiaoxun de jiancha xiang Lin Biao tongzhi de baogao” [Comrade Li Tianyou’s report to Lin Biao on review of the fundamental lessons learned from the combat at Siping], 17 July 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:848. 42. “Li Wan Li guanyu Siping zhandou de chubu jiantao” [Li, Wan, and Li’s preliminary self-criticism regarding the combat at Siping], 17 July 1947, in ibid., 847. 43. In the aftermath of the failed attack on Siping, Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan ordered all units that had participated in positional assault operations to submit detailed combat reports to the central command. Each report was to address issues including enemy disposition, terrain, weather, tasks assigned to specific units, reconnaissance, assessments, plan, conduct, and results of battle and a summary of the experience and lessons learned. Huang, Luo Ronghuan nianpu, 500–501. 44. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 101. 45. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun junshi kexueyuan, Zhanshu cankao ziliao, diyiji, 55. This source indicates Communist casualties of around 16,000. Nationalist sources suggest 40,000 Communist casualties in and around Siping. See Lew, The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 71. 46. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 30. 47. “Nanking to Secretary of State,” 14 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 3. 48. “Minutes: Meeting of the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy, June 26, 1947” (Appendix, dated 20 June), Office of Chinese Affairs, Box 12. 49. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 8, 10.



Notes to Pages 97–101307

50. John Carter Vincent, “Memorandum for use in presenting to the President the problem of military assistance to the Chinese National Armies,” 27 June 1947, Army Intelligence File, Box 65. 51. American Embassy, Nanking, “Memorandum,” 5 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 1. 52. “Memorandum for use in presenting to the President the problem of military assistance to the Chinese National Armies.” 27 June 1947, in Plans and Operations, Box 65. 53. American Embassy, Nanking, “Memorandum,” 5 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 1. 54. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 14, 17. 55. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 376. 56. Wedemeyer to Alvan C. Gillem, 1 February 1947, in Wedemeyer Papers, Box 092. 57. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 29 July 1947, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 126. 58. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 16 July 1947, in ibid., 124. 59. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 20. 60. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:455. 61. “Letter from A. C. Wedemeyer to the Secretary of State,” 29 July 1947, Plans and Operations, Box 9. 62. Ibid. 63. “Ward, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking,” 30 July 1947, Foreign Service, Mukden, Box 42. 64. “Ward, Mukden to AMEMBASSY NANKING,” 28 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 3. 65. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 36, 43. 66. American Embassy, Nanking, “Secret,” 31 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 1. 67. “Mukden to AMEMBASSY Nanking,” 28 July 1947, in Wedemeyer Mission, Box 3. 68. William T. Turner, First Secretary, American Embassy, Nanking to Secretary of State, Washington, 1 August 1947, Department of State Decimal, Box 7271. 69. “Presentation to Ambassador Stuart, General Wedemeyer and Mission of Activities of the Army Advisory Group, Nanking, China—25 July 1947,” Plans and Operations, Box 9. 70. “The Probable Effect upon China and the Far East of Chinese National Government Withdrawal From Manchuria and Sinkiang,” 5 August 1947, Plans and Operations, Box 9. 71. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 39. 72. “A Report from Colonel David Barrett, Assistant Military Attaché,” 6 August 1947, Plans and Operations, Box 65, 5, 8. Emphasis in the original. 73. Ibid., 6–7. 74. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!, 388. 75. Ibid., 389. 76. Jiang Zhongzheng zong tong dang an: Shi lüe gao ben, 68:659, 672; Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 45; “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 26 August 1947, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 132–133. 77. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 26 August 1947, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 134–135. 78. Wedemeyer, 24 August 1947, quoted in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 257.

308

Notes to Pages 101–109

79. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:456; Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 73–77; “Report to President Truman by Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer,” 773–774. 80. “Report to President Truman by Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer,” 773. 81. Ibid., 767. 82. “Minutes of Meeting between General Wedemeyer, Ambassador Stuart, and Mr. Mark Watson,” 1 August 1947, Wedemeyer Papers, Box 096. 83. “Report to President Truman by Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer,” 767. 84. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!, 379. 6. Encircling the Cities 1. Mao, “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party,” 317. 2. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 49. 3. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:388. 4. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 310. 5. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 39. 6. Li, “Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi Jiang Jieshi,” 302. 7. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 4–5; Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 20 September 1947, Department of State Decimal, Box 7271. 8. Sun, “Yunnan budui,” 522. The “Tumu” faction consisted of men who had been Chen’s classmates in the twelfth class of the Kuomintang Infantry College and officers who had served under Chen when he commanded the Eighteenth Army. 9. Pepper, Civil War in China, 179. 10. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:389. 11. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 173; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 101. 12. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 32. 13. Mao, “Strategy for the Second Year of the War of Liberation,” 141. 14. Ibid., 144. 15. Ibid., 144–145. 16. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 101. 17. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 45. 18. Zhonggong zhongyang danshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:355. 19. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, vol. 1, 389. 20. Xiang, Mao and His Generals, 146–147. 21. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 101; Paine, The Wars for Asia, 255; Westad, Decisive Encounters, 175. 22. Zhonggong zhongyang danshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:383, 390. 23. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 379. 24. “Lin Biao guanyu dijun zuozhan fangzhen ji wojun bushu gei ge bingtuan shouzhang de zhishi” [Lin Biao’s directive to all army corps commanders on the enemy’s operational principles and our deployment of force], 8 October 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 1, 258. 25. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 102. 26. Ibid. 27. Zhonggong zhongyang danshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:434. 28. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu dongbei jinhou zuozhan fangxiang wenti xiang Mao zhuxi de baogao” [Comrade Lin Biao’s report to Chairman Mao on the question of the future



Notes to Pages 110–117309

direction of operations in the Northeast], 8 November 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 1, 261–262. 29. Ibid. 30. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 103. 31. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 264. 32. “Memorandum on Delay on the Part of the Chinese National Government Concluding Certain Contracts,” undated memorandum (context points to July 1947), Div. of Chinese Affairs, Box 3. 33. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:463, 475; Stueck, Wedemeyer Mission, 117. 34. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 378. 35. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:353, 356. 36. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:157. 37. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 1:410. 38. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 6, pt. 2, 3338, 30 November 1947; ibid., 3342, 14 December 1947. 39. Ibid., 3346, 21 December 1947. 40. “Sanshiliunian qiu dui fei diliuci gongshi zuozhan jiantao” [Critique of combat operations against the sixth bandit offensive, autumn 1947], Chen Cheng fuzongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 08000000614A, 9–11. 41. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 103. 42. Chiang to Chen Cheng, 18 November 1947, in Shilüe gaoben [Historical manuscripts], Guoshiguan 002000000710A. 43. Sanjun daxue, Guomingemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, shang, 22. 44. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 309; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 103. Han says that the Communists had 420,000 main forces, 310,000 local forces—a total of 730,000 men. 45. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, Folder 15, 18 December 1947. 46. Ibid., 31 December 1947. 47. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 309. 48. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 104. 49. Zheng, “Cong daju jingong,” 517. 50. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3364, 8 January 1947. 51. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 5; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 105; Zheng, “Liaoxi bingtuan,” 195–196; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3366, 3368, 3374. 52. Zhao, Zhu De yu Wei Lihuang, 268–269. 53. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3377, 3378. 54. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 315. 55. Peng, “Wei Lihuang,” 42–43; Taylor, The Generalissimo, 381. 56. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 177. 57. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 316–318. 58. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3383. 59. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 319–322. 60. Ibid., 323. 61. Chiang Diaries, 3 February 1948, quoted in Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3380. 62. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3385. 63. Ibid., 3379, 3394, 3395; Sanjun daxue, Guomingemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan— sice, shang, 77. 64. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3395.

310

Notes to Pages 117–127

65. Ibid., 3379–3380. 66. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3381–3382; Taylor, The Generalissimo, 382. 67. Ibid., 3397. 68. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu dongbei diqing ji zuozhan yijian xiang Mao zhuxi de baogao” [Comrade Lin Biao’s report to Chairman Mao on the enemy situation in the Northeast and opinions on operations], 10 February 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian diyiji, 1, 549–550. 69. Peng, “Tabing lüxue,” 323. 70. Letter from Bishop L.-A. La Pierre, p.m.é., to Sr. Angele Benoit, m.i.c., Szepingkai (Siping), 23 February 1948. Source and translation courtesy of Sr. Huguette Turcotte, M.I.C. 71. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:442–443; U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 382; “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on the Position of the United States Regarding Short-Term Assistance to China,” 26 March 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 9; “Joint Chiefs of Staff Decision on J/C/S/1721/8, A Report by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee on ‘The Position of the United States Regarding Short-Term Assistance to China, ‘” 27 March 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 9; A. C. Wedemeyer, “Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army,” 30 March 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 9; “A. C. Wedemeyer, “Draft Memorandum to the Secretary of Defense,” 29 March 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 9. 72. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” 4 March 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 182–183. 73. Barr, “Report of Operational Advice Given to the Generalissimo,” in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 325. 74. “Chiang Kai-shek’s Long Range Military Plan for 1948–1949.” Plans and Operations, Box 9. 75. Sanjun daxue, Guomingemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, shang, 77–78; Jiaofei zhongyao zhanyi zhuishu yu jiantao (diyiji), 13; Zou, Weikun Changchun, 4. 76. “Stuart to the Secretary of State,” in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 190. 7. The Battle behind the Lines 1. Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria, 54. 2. “Liu Shaoqi guanyu ying yi zhuyao liliang jianli dong, xi, bei man genjudi zhi Peng Zhen dian” [Liu Shaoqi’s telegram to Peng Zhen on the need to use the main forces to build base areas in eastern, western, and northern Manchuria], 24 December 1945, Zhonggong zhongyang dang’anguan, Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 15:512–14. 3. Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. 4. Liu, “Huiyi zhencha yingxiong Yang Zirong,” 786–790; Jiang, “Yang Zirong,” 178–181. 5. I have Brian Eno to thank for this insight. See Tamm, Brian Eno, 102. 6. U.S. Department of the Army, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 2. 7. Mitter, The Manchurian Myth, 38–41. 8. Ibid., 190–194. 9. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 76; Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Haerbin,” 11. 10. Fang, “Yi dongbei Hejiang jianjun he jiaofei,” 706. 11. Du, “Zhandou zai Sanjiang pingyuan,” 738–741; Yuan, Dongbei da jiaofei jishi, 34; Hejiang shengwei, “Fang Qiang guanyu muqian Hejiang junqu de zhanlue yu junshi jianshe fangzhen de baogao” [Fang Qiang’s report on current strategic principles and



Notes to Pages 127–131311

military construction in the Hejiang military district], 24 December 1945, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 11–21. 12. Liu, “Disanwujiu lü beiman jiaofei de huiyi,” 733. 13. Ibid., 736. 14. “Hejiang jiaofei jingyan zongjie” [Summary of lessons of bandit extermination in Hejiang] 1947, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 145; “Dongbeiju, dongbei minzhu lianjun zong silingbu guanyu jiaofei gongzuo de jueding” [Northeast Bureau and Northeast Democratic United Army General Headquarters decision regarding bandit extermination work], June 1947, in ibid., 5. 15. Ibid., 7; Chen Yun, “Fadong nongmin shi jianli dongbei genjudi de guanjian” [Mobilizing the peasants is the key to establishing the Northeast base area], 13 July 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, Jiaofei douzheng: dongbei diqu, 256. 16. Ibid., 253. 17. “Zhonggong zhongyang dongbeiju guanyu jiaofei ji fadong qunzhong gongzuo de yijian” [Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Northeast Bureau opinion on bandit annihilation and mass mobilization work], 4 June 1946, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, Jiaofei douzheng: dongbei diqu, 194–195. 18. “Dongbei jiaofei gongzuo baogao” [Report on bandit extermination in the Northeast], 10 April 1947, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 139. 19. Ibid., 142. In their anti-bandit operations, Communist forces used tactics very similar to those that the Japanese used against both Communist and other anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance bands in the 1930s, as described in Lee, Revolutionary Struggle. I thank an anonymous reader for this observation. 20. Ibid., 140; “Hejiang jiaofei jingyan zongjie” [Summary of experience of bandit extermination in Hejiang], 1947, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 149. 21. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 2:150. 22. “Mudanjiang junqu yijiusiliu nian dongji senlin jiaofei jidian jingyan zongjie” [Summary of several points of experience from the Mudanjiang military district’s forest bandit annihilation of winter 1946], n.d., in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 161–168; “Hejiang jiaofei jingyan zongjie” [Summary of experiences of bandit extermination in Hejiang], 1947, in ibid., 145–150; “Dongbei jiaofei gongzuo baogao” [Report on bandit extermination in the Northeast], 10 April 1947, in ibid., 136–144. 23. Du, “Zhandou zai sanjiang pingyuan,” 738–739. 24. He, “Hejiang jiaofei jishi,” 722; Wang, “Dongbeiju sannian zongjie.” 25. Lei et al., “Chushi fengmao,” 48–52; Cai, “Dadi tieliu,” 9. 26. He, “Hejiang jiaofei jishi,” 724–727. 27. Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 29, 43. 28. “Dongbei jiaofei gongzuo baogao” [Report on bandit extermination work in the Northeast], 10 April 1947, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 138–139. These numbers should be taken as indicators of the degree of the problem, not as accurate statistics. 29. Ibid., 141. 30. Li Haitao, “Guanyu jiaofei de jige wenti” [On several questions related to bandit extermination], September 1946, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 157. 31. “Hejiang jiaofei jingyan zongjie” [Summary of experience of bandit extermination in Hejiang], 1947, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 148.

