Deng Xiaoping

should eliminate Huang Wei's army of reinforcements, which had come a long way from southern Henan, was cut off from support and was suffering from fatigue and shortage of food. The Military Commission promptly agreed to this plan and gave Liu, Chen and Deng authority of make decisions in emergency situations without seeking approval from the Commission. Accordingly, supported by a part of the East China Field Army, the main force of the Central Plains Field Army besieged Huang Wei's crack units in the Shuangduiji area between the Huihe and Guohe rivers, and in some 20 days of fierce fighting annihilated them. Then the East China Field Army pressed on to defeat the three armies led by Qiu Qingquan, Li Mi and Sun Yuanliang, which had managed to break out of the siege of Xuzhou and to flee west. Thus the Huai-Hai Campaign ended in complete victory.

Through 65 days of fighting the PLA had finally triumphed, wiping out 555,000 enemy troops. (Speaking about the campaign later, Mao Zedong once said facetiously to commanders of the campaign, "The Huai-Hai Campaign was well fought-it was like a pot of half-cooked rice, but bit by bit you managed to choke it down.") By this time the Kuomintang's crack troops on the southern front had been wiped out, the road to Nanjing was open and the collapse of the reactionary regime was imminent.

In April 1949 the General Front-line Committee, still with Deng serving as its Secretary and commanding the Second and Third Field Armies, directed the crossing of the Changjiang. Breaking through the line of defense painstakingly constructed by the Kuomintang over 500 kilometres from Jiujiang (Jiangxi Province) in the west to Jiangyin (Jiangsu Province) in the east, the mighty force, one million strong, fought its way across the Changjiang and went on to liberate Nanjing and Shanghai and the vast areas of Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces. The liberation of Nanjing signaled the collapse of the Kuomintang government. On the eve of this vast operation, Deng Xiaoping had received another appointment: he had been made First Secretary of the East China Bureau and placed in charge of taking over the east China region,the power base of the Kuomintang.

When the People's Republic of China was proclaimed on October 1, 1949, Deng attended the grand inauguration ceremony in Beijing. Soon afterwards he joined his comrades-in-arms and set out to liberate the Great Southwest of China.

LIBERATING THE GREAT SOUTHWEST