BUILD STABLE BASE AREAS IN THE NORTHEAST* December @*, !($%
1. Our Party’s present task in the Northeast is to build base areas, stable military and political base areas in eastern, northern and western Manchuria. 1 To build such base areas is no easy job; it requires hard and bitter struggle. Three or four years are needed to build such base areas. But a solid preliminary groundwork must be laid in the year 1946 . Otherwise we may not be able to stand our ground. 2. It should now be made clear that these base areas are not to be built in the big cities or along the main communication lines that are or will be occupied by the Kuomintang; under present conditions this is not practicable. Nor are they to be built in regions close to big cities or main communication lines held by the Kuomintang. The reason is that the Kuomintang, having seized the big cities and the main communication lines, will not let us build stable base areas in regions very close to them. Our Party should do adequate work and set up our first line of military defence in these regions, which must never be lightly abandoned. But they will be guerrilla zones for both parties and not our stable base areas. Therefore, the regions in which to build stable bases are the cities and vast rural areas comparatively remote from the centres of Kuomintang occupation. Those regions should now be designated so that we can dispose our forces accordingly and lead the whole Party towards this goal. 3. After we have decided on the location of our stable base areas and disposed our forces and after our army’s numerical strength has greatly increased, mass work will be the centre of gravity of our Party’s work in the Northeast. All cadres must be made to understand that the Kuomintang will be stronger than our Party in the 81
