Strategic Analysis

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Rereading Mao’s Military Thinking

Prashant Kumar Singh

To cite this article: Prashant Kumar Singh (2013) Rereading Mao’s Military Thinking, Strategic
Analysis, 37:5, 558-580, DOI: 10.1080/09700161.2013.821247

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Strategic Analysis, 2013
Vol. 37, No. 5, 558–580, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2013.821247

Rereading Mao’s Military Thinking

Prashant Kumar Singh

Abstract: Although the nature of warfare has changed beyond recognition since the
1920s and 1930s when Chairman Mao Zedong penned his main military writings, his
military thoughts are still a point of reference for any discussion on military thinking in
modern China. Developments in warfare have superseded Mao’s operational principles
and tactics visualised in his three-stage warfare; however, his philosophical and politi-
cal understanding of war has value that transcends time and space. The present article
shows that the political and military situation in China in the 1920s and 1930s shaped
Mao’s military thoughts, and his military ideas were an original contribution to Marxist
thought. The extent to which pre-existing non-Marxist Chinese and Western scholarly
traditions of strategic thinking influenced his ideas is uncertain. Mao’s military ideas
continue to provide normative direction in China, with the potential of opportunistic
philosophical manipulation by the government. In addition, the righteous convictions
of his military thoughts continue to capture the imagination of anti-system dissenters
worldwide.

Introduction

W ith the passage of time, Mao Zedong’s military thinking has been reduced to
romanticised guerrilla warfare, at least in popular parlance. This article rereads
the larger contexts and nuances of Mao’s military thinking, and reminds us that guer-
rilla warfare was just one aspect of his thinking and had only secondary importance in
his understanding of warfare. It should also be reiterated that Mao’s military thoughts
were a product of his Marxist-Leninist conviction and practical military experience
derived from China’s civil war and the fight against Japan’s invasion. Tracing it to
China’s ancient military thinking would be an over-extension. This article has been
developed on the basis of Mao’s seminal military writings during the 1920s and 1930s
that are available in English. Many scholars have carried out work on Mao’s military
thinking in the past, some of which this author has referred to. This article highlights
the finer details of Mao’s reasoning on war and warfare and will perhaps also satisfy
the need for a short and readable representation of Mao’s military thinking to enable
scholars to grasp Mao’s military thoughts more easily.1

The historical setting of Mao’s military thinking

The Japanese invasion of China and the Chinese civil war between the Kuomintang
(KMT or the Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a

Dr. Prashant Kumar Singh is Associate Fellow at IDSA, New Delhi.

Some portions of this article will appear in an ensuing monograph to be published later. The views
expressed in this article are the author’s own.

© 2013 Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses

 Strategic Analysis 559

complex political and military picture in China from the late 1920s onwards, and also
shaped Mao’s military thinking. Japan had long had its eyes on Chinese resources to
realise its colonial ambitions. Annexing Taiwan from China in 1895 made China the
first victim of its colonial ambitions. Japan fought a war against Russia on Chinese soil
in Manchuria in 1904–1905. After the final collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911–1912,
Japan started pressing China for sovereign concessions in Manchuria and Shandong.
Japan presented its ‘21 demands’ to China in 1915 in this regard. However, even a
disintegrated and enfeebled Chinese state resisted such demands which had created
popular outrage against Japan. After bullying China for years, Japan finally invaded
and occupied Manchuria in 1931. After a few years of ‘nibbling’ at Chinese terri-
tory, the Japanese military juggernaut rolled down from Manchuria in the north into
China proper in July 1937, and knocked out the Chinese forces, capturing Chinese
cities in quick succession. By October 1938, when Wuhan (the Chinese capital since
the fall of Nanjing in December 1937) fell, almost the whole of North and Central
China and large swathes of South China were under loose Japanese occupation. This
meant that the cities and the main lines of communication were firmly guarded by
the Japanese, whereas the countryside was relatively free. After the fall of Wuhan, the
war became protracted; no major operation was conducted, leaving the ground position
more or less unchanged until the end of the war in 1945. The primary reason for this
was Japan’s engagement in other war theatres during that period. In this war, China
paid a huge human cost. The Chinese people were subjected to inhuman atrocities,
the cities were bombarded indiscriminately, around 300,000 Chinese were butchered
in Nanjing alone, and approximately 100 million Chinese were displaced. This bar-
barity left the ordinary Chinese people hostile towards Japan and fuelled international
outrage as well, notably in the US. Incidentally, Japan during this time had fallen into
the hands of a militarist leadership, with the democratic leadership either persecuted or
sidelined.
In the meantime, the emergence of the CCP with an alternative vision for China
was an important development. The CCP was formed in 1921. The communists joined
the KMT on the common anti-imperialism and anti-warlordism plank in 1923. They
participated in the northern campaign (1926–1928) to reunify China, alongside the
KMT, under KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek’s military leadership. However, this was
an uneasy relationship. In April 1927, on Chiang Kai-shek’s orders, the nationalist
army with the help of criminals unleashed violence on the communists, murdering
thousands of communists in Shanghai in just a couple of days. This marked the end
of the first united front, starting the Chinese civil war. The communists failed to incite
retaliatory revolutionary violence in urban areas and were compelled to retreat into the
rural hinterland and raise their own Red Army.
Between 1930 and 1934, Chiang Kai-shek’s government launched five extermina-
tion or encirclement and suppression campaigns against the communists. While the
communists successfully repulsed the first four by employing guerrilla warfare, aban-
doning this guerrilla warfare and opting for positional warfare almost ensured their
extermination in the fifth. The disaster of the fifth extermination campaign was the
background of the communists’ flight for survival, known in history as the heroic Long
March, in which 86,000 communists abandoned their base in Jiangxi, South China, in
October 1934 and travelled first westward, then turning north reached the northern
province of Shaanxi in October 1935, covering around 6,000 miles. The attacks by the
nationalist and warlords’ militaries, and exhaustion during this long flight reduced the
communist army’s numbers to less than 10,000. After reaching Shaanxi in October
560 Prashant Kumar Singh

1935, the communists based themselves in North China and carried out their oper-
ations from there till the end of the war with Japan and finally till the breakout of
civil-war with the KMT in 1946. Under tremendous public pressure, as well as pressure
from within the nationalist army, Chiang Kai-shek reluctantly proposed a united front
with the communists against the Japanese, which the communists agreed to, accept-
ing his overall leadership, starting the second united front in 1937. The united front
broke down after the New Fourth Army incident in 1941 in which the nationalist troops
killed 3,000 communist troops in Southern Anhui. After this the nationalists and the
communists entered a sort of truce until the resumption of civil war in July 1946. The
communists, until the end of the war against Japan, basically carried out guerrilla activ-
ities between the Japanese lines in North China. However, realising the outcome of the
war, they rushed to fill the vacuum left by the Japanese in Manchuria. In Manchuria,
they got hold of the retreating Japanese troops’ ammunition, and more importantly they
successfully mobilised the countryside for their support. It was here that the civil war
finally resumed with the arrival of the nationalist troops.
In final analysis, during the entire war the Japanese always had the upper hand.
Japan demonstrated superior firepower and military skills. The nationalist forces bore
the brunt of the Japanese juggernaut. However, the KMT not only appeared lacking
on military counts, despite Soviet and US assistance, but it appeared constrained by
its support base of landlords and bourgeois class, politically vacillating too as to who
was its major enemy: Japan or the communists. On the other hand, the military role
of the communists in the war against Japan on the whole was limited to some heroic
 Strategic Analysis 561

fights. They were never considered the main countervailing force against Japan, either
by the Chinese public or by international powers such as the US and the USSR. Later
it was the rural masses’ political support for them which ultimately proved decisive in
the civil war against the KMT.
This is the background that resonates in Mao’s military writings. He led the
Long March, and was chairman of the communist party during many of these years.
In his writings, he comes across as a patriot revolutionary communist military com-
mander, and puts forward his observations, opinions and convictions. His writings,
562 Prashant Kumar Singh

originally lectures given to party cadres, were intended to dispel their doubts and strive
to debunk theories expounded self-servingly or out of ignorance by non-communist
circles, especially the KMT.2