312

Notes to Pages 131–136

32. “Dongbei jiaofei gongzuo baogao” [Report on bandit extermination work in the Northeast], 10 April 1947, in ibid., 140; “Zhonggong Songjiangsheng Binxian xianweihui guanyu jiaofei gongzuo de baogao” [Songjiang province Bin county Communist Party committee report on bandit extermination work], 30 June 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, Jiaofei douzheng: dongbei diqu, 221, 229; “Mudanjiang junqu yijiusiliunian dongji senlin jiaofei jidian jingyan zongjie” [Summary of several points of experience from the Mudanjiang military district’s forest bandit annihilation of winter 1946], n.d., in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 163. 33. “Zhonggong Songjiang Binxian xianwei guanyu jiaofei gongzuo de baogao” [Heilongjiang province Bin county Communist Party committee report on bandit annihilation work], 30 June 1946, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshenwei, Jiaofei douzheng: dongbei diqu, 220–237. 34. “Zhang Xiushan zai Songjiangsheng renmin daibiao dahui shang guanyu jiaofei he zhi’an gongzuo de baogao” [Zhang Xiushan’s report to the Songjiang provincial people’s congress on bandit extermination and social order work], 20 April 1946, in Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng, 27; “Dongbeiju guanyu jiajin jiaofei gongzuo gei ge fenju, shengwei de zhishi” [Northeast bureau directive to all branch bureaus and provincial committees on intensifying bandit extermination work], 30 September 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian, diyiji, 1, 256–258. 35. “Zhonggong Songjiang Binxian xianwei guanyu jiaofei gongzuo de baogao” [Heilongjiang province Bin county Communist Party committee report on bandit annihilation work], 30 June 1946, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshenwei, Jiaofei douzheng: dongbei diqu, 221. 36. Ibid., 230; “Dongbei jiaofei gongzuo baogao” [Report on bandit extermination work in the Northeast], 10 April 1947, Heilongjiang dang’anguan, Jiaofei douzheng,, 141. 37. Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 30, 35, 160; U.S. Department of the Army, The U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, liv, 2, 5. 38. Mao, “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement.” 39. For example, see Chen, Making Revolution. 40. Levine, Anvil of Victory, 203; Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 183. 41. Ke, “Lun dongbei jiefangqu,” 383. 42. Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 181, 183. 43. Ibid., 180–182. 44. Levine, Anvil of Victory, 206. 45. Zhang, “Shilun jiefang zhanzheng,” 74. 46. Levine, Anvil of Victory, 206. The following description of land reform draws largely on Levine, except where otherwise noted. 47. Ibid., 205–209. 48. Ibid., 211–212. 49. Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 188; Paine, The Wars for Asia, 254; Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Haerbin,” 15. 50. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Haerbin,” 15; Levine, Anvil of Victory, 212. 51. Ibid., 216, 221. 52. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Haerbin,” 15. 53. Mao, “On Some Important Problems of the Party’s Present Policy,” 183; Yang, “Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi,” 48. 54. Ibid.



Notes to Pages 136–145313

55. Chinese Communist Party Center, 28 March 1946, quoted in Yang, “Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi,” 48. 56. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Haerbin,” 13. 57. Ibid., 15. 58. Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 188–189; Levine, Anvil of Victory, 222. 59. Levine, Anvil of Victory, 222. 60. Ibid., 224. 61. Ibid. 62. Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 408–409. 63. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 73. 64. “Chen Yun tongzhi yu Xiao Hua tongzhi,” 7–8. 65. Levine, Anvil of Victory, 226. 66. Ibid., 228. 67. Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 190. 68. Ibid., 191. Daze points out that the party pulled back from its unsustainably high rates of taxes/purchase as the land reform policies exited their radical stage. 69. Zhu, Dongbei jiefangqu caizheng, 408. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 410. 72. Daze, “Jiefang zhanzheng,” 188. 73. Zhu, Dongbei jiefangqu caizheng, 407. 74. Ibid., 415–416. 8. Army of Learning 1. Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 163–164; Tanner, “Learning through Practice,” 39. 2. Xue and Liu, “Sulian yu dongbei,” 71; Lu, “Dui Sulian geiyu,” 81. 3. Xue and Liu, “Sulian yu dongbei,” 72. 4. Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 47–48; see also Paine, The Wars for Asia, 250. 5. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 76. 6. Ibid., 74. 7. Ibid., 77. 8. Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 47. 9. Yang, “Guanyu jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Sulian junshi yuanzhu.” 10. Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 48. 11. “Chen Yun, Gao Gang zhi Zhonggong zhongyang dian” [Telegram from Chen Yun and Gao Gang to the Chinese Communist Party Center] 29 November 1945, quoted in Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 75. 12. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 76; Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong de Sulian,” 48. 13. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 75; Xue and Liu, “Sulian yu dongbei,” 73. 14. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 75. 15. He, He Changgong huiyilu, 427–428. 16. He, He Changgong huiyilu, 427–428; Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 48. 17. Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 48. 18. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 76; Yang, Mao Zedong yu Mosike, 262 (citing Soviet sources). 19. Lu, “Dui Sulian geiyu,” 82; Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 73, 76; Yang, Mao Zedong yu Mosike, 262. 20. Wang, “Dongbeiju sannian zongjie.”

314

Notes to Pages 145–151

21. Yang, Mao Zedong yu Mosike, 184; Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 49. 22. Wang, “Baozheng Huaihai zhanyi,” 32. 23. Ao, “Dongbei jiefangqu jungong,” 6. 24. Liu, “Haerbin zhanshi de binggong dongyuan shengchan,” 523–529. 25. He, He Changgong huiyilu, 414–415. 26. Ibid., 417, 424. 27. Zhang, “Shilun jiefang zhanzheng xunsu qude shengli,” 77. 28. Xu, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong Sulian,” 49; Ao, “Dongbei jiefangqu jungong,” 6; “Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan deng guanyu dongbei jungong jianshe zhi zhongyang junwei dian” [Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan et al., telegram to the Central Military Commission on construction of military industries in the Northeast], 27 August 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, Junshi gongye, 194–197. 29. Hess, “From Colonial Port to Socialist Metropolis,” 373, 376, 379. 30. Wang, “Baozheng Huaihai zhanyi,” 32–33. 31. Hess, “From Colonial Port City to Socialist Metropolis,” 387; Wang, 1945–1949, 209–216. 32. Duan, “Yi dongbei tongxin lianluochu,” 10; Wang, “Baozheng Huaihai zhanyi,” 33; He, He Changgong huiyilu, 410. 33. Wang, “Baozheng Huaihai zhanyi,” 33. 34. Duan, “Yi dongbei tongxin lianluochu,” 10. 35. Han, “Lüda renmin,” 587–588. 36. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 95. 37. Ibid. 38. He, He Changgong huiyilu, 423. 39. Li, “Guandongjun wuqi,” 76. 40. “Lin Biao tongzhi guanyu dongbei paobing jianshe wenti xiang junwei de baogao” [Comrade Lin Biao’s report to the Military Commission on problems in the building of artillery in the Northeast], 18 July 1946, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian dierji, 2, 2:856–858. 41. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 97. 42. Ibid., 96, 97. 43. Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 174. 44. Ding, “Dang zhongyang zhishi women,” 61–63. 45. Gao, “Diyiliang tanke,” 27–29. 46. Whitson, High Command, 89. 47. Mao, “Strategy for the Second Year of the War of Liberation,” 141. 48. Ibid., 145. 49. Ibid., 144. 50. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 74; “Luo Ronghuan zhuan” bianxiezu, Luo Ronghuan zhuan, 258–259; Zeng, “Dongbei minzhu lianjun disan zongdui,” 324–334. 51. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 74. 52. Ibid.; “Dongzong zhengzhibu guanyu shenru tudi zhengce xuexi ying zhuyi shixiang gei gebu de zhishi” [Northeast command political bureau directive to all units in issues to be aware of in deepening study of land policy], 28 September 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 6, 2:744–745; “Dongzong



Notes to Pages 151–154315

zhengzhibu guanyu 3 zong kaizhan suku yundong de jingyan xiang junwei zongzheng de baogao” [Northeast command political bureau’s report to the military commission general political bureau on the Third Column’s experience in conducting the Speak Bitterness Movement], 28 September 1947, in ibid., 742–744. 53. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 74; Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:401. 54. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 74–75. 55. “Dongbei yezhan budui zhengjun zongjie” [Summary of the Northeast field troops’ Army rectification], quoted in Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 75. 56. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:401; Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 75. 57. Zhang, “Jiefang zhanzheng zhong yi sukuhui,” 77; “Dongbei junqu guanyu 2 xian bingtuan zhengzhi gongzuo xiang junwei de baogao” [Northeast military district report to military commission general political bureau on political work in the second echelon army corps], 21 October 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 6, 2:787–792. 58. Lin Biao, “Ruhe shi silingbu chengwei nenggan de zhihui jiguan—zai yezhanjun canmou huiyi shang de baogao” [How to make a command post into a competent organ of command], document dated 25 March 1948, in Lin Biao junshi lunwen xuanji ziliao, doc. #25, 7. The ratio of political to practical training probably varied somewhat from one unit to another. Wu Xiuquan remembered the Second Column’s training as involving three months of political instruction followed by two months of military training. Training for reserve units in North Manchuria, on the other hand, was 60 percent military education, 40 percent political education. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:403; “Xin houbeijun kaishi jixun” [New reserve army begins training], Dongbei ribao, 16 May 1948, 1. 59. Liu Yalou, “Sulian hongjun yezhan canmou yewu tiaoiling yiban xuyan” [Preface to Translation of the Soviet Red Army’s Regulations on Field Army Staff Work], December 1947, in Liu, Liu Yalou junshi wenji, 116. 60. Yan Zhongchuan, quoted in Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 171. 61. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 86–88. 62. “Dongzong guanyu dongbei junzheng daxue zuzhi jigou yu xunlian fangzhen de xunling” [Northeast command orders on the organization, structure, and principles of training for the Northeast military-political university], 1 December 1947, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 6, 2:839–840; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 85. 63. “Junqu canmou huiyi bimu” [Conclusion of military district staff meeting], Dongbei ribao, 13 May 1948, 1. 64. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 60. 65. “Dongzong guanyu beiman ge junqu dulituan lianbing qingkuang xiang zhongyang junwei de baogao” [Northeast command’s report to the central military commission on the situation of training in the independent regiments of the north Manchurian military districts], 28 November 1947, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian disanji, 6, 2:837–839. 66. There is evidence to indicate that the Communist Party Center itself knew about and endorsed the opium business as a way of earning desperately needed cash during the war against Japan. See Chen, “The Blooming Poppy.” 67. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:160–161.

316

Notes to Pages 155–158

68. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:402–403. 69. “Erxian bingtuan jinzhang jixun” [Second echelon troops in intense training], Dongbei ribao, 28 May 1948, 1. 70. Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 28. 71. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:402. 72. “Xin houbeijun kaishi jixun” [New reserve army begins training], Dongbei ribao, 16 May 1948, 1. 73. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 162. 74. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:403–404. 75. Ibid. 76. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 134; “Disanshijiujun zhanshi—Liaoshen zhanyi bufen,” 2. 77. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:404; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 134; “Disanshijiujun zhanshi— Liaoshen zhanyi bufen,” 2. 78. Ibid; “Zhankai junshi lianbing yundong” [Kicking off the military training campaign], Dongbei ribao, 18 May 1948, 1. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 60. 82. Liu, “Guanyu zhanqian lianbing wenti” [On the question of training prior to combat], 17 June 1948, in Liu, Liu Yalou junshi wenji, 162. 83. Ibid., 160; “Shitian junshi lianbing jingyan” [Experiences of ten days of military training], Dongbei ribao, 28 May 1948, 1; “Erxian bingtuan jinzhang jixun” [Second echelon troops in intense training], Dongbei ribao, 28 May 1948, 1; “Zhankai junshi lianbing yundong” [Kicking off the military training campaign], Dongbei ribao, 18 May 1948, 1. 84. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:403; “Shitian junshi lianbing jingyan” [Experiences of ten days of military training], Dongbei ribao, 28 May 1948, 1. 85. Liu, “Guanyu zhanqian lianbing wenti,” 162. 86. “Xin houbeijun kaishi jixun” [New reserve army begins training], Dongbei ribao, 16 May 1948, 1; Zhongguorenmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 134; Liang, “Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng,” 281–282; “Jinzhou dengcheng jiandaolian,” 2. 87. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 134. 88. “Zhankai junshi lianbing yundong” [Kicking off the military training campaign], Dongbei ribao, 18 May 1948, 1; “Disanshijiujun zhanshi—Liaoshen zhanyi bufen,” 3. 89. “Zhankai junshi lianbing yundong” [Kicking off the military training campaign], Dongbei ribao, 18 May 1948, 1. 90. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 97. 91. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 196. 92. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dongbei junqu silingbu, Dongbei sannian jiefang zhanzheng, 97. 93. Liao Yaoxiang to A. C. Wedemeyer, 6 August 1947, in Wedemeyer Papers, Box 093.



