Volume 2, No. 12, December 2001

The "Left" opportunists represented by Wang Ming knew nothing at all about the Law of development of China’s revolutionary war, nor did they understand the dialectics of revolutionary war; they advocated and pushed passive defence in opposition to Chairman Mao’s strategic concept of active defence. "Beginning from January 1932," "the ‘Left’ opportunists attacked these correct principles, finally abrogated the whole set and instituted a complete set of contrary ‘new principles’ or ‘regular principles.’" Ignoring the fact that the enemy was powerful and we were weak, they demanded the use of positional warfare, and the carrying out of "regular" warfare, a strategy of quick decision and protracted campaigns by purely relying on the main force of the Red Army. They wanted to "attack on all fronts" and "strike with two ‘fists’ in two directions at the same time" and opposed luring the enemy in deep, branding the necessary shift from one place to another as "retreat and flightism." They clamoured for fixed battle lines and absolutely centralized command and so on. In operations during the fifth counter-campaign against "enciclement and suppression," they at first resorted to adventurism in offensive, proposing to "engage the ememy outside the gate"; and then to conservatism in defence, advocating the dividing up of the forces for defence and engaging in a "contest of attrition" against the ememy; in the end they fell into flightism. As a result, the fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression" met with defeat and the Red Army had no alternative but quit the Kiangsi Base Area and start the Long March. This was the aftermath of passive defence pursued by Wang Ming’s "Left" opportunist line.

In strategic defence, to effect a strategic retreat in a planned way — that is, to lure the ememy in deep and hit the enemy when he comes into our area — is a necessary strategic move aiming at conserving our military strength and biding our time to defeat the enemy; this has always been our most effective military policy in vanquishing the enemy. Chairman Mao has said: "When the enemy launches a large-scale ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaign, our general principle is to lure him in deep, withdraw into the base area and fight him there, because this is our surest method of smashing his offensive." To lure the enemy in deep in a planned way makes it possible for us to concentrate our main forces accordingly and engage the enemy in mobile operations, to find terrain favourable for operations and thus manoeuvre the enemy unto our desired position. This will make the enemy swell with pride and commit mistakes; to disperse his forces and take on heavy burdens; to become tired out and demoralized and suffer blows wherever he goes. In that event, his weak points will be fully revealed and our strong points can be brought into full play, and we can fight in a way to our advantage. That swindlers like Wang Ming and Liu Shao-chi opposed the idea of luring the enemy in deep and favoured what they called "short and swift thrusts" fully testified to the fact that they did not understand revolutionary war, especially China’s revolutionary war.

In the fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression," the "Left" opportunists represented by Wang Ming, in the face of enemy attacks by means of blockhouse warfare, feared the enemy as if he were a tiger: they did not dare to advance to the enemy’s rear and attack him there, which would have been to our advantage, or boldly to lure the enemy troops in deep so as to concentrate our forces and annihilate them. On the contrary, they cherished passive defence as a talisman; they dispersed their forces to a great extent and forced the Red Army to dig itself in in front of enemy blockhouses, making short and swift thrusts against the enemy who built blockhouses at each halt in his advance; they milled around between the enemy’s main forces and his blockhouses in seeking battle and engaged the enemy in positional warfare, blockhouse warfare and war of attrition in the hope of "withstanding" enemy attacks by defence. This was nothing but a metaphysical line of pure defence and military conservatism through and through. As a result, we completely lost our initiative and missed the chance to annihilate the enemy; we could neither conserve our own strength nor wipe out the enemy, and not only had we failed to break through enemy attacks but were broken by him. Like other military blunders of the "Left" opportunist line, the so-called "short and swift thrusts" involved, as Chairman Mao put it, "theories and practices [which] were all wrong," and "did not have the slightest flavour of Marxism about them; indeed they were anti-Marxist."

Chairman Mao has highly summarized this strategy and tactics of our army into these words : You fight in your way and we fight in ours; we fight when we can win and move away when we can’t. This is a scientific creation of Chinese proletariat in its armed revolutionary struggle and is our army’s most reliable weapon to defeat the enemy and win victory; it fully embodies the peculiarities and laws of China’s revolutionary war. When the time is not ripe, our main force will not fight the enemy recklessly but will disengage him. But when we are sure to destroy the enemy, we will concentrate three to five divisions to wipe out one enemy division after another, eating up enemy troops mouthful by mouthful. When we can win, we wipe the enemy out; when we can’t, we move away. All our moving is for the purpose of fighting and all our strategy and tactical plans are based on fighting. Chairman Mao has pointed out: "Mobile warfare or positional warfare? Our answer is mobile warfare." When fighting mobile warfare, our main forces on the vast battlefields will be highly mobile; they move back and forth in giants strides, assemble or disperse quickly, seek and seize favourable opportunities for fighting and annihilate the enemy by surprise. Chairman Mao has also pointed out: "Mobile warfare is primary, but we do not reject positional warfare where it is possible and necessary." Out of the needs of strategic defence or strategic counter-attack, it should be admitted that positional warfare should be employed for the tenacious defence of certain strategic points and important positions, and also in attacking certain fortified enemy positions and strongholds. But it is not positional warfare in general sense of the word, neither should it be put on an equal footing with mobile warfare. During the Long March, the Central Red Army, seriously enfeebled as a result of flightism of the Wang Ming line and encircled, pursued, obstructed and intercepted by huge enemy forces, found itself in a very difficult position.

Engels pointed out: "The new military science must necessarily be the product of the new social relationship." Chairman Mao’s military line and his strategy and tactics are based on faith in the reliance upon the masses to carry out people’s war. They have a distinct class nature and a wide mass character. Originating from the practice of people’s war and in turn serving it, the strategy and tactics of the Red Army embodied our Party’s Mass line in relation to war; it is therefore impossible for any army opposed to the people to make use of them. All "Left" and Right opportunists are bound to be defeated because they do not understand historical dialectics, fail to see the strength of the people and are divorced from them. Relying on the masses, the revolutionary war will win; divorced from them, it will fail. This is a truth which has been repeatedly proved in the practice of China’s revolutionary war and a universal law of all revolutionary wars.

"Correct political and military lines do not emerge and develop spontaneously and tranquilly, but only in the course of struggle." It is precisely in the protracted struggles against "Left" and Right opportunist lines that the correct political and military lines of Chairman Mao emerged and developed. Practice is the criterion for testing the truth. We judge the correctness or incorrectness of a guiding line in war not by subjective thinking but by its results in objective social practice.

The Second Revolutionary Civil War can be divided into three stages according to the nature of our strategy: the first is from the days on the Chingkang Mountains to the fourth counter-campaign; the second is the period of the fifth counter-campaign, and the third is from the Tsunyi Conferecne onwards. The history of these three stages was one of victory, defeat, and again victory. During the fifth counter-campaign, the opportunists mistakenly negated the original correct principles, and the subsequent Tsunyi Conference in its turn correctly negated the erroneous principles, which pervailed at the time of the fifth counter-campaign, and reasserted and developed the original correct principles. Thus, historical experience has time and again proved the great truth that "the line is the key link; once it is grasped, everything falls into place." With the correct line guiding its war, the Red Army repeatedly defeated an enemy which was stronger than itself and repulsed enemy forces several times and even a dozen or more times larger than its own, and its revolutionary base areas constantly expanded. But when the line was wrong, its revolutionary base areas and troops suffered losses even though it had men and guns. Chairman Mao’s military line correctly reflects the objective laws of China’s revolutionary war and it summing-up of the rich experience gained in the course of its practice. It is the fundamental guarantee for our army to vanquish the enemy. "Left" and Right opportunist lines, on the other hand, are products of idealism and metaphysics; they run counter to the objective laws of China’s revolutionary war and cannot but meet with defeat in practice.

Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary war, like other military writings of Chairman Mao, is a priceless ideological treasure of our Party. It is an embodiment in the full sense of the word of the unity of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism and the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. Permeated with dialectical materialism and historical materialism, it is a powerful weapon for us in criticizing both the bourgeois military line and revisionism. We relied on Chairman Mao’s correct political and military lines to win victories in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future. Only in this way can we win still greater victories in the struggles of the Chinese Revolution.

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