Liu-Deng Army Leaps to the Dabie Mountains

After a year of fighting on interior lines, the Liberation Army had crushed the Kuomintang's general and key-point offensives, and the course of the war had turned in the people's favor. To carry the war into Kuomintang territory, on the night of 30 June 1947 Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping led over 120,000 men of the main force of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army across the Yellow River in southwestern Shandong, and won the Battle of Southwest Shandong. The army then marched without a rear base straight into the heart of Kuomintang territory, reaching the Dabie Mountains at the end of August. The Dabie Mountains lie where Hubei, Henan and Anhui meet, pressing on Nanjing to the east and Wuhan to the west and bordering the Yangtze to the south, a position of great strategic importance. After entering the mountains the Liu-Deng army quickly deployed, set up base areas, and with local support crushed Kuomintang encirclement attacks and gained a firm footing. At the same time the Taiyue Column under Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi advanced into western Henan, and the main force of the East China Field Army under Chen Yi and Su Yu advanced into the Henan-Anhui-Jiangsu border region. The three armies formed a triangular formation between the Yangtze, Huai, Yellow and Han Rivers, cooperating and fighting in mobile warfare, and created the Central Plains Liberated Area. On other fronts the Liberation Army likewise went over to the offensive. The leap into the Dabie Mountains opened the strategic offensive, carried the war into Kuomintang territory, and made the Central Plains the forward base for attacking Nanjing and Wuhan, the centers of Kuomintang rule. In December 1947 Mao Zedong declared: "The Chinese people's revolutionary war has now reached a turning point."