The study of war

Conceding high unpredictability on a tactical level, Mao perceived war as a methodi-
cal exercise worth scientific study, as considerable predictability exists on its strategic
level. For him, war science contained science of strategy, science of campaign and sci-
ence of tactics. The recurrence of the terms strategy and strategic is noticeably high
in Mao’s military thoughts. The terms, simply speaking, denote overall, broad, on the
whole and macro level of war. Any war-related analysis on this level is a strategic-level
analysis, which Mao insisted must be allowed to decide the course of military cam-
paigns and nature of tactics employed. Granting that sometimes one or two individual
recklessly fought wars could disturb strategic-level calculations, he emphasised indi-
vidual victories or defeats as strategically inconsequential for any of the belligerents.
According to Mao, having a correct strategic view of war and faithfully implementing
it was the key to winning.
Strategic-level analysis consists of two parts: political and military. While political
analysis examines belligerents’ overall socio-political, economic and military strength
and the international scenario, military analysis chalks out a war strategy consistent
with political analysis. Mao’s strategic-level analysis encompassed:

Study of comparative strength of enemy and own in politics, economy, military and other
areas; Proper study of ‘various campaigns or various operational stages’ and their relation
with the war as a whole; Identify important tactical aspects which can prove decisive; Identify
unique characteristics in the general situation; and Study how to manage the front and the rear
simultaneously.3

Nature of war
War had a central place in Mao’s scheme for communist revolution. He pronounced:

[t]he seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task
and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good
universally, for China and for all other countries . . . Experience tells us that China’s problems
cannot be settled without armed force . . . Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must
have a strong army.4

For Mao, war was a ‘political action’ which performed the historical function of carry-
ing society forward by breaking civilisational deadlocks created by vested interests. He
averred that in human civilisation hardly any war has happened that was not a product
of politics. Here, he was endorsing the Marxist understanding that politics is all about
class struggle. Class struggle is a long-drawn competition among various groups of
society that manifests itself in various violent and non-violent ways. For Mao, war was
the supreme manifestation of class struggle.

War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed a
certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since
the emergence of private property and of classes.5
 Strategic Analysis 563

Mao described the armed struggle under the CCP leadership as the only way left for
socio-economic reforms in China.

Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it
is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a
democratic republic.6

War per se was not morally condemnable. He saw a distinction between just and unjust
wars. Just wars were progressive and ensured advancement of society. Mao declared:
‘We support just wars and oppose unjust wars. All counter-revolutionary wars are
unjust, all revolutionary wars are just’.7 He exemplified the First World War as unjust
war, which, he stated, the communists in the world opposed. The protracted war with
Japan was another example of just war. He announced: ‘The banner of mankind’s just
war is the banner of mankind’s salvation. The banner of China’s just war is the ban-
ner of China’s salvation’.8 He was convinced that only just war could eliminate unjust
wars, and ensure peace:

War, this monster of mutual slaughter among men, will be finally eliminated by the progress of
human society, and in the not too distant future too. But there is only one way to eliminate it and
that is to oppose war with war, to oppose counter-revolutionary war with revolutionary war,
to oppose national counter-revolutionary war with national revolutionary war, and to oppose
counter-revolutionary class war with revolutionary class war.9

Upholding strategic defensive orientation for just wars, Mao rejected strategic offen-
sive as an imperialist idea, which, according to him, was in pursuit of aggressive
policies in international politics. He was essentially rejecting ‘the cult of offence’
seen in many countries in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. He did not
accept that strategic offensive was needed to boost national morale, certainly not
in the Chinese context. He argued that Chinese people’s faith in the justness of
their cause of liberation was a big morale booster. However, his vision of strategic
counter-offensive, expressed in the concept of ‘active defence’, reserved the right
of pre-emptory strikes in self-defence on campaign and tactical levels. This was
consistent with his belief in just war.10 Mao stipulated that politics in the form
of war was conducted by the armed forces, and was a different format than poli-
tics in the regular sense. According to him, the military objective of every war was
self-preservation and annihilation of the enemy. Here, annihilation means destruc-
tion of the enemy’s war machinery, not physical destruction of each and every enemy
soldier.11
Some scholars such as Samuel B. Griffith and John L Washington Jr. have attempted
to underscore the influence of Sun Tzu on Mao. On the other hand, Edward L.
Katzenbach and Gene Z. Hanrahan, Tang Tsou and Morton H. Halperin, and Giri
Deshingkar do not see such an influence. Although Mao’s writings contain ancient
Chinese maxims, they do not constitute the core of his ideas. The real meaning of being
influenced by someone’s work is accepting his or her views as cardinal guiding princi-
ples, and accordingly interpreting and constituting the reality. The trend of overlooking
Mao’s Marxist-Leninist convictions—ubiquitous in his writings—and emphasising
sporadic maxims of Sun Tzu misses the point made here. As far as Sun Tzu’s influ-
ence on Mao’s guerrilla tactics is concerned, his guerrilla tactics came, more plausibly,
from his own experiences of war. Besides, there are questions about his actual reading
564 Prashant Kumar Singh

of Sun Tzu. Katzenbach and Hanrahan, and Deshingkar point out Mao’s late reading
of Sun Tzu’s texts. Similarly, Mao read some of Clausewitz in Chinese translation, and
his ideas about war have resemblance to those of Clausewitz. However, it would be
incorrect to describe him as Clausewitzian. As is clear, Mao’s military thoughts were
basically introducing Marxist understanding of class struggle into the military realm.
Drawing insights from Stuart R. Schram, Mao was aware of his Chinese cultural her-
itage, and the society he wanted to change was Chinese. However, the ideology he was
pursuing for this change was Marxism-Leninism.12 Finally, Mao’s ideas on war and
warfare are his original and structured contribution to Marxist thought: ‘Mao Tse-tung
has done for war what Lenin did for imperialism and Marx for capitalism: he has given
war “scientific” schemata’.13

The two main problems

The strategic-level problems that Mao strove to resolve in his writings were whether
sheer military force could subjugate China, and whether quick victory against the
enemy was achievable. While the first problem was applicable in the context of the
Japanese invasion, the second problem was equally applicable to the war against
Japan as well as the civil war against the KMT. Mao resolutely opposed flightism
(‘only retreat, never advance’) as well as desperate recklessness (‘only advance, never
retreat’). Flightists were those who advocated compromise with Japan by surrendering
some Chinese territory, while the reckless wanted quick victory over the Japanese or
the KMT. Many of the themes under the two problems are quite entwined, but have
been segregated in this article for better readability.

