Huaihai Campaign

After victory in the Liaoshen Campaign, the Party Central Committee decided to launch the Huaihai Campaign over the broad region centered on Xuzhou. For unified command it formed a General Front Committee of Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin, with Deng Xiaoping as secretary. On 6 November 1948 the Central Plains and East China Field Armies, 600,000 men in all, began the campaign against 800,000 Kuomintang troops. It had three stages. In the first, the East China Field Army destroyed Huang Baitao's army group at Nianzhuang, and Huang killed himself; He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia, deputy commanders of the Kuomintang Third Pacification Zone, led their troops in revolt. In the second, the Central Plains Field Army, with the East China Field Army, destroyed Huang Wei's army group in the Shuangduiji area of Su County, Anhui, and captured Huang Wei. In the third, the East China Field Army destroyed Du Yuming's group, which had withdrawn from Xuzhou, in the Chenguanzhuang area of Yongcheng, Henan, capturing Du Yuming and killing Qiu Qingquan. The campaign ended in victory on 10 January 1949 after 66 days, with the Liberation Army's 600,000 defeating 800,000 Kuomintang troops and destroying over 555,000 of them. East China and the Central Plains north of the Yangtze were largely liberated, and the Kuomintang capital Nanjing came under direct threat. It was the campaign that destroyed the most enemy troops and had the greatest political impact of the three. In it, over five million peasant laborers from East China, the Central Plains and other liberated areas supported the front, and Chen Yi said with deep feeling: "The victory of the Huaihai Campaign was pushed forward by the people on wheelbarrows." The Huaihai Campaign Martyrs' Memorial Tower and museum stand in Xuzhou, Jiangsu.