Notes to Pages 161–167317 9. Contention Within

1. The situation was not much better in northern China, where the Nationalists held scarcely 15 percent of the territory between the Yellow River and the Great Wall. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 384. 2. Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 20 April 1948, in Department of State Decimal, Box 7273; Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 28 April, in ibid.; Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 4 June 1948, in ibid., Box 7274. 3. Chiang Kai-shek, quoted in Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 9. 4. Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 265. 5. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 1 March 1948; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 9. 6. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 9 March 1948. 7. Ibid., 13 March 1948; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3406. 8. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 10–11. 9. Jin, “Jiang Jieshi shi zenyang yingdui,” 11; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 136, 138. 10. Zheng, “Liaoxi bingtuan,” 196. 11. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 1 May 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 218. 12. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 328. 13. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 14 May 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 229. 14. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 139; Chen, “Xinbian diyijun,” 179. 15. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 78. 16. Ibid.; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 139. 17. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 78; Sun, “Yunnan budui,” 526. 18. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3458. 19. “Memorandum from American Consulate, Mukden to Secretary of State Evaluating the Nationalist Capture of Liaoyuan,” 28 July 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 6. 20. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3463–3464. 21. Ibid., 3464–3465; Jin, “Jiang Jieshi shi zenyang yingdui,” 11. 22. Zhu, Guomindang zhengquan de zong bengkui, 29. 23. Chiang Kai-shek, 21 December 1948, quoted in Zhu, Guomindang zhengquan de zong bengkui, 34. 24. Wasserstrom, Student Protests, 240–241. 25. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, 159. 26. Wasserstrom, Student Protests, 175, 271. Ironically, as Wasserstrom notes, while the Communist Party was in fact stepping up its leadership of urban protest movements, the Western-controlled English-language press in China was taking a more open-minded attitude toward the students, admitting that they had legitimate grievances, revealing the social problems that lay behind the popular discontent, and portraying the student movement as something more than just the result of Communist manipulation: “Instead of accepting official statements attributing all domestic unrest to ‘red’ agents, wire service reporters began to refer to ‘alleged’ Communist conspiracies. They also began to out more emphasis upon the severity of police repression and less upon the ‘lawlessness’ and ‘riotousness’ of the students.” (Wasserstrom, ibid., 271.) 27. Pepper, Civil War in China, 58–68, 70, 158.

318

Notes to Pages 168–172

28. Ibid., 71–72. 29. “A Japanese Looks at China,” December 1948, Records of GHQ Far East, Box 1, 20. 30. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 30 June 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 248–250. 31. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 30 July 1948, quoted in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 277. 32. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 10 June 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 243. 33. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 14 May 1948, in ibid., 228. 34. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 17 July 1948, in ibid., 257. 35. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 9–12; Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 251. 36. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 13. 37. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 19, 20 March 1948. 38. Schaller, The United States and China, 112. 39. Stueck, The Wedemeyer Mission, 117. 40. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 17 May 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 232–233. 41. U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 271. 42. “Major General Yang Chitseng to General Wedemeyer,” 10 June 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 64. 43. “Maddocks to Yang,” 25 June 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 64. 44. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:480. 45. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 9 June 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 241. 46. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 9 June 1948, in ibid., 241–242; J.C.S. 1721/11, 31 July 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 10, 94. 47. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 10 August 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 262. 48. Stuart to Department of State, 10 August 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 4; U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 279. 49. Marshall, 13 August 1948, quoted in Tsou, The American Failure, 2:446. 50. Marshall, 13 August 1948, quoted in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, 280. 51. Quoted in Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 111. The caution of Lin Biao, the Communist theater commander in the Northeast, and the much more aggressive strategy favored by Mao was replicated several years later in the Korean War, when theater commander Peng Dehuai tried (unsuccessfully for the most part) to curb Mao’s enthusiasm for campaigns that were beyond the combat and logistical capabilities of the Chinese People’s Volunteer force. In the Northeast, Mao’s confidence paid off: in Korea, it led to entirely avoidable setbacks and casualties, as described in Zhang, Military Romanticism. I thank an anonymous reader for this observation. 52. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:408; Mao to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou, 7 February 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 457. 53. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 23–24. 54. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:162–163. 55. Lin, Luo, and Liu, 18 April 1948, quoted in Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 111–112. 56. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 24; Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:162–163.



Notes to Pages 173–176319

57. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Gao Gang, Li Fuchun, Liu Yalou, Tan Zheng de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Gao Gang, Li Fuchun, Liu Yalou, and Tan Zheng], 22 April 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 458–459. 58. This will be discussed in more detail in chapter 12 below. 59. “Junwei guanyu da Changchun zuozhan qingkuang xiang Lin Luo de xunwen” [Military Affairs Commission’s questions to Lin and Luo concerning the combat situation at Changchun], 1 June 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian, diyiji, 1, 736–737. 60. “Lin, Luo guanyu Changchun zuozhan qingkuang xiang junwei de baogao” [Lin and Luo’s report to the Military Affairs Commission on the combat situation at Changchun], 1 June 1948, in ibid., 737–739. 61. “Zhu De tongzhi guanyu gongda Changchun wenti xiang Mao zhuxi de baogao” [Comrade Zhu De’s report to Chairman Mao on the question of attacking Changchun], 3 June 1948, in ibid., 739–740. 62. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 26. 63. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 112–113. 64. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronguan, Liu Yalou bing gao dongbeiju de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou copied to the Northeast Bureau], 22 July 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 464–465. 65. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 112. 66. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 27. 67. Ibid., 28; Tan, “Liaoshen zhanyi zhong,” 54. 68. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou bing gao Yang Dezhi, Luo Ruiqing, Ceng Biao de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou copied to Yang Dezhi, Luo Ruiqing, and Ceng Biao], 3 August 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 466; Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 28. 69. “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 12 August 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 468–469. 70. “Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou guanyu nanxia zuozhan yin liangshi deng kunnan shijian nanding zhi zhongyang dian” [Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou to the Central Military Committee on the difficulty of fixing a time to advance southward due to problems including grain], 11 August 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, Liaoshen zhanyi, 88. 71. “Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou guanyu yuding zuozhan jihua zhi zhongyang junwei dian” [Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liui Yalou to the Central Military Committee on setting a plan of battle], 3 September 1948,” in ibid., 97–99. 72. “Zhongyang junwei guanyu qiuji zuozhan zhongdian ying fangzai Wei Lihuang, Fan Hanjie xitong zhi Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou dian” [Central Military Committee to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou on focusing autumn operations on Wei Lihuang and Fan Hanjie’s units], 5 September 1948, in ibid., 100–101. 73. “Huang Kecheng siling zai dongbei junqu houqin huiyi shang de baogao” [Commander Huang Kecheng’s report at the Northeast military district logistics meeting], 10 March 1948, in Bu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 75–76. 74. Li Fuchun, “Dongbei xingshi he women de renwu” [The situation in the Northeast and our tasks], 3 April 1948, in ibid., 118.

320

Notes to Pages 176–180

75. Lin, Luo guanyu jingong huo weikun Changchun fang’an xiang junwei de baogao” [Lin and Luo’s report to the military commission on plans to take the offensive or to lay siege to Changchun], 19 May 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanci guonei geming zhanzheng shiliao xuanbian, disanji, 1, 732–734. 76. Li Fuchun, “Dongbei xingshi he women de renwu” [The current situation in the Northeast and our tasks], 10 March 1948, in Bu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 118. 77. “Huang Kecheng siling zai dongbei junqu houqin huiyi shang de baogao” [Commander Huang Kecheng’s report at the Northeast military district logistics meeting], 10 March 1948, in ibid., 78; Li, “Dongbei xingshi he womende renwu” [The situation in the Northeast and our tasks], 3 April 1948, in ibid., 120. 78. Ibid., 119. 79. Lin, Luo, Tan guanyu jinru xinqu hou chouliang wenti xiang zhongyang junwei de qingshi” [Lin, Luo, and Tan’s request to the Central Military Commission for instructions on collecting grain after entering new areas], 17 August 1948, in Houqin xueyuan, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 6:134–135. 80. “Tan, Luo, Lin guanyu caiqu jieliang banfa jiejue junliang wenti de qishi” [Lin, Luo, and Tan’s request for instructions regarding the methods to be adopted for resolution of the problem of military grain supplies], 9 September 1948, in Bu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 6:135–136; “Guanyu budui jinru xinqu jieliang banfa” [On the methods for units to take when borrowing grain when entering new areas], 21 September 1948, in ibid., 136–137. 81. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 155. 82. Li, “Dongbei xingshi he womende renwu” [The situation in the Northeast and our tasks], 3 April 1948, in Bu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 121. 83. “Huang Kecheng siling zai dongbei junqu houqin huiyi shang de baogao” [Commander Huang Kecheng’s report at the Northeast military district logistics meeting], 10 March 1948, in ibid., 83. 84. Ibid., 88. 85. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houfang qinwu xueyuan, “Liaoshen zhanyi houfang zuzhi,” 10, 23. 86. Lu, “Jifangjun da dao nali huoche jiu kai dao nali”; Zhao and Xu, “Sanlinglingwu ci lieche.” 87. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 244; Tanner, “Railways in Communist Strategy,” 161. 88. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houfang qinwu xueyuan, “Liaoshen zhanyi houfang zuzhi,” 9. 89. “Huang Kecheng siling zai dongbei junqu houqin huiyi shang de baogao” [Commander Huang Kecheng’s report at the Northeast military district logistics meeting], 10 March 1948, in Bu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun houqinshi ziliao xuanbian: jiefang zhanzheng shiqi, 81. 90. Central Intelligence Agency Information Report, “Economic Information: Railroads in Operation in Chinese Communist-Controlled Areas, Manchuria,” 13 July 1948 (document obtained from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration under the Freedom of Information Act); Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 12 March 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7273. 91. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 281.



Notes to Pages 184–190321 10. Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy

1. He and Zhou, “Tingjin Jidong,” 337–345. 2. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronguan, and Liu Yalou], 7 September 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 471–473. 3. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 113. 4. Zhang, Xuebai, 335–337; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 645. 5. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 33–34. 6. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 50–51; Whitson, High Command, 313; He and Zhou, “Tingjin Jidong,” 338, 347. 7. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 114. 8. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 138–140. 9. Rinden, Mukden, to Secretary of State, 14 September 1948, in Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 10. Huang Xizhang (Nationalist officer), radio message, 26 September 1948, Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan, 002-090300-00191-003. 11. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 286; Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:411; Sheng, “Dijiushisanjun,” 81; Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi zhong paobing,” 519; Zhou, Liaoxi huizhan, 49. 12. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:412. 13. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 288–289; Liu, “Wo zai Shenyang kongjun,” 418. 14. Mukden to Secretary of State, 24 September 1948, Department of State Decimal File, Box 7275. Wei Lihuang’s assessment was that Lin’s goal was to capture Jinzhou and Jinxi, isolate Shenyang, and then turn around to attack the Nationalists in North China. Wei Lihuang to Chiang Kai-shek, 27 September 1948, Chiang zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00191-017. 15. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 78. 16. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3492–3493. 17. Ibid., 3493. 18. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2: 992–993. 19. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 2:165; “Luo Ronghuan zhuan” bianxiezu, Luo Ronghuan zhuan, 282. 20. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 136. 21. Zhan and Li, “Bingjian chicheng,” 356–358; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3494. 22. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 29 September 1948, Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:70. 23. Ibid. 24. Zhao, “Yixian zhanyi,” 86; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 115. 25. Ibid. 26. Zhan and Li, “Bingjian chicheng,” 351–356. 27. Zhao, “Yixian zhanyi,” 87–90. 28. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:952. 29. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 62.