China cannot be subjugated

Mao’s answer to whether China could be subjugated demonstrated his patriotism
as well as his grip over domestic and international political-economy and warfare.
His answers to the question basically took on a defeatist psychology, expressed in
statements like ‘China is inferior in arms and is bound to lose in a war’; ‘If China
offers armed resistance, she is sure to become another Abyssinia’; and ‘the continu-
ance of the war spells subjugation’. For Mao, such statements were subjugationism,
not a concern about subjugation. Subjugationists had neither hope nor interest in the
resistance against Japan.14 In view of the common Chinese people’s anger towards
Japan because of its barbarity, and international opinion against it, Mao believed that
subjugationists did not pose a serious challenge. Nevertheless, they required rebuttal at
every level, and in every form, due to the fear of the existence of defeatist impulses in
society.15
Mao underscored that the Japanese invasions’ barbarity flowed from the ‘military-
feudal character’ of Japanese imperialism, pursuing a basically unchangeable material
and cultural agenda in China:

At the very beginning of the War of Resistance, we estimated that the time would come when
an atmosphere conducive to compromise would arise, in other words, that after occupying
northern China, Kiangsu and Chekiang, Japan would probably resort to the scheme of inducing
China to capitulate. True enough, she did resort to the scheme, but the crisis soon passed,
one reason being that the enemy everywhere pursued a barbarous policy and practiced naked
 Strategic Analysis 565

plunder . . . In the main the enemy is transplanting into the interior of China the same old
measures he adopted in the three northeastern provinces. Materially, he is robbing the common
people . . . Spiritually, he is working to destroy the national consciousness of the Chinese
people . . . This barbarous enemy policy will be carried deeper into the interior of China.16

Mao argued that only the progressive overthrow of the Japanese ruling class by Japan’s
progressive sections could stop Japanese aggression towards China. Otherwise, this
aggression would stop with the Japanese ruling class committing suicide in pursuit of
the subjugation of China. There was no third way out. For Mao, the second scenario
was the only plausible possibility.17
Mao was convinced that Japanese imperialism would not be able to carry on its
initial success in the long run due to deficient manpower and overstretched resources.
Besides, as he argued, the Japanese invasion coincided with the eve of the worldwide
collapse of imperialism and fascism. Japan’s imperialist strength itself had declined
from what it used to be before the First World War. Furthermore, Mao reasoned, Japan
was underestimating the rising tide of Chinese nationalism. Despite being a compara-
tively weak ‘semi-colonial and semi-feudal country’, China had considerable presence
of capitalism and had a bourgeoisie national leadership (basically the KMT and other
nationalist groups), with considerable military wherewithal. He also reiterated the pres-
ence of the CCP and its Red Army as a committed force against the aggressors.
Furthermore, Mao was confident of eventually gaining full international support for
China against Japan. He spoke highly of the geographically proximate USSR. Thus,
Japan was indulging in adventurism to maintain its pre-eminence.18
Answering an important question posed to him about whether a small but strong
country could conquer a big but weak country in modern times, he emphasised that
it was possible only in distant history when wars were local incidents without signifi-
cant international repercussions. Furthermore, he argued that citing Britain’s conquest
of India was incorrect, as it would amount to forgetting that Japanese capitalism in
the 1930s was in decline, while British capitalism in the 18th century was on a rising
trajectory. He also argued that Italy’s conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935 was
also an incorrect example as Abyssinia was still ‘passing from the slave to the serf
system’, and was too small and weak in every regard of national capabilities to be
compared with China. The Italian conquest of Abyssinia was an internationally iso-
lated event even in modern times, whereas war on such a scale as the Japanese
invasion of China could not have been without international repercussions.19 Thus,
Mao forcefully argued that subjugation of China through sheer military force was
impossible:

Even if Japan should succeed in occupying a section of China with as many as 100 to 200 mil-
lion people, we would still be far from defeated . . . when it is dark in the east, it is light in the
west; when things are dark in the south, there is still light in the north . . . Even if Japan block-
ades the Chinese coastline, it is impossible for her to blockade China’s Northwest, Southwest
and West.20

Quick victory is not possible

Mao dismissed the Left adventurism of demanding quick victory against the KMT and
the Japanese. He straightforwardly stated that the adventurists’ assessments were unre-
alistic and quick victory was a delusion.21 Victory required comprehensive political
566 Prashant Kumar Singh

work and continuously pushing back the enemy by a series of small tactical vic-
tories. Mao asked to take full advantage of China’s geography and population, and
opposed putting all the stakes in one or two odd battles, as without a favourable strate-
gic balance of power, fighting strategically decisive battles could have been disastrous.
China’s large territory provided an extended battlefront for manoeuvre, and its huge
population a large recruitment base: an ideal situation for protracted war. He argued
that the duration of the war against Japan would mainly depend on the rise of the
anti-imperialism revolutionary movement within Japan, formation of an international
united front against Japan and most importantly the building of a united national front
in China. Incidentally, Mao’s emphasis on the international scenario was perhaps more
relevant in the war against Japan than in the civil war.22
In the context of the civil war, Mao considered the KMT’s ‘encirclement and sup-
pression’ campaigns, and the Red Army’s counter-campaigns, as the main pattern. The
entire civil war would protractedly rotate between the KMT’s offensive and the Red
Army’s defensive, and the Red Army’s counter-offensive and the KMT’s defensive.
For the communists, the loss of territory, cadres and party membership would always
be recoverable. Only complete destruction would be their defeat. According to Mao,
the KMT would not be able to sustain this mode of warfare in the long run for want
of the public support protracted warfare required. Besides, it had a palpable state to
defend.23
Nevertheless, Mao knew that the Red Army’s internal and external adversaries were
formidable, and had strategic advantage. While the Japanese were waging war in the
Chinese territory maintaining a strategic offensive and operating on exterior lines, the
KMT government, recognised by major countries, controlled almost all of China and
had massive military power. On the contrary, the communist party’s political power
was in flux and without external recognition and its Red Army’s fighting capabilities
were very limited. Broadly speaking, in the civil war the KMT forces were encircling
the communists, and later the Japanese forces were encircling the Chinese, commu-
nists included. However, as Mao stated, the communist party was pinning its hopes
on political divisions in the KMT which were adversely affecting the KMT forces’
morale, and also on the most potent weapon of the politically surcharged peasantry’s
support against the foreign invaders and the local KMT. He underlined that the invad-
ing Japanese army or the reactionary KMT forces were moving amidst a large and
hostile population.24 Thus, with the peasantry and China’s large territory in the back-
drop, Mao supported the idea of three-stage warfare to fight superior enemies from an
inferior position.

Three-stage warfare
Mao’s three-stage warfare strategy was basically a strategy of mobile warfare assisted
by guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare was secondary in his overall scheme despite
taking the lead from time to time. Mobile warfare was high-mobility war ‘on exten-
sive battlefields, making swift advances and withdrawals, swift concentrations and
dispersals’. Its essence was ‘fight when you can win, move away when you can’t
win’, keeping war fronts fluid. In mobile warfare, ‘regular armies wage quick-decision
offensive campaigns and battles on exterior lines along extensive fronts and over
big areas of operation’. He argued that ‘[a]ll our “moving” is for the purpose of
 Strategic Analysis 567

“fighting”’.25 One can argue that the same applies to guerrilla warfare too. But as it
emerges in Mao’s writings, guerrillas were local peasants loosely directed but strongly
inspired by the communist party, and active only in their local pockets, whereas regu-
lar communist armies, despite the fluidity of war, were under a political and military
command with a high degree of centralisation, and their scale of operation was much
larger.
The three-stage mobile warfare strategy proposed strategic retreat against the
strategy of ‘engaging the enemy outside the gates’. Mao argued that ‘engaging the
enemy outside the gates’ was erroneous, and meant:
568 Prashant Kumar Singh

‘Pit one against ten, pit ten against a hundred’; ‘Attack on all fronts’; ‘Seize key
cities’; ‘Strike with two “fists” in two directions at the same time’ and ‘Don’t let our
pots and pans be smashed’.26
The communists needed a calculated strategic retreat to acquire strength to defeat
their more powerful enemies. Mao argued that the communist party’s 16-character
formula—the enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy
tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue—was the gist of strategic retreat-based
anti-‘encirclement and suppression’ counter-campaigns against the KMT,27 equally
applicable to the war against Japan too.
Thus, three-stage warfare was strategically defensive. Its first two stages generally
witnessed strategic retreat, whereas the third stage was strategic counter-offensive. Mao
warned that three-stage warfare would be a long-drawn process, always with new cam-
paigns and new battles under new circumstances.28 Incidentally, this article strives to
provide a context-neutral interpretation of three-stage warfare, or read the two contexts
alongside each other. However, since three-stage warfare got full treatment in the con-
text of the Japanese invasion, it is this context that is relatively more pronounced in the
following sub-sections.

