Strategically Decisive Battle

An important military campaign for the decisive victory of the National War of Liberation. From September 1948 to January 1949, under the leadership and command of Mao Zedong and the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, and with the ardent support of the people, the Chinese People's Liberation Army launched three major strategic military campaigns of Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin, and several other important military campaigns successively, and engaged in a strategic decisive battle with the KMT, basically destroying the major military forces on which the KMT relied to maintain its reactionary rule.

In the autumn of 1948, the People's Liberation War entered a decisive stage of winning the national victory. The People's Liberation Army grown from 1.27 million people at the beginning of the war to 2.8 million people, the size of Liberated Areas begun to cover an area of 23.55 million square kilometers with a population of 16.8 billion, and the land reform was basically completed, while the revolutionary and productive enthusiasm of the peasants increased unprecedentedly, and the rear of the PLA was further consolidated. On the contrary, the KMT army declined from 4.3 million to 3.65 million, of which only 1.74 million can be deployed in the front line and was demoralized and weak in combat effectiveness; it was also very isolated because of the strong opposition of people from all walks of life. KMT was forced to abandon "total defense" in favor of "focused defense" in military terms. The KMT regime was on the verge of collapse. The time was ripe for the People's Liberation Army to wage a strategic decisive battle with the KMT Army.

Beginning in September 1948, the People's Liberation Army launched an autumn offensive of unprecedented scale on the battlefields of Northeast China, East China, Central Plains, North China and Northwest China.

On September 16, 1948, 320,000 East China Field Army soldiers launched the Jinan Campaign under the command of Su Yu and others, and after eight days and nights of fierce fighting, they conquered Jinan and annihilated more than 100,000 enemies, including more than 20,000 rebels. The Ji’nan Military Campaign opened the prelude to the strategic decisive battle.

The Central Military Commission took advantage of the situation and led the autumn offensive to a strategic battle to annihilate the large corps of the KMT army on the spot. The Liaoshen Military Campaign lasted 52 days from September 12, 1948 to November 2, 1948. Under the leadership of Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan, the main force of the Northeast Field Army of 700,000 people and more than 300,000 local troops wiped out a total of 472,000 enemy troops.

The Huaihai Campaign lasted 66 days from November 6, 1948 to January 10, 1949. The East China Field Army, the Central Plains Field Army and the local armed forces, totaling 600,000 soldiers, under the leadership of the General Front Committee (Secretary Deng Xiaoping), including Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin, annihilated a total of 555,000 enemy troops.

The Pingjin Military Campaign lasted 64 days from 29 November 1948 to 31 January 1949. The main forces of the Northeast Field Army and North China Field Army and the local armed forces, which entered the war with a total of 1 million people, under the leadership of the General Front Committee of the Pingjin Front led by Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan and Nie Rongzhen, annihilated more than 520,000 KMT troops. The three military campaigns lasted 4 months and 19 days, annihilating more than 1.54 million of the KMT's active forces, and with the losses in the Ji’nan and other military campaigns from July 1948 to January 1949, the KMT army lost more than 2.3 million troops. The main military forces on which the KMT relied to maintain its reactionary rule were basically destroyed.

The three major strategic military campaigns and several important others were interlocked and won successively, both the scale of the war or the results achieved were unprecedented in the history of Chinese warfare rare in the history of world warfare, marking the decisive victory of the National War of Liberation and a fundamental victory in the more than 20-year-long Chinese Revolutionary War led by the CPC, which lasted for more than 20 years, won a fundamental victory in the people's war and also a victory in Mao Zedong's military thought.