322

Notes to Pages 190–196

30. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 285; Zhao, “Yixian zhanyi,” 91. 31. Fan Hanjie to Chiang Kai-shek, 27, 28, and 29 September 1948, Chiang Zhengzhong zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00191-15, 002-090300-00191-021, 002-09030000191-037, 002-090300-00191-040, 002-090300-00191-057. 32. Zhao, “Yixian zhanyi,” 90. 33. Fan Hanjie to Chiang Kai-shek, 1 October 1948, Jiang Zhengzhong zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00191-110. 34. Fan Hanjie to Chiang Kai-shek, 10 October 1948, ibid., 002-090300-00191-196. 35. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1011; Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 92–93. 36. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3495; Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 355–357. 37. Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 357. The first two instances were at Zhangwu and Liaoyuan. 38. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 39; Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 357. 39. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 115. 40. Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 359; Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 175. 41. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 1 September 1948. 42. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 253, 255. 43. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 18, 19 September 1948. 44. Lew, The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 116; Westad, Decisive Encounters, 201. 45. Xiang, Mao’s Generals, 156–158. 46. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 25 September 1948, Reflections on the Week. 47. Ibid., 26 September 1948. 48. Ibid., 29 September 1948. 49. Ibid., 30 September, 1948; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3494. 50. Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 150. 51. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 2, 3 October 1948; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 92; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3495; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 15; Jin, “Jiang Jieshi shi zenyang yingdui,” 13; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 116–117; Westad, Decisive Encounters, 195. 52. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 15. 53. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 154–161. 54. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 387; Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 160. 55. Whitson, High Command, 314; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 120; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 58. 56. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 4 October 1948. 57. General Barr, quoted in U.S. State Department, The China White Paper, 333. 58. “Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou zhi zhongyang junwei dian” [Lin, Luo, and Liu to Central Military Commission], 26 September 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 499n23. 59. “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 27 September 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 473–474. 60. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:999; Lin, Luo, and Liu to Center, 28 September 1948, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:69n1; Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 37.



Notes to Pages 196–203323

61. Mao Zedong, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 29 September 1948, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:70. 62. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 32–33. 63. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1008–1011. 64. Ibid.,1012, 1014; Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 33. 65. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 115. 66. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 40–43; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1012–1013; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 116. 67. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 116. 68. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 45. 69. Mao Zedong, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou binggao dongbeiju de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou, copies to the Northeast Bureau], 3 October 1948, 1700 hours, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:70–71. 70. Ibid. 71. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 116; Zhenzhong riji, xia, 1014 (3 October 1948). 72. Mao Zedong, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou binggao dongbeiju de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou, copied to the Northeast Bureau], 4 October 1948, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen juezhan, 1:72–73. 73. Mao Zedong, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou binggao dongbeiju de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou, copied to the Northeast Bureau], 4 October 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 478–479. 74. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:163. 75. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 194. 76. Mao Zedong, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 5 October 1948, in Zhonggong zhongyang, Liaoshen dajuezhan, 1:73–74. 77. Ibid. 11. Close the Door and Beat the Dog 1. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 117, 121, 124; Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 54–55; personal observation during a visit to Tashan, July 2012. 2. This division of the Battle of Tashan into three stages is taken from Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 56. 3. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 124. 4. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 143; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 124. 5. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishiyijun disanci guonei geming, 141–143. 6. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 55–56. 7. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair), 117–120. 8. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 120; Chen, “Ma Liang zhuan.” 9. Whitson, High Command, 314; conversation with personnel from the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall, July 2012. 10. Quoted in Hui, “Jiang jun zai Huludao zuozhan ceji,” 283.

324

Notes to Pages 203–209

11. Quoted in Fan, “Jinzhou zhanyi,” 68. 12. Fan, “Jinzhou zhanyi,” 67. 13. Peng, “Wei Lihuang,” 49; Lin, “Tashan zhanyi jiyao,” 228. 14. Mo, “Yingxiong Tashan,” 36; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 69. 15. Mo, “Yingxiong Tashan,” 368–369. 16. Lin, “Tashan zhanyi,” 227. 17. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 128–129; Shi, “Diwushisijun zai Tashan,” 254. 18. Wu, “Jinzhou zhanyi Tashan zuyuan zhandou,” 16–18. 19. Shi, “Diwushisijun zai Tashan,” 243. 20. Hou, “Di shiqi bingtuan,” 218–219. Note: verbatim quotes reproduced in memoirs such as this are unlikely to be accurate: we should regard them as reflective of the positions taken at the time, rather than precise records of remarks made. 21. Ibid. 22. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3500–3501. 23. Hou Jingru, 10 October, 1948, quoted in Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 151. 24. Mo, “Yingxiong Tashan,” 376; Lin, “Tashan zhanyi,” 229; Hou, “Di shiqi bingtuan,” 220; Peng, “Wei Lihuang,” 51; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 126. 25. Mo, “Yingxiong Tashan,” 377–378; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, shang, 72. 26. Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 151. 27. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3502. 28. Lin, “Tashan zhanyi,” 230. 29. Hou, “Di shiqi bingtuan,” 222. 30. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 126; Wu, “Jinzhou zhanyi Tashan zuyuan zhandou,” 3. 31. Quoted in Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 17. 32. Fan Hanjie to Chiang Kai-shek, 10 and 11 October 1948, Jiang Zhengzhong zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00191-237, 002-090300-00191-240, 002-090300-00191-252. 33. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 295. 34. Jinzhou municipal government, “Wei Jinzhoushi ge zhongxuexiao zaixiao liuwang xuesheng mujuan qingyu beian” [Memorandum on request for contributions for refugee students at Jinzhou’s middle schools], Jinzhou Archives, 88.1.84, doc. # 2. 35. I thank Dr. Li Chen of Renmin University for sharing his insights into the state of the Nationalist armies and for urging me to pay more attention to the distinctions between stronger and weaker Nationalist forces. 36. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 386. 37. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 115. 38. Ibid., 116. 39. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:166. 40. Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 519; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 119. 41. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 119; Su, “Liaoshen zhanyi,” 520. A Nationalist source claims that the attack involved a five-hour artillery barrage by five hundred Communist guns. (Li, Dongbei kanluan, 83.) See also Sheng, “Dijiushisanjun,” 83. 42. Xue, “Huowang xia,” 389–395. 43. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 120. 44. Tao, “Erzong shiliutuan ‘Jinzhou zhandou,’” 1.



Notes to Pages 209–216325

45. Yan, “Weile duoqu,” 333. 46. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1030. 47. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 119. 48. Ibid. 49. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, xia, 1036. 50. “Zhongyang junwei guanyu jinkuai gongke Jinzhou zhi Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou dian” [Central Military Committee telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou on capturing Jinzhou as quickly as possible], 10 October 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu, Liaoshen zhanyi, 171–172. 51. Cai, “Dadi tieliu,” 12. 52. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 121; Leng and Liu, “Bazongdui ‘tingjin Jinzhou.’” 53. Li Ruhe to Chiang Kai-shek, Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00192-099. 54. Westad, Decisive Encounters, 196. 55. Luo and Xu to Chiang Kai-shek, 14 October 1948, Jiang Zhengzhong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00192-099. 56. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 298. 57. Huang, “Jinzhou zhanyi,” 130. 58. Zhan and Li, “Bingjian chicheng,” 363. 59. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 121–122. 60. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishisijun silingbu, Disishisijun jiefang zhanzheng shi, 92; Leng and Liu, “Bazongdui ‘tingjin Jinzhou,’” 1. Note: the official Nationalist history of the civil war describes the Communist troops as having used a “human wave advantage” to overwhelm their defenses at Jinzhou. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 66. It is quite possible that both varieties of tactical behavior were used. 61. “Liuzong shiqi shi tingjin dixinzang.” 62. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1036. 63. Wu, “Liaoshen da juezhan,” 34. 64. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1039. Han Xianchu puts the number of defenders in the old city at 15,000–16,000 men. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 123. 65. He, “Jinzhou zhanyi,” 109. 66. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disanshijiujun disanci guonei geming, 65; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishisijun silingbu, Disishisijun jiefang zhanzheng shi, 87; Cai, “Dadi tieliu,” 13; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 123. 67. Li Ruhe to Chiang Kai-shek, 24 October 1948, Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00192-099. 68. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:415–416. 69. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 299; Gui, “Fan Hanjie,” 118. 70. Xia, “Yizong ershi huozhuo Fan Hanjie.” 71. Ibid.; Fan, “Jinzhou zhanyi,” 70. 72. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 15 October 1948. 73. Ward, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking, 16 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10. 74. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 17 October 1948. 75. Lin, “Tashan zhanyi,” 232. The literal translation of Chiang’s insult would be “you’re a locust,” with the word for locust (huangchong) being a pun on the word for Whampoa (Huangpu).

326

Notes to Pages 216–224

76. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 17 October 1948. 77. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3504. 12. Putting Changchun under Siege 1. For descriptions of sieges and siege technology, see Sawyer, Fire and Water. 2. Tanner, China: A History, 254. 3. Ibid., 344. 4. Shang, “Changchun kunshou,” 347; Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 13. Estimates of civilian deaths at Changchun vary considerably. Liu Tong suggests that the city had a total population of around 400,000 at the start of the siege, including 100,000 soldiers and military dependents, and that civilian deaths amounted to 120,000 (Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 631, 641). Zhang Zhenglong estimates the civilian population alone at around 500,000 (noting that estimates range from 400,000 to 600,000), with the population at the end of the siege standing at around 170,000—a loss of some 330,000, including both dead and refugees. (Zhang, Xuebai, 467. Zhang points out that the number of civilian dead at Changchun was roughly equal to the number of casualties at Hiroshima.) For similar figures, see Zhou, Liaoxi huizhan, 153. 5. Descriptions of the siege of Changchun appear in Zhang, Xuebai, 439–486, and in Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 629–642. Zhang’s account is highly critical of the PLA and thus helped to make his book very controversial in China; Liu’s description, while similar to that of Zhang, concludes by placing the blame for civilian casualties on the shoulders of the Kuomintang commanders. Liu’s book thus did not elicit the same level of controversy as Zhang’s work, and accordingly did not attract the attention of Western journalists in the way that Zhang’s book did. 6. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 129. 7. Buck, “Railway City and National Capital,” 65. The following description of Changchun draws on Buck except as otherwise noted. 8. Ibid., 76. 9. Ibid., 74–87; Zhang, Xuebai, 467. 10. Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 111, 115, 155–162. 11. Ibid., 27–33. It should be noted that this description of popular enthusiasm for the Nationalist New First Army appears in a book published in the People’s Republic of China. 12. Ibid., 98. 13. S. Sakamura, “Political Conditions in Changchun at the time of the closing of the American Consulate General (beginning of February 1948),” Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10. The following description of conditions in Changchun draws on Sakamura’s report except as otherwise noted. 14. Zhang, Xuebai, 440. 15. Sakamura, “Political Conditions in Changchun at the time of the closing of the American Consulate General (beginning of February 1948).” 16. Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 183. 17. Shi, “Xinbian diqijun zai Changchun,” 320–321; Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 60. 18. Ren, “Diliushijun Changchun qiyi,” 293; Eastman, “Nationalist China,” 607–608. 19. Zhang and Zhang, “Changchun qiyi qianhou,” 298. 20. Ibid., 299. 21. Chiang Diaries, Box 46, 11 June 1947. 22. Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 95–96.



Notes to Pages 225–229327

23. Long, “Jilin chetui,” 285. 24. Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 347–348. 25. Long, “Jilin chetui,” 286; Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 347–348; Zhang and Zhang, “Changchun qiyi qianhou,” 305–306; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 40; Li, “Dongbei kanluan, 309. 26. Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 349; Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 266. 27. Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 267; Long, “Changchun jiefang jingguo,” 328. 28. Li, Dongbei kanluan, 309. 29. “American Consulate General Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 30. Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 267. 31. Zhang, Xuebai, 467; “Xiao Hua tongzhi zai weicheng zhenggong hui shang guanyu weikun fengsuo Changchun de zhengzhi gongzuo baogao tigang” [Outline of comrade Xiao Hua’s report on political work in the blockade and siege of Changchun at the meeting on siege political work] (28 June 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 25. 32. Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 350. 33. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 406. 34. Yuan, “Dishier zongdui,” 488. 35. Ibid., 490. 36. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 406–407. Xiao writes that months later when the Liao-Shen Campaign was over, Zheng Dongguo asked him, “Why’d you blow up the airport?” Xiao responded: “Do you really have to ask?” 37. Editors’ note, Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:789; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun bubing disanshibajun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun bubing disanshibajun disanci guonei geming, 83. 38. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:767; Yuan, “Dishier zongdui,” 491. 39. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:773. 40. Quoted in Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 87. 41. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 412. 42. Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 25; Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou] 3 June 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 462; ibid., 496–497n13. 43. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 7 June 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 462–464. 44. Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 496n12; Tan, “Wode huiyi,” 25; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun bubing disanshibajun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun bubing disanshibajun disanci guonei geming, 83. 45. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:790. 46. Ibid., 792. 47. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 407. 48. Xiao, “Changchun Jiefang,” 408–409; Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 10. 49. Zhang, Xuebai, 442; Fei, “Changchun weikun,” 10. 50. Zhang, Xuebai, 441–442; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 410. 51. Long, “Changchun jiefang,” 330; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 408.