1. The first stage

At the time Mao was writing his essays On Protracted War and Problems of Strategy
in Guerrilla War against Japan, the war of resistance was in the first phase. Japan
was on the strategic offensive making advances into China, and the Chinese forces
were on the strategic defensive. Despite China’s putting a united national front against
Japan, the Japanese were prevailing in the war with all their potential disadvantages.
Their inadequacy in numbers of men and material was yet to show any effects. Japan
was yet not fully isolated by the international community, and was receiving foreign
arms. Although sympathetic to China, advanced capitalist countries were hesitant to
join hands with the USSR against Japan. Therefore, despite China gaining some polit-
ical and military strength since the invasion began, the idea of a quick victory was
not workable. Strategic retreat was the only choice.29 Earlier against the KMT, too,
Mao had rhetorically described the temporary loss of territory as ‘give in order to
take’:

It often happens that only by loss can loss be avoided . . . If you refuse to let the pots and pans
of some households be smashed over a short period of time, you will cause the smashing of
the pots and pans of all the people to go on over a long period of time.30

‘Primarily mobile warfare, supplemented by guerrilla and positional warfare’ was

the preferred mode of war in strategic retreat. During this period, explaining the
rationale of strategic retreat as the beginning of a counter-offensive to the sym-
pathetic masses, on whose support the success of this strategy depended, was
very important. The retreat had tactical value too: to force the enemy to make
mistakes.31
 Strategic Analysis 569

2. The second stage

The shortage of troops and the stiff resistance put up by the Chinese would bring
Japan’s strategic advance to a halt which will mark the end of the first stage. In the
second stage, marked by a strategic stalemate, the enemy would consolidate its power
and revolutionary forces would prepare for the counter-offensive. In this stage, the
enemy would defend his rear and its occupied territory operating from terminal points
(centralised locations). The guerrillas would fight intensely on exterior lines. Taking
advantage of the enemy’s neglect of his rear during his relentless strategic advance
in the first stage, they had immediately set up their bases around the occupied areas.
Thus, the main feature of the fight would now be guerrilla warfare, with mobile warfare
570 Prashant Kumar Singh

becoming secondary. The bulk of the Chinese forces would be dispersed to the enemy’s
rear in coordination with local guerrillas. Their coordinated guerrilla warfare would
compel the enemy to come out from his stronghold areas only to be annihilated in
mobile warfare.32 Nevertheless, despite the enemy adopting the strategic defensive,
the overall balance of power would still favour the enemy.
The second stage would be relatively longer and more painful, and would witness
unprecedented bloodshed, foreign occupation, puppet governments, rapine and plun-
der, and cultural humiliation. However, this phase would also witness unprecedented
mass mobilisation and national unity, primarily seen in the public support for the guer-
rillas. International support, crucial to determine the duration of this stage, would build
up for China tangibly. With the enemy fully overstretched, the strategic balance would
finally begin to tilt in China’s favour by the end of this phase. Political and diplomatic
work would begin to bear fruit.33

2.1. Quick decision battles

Although Mao did not very clearly ascribe quick decision battles to any particular
stage, most quick decision battles were likely to have taken place in the second stage.
Although fighting potentially strategically decisive individual battles with uncertain
outcomes was unacceptable, when victory was sure, dragging the enemy into deci-
sive engagements in major or minor campaigns or battles was necessary. Incidentally,
there is difficulty of approximation of Chinese use of the words ‘operation’ and ‘cam-
paign’ with the Western or Indian terminology. Nevertheless, in the light of Mao’s
writings, it appears that these quick decision battles are operation-level battles. Only
a series of such decisive battles would ‘deplete the enemy forces’ and transform the
Chinese forces from weak to strong. The thrust was to annihilate the enemy in small
numbers. Thus, Mao endorsed an operational principle of ‘quick-decision offensive
warfare on exterior lines’ for campaigns and battles under an overarching strategic prin-
ciple of ‘protracted defensive warfare on interior lines’. This operational principle was
meant to push the enemy on the defensive on exterior lines, compel him to divest his
troops from the interior lines, and gradually achieve the strategic objective of seeking
the enemy’s strategic-level attrition. Quick decision battles should have quick victo-
ries which depended on the offensive employment of overwhelming numbers.34 Mao
emphasised that the victory or defeat in the first battle in any campaign may prove a
decisive influence on the troops’ morale. Therefore, it should be part of the larger cam-
paign plan, and should be carefully planned keeping the next strategic stage in mind.
For battles, he produced certain guidelines:

It is inadvisable to fight when the force confronting us is too large; it is sometimes inadvisable
to fight when the force confronting us, though not so large, is very close to other enemy forces;
it is generally inadvisable to fight an enemy force that is not isolated and is strongly entrenched;
and it is inadvisable to continue an engagement in which there is no prospect of victory.35

Mao warned that sometimes the enemy too would like to prolong operation/campaign-
level battles in order to avoid annihilation. However, inadequate reinforcement would
not allow him to do so. Thus, the enemy’s weakness in numbers and its strategic
mismanagement should be continuously exploited. In addition, although the enemy
 Strategic Analysis 571

may like to prolong some battles when in a disadvantageous position, its overall strat-
egy would still be to impose ‘a war of quick decision’ on China, which China must
avoid and instead persist with a protracted war strategy to keep the situation under its
control.36

3. The third stage

Intense political and diplomatic work done during the second stage brings about
the third stage, in which relatively strengthened Chinese forces would finally launch
a strategic counter-offensive and the exhausted enemy would beat a strategic-level
572 Prashant Kumar Singh

retreat. Mobile warfare would subsume guerrilla warfare. For the first time, the Chinese
forces would fight a war on exterior lines on a strategic level to recover national ter-
ritory. China would be liberated by dint of its political and military perseverance, and
with international support. It would also contribute to the international fight against
fascism. What a prophetic word in 1938, when the Second World War in Europe was
yet to start, and Japan’s defeat would take a full seven years more. The details of the
actual course of China’s war of resistance against Japan may vary. However, what is
beyond doubt is that Mao correctly perceived the direction of the general drift of the
political course.37

