Important Accounts

February 8, 1935

Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Summary of Combating the Five Encirclement Campaigns Launched by the Enemy, drafted by Zhang Wentian in accordance with Mao Zedong’s speech at the Zunyi Conference, was issued after it was passed by the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The Resolution summed up the lessons of the failed combat against the fifth encirclement campaign, reiterated Mao Zedong’s criticism of the strategic and tactical mistakes of Bo Gu and Otto Braun in his speech at the Zunyi Conference, and made it clear that Bo Gu’s purely defensive line was the main reason why they failed to crush the enemy’s fifth encirclement campaign.

The Resolution reaffirmed the strategic and tactical principles adopted by Mao Zedong and other people who commanded the Red Army to successfully crush several encirclement campaigns. Those principles are as follows: (1) Before finding the enemy’s weakness, we should not immediately engage in a decisive battle we’re not sure of. Instead, we should confuse, induce and clamp down on the enemy with secondary forces, while transferring the main force to the enemy’s flanks and rear where they will rally in secret and crush the enemy when the opportunity comes. (2) In the decisive battle, it is absolutely necessary to concentrate the forces by clamping down on one or more enemy forces, and besieging and eliminating the force with the greatest force so as to crush the enemy one by one. (3) To crush the enemy’s fortress tactics, we should make use of our strengths in eliminating the enemy through mobile warfare. To crush the fortress tactics through mobile warfare, we need to eliminate enemy troops in large numbers when they advance within the fortress line, and to force the enemy to leave their fortresses and engage in mobile warfare against us out of the fortress line when the Red Army moves to the vast fortress-free zone. As long as we make use of the strategic and tactical principles of mobile warfare flexibly, artistically and surprisingly, we will certainly crush the enemy’s fortress tactics. (4) We need to fight a protracted war and battles of quick decision. Under the principle of a protracted war, we should oppose two wrong tendencies that may occur after crushing the enemy’s encirclement campaign; under the principle of battles of quick decision, we should avoid having battles hastily due to panic. (5) We should make use of every conflict between counter-revolutionaries to widen the rift within them from positive aspects so that we can launch counter-offensives and attacks. This is one of the important strategies to crush the enemy’s encirclement campaign.

The Resolution criticized Bo Gu and Otto Braun over the mistakes they had made since the strategic shift, saying, “In Otto Braun and other comrades’ opinion, our breakout operation was not a resolute combat, but an escape in panic and a moving action. This error in principle lasted till the final stage of the breakout campaign. When the Red Army reached the Hunan-Guizhou border, we were at a disadvantage, but they still mechanically headed to the direction of the second corps and the sixth corps instead of changing their course of action according to the situation.”

The Resolution also criticized Bo Gu and Otto Braun for undermining the collective leadership of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, stressing that in order to crush the new encirclement of the enemy and establish new Soviet areas, it was necessary to completely correct the mistakes in terms of military leadership in the past and improve the leadership style of the Central Military Commission. The Resolution put forward new requirements for the implementation of highly mobile strategic tactics in the establishment of new Soviet areas and for better leadership of the revolutionary war to achieve complete victory.

February 8, 1949

Mao Zedong wrote the telegramto the leaders of the Second and Third Field Armies for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. It was also sent to other field armies concerned and to the bureaus of the Central Committee concerned. He said in the telegram, “From now on, the formula followed in the past twenty years, ‘first the rural areas, then the cities’, will be reversed and changed to the formula, ‘first the cities, then the rural areas’. The army is not only a fighting force; it is mainly a working force. All army cadres should learn how to take over and administer cities. In urban work, they should learn how to be good at dealing with the imperialists and Kuomintang reactionaries, good at dealing with the bourgeoisie, good at leading the workers and organizing trade unions, good at mobilizing and organizing the youth, good at uniting with and training cadres in the new Liberated Areas, good at managing industry and commerce, good at running schools, newspapers, news agencies and broadcasting stations, good at handling foreign affairs, good at handling problems relating to the democratic parties and people’s organizations, good at adjusting the relations between the cities and the rural areas and solving the problems of food, coal and other daily necessities and good at handling monetary and financial problems. In short, all urban problems, with which in the past our army cadres and fighters were unfamiliar, should from now on be shouldered by them. You are to advance and occupy four or five provinces, and in addition to the cities, you will have to attend to vast rural areas. Since all the rural areas in the south will be newly liberated, the work will be fundamentally different from that in the old Liberated Areas of the north.” He added, “Therefore, rural work must also be learned afresh. However, as compared with urban work, rural work is easy to learn. Urban work is more difficult and is the main subject you are studying. If our cadres cannot quickly master the administration of cities, we shall encounter extreme difficulties.” “The army is still a fighting force, and in this respect, there must be absolutely no relaxing; to relax would be a mistake. Nevertheless, the time has come for us to set ourselves the task of turning the army into a working force. If we do not now set ourselves this task and resolve to perform it, we shall be making an extremely big mistake.” The telegram is included in “Selected Works of Mao Zedong: Volume IV” under the title “Turn the Army into a Working Force”.