328

Notes to Pages 230–234

52. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:780 (6, 7 June 1948). 53. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 409. 54. Ibid., 415. 55. Ibid., 415–416; Zhang, Xuebai, 445–446; Zhou, Liaoxi huizhan, 154. 56. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 409. 57. “Weicheng zhong de jige wenti: Tang Tianji tongzhi zai weicheng budui gaogan huiyi shang de baogao” [A few questions related to the siege: Comrade Tang Tianji’s report at a meeting of high-ranking cadres of the siege forces] (17 August 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 30. 58. Yuan, “Dishier zongdui,” 493; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:785. 59. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 11; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:700. 60. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 134. 61. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3476. 62. Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 268. 63. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—disice, 127; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3495–3496. 64. “American Consulate, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 65. Quoted in Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 219. 66. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 11–12; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 413. 67. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3465. 68. Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 356. 69. “American Consulate General, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275; Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 12. 70. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 11. 71. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:795. 72. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 73. “Xiao Hua tongzhi zai weicheng zhenggong hui shang guanyu weikun fengshuo Changchun de zhengzhi gongzuo baogao tigang” [Outline of comrade Xiao Hua’s report on political work in the blockade and siege of Changchun at the meeting on siege political work] (28 June 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 25. 74. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 75. “Xiao Hua tongzhi zai weicheng zhenggong hui shang guanyu weikun fengshuo Changchun de zhengzhi gongzuo baogao tigang” [Outline of comrade Xiao Hua’s report on political work in the blockade and siege of Changchun at the meeting on siege political work] (28 June 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 25; Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 76. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 12; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:799. 77. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 412; Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 12; Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 78. “Weicheng zhong de jige wenti,” 31. 79. Jilin shengwei, “Guanyu dui Changchun waiwei qiushou douzheng” [Directive regarding the struggle for the autumn harvest on the perimeter of Changchun], 14



Notes to Pages 237–243329

September 1948, in Changchun shiwei, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 20–21; Zhang, Xuebai, 443; Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 13. 13. Death, Treason, and Surrender in the Garden City 1. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 413; Fei, “Weikun Changchun,” 14; Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 212. 2. Shi, “Xinbian diqijun zai Changchun,” 322–323; Shang, “Changchun kunshou,” 351. 3. Long, “Changchun jiefang,” 330; Li, Dongbei kanluan, 308. 4. Zhang, Xuebai, 443, 472–475; Liu, Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng, 634–635; Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 97–98. 5. “Erzong shiliu tuan ‘lianhaobing,’” 1. 6. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:804. 7. “Xiao Hua tongzhi zai weicheng zhenggong hui shang guanyu weikun fengsuo Changchun de zhengzhi gongzuo baogao tigang” [Outline of comrade Xiao Hua’s report on political work in the blockade and siege of Changchun at the meeting on siege political work] (28 June 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 25. 8. Quoted in Zhang, Xuebai, 482. 9. Luo Ronghuan zhuan bianxiezu, Luo Ronghuan, 273. 10. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:775. 11. Ibid., 779. 12. Ibid., 812; Xiao Hua, quoted in Zhang, Xuebai, 468. 13. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 14. Quoted in Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 220. 15. “American Consulate, Mukden to American Ambassador, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 16. Zhang, Xuebai, 479. 17. Ibid., 476–481. 18. “American Consulate, Mukden to American Ambassador, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 19. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3476. 20. “Weicheng zhong de jige wenti: Tang Tianji tongzhi zai weicheng budui gaogan huiyi shang de baogao” [A few questions related to the siege: Comrade Tang Tianji’s report at a meeting of high-ranking cadres of the siege forces] (17 August 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 30–31. 21. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” See also Zhang, Xuebai, 469. 22. Ibid. 23. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 24. “Weicheng zhong de jige wenti: Tang Tianji tongzhi zai weicheng budui gaogan huiyi shang de baogao” [A few questions related to the siege: Comrade Tang Tianji’s report at a meeting of high-ranking cadres of the siege forces] (17 August 1948), in Changchun shiwei ziliaoshi, Zhonggong Changchun diqu, 31. 25. “American Consulate General, Mukden, to American Embassy, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 26. Fei, “Weikun Changchun,” 13. 27. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 414. 28. Luo, “Guanyu weikun Changchun.” 29. “Erzong shiliutuan ‘lianhaobing.’” 1.

330

Notes to Pages 243–246

30. Zhang and Zhang, “Changchun qiyi qianhou,” 307. 31. Zhang, Xuebai, 476. 32. Ibid.; “American Consulate General, Mukden, to American Ambassador, Nanking, 23 September 1948,” Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 33. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:903; Fei, “Weikun Changchun,” 14; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 413; Ren, “Diliushijun Changchun qiyi,” 294. 34. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 15. 35. Zhou, Liaoxi huizhan, 144. 36. Fei, “Changchun weikunzhan,” 14 37. Ibid., 15; Shi, “Xinbian diqijun zai Changchun,” 323; Zhang, Xuebai, 444. 38. Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Tan Zheng, “Guanyu weikun Changchun de baogao,” 9 September 1948, in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zong zhengzhibu lianluobu, Dijun gongzuo shiliao diwuce, 118. 39. Ibid. 40. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 417. 41. Zhang, Xuebai, 447; Li, “Changchun qiyi jiyao,” 314. 42. Li, “Changchun qiyi jiyao,” 311. 43. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 417. 44. Li, “Changchun qiyi,” 313. 45. Zeng, “Changchun qiyi,” 273. 46. Ibid., 277. 47. “Mukden to Secretary of State,” 13 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. Note: Due to the difference in time zones, it is possible that this report was sent on 14 October from Shenyang. 48. Zeng, “Changchun qiyi jishi” (version 1), 428. 49. Li Keyan, Xiao Shuyao (Changchun inspection officers) to Chiang, 4 October 1948, Jiang zongtong wenwu—yiban ziliao—chengbiaohuiji (yiyijiu), Guoshiguan 002000001934A. 50. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3499. 51. Wei Lihuang to Chiang Kai-shek, 12 October 1948, Jiang Zhengzhong zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-090300-00191-299. 52. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 16 October 1948; Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3503–3504. 53. Han Xianchu, at the time a commander of Communist forces in the Northeast, suggests in his memoir that Chiang’s ordering Zheng Dongguo to break out of Changchun was no more than a cynical, self-serving game. By 15 October, it should have been evident to all concerned, including Chiang, that the KMT troops in Changchun did not have the strength to break out. By ordering them to do so, Chiang was merely placing the responsibility for defeat on the shoulders of Zheng Dongguo. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 128. 54. Zheng, “Kunshou gucheng,” 269–270; Long, “Changchun jiefang,” 331. American intelligence reports at the time noted that the fall rains had been heavy and that the roads out of Changchun were so muddy and rutted that it would be impossible for Zheng’s forces to move their heavy American equipment south even if they had succeeded in breaking through the Communist lines. “Ward to American Ambassador Nanking, ‘Survey of Government and Communist Capabilities in the Northeast,’” 18 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 55. Zeng, “Changchun qiyi jishi” (version 1), 429–431.



Notes to Pages 247–254331

56. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 417. 57. Zeng, “Changchun qiyi jishi” (version 1), 431–433; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 419; Ren, “Diliushijun Changchun qiyi,” 296; Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 362. 58. Li, “Changchun qiyi jiyao,” 317. 59. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 19 October 1948. 60. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 421; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 128; Long, “Changchun jiefang,” 335; Sheng, “Changchun kunshou,” 363. 61. Zhang and Wang, 1948 Changchun, 93. 62. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 421; Shi, “Xinbian diqijun zai Changchun,” 325–326. 63. Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 421–422. 64. Ibid.; Zhang, Xuebai, 453; Long, “Changchun jiefang,” 355. 65. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3506. 66. Quoted in Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 129; Xiao, “Jiefang Changchun,” 422. 67. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3510. 14. Avalanche of Defeat 1. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 5, 15 October 1948. 2. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1. 3. Ibid., 3505. 4. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 5, 15 October 1948. The Communists actively contributed to this misreading through their troop movements and through deliberate misinformation: they had captured a Nationalist spy ring in Harbin and were using their radio transmitter to send false intelligence reports, including a report to the effect that two Communist columns were heading toward Shanhaiguan. Zhen, “Liaoshen zhanyi zhong de dianzi qingbaozhan,” 69. 5. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 28. 6. “Yizong ershi ‘Liaoxi zhuiji zhandou,’” 1. 7. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 78. 8. Ibid., 79; Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 5, 15 October 1948. 9. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 75; Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 149. 10. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 83. 11. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 145. 12. Ibid. 13. Zhao, “Shenyang jiefang,” 370. 14. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun disishierjun disanci guonei geming, 64–66; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 87; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 148. 15. Xiao, “Weijian Liao Yaoxiang,” 465. 16. Ibid., 464; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 120–121. 17. Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 482–483. 18. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3503. 19. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 150. 20. Ibid. 21. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 92; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 152; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 18. 22. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 153–154; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 19.

332

Notes to Pages 255–260

23. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 93. 24. Ibid. 25. Report filed by Zhou Xinghuan, 19 November 1948, in Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-080200-00545-108. 26. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3505; Xiao, “Weijian Liao yaoxiang,” 468; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 22. 27. Ibid. 28. For a critique of the argument that Marshall’s mediation mission torpedoed Chiang’s chances of victory over the Chinese Communist Party, see Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria. 29. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 94. Chiang’s biographer Jay Taylor suggests that at this point, Chiang realized that Liao could not capture Jinzhou, and thus approved the plan to retreat to Yingkou. Taylor underestimates the complexity of the situation, Chiang’s determination, and his intense frustration with Wei and Du. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 389; Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 5, 20, 21, 22 October. 30. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 23, 38. 31. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 156. 32. Zhang, Mao Zedong junshi nianpu, 680. 33. Xiao, “Weijian Liao Yaoxiang,” 468. 34. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 96; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 130. 35. Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:418. 36. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 130; Xiao, “Weijian Liao yaoxiang,” 469. 37. Liang, “Heishan,” 440. 38. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 156; Liang, “Heishan,” 441. 39. Liang, “Heishan,” 441. 40. Lü, “Dongbei funü zai gonggu he jianshe dongbei,” 51; Liang, “Heishan,” 443; He, “Heishan zujizhan,” 3. 41. Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan to all column commanders, 23 October 1948, quoted in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxian (neibuben), 322–323. 42. Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 1:168. 43. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 98. The news that Changchun had fallen contributed to Liao’s decision. Note: Liao’s memoir puts this decision on the evening of 23 October. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 157. The one-day discrepancy in dates may be due to an error of memory on Liao’s part. 44. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 98; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 158. 45. Liang, “Heishan,” 449–457; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 131; Chen, “Xinbian diyijun,” 189; Whitson, High Command, 315, 318. 46. Tan, “Wode huiyi, 67. 47. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 35. 48. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 100; Liao did not discover this until 25 October. Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 159. 49. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 100. 50. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 35; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 160–161; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 100. The latter source places these events on 25 October. 51. Ibid., 100–101.



Notes to Pages 260–264333

52. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 35. 53. Report filed by Zhou Xinghuan, 19 November 1948, Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu, Guoshiguan 002-080200-00545-108. 54. Chen, “Xinbian diyijun,” 194. 55. Hu, “Diqishijun Liaoxi zuozhan,” 212; Xiao, “Weijian Liao Yaoxiang,” 471–473. 56. Xiao, “Weijian Liao Yaoxiang,” 472–473; Chen, “Xinbian diyijun,” 194. 57. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1058. 58. Whitson, High Command, 318. Given the one-day discrepancy in so many of the dates that appear in different accounts of these events, it is possible that this occurred on the 27th, rather than on the 28th. 59. Liu, “Zhidao Shenyang,” 2. 60. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 102–103; Yang, “Liaoxi zhanyi bushu,” 171; Liao, “Liaoxi zhanyi,” 165–167. 61. “Huozhuo Liao Yaoxiang.” 62. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 28 October 1948, in Rea and Brewer, The Forgotten Ambassador, 279. 63. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3510. 64. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, 31 October 1948, Reflections on the Week. 65. Ibid. 66. Ward, Mukden, to American Embassy, Nanking, 27 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10. 67. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 104. 68. Cheng, “Peihe zhuli,” 475–479. 69. Ibid., 479–483; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1053; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 136. 70. Whitson, High Command, 318; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 105. 71. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 389. 72. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 5, 22, 23 October. 73. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:797, 805. 74. Cheng, “Peihe zhuli,” 476. 75. Stuart to Secretary of State, 2 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10. 76. Xu, “Shenyang jiefang,” 397. Zhang Xueliang himself, of course, had been under house arrest since the Xi’an Incident of 1936. One of Zhang’s brothers, Zhang Xuesi, was working with the Chinese Communist Party. 77. Hu, “Huigu Shenyang,” 437–438; Wang, “Zai Shenyang yunniang,” 383, 384, 387; Zhao, “Shenyang jiefang jianshu,” 368. 78. Qin and Wang, “Congshi Shenyang jiefang,” 423. 79. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 136. 80. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1057, 1058, 1059; Wu, Suiyue jiannan, 1:420; Yuan, “Dishier zongdui,” 498. 81. Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 136. 82. Liu, “Zhidao Shenyang,” 1. 83. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 105. 84. Qin and Wang, “Congshi Shenyang jiefang,” 430–432. 85. Mukden to Secretary of State, 30 October 1948, Department of State, Decimal, Box 7275. 86. Qin, Zongtong Jiang gong, vol. 7, pt. 1, 3517.