Four main ‘relations’ in three-stage warfare

Mao’s three-stage warfare contained four main ‘relations’ or themes: interior and
exterior lines, possession and non-possession of a rear area, encirclement and counter-
encirclement, and big areas and little areas. On the whole, the retreating regular forces
would operate on interior lines, while the guerrilla forces would advance on exterior
lines. The guerrilla forces too would have their own interior and exterior lines open-
ing multiple fronts of war, and presenting an imagery of simultaneous retreat and
advance. The regular forces would fight from the depth (rear area) of the country,
whereas the guerrillas would be located in the enemy rear, maintaining their own small
rear area, trapping the enemy in a multi-layered encirclement and making the battle-
front unsustainably extended for the enemy. The Chinese forces were first encircled by
the invading Japanese army when they were retreating on interior line. However, the
retreating Chinese forces too, at times, tactically encircled isolated enemy troops on
exterior lines, which formed the first counter-encirclement of the enemy. The enemy’s
attempt to encircle individual guerilla bases located in its rear area was the second
form of encirclement by it; however, in its attempt to encircle individual guerilla bases
the enemy itself stood encircled by the guerilla network on the whole, which was the
second form of counter-encirclement of the enemy. Despite occupying Chinese terri-
tory, the enemy would practically occupy some big cities and protect its main lines of
communication only. China at large, particularly its rural side, would remain free, and
even occupied areas had guerrilla bases.38

Positional warfare and guerrilla warfare

Mobile defence, positional attack and positional defence had only a secondary role in
mobile warfare. Both offensive and defensive positional warfare was generally defunct
in the extremely fluid second phase. However, semi-positional warfare was more useful
in obstructing the enemy’s advance.39 In Mao’s thinking, guerrilla warfare due to its
sheer scale was much more important, and had its own autonomous strategic context.
It would assume relatively more importance in the second phase; otherwise, its primary
function was assisting mobile warfare, and it would be subsumed into mobile warfare
in the third phase. Mao did not appear to hold a romantic view of guerrilla warfare.
In fact, while discussing ‘guerrilla-ism’, Mao argued that guerrilla-ism in the sense of
mobility was essential as a primary mode of warfare, but in the sense of irregularity,
decentralisation, lack of uniformity, absence of strict discipline and rudimentary func-
tioning, he would have to go with the Red Army becoming a more sophisticated and
modern army.40
 Strategic Analysis 573

Political work
Mao emphasised that victory in war depended on political progress. For him, political
work deserved more attention than weapons and finance. It involved shaping public
opinion, mass mobilisation for war, raising a politically committed army, establish-
ing the communist party’s leadership over the army and building broad political unity
and international opinion against the enemy.41 The article has already mentioned cre-
ating a broad-based unity without compromising the communist party’s long-term
goal and the importance of international diplomatic work as important components
of Mao’s political work. The role of the masses in war and the concern about establish-
ing leadership of the communist party over the Red Army stands out in Mao’s political
work.
Mao’s dubbing of subjugationist and quick victory ideas as subjective did not mean
opposing ‘man’s conscious dynamic role’, but only meant opposing unsubstantiated
ideas.42 He welcomed conscious individual efforts in war. In fact, without ensuring
people’s whole-hearted participation, aspiring to victory was to ‘go south by driving
the chariot north’. A comprehensive mass politicisation was meant to explain the aim
of the war to the masses, convince them about its justness and tell them the daily life
implications of defeat. Political work was basically propaganda carried out through
various educational and cultural activities. Such politicisation would ensure an abun-
dance of voluntary reinforcement producing a spirited people’s army whose morale
would be far superior to that of the invaders. Thus, people were more decisive than
weapons.

Political progress at home and perseverance in the War of Resistance are inseparable. The
greater the political progress, the more we can persevere in the war, and the more we persevere
in the war, the greater the political progress.43

Mao declared:

Communists do not fight for personal military power, but they must fight for military power
for the Party, for military power for the people . . . Political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun. Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to
command the Party.44

Mao condemned the roving rebel band political ideology and the purely military view-
point which showed little interest in ground-level political work as running counter to
the communist party’s leadership and its revolutionary goals. He attributed the roving
rebel band tendency to the lumpen proletariat section, which constituted a consider-
ably large proportion of the Red Army, and wanted to increase the party’s political
influence only by mercenary methods like monetary incentives and ‘accepting desert-
ers and mutineers’. Besides, a purely military viewpoint saw division between political
and military tasks of the party, and treated military tasks as superior. Mao warned that
a purely military viewpoint would eventually mean, ‘If you are good militarily, natu-
rally you are good politically; if you are not good militarily, you cannot be any good
politically’. He warned that the military bereft of revolutionary commitments would
alienate the masses, threaten proletarian leadership and take the course of warlordism.
In order to tackle these problems, he recommended correct ideological education for
the army, more recruitment from politicised workers and peasants, the party’s active
participation in military affairs and constructive criticism of the army at every level
574 Prashant Kumar Singh

of the party, with clear instruction for the army for grassroots-level political and mil-
itary work and a clear definition of its relationship with the party and the masses.
The aim was to make the army realise that it was fighting its own war, not somebody
else’s.45
Finally, ‘the unity between officers and men’, ‘the unity between army and people’,
a ‘united front policy’, mass mobilisation and an international alliance including pro-
gressive Japanese, constituted the full spectrum of political work that was to start at
the officer-soldier level. Once the political work was completed:

[t]he Japanese aggressor, like a mad bull crashing into a ring of flames, will be surrounded by
hundreds of millions of our people standing upright, the mere sound of their voices will strike
terror into him, and he will be burned to death.46

For a summary of Mao’s strategic and operational precepts see Appendix 1.

The legacy and relevance of Mao’s military thinking

Mao’s military thoughts, summarised as the People’s War, provided the intellec-
tual conditioning of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for decades. They
became an important instrument in larger political machinations in the 1960s, par-
ticularly during the Cultural Revolution. Even after the reversal of Maoist politics,
and eventually Mao’s death, the wholesale abandoning of Mao’s military thoughts
was never possible.47 The deterrence value of Mao’s People’s War, national mobil-
isation and all-out war-like formulations, although polemical, has been underscored.
The examples of Vietnam and Afghanistan are also cited to prove that the national
mobilisation that Mao visualised has never been an outdated phenomenon.48 Military
power continues to be a vital component in the Chinese conception of comprehen-
sive national power. Dennis J. Blasco points out that all the Chinese defence White
Papers since 1998 have adhered to the People’s War concept and active defence strat-
egy, indicating a strong textual as well as normative continuity. David Lai illustrates
how the CCP and the PLA treats People’s War as a ‘magic weapon’. Mao’s successor
Deng Xiaoping, upholding Mao’s thoughts, insisted on implementing it under modern
conditions. Jiang Zemin, who underscored the role of technology in military affairs,
also described People’s War as ‘the key to defeating enemies’. Lai also mentions
Hu Jintao’s highlighting of the importance of People’s War. He appears to suggest
that there is pressure from the top Chinese leadership to continuously redefine Mao’s
People’s War doctrine.49
The idea of strategic defence still has strong ideological support. Hypothetically
speaking, if China were to build an expeditionary military force on the American
model, it would entail adjustment in overall national ideological orientation and ensure
a lot of homework for the ruling communist party. Analysing Peng and Yao’s edited
volume, The Science of Military Strategy, Blasco states that ‘people’s war is not a
static or dead theory’. It is redefining itself, as the PLA is modernising. Blasco as
well as Alexander Huang points out that the salience of this theory does not lie in
technology, but in its connection with politics and people. As China continues to be a
party-state, the importance of correct handling of party–public, party–army and army–
public relations is as relevant as it was in the 1920s and 1930s. Blasco mentions that
people’s mobilisation is still an important feature in China’s military planning. The
National Defence Mobilisation Law (2010) and China’s emphasis on civil–military
 Strategic Analysis 575

