CHAPTER IV.
"ENCIRCLEMENT AND SUPPRESSION" AND COUNTER-CAMPAIGNS
AGAINST IT --THE MAIN PATTERN OF CHINA'S CIVIL WAR
In the ten years since our guerrilla war began, every independent
Red guerrilla unit, every Red Army unit or every revolutionary base area has
been regularly subjected by the enemy to "encirclement and
suppression". The enemy looks upon the Red Army as a monster and seeks to
capture it the moment it shows itself. He is for ever pursuing the Red Army and
for ever trying to encircle it. For ten years this pattern of warfare has not
changed, and unless the civil war gives place to a national war, the pattern
will remain the same till the day the enemy becomes the weaker contestant and
the Red Army the stronger.
The Red Army's operations take the form of counter-campaigns
against "encirclement and suppression". For us victory means chiefly
victory in combating "encirclement and suppression", that is,
strategic victory and victories in campaigns. The fight against each
"encirclement and suppression" campaign constitutes a
counter-campaign, which usually comprises several or even scores of battles,
big and small. Until an "encirclement and suppression" campaign has
been basically smashed, one cannot speak of strategic victory or of victory in
the counter-campaign as a whole, even though many battles may have been won.
The history of the Red Army's decade of war is a history of counter-campaigns
against "encirclement and suppression".
In the enemy's "encirclement and suppression" campaigns
and the Red Army's counter-campaigns against them, the two forms of fighting,
offensive and defensive, are both employed, and here there is no difference
from any other war, ancient or modern, in China or elsewhere. The special
characteristic of China's civil war, however, is the repeated alternation of
the two forms over a long period of time. In each "encirclement and
suppression" campaign, the enemy employs the offensive against the Red
Army's defensive, and the Red Army employs the defensive against his offensive;
this is the first stage of a counter-campaign against "encirclement and
suppression". Then the enemy employs the defensive against the Red Army's
offensive, and the Red Army employs the offensive against his defensive; this
is the second stage of the counter-campaign. Every "encirclement and
suppression" campaign has these two stages, and they alternate over a long
period.
By repeated alternation over a long period we mean the repetition
of this pattern of warfare and these forms of fighting. This is a fact obvious
to everybody. An "encirclement and suppression" campaign and a
counter-campaign against it--such is the repeated pattern of the war. In each
campaign the alternation in the forms of fighting consists of the first stage
in which the enemy employs the offensive against our defensive and we meet his
offensive with our defensive, and of the second stage in which the enemy employs
the defensive against our offensive and we meet his defensive with our
offensive.
As for the content of a campaign or of a battle, it does not
consist of mere repetition but is different each time. This, too, is a fact and
obvious to everybody. In this connection it has become a rule that with each
campaign and each counter-campaign, the scale becomes larger, the situation
more complicated and the fighting more intense.
But this does not mean that there are no ups and downs. After the
enemy's fifth "encirclement and suppression" campaign, the Red Army
was greatly weakened, and all the base areas in the south were lost. Having
shifted to the northwest, the Red Army now no longer holds a vital position
threatening the internal enemy as it did in the south and as a result the scale
of the "encirclement and suppression" campaigns has become smaller,
the situation simpler and the fighting less intense.
What constitutes a defeat for the Red Army? Strategically
speaking, there is a defeat only when a counter-campaign against
"encirclement and suppression" fails completely, but even then the
defeat is only partial and temporary. For only the total destruction of the Red
Army would constitute complete defeat in the civil war; but this has never
happened. The loss of extensive base areas and the shift of the Red Army
constituted a temporary and partial defeat, not a final and complete one, even
though this partial defeat entailed losing go per cent of the Party membership,
of the armed forces and of the base areas. We call this shift the continuation
of our defensive and the enemy's pursuit the continuation of his offensive.
That is to say, in the course of the struggle between the enemy's
"encirclement and suppression" and our counter-campaign we allowed our
defensive to be broken by the enemy's offensive instead of turning from the
defensive to the offensive; and so our defensive turned into a retreat and the
enemy's offensive into a pursuit. But when the Red Army reached a new area, as
for example when we shifted from Kiangsi Province and various other regions to
Shensi Province, the repetition of "encirclement and suppression"
campaigns began afresh. That is why we say that the Red Army's strategic
retreat (the Long March) was a continuation of its strategic defensive and the
enemy's strategic pursuit was a continuation of his strategic offensive.