334

Notes to Pages 264–270

87. Hu, “Huigu Shenyang,” 441. The plot never got beyond the discussion stage. 88. Ibid., 442; Ward, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking, 31 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10. 89. Zhou Fucheng to Chiang Kai-shek, 31 October 1948, in Jiang Zongtong wenwu, wuzhuang panguo (yiliujiu), Guoshiguan 002000002446A. 90. Xu, “Shenyang jiefang,” 397. 91. Liu, “Liaoshen zhanyi de shoubei,” 377; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1061; Wang, “Zai Shenyang yunniang,” 390; Xu, “Shenyang jiefang,” 397; Zhao, “Shenyang jiefang,” 372–373. 92. Cheng, “Peihe zhuli,” 483; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1063. 93. Liu, “Zhidao Shenyang,” 4. 94. Ibid., 6. 95. Wang, “Zai Shenyang yunniang,” 391; Yuan, “Di shier zongdui,” 501. 96. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1064. 97. Zhang and Liao, “JiReLiao bianqu,” 454. 98. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 74. 99. Hou, “Dishiqi bingtuan,” 223; Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 31–32. 100. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 57; Han, “Dongbei zhanchang,” 135. 101. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 57. A Nationalist account places this attack on 28 October. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 74. 102. Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1059; Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun silingbu, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun diwushiwujun disanci guonei geming, 58; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 74. 103. Lin, “Tashan zhanyi,” 234–235. The “four big families” were Chiang Kai-shek’s own family and the extended families of his close associates T. V. Soong, H. H. Kung, and the Chen brothers, Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu. 104. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 752, 119. 105. Du, “Liaoshen zhanyi gaishu,” 36. 106. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao” [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 19 October, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 488; see also the telegrams in ibid., 489, 487; Li, “Yingkou zhuijizhan,” 5. 107. Wu, “Liaoshen dajuezhan,” 35; Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 116. 108. Ibid., 129. 109. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 25 October 1948, in Mao, Mao Zedong junshi wenxuan (neibuben), 492. 110. Mao, “Gei Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, Liu Yalou de dianbao [Telegram to Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan, and Liu Yalou], 27 October 1948, in ibid., 493. 111. Li, “Yingkou zhuijizhan,” 2; Qiu, Qiu Huizuo huiyilu, 170–171. 112. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 117–118, 130. 113. Ibid., 118; Liao, “Diwushierjun Yingkou,” 451. 114. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 118–119. Communist sources claim that the fire was the result of a Communist artillery round; Nationalist



Notes to Pages 270–277335

memoirs (published in China) say that the ship had previously been used to transport drums of gasoline and that candles set fire to spilt gasoline below decks. See Zhonggong Zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1064; Li, “Yingkou zhuijizhan,” 509; Liao, “Diwushierjun Yingkou,” 451–452. 115. Li, “Yingkou zhuijizhan,” 509; Liao, “Diwushierjun Yingkou,” 452; Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliaoshi, Zhenzhong riji, 2:1064. 116. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 119–120; Zhang and Liao, “JiReLiao bianqu,” 455. 117. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 120, 122, 132–133. 118. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 389. 119. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu kanluan—sice, 123, 133. 15. Assessing and Remembering 1. Such simplifications are, of course, not unique to Chinese historical museums, as can be attested by the controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution or by a visit to any of the museums attached to various American presidential libraries. 2. I do not mean to imply that factional struggle within the Communist Party ended in the 1980s. But then, it was pretty clear who had won—and from the 1990s onward, the individuals whose reputations and thus careers were closely tied to the events of the Chinese Civil War were retiring and passing from the stage. Thus, historical controversies about those events were no longer as important as they had been in previous decades. 3. Sanjun daxue, Guomin gemingjun zhanyishi diwubu—kanluan, dijiuce, 4–5. 70, 77, 79; Cheng, “Guo Gong neizhan,” 80, 83. 4. Chiang Diaries, Box 47, Folder 7, 3, 4 November 1948. 5. Ibid., 3 November 1948. 6. Quoted in Pakula, The Last Empress, 565. 7. Truman, in Miller, Plain Speaking, 288. 8. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 13. 9. Pakula, The Last Empress, 566. 10. W. S. Youngman to T. V. Soong, 7 December 1948, T. V. Soong Papers, Reel 23, Folder no. 7. 11. Ward, Mukden to American Embassy, Nanking, 14 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 10; Ward to American Ambassador, “Survey of Government and Communist Capabilities in the Northeast,” 18 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 12. “Report of D. Worth Clark, Consultant to Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Senate, on Financial, Economic and Military Conditions in China and Recommendations Concerning Future Aid,” Lockett papers, Box 1. The Lockett Mission recommended all-out support for Chiang’s regime, including immediate, direct military aid, combat advice (including strategic and tactical authority), financial support for China’s military operations, financial aid to stabilize China’s economy, and strict American supervision of expenditures under any loan agreements made with China. 13. “Views of General Pai-Chung-hsi on China Crisis,” 2 November 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 59, 1. 14. Stuart to the Secretary of State, 26 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 9. 15. “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Forces and the Chinese National Government Forces,” Intelligence Research Project, Project 3813, 15 August 1947, 2, Wedemeyer Papers, Box 095; Ward, Mukden to Secretary of State, 14 January 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 727.

336

Notes to Pages 277–280

16. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 246. 17. “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Forces and the Chinese National Government Forces,” Intelligence Research Project, Project 3813, 15 August 1947, 2, Wedemeyer Papers, Box 095; Ward, Mukden, to Secretary of State, 14 January 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7272; Stuart, Nanking to Secretary of State, 7 June 1947, Department of State Decimal, Box 7270. 18. Ward to the American Ambassador, Nanking, “Survey of Government and Communist Capabilities in the Northeast,” 18 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275; Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:483; Department of State, The China White Paper, 288. 19. Memorandum from JUSMAG, Nanking, agd Barr to Dep’t of the Army for Wedemeyer, Army Intelligence File, Box 65. 20. Sun Liren to Albert Wedemeyer, 15 October 1949, in Wedemeyer Papers, Box 103. Li Chen, a historian at Renmin University in Beijing, observes that historians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree that the Nationalist forces at Huludao and Shenyang had the supplies that they needed to conduct the ambitious operations that Chiang Kai-shek planned for the West-Advancing and East-Advancing Armies. Li concludes: “Limitations on supply were not a primary factor in the Nationalist defeat in Manchuria.” Li, “From Burma Road to 38th Parallel,” 135–136. 21. Ward to the American Ambassador, Nanking, “Survey of Government and Communist Capabilities in the Northeast,” 18 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275; Mukden to Secretary of State, 13 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. 22. Tsou, America’s Failure, 2:482–483. 23. “A report to the National Security Council by the Department of State on United States Policy Toward China,” 13 October 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 65. 24. Albert Wedemeyer, “Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army,” 15 December 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 10. See also “Memorandum for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Combat Operations,” 31 December 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 9; Omar N. Bradley, “Memorandum for Secretary of Defense,” 3 November 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 65; “Decision on J.C.S. 1721/17, Enclosure A: Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense,” 16 December 1948, Plans and Operations, Box 10. 25. Stuart to Secretary of State, 26 October 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 9. 26. Omar N. Bradley, “Memorandum for Secretary of Defense,” 3 November 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 65; “Letter from A. C. Wedemeyer to the Secretary of State,” 29 July 1947, Plans and Operations, Box 9. 27. Stuart, Nanking, to Secretary of State, 24 November 1948, Foreign Service, Nanking, Box 6. 28. “Possible Developments in China: Summary,” 3 November 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 9. 29. “A Report to the National Security Council by the Department of State on United States Policy toward China,” 13 October 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 65. 30. “Possible Developments in China: Summary,” 3 November 1948, RG 319, Box 9, 11; “A Report to the National Security Council by the Department of State on United States Policy Toward China,” 13 October 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 65; “Memorandum for General Wedemeyer,” 18 November 1948, Army Intelligence File, Box 9. 31. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 16–17. 32. Leighton Stuart to Secretary of State, “Recent Political and Military Developments in China,” 14 October 1948, Department of State Decimal, Box 7275. Douglas J. Macdonald



Notes to Pages 280–289337

points out that in their dealings with Chiang Kai-shek and his government, the Americans faced a classic dilemma: force a weak and morally questionable ally to carry out reforms by attaching uncompromising conditions to aid, or bolster the regime first and worry about reform later. In the early 1960s, the United States faced a similar choice when dealing with the Diem regime and its successors in South Vietnam. In both cases, Americans failed to resolve the dilemma and ultimately pursued a third option: withdrawal. See Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos. 33. See Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria. 34. “Minutes of Meeting with General Chen Cheng, 6 August 1947, Mukden,” Wedemeyer papers, Box 096. 35. Li Zongren, who took Chiang’s place as president in January 1949, released Wei in April of that year. Wei retired to Hong Kong, but returned to China in 1955, living in Beijing until his death of heart disease in 1960. Boorman et al., Biographical Dictionary, 405–406. 36. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 301. 37. Wu, Da cefan, 2:4, 10, 13. 38. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 302. Chang and Halliday also exaggerate when they claim (on 301) that Wei Lihuang withdrew from various positions, thus giving the Communists 90 percent of the Northeast. This is simply impossible, as Wei never controlled anywhere near 90 percent of the Northeast to begin with. In his biography of Chiang Kai-shek, Jay Taylor similarly considers it “likely” that Wei was in cahoots with the Communists, but he offers no evidence (Taylor, The Generalissimo, 389–390). 39. Wu, Da cefan, 2:14. 40. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair), 85. 41. Kissinger, On China, 23–24. Kissinger takes this model from Lai, Learning from the Stones. 42. Sunzi, The Art of War (trans. Mair), 92. 43. Whitson, The Chinese High Command, 315. 44. Rigg, Red China’s Fighting Hordes, 28. 45. Lin, Lin Biao Junshi lunwen xuanji ziliao. 46. For example, see Lin, “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!,” 3 September 1965. 47. We can contrast this to the troubled relationships between Chiang Kai-shek and some of his commanders, particularly Wei Lihuang, which led not to victory, but to defeat. 48. Mao, “Diao Luo Ronghuan tongzhi.” 49. Jin, The Culture of Power, 78–79; Teiwes and Sun, The Tragedy of Lin Biao, xi, 79. 50. This was allegedly Lin’s observation regarding the Lüshan Plenum, at which Peng Dehuai was criticized and relieved of his position as minister of defense—a post that Lin then took over. Teiwes and Sun, The Tragedy of Lin Biao, 18. If Lin was indeed simply saying whatever had to be said in order to survive, he apparently did so without reserve: he voiced strong criticisms of Peng Dehuai at the Lüshan Plenum and took the lead of post-Lüshan struggle sessions against Peng and against Huang Kecheng, who had fought under Lin’s command in the Northeast. Yang, Tombstone, 376–377. 51. Jin, The Culture of Power, 135, 195–196. 52. “Dadao Liu Shaoqi,” 8. 53. Ke, Pipan Lin Biao. 54. “Chen Yun tongzhi yu Xiao Hua tongzhi,” 2–4, 8. See also Chen, “Dui bianxie ‘Liaoshen juezhan’ yishu de yijian.” 55. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun bayi dianying, Da juezhan: Diyibu, Liaoshen zhanyi.

338

Notes to Pages 289–292

56. Li, “Huang Kecheng mianshi women lishedi shuxie Lin Biao.” 57. Units also entered through two other passes, Lengkou and Xifengkou. Ding et al., Dongbei jiefang zhanzheng dashiji, 223. 58. On the poor treatment of PLA veterans see Diamant, Embattled Glory.

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Archival Sources National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland Army Intelligence File

Army Intelligence File, Record Group 319

Chinese Affairs

General Records of the Division of Chinese Affairs, Subject File, 1944–47. Record Group 59.

Dept. of State Decimal

General Records of the Department of State, Decimal File, 1945–49. Record Group 59.

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General Records of the Division of Chinese Affairs, Subject File, 1945–47. Record Group 59.

Foreign Service, Mukden

Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State; China; Mukden Consulate General, General Records, 1936–48. Record Group 84.

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Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State; China; U.S. Embassy, Nanking; Classified General Records, 1948. Record Group 84.