integration in logistic building are instructive in this regard, although criticism persists
over how reliable and sustainable civilian support is in the context of high-technology
wars. Information warfare too is interpreted as a form of People’s War, although the
information warfare-specific contours of People’s War require a clearer enunciation of
the idea, whether it is interpreted as a form of People’s War in terms of civil–military
integration of the information technology resources, the mass use of private hackers or
surprise and deception akin to guerrilla tactics.50
On a different note, the old Maoist tendency of interpreting the world in confronta-
tional ideological terms persists, in which the US and the West are still considered
hegemonic powers. Other countries are evaluated on the basis of their relations
with the hegemonic powers. Japan continues to be a reference point for Chinese
nationalism. Seeing China’s recent assertions in the territorial disputes in the East
China Sea and the South China Sea, one could argue that China is transiting from
a strategic defensive ideology to a strategic offensive ideology. In this context, an
opportunistic philosophical and political revival of Mao’s military thought is not an
impossibility as terms like self-defence, active defence and just cause are all about
subjective interpretation. Mao’s principle of strategic defence with permission for
pre-emptive initiative on the campaign level has the capacity to accommodate this
opportunism.51
Mao’s People’s War has a role-model value. It still inspires armed insurgencies
across countries; recent examples include Indian and Nepalese Maoist insurgencies.
The internet has the potential to bring People’s War to urban areas. Facebook mobil-
isations brought down Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt in 2011 and played an
instrumental role in the civil society-led anti-corruption movement in 2011–2012 in
India and unprecedented public demonstrations in the wake of the death of a gang-
rape victim in India in December 2012 and January 2013. In China, too, the internet
plays an important role in ‘mass incidents’. All this is protracted war in its own right
waged by civil society. In the 1930s, the Japanese or the local bourgeois reactionary
KMT forces were moving amidst a hostile population. Now, and in recent times, the
CCP is moving amidst a growing number of dissenters. Although terrorist and sepa-
ratist violence figures as a prominent security concern for China, as seen in the PLA’s
Peace Mission exercises with Russia and its other military drills, whether the Chinese
government officially recognises the threat of any form of People’s War or protracted
war against it, and whether it has any comprehensive counter-strategy—political and
military—is a matter of separate research.

Conclusion
Although Mao’s three-stage People’s War was the product of a specific time and space,
as an analytical category that changed the notion of time, space (territory), loss and
defeat, it reains relevant. Various military leaders like Simon Bolivar in Venezuela in
the 19th century may have implemented the kind of three-stage war in the past that Mao
visualised in the 1930s. In fact, even the nationalist army basically followed protracted
war against Japan after the fall of Wuhan in 1938. Nevertheless, it is Mao who made
it an analytical category. His understanding that war is politics, and people at large are
an integral part of this politics, is hard to challenge. Mao’s views of political work
are not very compatible with the liberal democratic setting of civil–military relations.
Nevertheless, the role of righteous conviction in boosting the military’s morale and
the military’s organic link with the masses and the political class in national defence
576 Prashant Kumar Singh

transcends boundaries. Finally, a fair understanding of Mao’s military thoughts is still

vital in order to understand the People’s Republic of China’s continuous rhetoric on
peace, just wars and strategic defence.52

Notes
1. Mao Zedong, ‘The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains’ (1928), ‘On Correcting Mistaken
Ideas in the Party’ (1929), ‘Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War’ (1936),
‘Guerilla Warfare’ (1937), ‘Basic Tactics’ (1937), ‘On Protracted War’ (1938), ‘Problems of
Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan’ (1938) and ‘Problems of War and Strategy’ (1938),
all in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/
selected-works/ and http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/military-
writings (both accessed 17 February 2013). The Marxists Internet Archive (http://www.
marxists.org/) houses standard translations of Mao’s work in circulation. Since the writings
are in html format rather than PDF, they do not show page numbers. Therefore, to make ref-
erences easily accessible, the author has put sections in inverted commas followed by chapters
with chapter numbers, wherever a book is available in chapters, and then the name of the book
in italics. On Protracted War is available in sections and paragraph numbers, not in chapters.
Therefore, references to this book include paragraph numbers.
2. This summary narration of the historical setting in China from the late 1920s onwards draws
on Stephen R. MacKinnon, ‘The Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1931–1945’, in David A. Graff and
Robin Higham (eds.), A Military History of China, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2002,
pp. 211–227; William Wei, ‘Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun: Mao and the
Red Army’, in David A. Graff and Robin Higham (eds.), ibid., pp. 229–248; Edgar O’balance,
The Red Army of China, Faber and Faber, London, 1962. See also Mao Zedong, ‘The Chinese
Communist Party and China’s Revolutionary War’ and ‘The Laws of War are Developmental’,
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
3. Mao Zedong, ‘Strategy is the Study of the Laws of a War Situation as a Whole’, in ‘How
to Study War’ (Chapter I), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1; Mao
Zedong, ‘Initiative, Flexibility and Planning’ (Paragraph 88), On Protracted War, no. 1.
4. Mao Zedong, ‘China’s Characteristics and Revolutionary War’, Problems of War and Strategy,
no. 1.
5. Mao Zedong, ‘The Laws of War Are Developmental’, in ‘How to Study War’ (Chapter I),
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
6. Mao Zedong, ‘The War History of the Kuomintang’, Problems of War and Strategy, no. 1.
7. Mao Zedong, ‘The Aim of War is to Eliminate War’, in ‘How to Study War’ (Chapter I),
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.; Mao Zedong, ‘The Object of War’ and ‘Fighting for Perpetual Peace’
(Paragraphs 57–58), On Protracted War, no. 1.
10. Mao Zedong, ‘Active and Passive Defence’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V),
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
11. Mao Zedong, ‘War of Annihilation’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems
of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1; Mao Zedong, ‘The Object of War’
(Paragraph 68), On Protracted War, no. 1.
12. Stuart R. Schram, ‘Chinese and Leninist Components in the Personality of Mao Tse-Tung’,
Asian Survey, 12(6), June 1963, pp. 259–273.
13. For this quotation, see Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr. and Gene Z. Hanrahan, ‘The Revolutionary
Strategy of Mao Tse-Tung’, Political Science Quarterly, 70(3), September 1955, p. 322.
Samuel B. Griffith is probably the earliest writer who attempted to draw a parallel between Sun
Tzu and Mao. He translated Sun Tzu’s Art of War and some of Mao’s works, and gave them
introductory notes. His translation of Sun Tzu (Sun Tzu: The Art of War, translated and with
an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith, with a foreword by B.H. Liddell Hart, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1963) is perhaps the first known standard translation. Griffith asserts: ‘The influence of
the ancient military philosopher Sun Tzu on Mao’s military thought will be apparent to those
who have read The Book of War. Sun Tzu wrote that speed, surprise, and deception were the
primary essentials of the attack and his succinct advice, “Sheng Tung, Chi His” (“Uproar [in
 Strategic Analysis 577

the] East, Strike [in the] West”), is no less valid today than it was when he wrote it 2,400 years
ago. The tactics of Sun Tzu are in large measure the tactics of China’s guerrillas today’.
‘Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare’, translated by Samuel B. Griffith, US Marine Corps
Publication, 1940, p. 37, at http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/FMFRP%2012-
18%20%20Mao%20Tse-tung%20on%20Guerrilla%20Warfare.pdf (Accessed 10 March
2013). Many online resources such as Online Information for the Defense Community
(http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA168430)
include A Study of a Classical Leader: Sun Tzu and His Influence on Mao Tse-Tung (John L.
Washington, Jr., Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama, 1986) as an important book about Sun Tzu’s influence on Mao. Unfortunately,
however, the copy of this work is not accessible. Griffith cites a number of quotations from
Sun Tzu in Mao’s works. However, the mere presence of these quotations does not prove Sun
Tzu’s decisive influence on Mao. Recently, Mark McNeilly has also attempted to provide
an interpretation of Sun Tzu relevant to contemporary times: Mark McNeilly, Sun Tzu and
the Art of Modern Warfare, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003; Mark McNeilly,
Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers, Oxford University
Press, New York, 2003. On the basis of his own reading of Mao’s military writings, this
author endorses the view upheld by Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr. and Gene Z. Hanrahan, ‘The
Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-Tung’, Political Science Quarterly, 70(3), September
1955; Tang Tsou and Morton H. Halperin, ‘Mao Tse-Tung’s Revolutionary Strategy and
Peking’s International Behavior’, The American Political Science Review, 59(1), March 1965,
pp. 80–99; Giri Deshingkar, ‘Mao Zedong’s Military Thought: A Perspective’, China Report,
31(101), February 1995, pp. 101–107. Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr. and Gene Z. Hanrahan,
and Giri Deshingkar question whether Sun Tzu really had any decisive influence on Mao.
They highlight the Marxist-Leninist character of Mao’s military thinking, and argue that
although Mao’s ideas may overlap with those of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, his ideas are
independent of them. Incidentally, Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr. and Gene Z. Hanrahan appear to
suggest an interesting argument that although Mao’s military thoughts are a contribution to
communists worldwide, his use of Marxist-Leninist quotations themselves is just by way of
examples, like quotations from Sun Tzu’s works. What he means is that Mao’s contribution
of military thoughts to the Marxist communists was independent of Marx and Lenin. They
were essentially his own (see pp. 322–324). Giri Deshingkar points out the limitation in
terms of Mao’s access to Western literature, and Mao’s own confession that he read Sun Tzu
considerably late (see p. 102). Tang Tsou and Morton H. Halperin’s article is an extremely
valuable contribution on Mao’s military thoughts. They study Mao’s military thoughts in
terms of revolutionary strategy only, and analyse the relationship between Mao’s revolutionary
strategy and the Leninist framework. They argue that ‘Mao went beyond Lenin in his emphasis
on the importance of military power’ (p. 81). Carnes Lord states: ‘There is little evidence
that Mao Tse-tung’s military thought and practice was affected significantly by Sun Tzu.
The emphasis in The Art of War on subduing the enemy without fighting was long regarded
in the People’s Republic as an “idealist” element in the work that rendered it suspect from
the Marxist-Leninist perspective. Since the mid- to late 1980s, however, Chinese analysts
have come to see in this aspect of The Art of War the basis for a theory of deterrence “with
Chinese characteristics”, and the study of Sun Tzu in Chinese military circles has become
increasingly de rigueur’. Carnes Lord, ‘A Note on Sun Tzu’, Comparative Strategy, 19(4),
October–December 2000, p. 305.
14. Mao Zedong, ‘Statement of the Problem’ (Paragraph 3) and ‘The Theory of National
Subjugation is Wrong and the Theory of Quick Victory is Likewise Wrong’ (Paragraph 28),
On Protracted War, no. 1. Mao identified two different strands of subjugationism: social and
political. Social subjugationism reflected general pessimism and a limited world-view, whereas
political subjugationism self-servingly believed in Japan’s limited objectives in North and
Northeastern China. At another level, Mao differentiated that political subjugationism was
‘fundamental’ while social subjugationism was just ‘temporary’. Mao Zedong, ‘Statement of
the Problem’ (Paragraph 8), On Protracted War, no. 1.
15. ‘Compromise or Resistance? Corruption or Progress’ (Paragraph 24), On Protracted War,
no. 1.
16. Ibid. (Paragraphs 21 and 24).
578 Prashant Kumar Singh

17. Mao Zedong, ‘The Army and the People are the Foundation of Victory’ (Paragraph 111), On
Protracted War, no. 1.
18. Mao Zedong, ‘The Basis of the Problem’ (Paragraphs 9–11) and ‘Refutation of the Theory of
National Subjugation’ (Paragraphs 15–16), On Protracted War, no. 1.
19. Mao Zedong, ‘Refutation of the Theory of National Subjugation’ (Paragraphs 13–18), On
Protracted War, no. 1.
20. Mao Zedong, ‘Statement of the Problem’ (Paragraph 6), On Protracted War, no. 1.
21. Mao Zedong, ‘The Theory of National Subjugation is Wrong and the Theory of Quick Victory
is Likewise Wrong’ (Paragraphs 27, 29 and 119), On Protracted War, no. 1.
22. Mao Zedong, ‘Statement of the Problem’ (Paragraph 6), On Protracted War, no. 1.
23. Mao Zedong, ‘Preparations for Combating “Encirclement and Suppression” Campaigns’,
‘Strategic Retreat’, ‘Strategic Counter-Offensive’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V),
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
24. ‘Statement of the Problem’ (Paragraph 6), On Protracted War, no. 1. The support of peasants
and the rural masses for the Red Army against the KMT and later against the Japanese invading
forces is a recurring theme of Mao’s writings, and a basic proposition in his strategy against
them.
25. Mao Zedong, ‘Mobile Warfare’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems of
Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1; Mao Zedong, ‘Statement of the Problem’
(Paragraph 6) and ‘Mobile Warfare, Guerrilla Warfare and Positional Warfare’ (Paragraph 91),
On Protracted War, no. 1.
26. Mao Zedong, ‘Strategic Retreat’, Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
27. Ibid.
28. Mao Zedong, ‘“Encirclement and Suppression” and Counter-Campaigns against It—The Main
Pattern of China’s Civil War’ (Chapter IV), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary
War, no. 1.
29. Mao Zedong, ‘The Three Stages of the Protracted War’ (Paragraphs 36 and 42), On Protracted
War, no. 1.
30. Mao Zedong, ‘Strategic Retreat’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems of
Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
31. Ibid.
32. Mao Zedong, ‘The Three Stages of the Protracted War’ (Paragraph 35), On Protracted War,
no. 1.
33. Ibid. (Paragraphs 41 and 43).
34. Mao Zedong, ‘Offence within Defence, Quick Decisions within a Protracted War, Exterior
Lines within Interior Lines’ (Paragraphs 72–77), On Protracted War, no. 1; Mao Zedong,
‘Mobile Warfare’ and ‘War of Quick Decision’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V),
Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
35. Mao Zedong, ‘Offence within Defence, Quick Decisions within a Protracted War Exterior
Lines within Interior Lines’ (Paragraphs 72–77), On Protracted War, no. 1; Mao Zedong,
‘Starting Counter-Offensive’, ‘War of Quick Decision’, ‘Mobile Warfare’, in ‘The Strategic
Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
36. Mao Zedong, ‘Offence within Defence, Quick Decisions within a Protracted War, Exterior
Lines within Interior Lines’ (Paragraphs 74, 76), On Protracted War, no. 1: Mao Zedong, ‘War
of Quick Decision’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems of Strategy in China’s
Revolutionary War, no. 1.
37. Mao Zedong, ‘The Three Stages of the Protracted War’ (Paragraph 38), On Protracted War,
no. 1.
38. Mao Zedong, ‘A War of Jig-Saw Pattern’ (Paragraphs 51–56), On Protracted War, no. 1.
39. Mao Zedong, ‘Mobile Warfare, Guerrilla Warfare and Positional Warfare’ (Paragraphs 72–77),
On Protracted War, no. 1; Mao Zedong, ‘Mobile Warfare’ and ‘War of Quick Decision’, in ‘The
Strategic Defensive’ (Chapter V), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
For strategic context of guerrilla warfare, see Mao Zedong, Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla
War against Japan, no. 1.
40. Mao Zedong, ‘Mobile Warfare’ and ‘War of Quick Decision’, in ‘The Strategic Defensive’
(Chapter V), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.
41. Mao Zedong, ‘Political Mobilization for the War of Resistance’ (Paragraphs 66 and 67), On
Protracted War, no. 1.
 Strategic Analysis 579