February 8, 1962

Chen Yun, speaking at a meeting of all cadres from Shaanxi Province on the sideline of the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, stressed the need to make the understanding more correct through “exchanges, comparison and repetition”. He said, “We often talk about seeking truth from facts. Facts refer to the actual situation we need to find out; to seek truth is to develop the right policy according to research findings. One of the ways to find out the situation is to exchange views with other people. In doing so, originally one-sided views can gradually get comprehensive. In the absence of objections, we can make some assumptions, think about the problems from other perspectives, and study various conditions and possibilities. Not all the people who make mistakes have no factual basis. They just take one-sidedness as comprehensiveness. Before leading organs develop a policy, they need to spend more than 90 percent of the time doing research, and less than 10 percent having discussions and making decisions. They need to study the problems and compare different options before making plans and developing policies. After making comparisons, they should not make decisions immediately. They need to think twice and wait a while.” Part of this speech is included in Selected Works of Chen Yun: Volume III.

A Glance at the Party History

1931

On February 8, the Central Bureau of the Central Revolutionary Base issued a circular entitled The Land Problem and Anti-rich Peasants Strategies. “At present, in the struggle for nationwide Soviet victory, state ownership of land is only a propaganda slogan. It is not yet in the stage of implementation,” the circular said. Peasants participated in the revolution “to acquire not only the right to use land, but also ownership of land”. “The peasants must be given land ownership that they long for in the revolution”. On February 27, Mao Zedong, as the director of the General Political Department of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, wrote to the Jiangxi Soviet government, determining peasants’ ownership of land after the land reform. The Jiangxi Soviet government, in accordance with Circular No. 9 of the Central Bureau of the Central Revolutionary Base and Mao Zedong’s letter, issued a notice in March, To Urge the Distribution of Land and Declare Land Ownership, thus resolving the issue of peasants’ ownership of land. Since then, land reform in the Central Revolutionary Base had been carried out extensively and deeply.

1957

On February 8, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party passed the Directive on Carrying out the Campaign to Increase Production and Practice Economy in 1957. “In order to ease the tension in material supplies and fiscal expenditures, to shift the economic front to steady progress after the great march of 1956, and to have necessary rest and reorganization, we must make appropriate adjustments to the scale and speed of construction, and make greater efforts to carry out the Campaign to Increase Production and Practice Economy throughout the country in 1957,” the Directive said.

1985

On February 8, the State Council approved the Outline of the Report on Shanghai’s Economic Development Strategy drafted by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government and the Shanghai Transformation and Revitalization Research Team of the State Council, and issued a notice, stating that the transformation and revitalization of Shanghai was a major matter related to China’s Four Modernizations. Under the new historical conditions, Shanghai’s development should take a new path of transformation and revitalization, and give full play to its functions as a central city. The goal was to turn Shanghai into an open and multi-functional modern socialist city with a reasonable industrial structure, advanced science and technology and outstanding civilization by the end of this century.

2006

On February 8, the CPC Central Committee issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Work of the CPPCC. It includes six articles: (1) The cause of the CPPCC is an important part of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics; (2) We should do a good job in conducting the political consultation of the CPPCC; (3) We should actively promote the democratic supervision of the CPPCC; (4) We should carry out the CPPCC’s in-depth participation in and discussion of state affairs; (5) We should earnestly carry out the CPPCC’s own construction; (6) We should strengthen and improve the Party’s leadership over the CPPCC. This document would guide the development of the cause of the CPPCC in the future.

Historical Moments

On February 8, 1940, the Political Department of the Eighth Route Army held the Taihang Literary and Artistic Symposium at the garrison in Wuxiang County, Shanxi Province, at which Zhu De spoke.

On February 8, 1942, Mao Zedong made a report entitled Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing.