Deng Xiaoping

In November 1948 the Huai-Hai Campaigns began. It was to last 65 days.

The battlefield of the Huai-Hai Campaign, centered on Xuzhou, covered a wide area, from the shores of the Yellow Sea in the east to the borders of Henan and Anhui provinces in the west, and from the areas along the Longhai Railway in the north to the Huaihe River in the south. For the Communist-led forces, this enemy-occupied area constituted a barrier to the Changjiang and to Nanjing, the capital of the Kuomintang government. After the fall of Jinan, the Kuomintang government drew back its forces and assembled in the Xuzhou area all the best troops on the southern front that were operating under its direct control-five armies and the troops from three pacification zones, totaling 800,000 men.

On the PLA side, seven columns of the Central Plains Field Army (later named the Second Field Army), 16 columns of the East China Field Army (later named the Third Field Army) and some local armed forces, or a total of 600,000 men, participated in this decisive campaign. They were supported by 5.4 million volunteer laborers, who-using carts, wheelbarrows, shoulder-poles, boats, and any other means at hand -transported 200,000 tons of grain and 7,000 tons of ammunition and other military materiel. At this point, it was truly a people's war. Deng Xiaoping was appointed Secretary of the General Front-line Committee, which was to command both the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army and to take charge of everything at the front. The other members of the Committee were Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin. Deng and his fellow commanders made prudent dispositions in accordance with the strategy outlined by the Central Committee and with the policy decisions of Mao Zedong. Once operational plans were decided upon, Deng was to help organize their execution and to share command at the front.

In the Huai-Hai Campaign the Kuomintang had more troops than the PLA and enjoyed an even greater superiority in arms and equipment. For this reason, the PLA adopted the basic tactic of repeatedly isolating segments of the enemy's main force and annihilating them one by one by concentrating a superior force. At the outset of the campaign the two armies led by He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia, deputy commanders of the Third Pacification Zone of the Kuomintang army, who were actually underground Communist Party members, who were actually underground Communist Party members, suddenly revolted on the battlefront. The main force of the East China Field Army poured through this opening in the enemy defenses to block the retreat of the army commanded by Huang Botao, which was moving towards Xuzhou from east of the Grand Canal, and tightly encircle it the Nianzhuang area,. After this, the General Front-line Committee, again on its own proposal with the approval of the Military Commission, moved the Central Plains Field Army to the rear of the enemy and took by surprise Suxian County along the Tianjin-Pukou Railway, a place of strategic significance. By so doing they severed communications between Xuzhou and its rear, isolating the large number of Kuomintang troops massed around the city and cutting off their retreat. After wiping out Huang Botao's army, the General Front-line Committee made another suggestion: next they