42. Mao Zedong, ‘Man’s Dynamic Role in War’ (Paragraphs 60–61) and ‘Political Mobilization
for the War of Resistance’ (Paragraphs 66–67), On Protracted War, no. 1. Mao has dealt with
the issue of subjectivism in the chapter ‘On Subjectivism’ in On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in
the Party, no. 1. Here, he is more concerned about subjectivism within the communist party. He
describes subjectivism or subjective criticism as ‘loose and groundless talk or suspiciousness’
causing ‘unprincipled disputes and undermin[ing] the Party organization’ and ‘great harm to
the analysis of the political situation and the guidance of the work’ finally resulting ‘either in
opportunism or in putschism’. To correct this problem, he suggests: (1) ‘Teach Party members
to apply the Marxist-Leninist method in analysing a political situation’; (2) ‘Direct the atten-
tion of Party members to social and economic investigation and study, and help comrades to
understand that without investigation of actual conditions they will fall into the pit of fantasy
and putschism’; (3) ‘In inner-Party criticism, guard against subjectivism, arbitrariness and the
vulgarization of criticism; statements should be based on facts and criticism should centre on
politics’.
43. Mao Zedong, ‘Compromise or Resistance? Corruption or Progress’ (Paragraph 25), On
Protracted War, no. 1.
44. Mao Zedong, ‘The War History of the Kuomintang’, Problems of War and Strategy, no. 1.
45. Mao Zedong, ‘On the Ideology of Roving Rebel Bands’ and ‘On the Purely Military
Viewpoint’, On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party, no. 1; Mao Zedong, ‘Military
Questions’, The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains, no. 1. Cliquism (the rejection of the
idea of arming local masses), opportunism (the tendency to avoid action under the pretext of
conserving strength) and the malady of revolutionary impetuosity, also described as putschism
(wanting only to do big things, and showing contempt for small work such as political work
among the masses), were facets of a purely military view.
46. Mao Zedong, ‘The Army and the People Are the Foundation of Victory’ (Paragraph 114), On
Protracted War, no. 1.
47. See John Gittings, ‘The “Learn from the Army” Campaign’, The China Quarterly, 18, April–
June 1964, pp. 153–159; Ellis Joffe, ‘The Chinese Army after the Cultural Revolution: The
Effects of Intervention’, The China Quarterly, 55, July–September 1973, pp. 450–477; Ralph
L. Powell, ‘The Increasing Power of Lin Piao and the Party-Soldiers 1959–1966’, The China
Quarterly, 34, April–June 1968, pp. 38–65; Richard D. Nethercut, ‘Deng and the Gun: Party
Military Relations in the People’s Republic of China’, Asian Survey, 22(8), August 1982,
pp. 691–704.
48. You Ji, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs and the Evolution of China’s Strategic Thinking’,
Contemporary Southeast Asia, 21(3), 1999, pp. 344–364. The references to People’s War in
contemporary China, the example of the US defeat in Vietnam and the Soviet humiliation in
Afghanistan are available on pp. 346–347.
49. David Lai, ‘The Agony of Learning: The PLA’s Transformation in Military Affairs’, in Roy
Kamphausen, David Lai and Travis Tanner (eds.), Learning by Doing: The PLA Trains at Home
and Abroad, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 2012, pp. 366–367.
50. This paragraph draws on Alexander Huang, ‘Transformation and Refinement of Chinese
Military Doctrine: Reflection and Critique on the PLA’s View’, in James C. Mulvenon
and Andrew N.D. Yang (eds.), Seeking Truth from Facts: A Retrospective on Chinese
Military Studies in the Post-Mao Era, Rand Cooperation, 2001, at http://www.rand.org/
content/dam/rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/2007/CF160.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2013);
and Dennis J. Blasco, ‘Chinese Strategic Thinking: People’s War in the 21st Century’,
China Brief , 10(6), The Jamestown Foundation, at http://www.jamestown.org/single/
?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36166&tx_ttnews[backPid]=13&cHash=56137daa72
(Accessed 18 March 2013). For information warfare-centric contemporary references, and
interpretation of People’s War, see James Mulvenon, ‘The PLA and Information Warfare’,
in James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang (eds.), The People’s Liberation Army in the
Information Age, Rand Corporation, 1999, p. 183, at http://www.rand.org/content/dam/
rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF145/CF145.chap9.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2013); Wang
Pufeng, ‘The Challenge of Information Warfare’, at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/china/docs/
iw_mg_wang.htm (Accessed 18 March 2013); Wei Jincheng, ‘Information War: A New Form
of People’s War’, at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/china/docs/iw_wei.htm (Accessed 18 March
2013). Wang Pufeng’s and Wei Jincheng’s writings are part of Michael Pillsbury’s edited
580 Prashant Kumar Singh

collection, Chinese Views of Future Warfare published by the Institute for National Strategic
Studies, National Defense University Press, Washington DC, 1998.
51. The point conveyed in this paragraph draws on David Lai, no. 49, pp. 361–367.
52. Please see the following monograph for some of the outstanding theoretical formulations in
Chinese strategic culture: Andrew Scobell, ‘China and Strategic Culture’, Strategic Studies
Institute (US Army War College), 2002, at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/
pdffiles/pub60.pdf (Accessed 3 March 2013).

Appendix 1
Strategic and operational principles prescribed by Mao suitable for China’s revolutionary war∗
Determine strategic orientation
Oppose adventurism when on the offensive,
oppose conservatism when on the defensive,
and oppose flightism when shifting from one
place to another
Oppose guerrilla-ism in the Red Army Uphold the guerrilla character of the Red
Army operation
Oppose protracted campaigns and a strategy Uphold the strategy of protracted war and
of quick decision campaigns of quick decision
Oppose fixed battle lines and positional Uphold fluid battle lines and mobile warfare
warfare
Oppose fighting merely to rout the enemy Uphold fighting to annihilate the enemy
Oppose the strategy of striking with two ‘fists’ Uphold the strategy of striking with one ‘fist’
in two directions at the same time in one direction at one time
Oppose the principle of maintaining one large Uphold the principle of small rear areas
rear area
Oppose an absolutely centralised command Uphold a relatively centralised command
Oppose the purely military viewpoint and the Uphold the Red Army’s propagandist and
ways of roving rebels organiser role in the Chinese Revolution
Oppose bandit ways Uphold strict political discipline
Oppose warlord ways Uphold both democracy within proper limits,
and an authoritative discipline in the army
Oppose an incorrect, sectarian policy on Uphold the correct policy on cadres
cadres
Oppose the policy of isolation Uphold the policy of winning over all possible
allies
Oppose keeping the Red Army at its old stage Uphold developing the Red Army into a new
stage
∗ Mao Zedong, ‘Our Strategy and Tactics Ensuing from These Characteristics’, in ‘Characteristics of China’s
Revolutionary War’ (Chapter III), Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, no. 1.