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Records of General Headquarters, Far East Command, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers and United Nations Command Intelligence Reports, 1946–50. Record Group 554.

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Records of Interactive Services Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of China ( JUSMAG China). Record Group 334.

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General Records of the Department of State, Marshall Mission Records, 1944–48. Record Group 59.

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Foreign Relations of the United States. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, various volumes and years.

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Academia Historica (Guoshiguan), Taibei, Taiwan.

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Index

Italicized page numbers refer to illustrations. Acheson, Dean, 12, 13, 15, 83, 280 advance in the north, defend in the south strategy, 31 Americans: question of responsibility for Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat, 12, 14, 110, 255, 278–280; racist attitudes of, 37, 49, 169 Andong, 34, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 56, 88 Anshan, 115, 116, 145, 262 Apricot Tree Village, 125 armor, 5, 73, 74, 126, 154, 156, 158, 190; sources of, 148–149. See also tanks Art of War. See Sunzi artillery, 65, 74, 76, 93, 108, 142, 143, 147–148, 149, 178; coordination with infantry, 5, 59, 73, 77, 78, 116, 154, 156, 211; sources of, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148; use in combat, 55, 56, 58, 92, 94, 108, 116, 152, 158, 180, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 202, 204, 209, 210, 215, 231, 232, 258, 267. See also Zhu Rui Badger, Oscar C., 170 Bai Chongxi, 277 Balhae, 27 banditry, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131 bandits, 6, 41, 65, 124–128, 147, 240; Chinese Communist operations against, 128–132 Barr, David, 278 Barrett, David, 100 bayonet, 153, 157 Beijing. See Beiping

Bei-Ning line, 10, 45, 50, 86, 106, 109, 111, 112, 162, 164; operations along during Liao-Shen Campaign, 184–187, 195; in planning of Liao-Shen Campaign, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177 Beiping, 10, 82, 117, 174, 214, 232, 290; Chiang Kai-shek’s direction of operations from, 9, 11, 193–194, 216, 245, 247, 255, 261 Belorussov, Dimitri, 31 Berlin airlift, 246 Big Training, 150, 152–157, 184, 229 Bridges, Styles, 12 Byrne, James, 12, 36 Caughey, John, 37, 48, 49, 50 Chahar, 39, 46, 51 Chang, Jung, 281–282, 334n38 Changbai, 63 Changchun, 4, 6, 10, 28, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 64, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 96, 105, 106, 109, 115, 120, 161, 163, 164, 172, 196, 221–222, 256, 261; civilian casualties during, 220, 237, 273; decision to put under siege, 173, 174, 227; failed Communist attack on, 172–173, 226–227; Nationalist forces in, 222–226, 243–247; siege of, 7, 10, 11, 229–234, 237–243, 247–249 Chen Cheng, 40, 106–107, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114 Chen Lifu, 185, 186, 277, 279 Chen Mingren, 89, 91 Chen Yun, 41, 72, 127, 136, 137, 143, 289. See also Qidaojiang Meeting

359

360

Index

Chiang Ching-kuo, 194, 265 Chiang Kai-shek, 3, 5, 30, 35, 36, 39, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 120, 161, 166, 167, 170, 192; American views of, 13, 14, 34, 37, 64, 82, 83, 96–97, 100, 119, 164, 168–169, 195, 276–280; appeals to God of, 88, 112, 192; Christian beliefs of, 9; and Liao-Shen Campaign, 9–11, 183, 187–188, 190, 193–195, 196, 203–206, 216, 245, 246, 251–254, 256, 261, 267, 270, 280; and Marshall Mission, 37–38, 48, 49, 51, 55, 63, 81, 82; personality, 9, 49, 247, 261; relations with the USSR, 30, 31, 124, 276; retreat to Taiwan, 12; and siege of Changchun, 224, 225, 232, 240, 245, 246, 248–249; views of Americans, 37, 49, 51, 81, 86, 110–111, 169, 255, 275; and Wedemeyer Mission, 98, 101; and Wei Lihuang, 115–117, 162–165, 171, 252, 254, 255, 262, 264, 281 Chifeng, 51, 88, 190 China Lobby, 12, 110, 169, 170 China Proper, 27, 46, 50, 52, 108, 109, 111, 147, 296n41 China White Paper, 13 China-Changchun railway, 86, 89, 92, 96, 106, 109 Chinese way of war. See way of war: Chinese Chongqing, 30, 31, 37 Chongqing (ship), 204 Chongqing negotiations (1945), 30, 168 Chungking. See Chongqing Churchill, Winston, 38 city walls, traditional, 116, 190, 191 Clausewitz, Carl von, 2, 3, 17, 18, 20, 44, 46, 58, 294n27, 294n45; influence on Mao Zedong, 22 Cold War, 38, 101, 102, 296n36 configuration. See shi conventional operations, 67; Communist forces’ transition to, 5, 22–23, 52, 141, 149, 150, 153, 158, 252, 283, 290 counterinsurgency, 14, 21, 126, 130, 132, 293n11 Counter-Insurgency Field Manual, 14, 293n11 “cutting tofu,” 212, 213

Dahushan, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259 Dalian. See Lüshun-Dalian Dandong. See Andong death ground. See desperate terrain deception, 15, 16, 19, 21, 212, 283 decisive battle, 17, 21, 22, 25, 284; Chiang Kai-shek’s pursuit of, 193, 194, 196; Mao Zedong on the need for, 23, 200, 256 Dehui, battle of, 76–79, 80, 92 desperate terrain, 203 Du Yuming, 35; American criticism of, 106, 280; command of defensive operations in Manchuria, 85; command of evacuation of Nationalist forces from Manchuria, 267, 270; command of operations in Manchuria, 39, 45, 78, 224; criticism of Chiang Kai-shek, 252; Lin Biao’s concerns about, 64; and Nationalist offensive against Linjiang, 46, 53, 54, 56, 67, 70, 71, 82; role during the Liao-Shen Campaign, 251, 252, 254–255, 256 East-Advancing Army Corps, 193, 194, 196, 199, 251, 252, 254, 255, 281, 336n20. See also Tashan, battle of Ebenezer, Howard, 221 Eighth Army Corps, 10, 262 Eighth Column, 187, 208, 209, 211, 263, 269; failure to fire on airport at Jinzhou, 188–189 Eighth Route Army, 32, 223, 232, 240 Eleventh Column, 116, 184, 186, 202, 203, 267, 270 Eno, Brian, 310n5 Europe, American focus on, 97, 100, 102, 162, 169, 246, 277, 278–279, 296n36 explosives, 80, 108, 146, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 173, 186, 191, 212, 219, 229, 253 Fairbank, John K., 17, 18, 294n20 Faku, 112, 113, 262 Fan Hanjie, 10, 187, 188, 190, 194, 195, 201, 202, 206, 207, 212, 216, 254, 276, 278; flight from Jinzhou, 214–215 Fifth Column, 253, 254, 256 Fifty-second Army, 34, 56, 116, 255; retreat from Yingkou, 263, 269–270



Index361

First Column, 74, 76, 87, 93, 94, 209, 227, 252, 257, 265, 302n56 first south, then north strategy, 46, 53, 82, 85 Five Big Combat Skills, 153 four big families, 268, 334n103 four fast, one slow, 80, 155, 156 four teams, one unit, 80, 155, 156 Fourth Column, 56, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 115–116, 186, 187, 202, 203, 204, 303n80 Fourth Field Army, 5, 11, 12, 289, 290, 291, 292 Fu Zuoyi, 51, 117, 174, 175, 184, 193 Fusong, 63 Gao Gang, 41, 143 Goguryeo, 27 Great Wall, 26, 27–28, 34, 45, 53, 88, 106, 161, 174, 184, 190 grenades, 143, 212, 277; production of, 111, 146; use in combat, 108, 128, 153, 157, 253, 257 Gu Zhutong, 165, 188, 193, 252 guerrilla warfare, 15, 20–22, 52, 152, 283 guerrilla-ism, 140, 287 Guling, 48, 163 Guo Huaruo, 20 half-cooked rice, 135 Halliday, Jon. See Chang, Jung Han Xianchu, 220, 253, 254 “hard-fighting battle,” 68 He Changgong, 144, 146 He Yingqin, 165 Hebei, 26, 31, 88, 172, 175, 184, 186 Heilongjiang, 124 Heishan, 254, 255, 256–259, 267, 283, 290 Hong Xuezhi, 77, 78, 92 Hou Jingru, 204, 205, 206, 213, 216, 267, 268, 281 Huaide, battle of, 87–88 Huai-Hai Campaign, 3, 11, 35, 293n1 Huang Kecheng, 178, 180, 288, 289 Huang Taiji, 28 Huludao, 106, 115, 120, 186, 215; as base for Nationalist attack on Tashan, 193, 195, 197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 216, 251, 254; Chiang Kai-shek visits, 183; Communist control of in 1945, 34; consideration of

in Communist planning, 172, 196, 256; Nationalist retreat from, 11, 267, 270 human wave tactics, 59–60, 204, 205, 325n60 ideology, 59, 135, 150, 223; Lin Biao’s lack of interest in, 33; significance of, 155 Japanese technical personnel: Communist use of, 141, 146, 283 Japanese weapons: Communist use of, 77, 111, 126, 141, 142–145, 148, 149, 187, 191, 211, 283; Nationalist use of, 277 Jehol. See Rehe Jiang Jieshi. See Chiang Kai-shek Jiang Jingguo. See Chiang Ching-kuo Jiang Qing, 124 Jiangxi Soviet, 32, 47 Jinan, battle of, 192, 193, 276 Kalgan (Zhangjiakou), 51 Keegan, John, 16, 17 Kennan, George, 169 Kennedy, John F., 8, 12, 13 Kilcullen, David, 130 Kissinger, Henry, 284 Koguryo (Goguryeo), 27 Kuling. See Guling land reform, 15, 41, 70, 123, 132, 134–137, 141, 150; excesses of, 136–137, 155, 207, 229, 273, 292; negative effects on grain production, 177 Le Corbusier, 221 Leroux, Gaston, 214 Li Gongpu, 49 Li Tianyou, 92–95, 118 Li Zongren, 117, 167, 337n35 Liang Xingchu, 257, 259 Liao Yaoxiang, 5, 114, 120, 158, 162, 164, 194, 195, 216, 254, 257, 281. See also West-Advancing Army Corps Liao-Shen Campaign, significance of, 3–5, 11 Liaoxi Corridor, 26, 27–28, 31, 34, 35, 60, 106, 107, 117, 193, 194 Liaoyang, 115, 116, 262 Liddell Hart, Basil, 17, 18, 294n20

362

Index

Lin Biao, 4, 5, 7, 10, 32, 33, 35, 39, 52, 55, 65, 68, 94, 95, 113, 118, 141, 143, 144, 177, 188, 189, 203, 208, 209, 213, 214, 254, 256, 257, 260, 262, 268; concerns about attack on Harbin, 51, 64; during the Cultural Revolution, 288; hesitation in attacking Jinzhou, 183, 195–199, 288; and military modernization, 15, 23, 75–76, 148–150, 152–153, 283, 292; military thought of, 19, 41, 53, 58–61, 77–78, 88, 96, 104, 108, 153, 155–156, 176, 184, 191, 212, 283, 284, 286; operational style of, 33, 60, 73, 87–88, 91, 185–186; portrayals of in China, 273, 285, 286, 288–289; relations with Mao Zedong, 25, 32, 39, 87, 89, 91–92, 171–175, 185, 192, 287–288; and siege of Chang­chun, 226, 227, 228, 231, 240 Linjiang, 45, 63; defenses of, 67–73, 150 Liu Shaoqi, 124, 288 Liu Yalou, 4, 95, 108, 141, 176, 188, 196, 197, 208, 228, 256, 289; and military modernization, 152, 153–154, 157, 229; and siege of Changchun, 239, 240 Logistics: Communist, 33, 54, 65, 66, 70, 76, 318n51; in the Liao-Shen Campaign, 172, 175–180, 185; Nationalist, 46, 100, 278 Long Yun, 224, 245 Luce, Henry, 12, 111 Luo Qi, 204, 205, 206, 216 Luo Ronghuan, 4; criticism of Peng Zhen, 41; in the Liao-Shen Campaign, 188, 196, 208, 257; and Lin Biao’s hesitation to attack Jinzhou, 287, 288; and military modernization, 141, 153; and operational planning, 176, 177; as political commissar, 33, 92, 95, 108; portrayal of in film, 289; and the siege of Changchun, 228, 229, 239, 240, 241, 242; and Speak Bitterness movement, 150; willingness to sacrifice lives, 93 Lüshun-Dalian, 28, 34, 53, 105, 142, 143, 146, 147 Manchukuo, 29, 133, 221; “puppet” troops and police forces of, 31, 53, 65, 126, 129, 147

