Strategic Principle of Active Defense

It is the general strategic guideline of the China’s revolutionary war.

In December 1936, Mao Zedong pointed out in his article “Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War": “Active defense is also known as offensive defense, or defense through decisive engagements. Passive defense is also known as purely defensive defense or pure defense. Passive defense is actually a spurious kind of defense, and the only real defense is active defense, defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive.” He stated many times that this was not a strategic policy to guide a certain stage of China's revolutionary war, but it was the general strategic policy guiding China's revolutionary war.

In May 1928, Mao Zedong put forward the “sixteen-characters formula” of the guerrilla warfare, which correctly solved the problem of how the Chinese Workers and Peasants, Red Army could preserve and develop itself and destroy the enemy, under the conditions of obvious disparity of power between the strong and weak enemies. It also reflected the guiding principles of the whole process of the Red Army's anti-"encirclement" campaign. The strategic principle of active defense was developed on the basis of the “sixteen-characters formula” of the Red Army’s guerrilla warfare.

In Mao Zedong's view, active defense means that after the enemy launches an attack on the People’s Army, it first takes the initiative to retreat a step or hold on to certain points, tries to create conditions and postures favorable to itself and unfavorable to the enemy, takes advantage of the favorable conditions of the People's War to annihilate and consume the enemy's living forces with a quick battle of attack on the outside of the battlefield, strives for local initiative and victory, gradually transforms the contrast between the enemy's and its own forces, changes the strategic passive situation, then, it moves to strategic counter-offensive and strategic offensive in a timely manner, and carries out strategic decisive battles under favorable conditions to seize the final victory of the war.

According to Mao Zedong, the military construction work of New China has basically conducted and arranged according to the strategic policy of active defense. He also emphasized that the preparations must be made before the outbreak of a war. Once the imperialists attempt for an invasion, the People’s Army must mainly lure the enemy deeper, look for war opportunities, concentrate superior forces, destroy the enemy one by one, and destroy the invader’s living forces step by step.