In the Chinese civil war, as in all other wars, ancient or modern,
in China or abroad, there are only two basic forms of fighting, attack and
defence. The special characteristic of China's civil war consists in the
long-term repetition of "encirclement and suppression" campaigns and
of our counter-campaigns together with the long-term alternation in the two
forms of fighting, attack and defence, with the inclusion of the phenomenon of
the great strategic shift of more than ten thousand kilometres (the Long
March). [15]
A defeat for the enemy is much the same. It is a strategic defeat
for the enemy when his "encirclement and suppression" campaign is
broken and our defensive becomes an offensive, when the enemy turns to the
defensive and has to reorganize before launching another "encirclement and
suppression" campaign. The enemy has not had to make a strategic shift of
more than ten thousand kilometres such as we have, because he rules the whole
country and is much stronger than we are. But there have been partial shifts of
his forces. Sometimes, enemy forces in White strongholds encircled by the Red
Army in some base areas have broken through our encirclement and withdrawn to
the White areas to organize new offensives. If the civil war is prolonged and
the Red Army's victories become more extensive, there will be more of this sort
of thing. But the enemy cannot achieve the same results as the Red Army,
because he does not have the help of the people and because his officers and
men are not united. If he were to imitate the Red Army's long-distance shift,
he would certainly be wiped out.
In the period of the Li Li-san line in 1930, Comrade Li Li-san
failed to understand the protracted nature of China's civil war and for that
reason did not perceive the law that in the course of this war there is
repetition over a long period of "encirclement and suppression"
campaigns and of their defeat (by that time there had already been three in the
Hunan-Kiangsi border area and two in Fukien). Hence, in an attempt to achieve
rapid victory for the revolution, he ordered the Red Army, which was then still
in its infancy, to attack Wuhan, and also ordered a nation-wide armed uprising.
Thus he committed the error of "Left" opportunism.
Likewise the "Left" opportunists of 1931-1934 did not
believe in the law of the repetition of "encirclement and
suppression" campaigns. Some responsible comrades in our base area along
the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border held an "auxiliary force" theory,
maintaining that the Kuomintang army had become merely an auxiliary force after
the defeat of its third "encirclement and suppression" campaign and
that the imperialists themselves would have to take the field as the main force
in further attacks on the Red Army. The strategy based on this estimate was
that the Red Army should attack Wuhan. In principle, this fitted in with the
views of those comrades in Kiangsi who called for a Red Army attack on
Nanchang, were against the work of linking up the base areas and the tactics of
luring the enemy in deep, regarded the seizure of the capital and other key
cities of a province as the starting point for victory in that province, and
held that "the fight against the fifth 'encirclement and suppression'
campaign represents the decisive battle between the road of revolution and the
road of colonialism". This "Left" opportunism was the source of
the wrong line adopted in the struggles against the fourth "encirclement
and suppression" campaign in the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border area and in
those against the fifth in the Central Area in Kiangsi; and it rendered the Red
Army helpless before these fierce enemy campaigns and brought enormous losses
to the Chinese revolution.
The view that the Red Army should under no circumstances adopt
defensive methods was directly related to this "Left" opportunism
which denied the repetition of "encirclement and suppression"
campaigns, and it, too, was entirely erroneous.
The proposition that a revolution or a revolutionary war is an
offensive is of course correct. A revolution or a revolutionary war in its
emergence and growth from a small force to a big force, from the absence of
political power to the seizure of political power, from the absence of a Red
Army to the creation of a Red Army, and from the absence of revolutionary base
areas to their establishment must be on the offensive and cannot be conservative;
and tendencies towards conservatism must be opposed.
The only entirely correct proposition is that a revolution or a
revolutionary war is an offensive but also involves defence and retreat To
defend in order to attack, to retreat in order to advance, to move against the
flanks in order to move against the front, and to take a roundabout route in
order to get on to the direct route--this is inevitable in the process of
development of many phenomena, especially military movements.
Of the two propositions stated above, the first may be correct in
the political sphere, but it is incorrect when transposed to the military
sphere. Moreover, it is correct politically only in one situation (when the
revolution is advancing), but incorrect when transposed to another situation
(when the revolution is in retreat, in general retreat as in Russia in 1906, [16] and in China in 1927 or in partial retreat as in Russia at the
time of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918). [17] Only the second proposition is entirely correct and true. The
"Left" opportunism of 1931-34, which mechanically opposed the
employment of defensive military measures, was nothing but infantile thinking.
When will the pattern of repeated "encirclement and
suppression" campaigns come to an end? In my opinion, if the civil war is
prolonged, this repetition will cease when a fundamental change takes place in
the balance of forces. It will cease when the Red Army has become stronger than
the enemy. Then we shall be encircling and suppressing the enemy and he will be
resorting to counter-campaigns, but political and military conditions will not
allow him to attain the same position as that of the Red Army in its
counter-campaigns. It can be definitely asserted that by then the pattern of
repeated "encirclement and suppression" campaigns will have largely,
if not completely, come to an end.
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