Manchuria, 3, 5, 9, 25–29; Japanese occupation of, 28–29, 126, 131, 133, 145, 146, 221, 273 Manchurian Plain, 27, 76, 262 Mao Zedong, 12, 25, 29, 31, 34, 37, 41, 46, 51, 83, 95, 108, 118, 124, 132, 133, 136, 149, 150; and the Liao-Shen Campaign, 183, 184, 185, 189, 195, 196, 197–199, 210, 254, 256, 261, 268, 269, 281–282; military thought of, 5, 15, 20–23, 42, 56, 58, 61, 73, 86, 105, 108, 122, 123, 140, 141, 154, 177, 200, 282, 283, 285; relations with Lin Biao, 32, 39, 87, 91–92, 171–175, 197–198, 269, 285, 287–288; and the siege of Changchun, 228 Marshall, George C., 12, 13, 39, 51, 54, 63, 97, 98, 102, 110, 169, 171, 245; relations with Chiang Kai-shek, 48, 49, 55, 81, 255, 275, 280. See also Marshall Mission Marshall, Katherine, 49 Marshall Mission, 6, 14, 36–38, 40, 50, 64, 81–82, 168, 277 McCarran, Patrick, 13 McCarthy, Joseph, 13 Mengjiang, 63 military industries, 142, 145–147 Minford, John, 19 missionaries, Catholic, 89, 94 Mukden Incident, 28 Murawiec, Laurent, 17 Music of the Night, 214 National Assembly, 63, 81, 167; elections controversy of, 164, 166 Nationalist soldiers, 63, 72, 74, 118, 187, 198–199, 214, 260, 268; incorporation into Communist units, 58, 157; in siege of Changchun, 223, 230, 231, 238, 243; as trainers of Communist soldiers, 151, 154, 157 New Fifth Army, 112, 113, 114, 197 New Seventh Army, 112, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 230, 232, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 261 New Third Army, 112 Ninety-third Army, 180, 190, 207, 224 Ninth Army Corps, 10



Index363

Ninth Column, 189, 190, 209, 210, 263, 269, 270 North China, 26; American concerns about, 36, 100, 276; in Communist strategic planning, 30, 34, 53, 80, 86, 173, 174; in Nationalist strategic planning, 50, 85, 117, 120, 162, 165, 321n14; relation to Liao-Shen Campaign, 191, 206; Soviet concerns about, 38; vulnerability of, 11, 27 North Korea, 45, 56, 65, 66, 100, 134; as rear area for Chinese Communist forces, 57; support for Chinese Communist forces, 139, 141, 144, 145, 283 Northeast, the. See Manchuria Northeast Bureau, 31, 34, 41, 42, 52, 55, 62, 73, 86, 123, 124, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 145, 146, 173 Northeast Democratic United Army (NDUA), 5, 39, 41, 42, 56, 87, 105, 129; incorporation of former Nationalist soldiers into, 151; morale issues of, 137, 150; and transition to conventional operations, 60, 76, 95, 108, 149 Northeast Field Army, 5, 11, 290; conduct of positional assault, 190, 201; and Siege of Changchun, 244, 246, 247; training and tactical skills of, 154, 156, 186, 229, 253; and transition to conventional operations, 15, 148, 152, 153, 158, 283 Northeast People’s Autonomous Army, 5 Northern Expedition, 32, 35, 163 Nurhaci, 28 Officers’ Moral Endeavor Society, 9 one point, two flanks, 60, 68, 75, 80, 88, 155, 156 Pan Niduan, 224, 244 Parhae (Balhae), 27 Peng Dehuai, 20, 218n51, 337n50 Peng Zhen, 31, 34, 36, 123, 124, 288; dismissal of, 41 Pepper, Suzanne, 107 Phantom of the Opera, 214 Ping-Jin Campaign, 11, 149 Pingxingguan, Battle of, 32

political reform, American pressure for, 47, 48, 49, 86, 97, 98, 101, 102, 119, 166, 168, 169, 192, 337n32 popular support, Chiang Kai-shek’s loss of, 14, 223 Port Arthur. See Lüshun-Dalian protest movements, 47, 82, 167, 317n26 Qidaojiang Meeting, 66–67 Qitamu, battle of, 74–75 Qiu Huizuo, 198, 258, 288 Que Hanqian, 195, 204, 205, 206, 216, 267, 281 railways, 5, 28, 35, 39, 221; Communist sabotage of, 70, 109, 172, 184, 186; Communist use of, 31, 105, 123, 175, 178–180; Nationalist use of, 30, 36, 45, 53–54, 55, 68, 78. See also Bei-Ning line Rehe, 27, 31, 39, 45, 46, 51, 86, 88, 96, 109, 111, 162, 174, 175, 190, 262 “Report on the Hunan Peasant Movement,” 132 Republican Party, 13, 47, 110, 169; Chiang Kai-shek’s preference for, 275 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 29, 275, 276 Russo-Japanese War, 28, 146, 221 Sakamura, S., 222 Schaller, Michael, 169 Second Column, 64, 74, 79, 87, 88, 113, 187, 190, 210, 227, 262 Seventh Column, 92, 93, 94, 113, 186, 187, 210 Shandong, 29, 31, 40, 86, 88, 125, 146, 192, 193, 204, 206, 289 Shanhaiguan, 27, 106, 290, 291, 292; Communist capture of (1945), 31; in Communist strategic planning, 109, 172, 173, 174, 175, 184, 185, 195, 186, 196; Nationalist breakthrough at (1945), 34, 35, 60, 123, 270; in Nationalist strategic planning, 115, 162, 193 Shenyang, 4, 27, 36, 99; Chiang Kai-shek’s visits to, 9, 10, 11, 88, 107, 109, 114, 183, 193, 194, 196, 203, 216, 246, 251, 253, 254; Communist advance to (1945), 31; Communist attack on, 7, 262–265, 267, 276;

364

Index

in Communist strategic planning, 41, 93, 105, 109, 173, 183; industrial base, 145, 163; Mukden Incident in, 28; in Nationalist strategic planning, 84, 96, 112, 115, 117, 120, 255, 261 shi, 19, 20, 182, 183, 284–285 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, 30–31 Siping, 25, 38, 105, 107, 115, 149, 172; First Battle of, 89; Fourth Battle of, 118–119, 120; Second Battle of, 39–40, 55, 128; Third Battle of, 87, 89–96, 154, 173 Six Principles of Combat, 59, 61, 153, 154, 155, 156, 288 Sixth Column, 64, 74, 76, 77, 78, 113, 116, 209, 227 Sixtieth Army, 119, 223–226, 243, 244, 245, 247, 261, 263 Soong, T. V., 56, 99 Soong Ai-ling, 194 Soong May-ling, 46, 49, 194, 247, 275–277 South China, 29, 30, 31, 215 South Korea, 100, 139 South Manchuria Base Area, 45, 54, 55, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 81. See also Linjiang Soviet Union, 30, 36, 49, 60, 65, 67, 107, 126, 145; Chiang Kai-shek’s concerns about, 38, 40, 45, 53, 63; competition with Japan in Manchuria, 129; and education of Chinese Communist officers in Manchuria, 33, 92, 141, 149, 152, 283; interests in Manchuria, 29–30; invasion of Manchukuo (Manchuria), 29, 134, 221; relations with Chiang Kai-shek’s government, 30–31, 35, 123, 276; and supply of weapons to Chinese Communists in Manchuria, 142–145; support for Chinese Communists in Manchuria, 30–31, 33–34, 53, 71, 105, 123, 127, 146–147, 150, 161–162, 179, 277, 281, 283; and trade with Chinese Communists in Manchuria, 124, 134, 138–139, 141; and training of Chinese Communist soldiers in Manchuria, 147, 149, 158; and United States’ concerns about, 97, 99–101, 119, 169–170, 278–280

Speak Bitterness Campaign, 149–152, 154, 155, 157 staff officers, Communist, 58, 79, 153, 196, 208, 259; education of, 153; regulations for, 152 Stalin, Joseph, 29, 30, 38, 142, 144, 149, 179, 255n21 strategic retreat, 22, 24, 25, 42, 56 Stuart, John Leighton, 48, 49, 64, 81, 86, 98, 99, 119, 120, 123, 164, 168, 169, 276, 279, 280, 296n32 Sunzi, 16–20, 22, 58, 126, 182, 183, 203, 218, 219, 283, 284, 285, 293n14 Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, 124–125 Tang Tsou, 110, 278 tanks, 77, 79, 119, 129, 178, 185, 189, 210, 211, 214, 253, 257; sources of, 143, 191. See also armor Tashan, battle of, 7, 186, 187, 193, 197, 201–207, 213, 216, 267–268, 290. See also East-Advancing Army Corps Tenth Column, 116, 257, 259 Third Column, 66, 67, 68, 73, 113, 208, 209, 210, 303n80; and Speak Bitterness Campaign, 150 Thirteenth Army, 34 three big cities strategy, 41 three ferocities, 155, 156 3-3 system, 60, 61, 68, 75, 80, 155, 156, 191, 212 three-three system. See 3-3 system Time magazine. See Luce, Henry Tonghua, 45, 46, 56, 57–58, 88, 145 trenches, 17; Communist use of, 68, 93, 116, 156, 173, 190, 202, 203, 208, 209, 210, 229, 239, 257 Truman, Harry, 12, 13, 14, 30, 36, 38, 49, 50, 64, 81, 82, 83, 110, 169, 170, 275, 276 Truman Doctrine, 83 Twelfth Column, 116, 226, 264, 268, 269 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. See Soviet Union Vietnam War, 21, 336n32 Vincent, John Carter, 96, 97



Index365

Waldron, Arthur, 16, 19 Wang Jiashan, 116–117 Ward, Angus, 96, 99, 262 way of war: Chinese, 15–18, 125, 294n20; Western, 17, 18, 284 Wedemeyer, Albert, 84, 87, 98, 99, 101, 102, 106, 158, 278, 279. See also Wedemeyer Mission Wedemeyer Mission, 6, 96–102 Wei Lihuang, 10, 114, 115, 119, 188, 193, 203, 245, 251, 254, 260, 278; allegations of Communist connections, 282; differences with Chiang Kai-shek, 11, 117, 162–165, 194, 252, 281; flight from Shenyang, 261–262, 264 weiqi, 284, 285 Wen Yiduo: assassination of, 49–50, 167 West-Advancing Army Corps, 7, 193, 195, 196, 205, 216, 251, 252–256, 258, 336n20; destruction of, 259–261 Western way of war. See way of war: Western Whampoa Military Academy, 32, 35, 107, 116, 207, 216, 224, 225, 230, 247, 283 Whampoa spirit, 163, 249 “who lost china” question, 12, 13–14, 282 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 221 xiangqi, 284–285 Xiao Hua, 19, 268, 289; and the siege of Changchun, 238, 239 Xiao Jinguang, 141, 143–144, 268; and the defenses of Linjiang, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72; and the siege of Changchun, 227, 230, 231, 246, 247, 248 Xie Wendong, 129–130 Xingcheng, 174, 178, 186, 189, 191, 195 Xinkailing, Battle of, 56–58, 116 Xinlitun, 115, 195 Xinmin, 113, 184–185, 262

Xiong Shihui, 88, 99, 100, 106, 280 Xu Yan, 145 Yalu River, 56, 65 Yan’an, 20, 30, 31, 32, 39, 41, 51, 58, 106; Communist loss of, 82–83, 85, 86 Yan’an Artillery School, 147 Yang Chengwu, 175 Yang Chitseng, 170 Yang Kuisong, 145 Yang Zirong, 124–125 Yangzhou, Massacre of, 219–220 yellow powder, 152 Yingkou, 5, 7, 34, 109, 115, 116–117, 118, 139, 164, 172, 183; Liao Yaoxiang’s interest in retreating to, 165, 194, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 267; Nationalist retreat from, 11, 263, 266, 268–270 Yixian, 174, 175, 177, 184; battle of, 185, 189–191, 195, 196, 208, 224, 245 Yunnan, 50 Yunnan troops, 224; Chiang Kai-shek’s distrust of, 224; Communist appeals to, 244; contradictions with Whampoa-clique units, 207, 225, 230 Zeng Kelin, 31 Zeng Zesheng, 223, 224, 225, 244, 245, 246, 247, 251 Zhangjiakou (Kalgan), 51 Zhangwu, 112, 113, 179, 190, 194, 195, 252, 253, 254 Zheng Dongguo, 72, 91, 163, 254; and siege of Changchunm, 10, 225, 226, 231, 233, 237, 238, 239, 240, 243, 245, 246, 247, 327n36; surrender of, 248–249 Zhou Enlai, 32, 37, 51, 64, 167, 248 Zhou Fucheng, 265 Zhu De, 32, 174, 228, 244 Zhu Rui, 141, 144, 147, 148, 190, 191

Harold M. Tanner is Professor of History and Fellow of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. A specialist in twentieth-century and contemporary China and Chinese military history, he is author of The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China: Siping, 1946 (IUP, 2012) and of China: A History (2009).