Mao Zedong Military Thought is a scientific theoretical system of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with Mao Zedong as the main representative. With the general laws of China’s revolutionary wars, the people’s military, national defense development, and military issues as its main content, it is an important part of Mao Zedong Thought. As a combination of the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism with the reality of China’s revolutionary war and national defense development, it is the scientific summary and collective wisdom of the long-term military practice of the Chinese people and the people’s military under the leadership of CPC. At the same time, it has also absorbed the essence of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign military thoughts in many ways. As such, it is the guiding ideology of the CPC in leading China’s revolutionary war, military building, national defense development, and war against aggression.

I. Main Content

As a scientific system, Mao Zedong Military Thought has extremely rich content. It main includes the following aspects.

War Philosophy and Methodology

Mao Zedong applied the principles of dialectical materialism and historical materialism to study and guide the Chinese revolutionary war, creatively put forward the concept of “military dialectics”, expounded a series of viewpoints on war and the military in a systematic and in-depth manner, revealed the basic laws of contradiction movement in the military field, and summarized and put forward important principles of universal significance on how to study and guide wars. As the quintessence of Mao Zedong Military Thought, Mao Zedong’s military dialectics provides the basic viewpoints and methods for correctly understanding and guiding warfare, and appropriately resolving problems in the military field.

1. War is the highest form of struggle to address contradictions between classes, nations, countries, and political groups at a certain stage of development. It started since the possession of private property and class. Imperialism and hegemonism are the root causes of modern wars. War is politics carried out with bloodshed to remove obstacles on the path of political development. In a class society, revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable, and a leap in social development cannot be achieved without them. The proletariat must determine its attitude toward each war based on the political nature of each war, support all just wars that promote social progress, and oppose all unjust ones. A just war of mankind is to save mankind. After all, the development of human society will eliminate wars. When the progress is so advanced that classes and countries no longer exist, there will be no wars at all. Supporting and participating in a just war is to finally eliminate the war. If you don’t want be shot by a gun, you must pick up a gun.

2. From an essential and long-term perspective, imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers. From this point of view, the proletarian strategic thinking should be established: strategically, they should despise all enemies and difficulties as a whole; on the other hand, imperialism and all reactionaries are living tigers, iron tigers, and real tigers, meaning the proletariat should have strategic and tactical thinking. In tactics, it means paying attention to all enemies and difficulties in addressing every specific issue.

3. The essence and fundamental purpose of a war between two militaries are to preserve oneself and annihilate the enemy. This is the basis of all war actions, and must be implemented in both technical actions and strategic actions. It applies to all wars, and is implemented throughout a war. Generally speaking, annihilating the enemy is the priority, as only by so doing can a military effectively preserve itself.

4. The confrontation, dependence, and transformation of various factors on both sides of the war under certain conditions constitute the content and process of the war contradictory movement, promote the development of war, and determine the outcome of war. They are manifested in the competition of the material conditions and conscious initiative of the two sides in the process of war, and in the changing balance of power. Although the outcome of the war depends on the military, political, economic, natural, and international aid conditions of both sides, the final outcome depends on the subjective efforts of its people.

5. People’s conscious initiative in war is the decisive factor that turns the possibility of victory into reality. Although the phenomenon of war is more “probabilistic” than other social phenomena, war is a material movement phenomenon which is regular and can be understood and controlled. We must learn from war in war and correctly understand and apply its laws. Military strategists cannot seek victory in the war by going beyond the time limit permitted by objective conditions, but they can and must correctly and fully exert their subjective efforts within the limits of objective conditions, implement correct war instructions, and win more battles, thereby gradually changing the balance of power and striving for victory on their initiative. Weapons are an important factor in war, but in the final analysis, it is the people rather than things that play a decisive role. We must oppose voluntarism that over-exaggerates the role of the spirit, and weaponism that overly emphasizes the role of weapons. In guiding warfare, we must meet the requirements of being active, flexible, and forward-looking.

6. The laws of war are divided into general ones and special ones. To correctly study and guide war, a military must focus on its characteristics and development. It is necessary to be familiar with and use the general laws of warfare and the special laws of specific wars to prevent dogmatism and empiricism that do not distinguish between the nature, time, and regional differences. The law of war is the reflection of the objective reality of war on people’s minds. To be familiar with the situation of the enemy and ours, find out the laws of action from them, and apply such laws to one’s own actions is the fundamental method for studying and guiding war.

7. The relationship between the overall situation and the local situation in war must be correctly handled. War commanders must have a strategic sense and overall perspective, bear the whole picture in mind, master details, seize the strategic links to deploy campaigns, seize the campaign links to deploy battles, prioritize the whole over the part, and guarantee the key parts by the whole.

8. In war, the process of understanding the situation not only exists before the making of the military plan, but also exists after it. On the basis of thorough reconnaissance, a military must conduct analysis by discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, thereby making correct judgments and combat resolutions, and formulating reasonable military plans. To formulate a military plan, we must consider all possibilities and prepare for the worst-case scenarios, and strive for the best result. After the military plan is implemented, it is necessary to promptly revise it and adjust the deployment in accordance with the changing situation, so that the guidance is always in line with reality.

9. A military should apply the theory of unity of opposites, correctly understand and deal with a series of contradictory relationships in the military field to make the two contradictory aspects mutually complementary. They include contradictions between self-preservation and elimination of the enemy, offensive and defensive, advantages and disadvantages, being active and being passive, inside front and outside front, mobility and stillness, advance and retreat, advance and fight, concentration and dispersion, protracted war and quick war, war of annihilation and war of attrition, front and rear, regular force and people’s armed forces, field force and local force, military work and political work, etc. 

10. The form of warfare develops in the constant denial of the old combat methods, and the transformation of military strategy with changing the main combat form as the main content must be implemented at an appropriate time, so that the form of warfare conforms to the characteristics of the war and the changing combat missions.

The Thought of People’s Military

Mao Zedong attached great importance to the role of the people’s military in seizing and defending power, and emphasized that “without the people’s military, there would be nothing to speak of for the people” (Collected Military Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 2, p. 789).  Proceeding from the reality of the Chinese revolutionary war, he systematically established the principles of building the people’s military and solved how to build a revolutionary military with farmers as the main component into a new type of people’s armed forces that is proletarian in nature, has strict discipline, and maintains close ties with the people.

1. This military is a new type of proletarian force led by the CPC and built for the benefit of the people and a real people’s military. Standing closely with the Chinese people and serving the Chinese people wholeheartedly is its sole purpose.

2. This military is an armed group that performs revolutionary political tasks, meaning it will always be a combat team. It also performs other tasks required by revolutionary politics including work teams and production teams. In the period of the new democratic revolution, in addition to the main task of fighting, it was also responsible for publicizing, organizing and arming the people, helping the people to build political power and even establish the CPC’s organizations, and carrying out production during the gaps in combat. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the tasks of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is to consolidate national defense, resist aggression, defend the country and the socialist system as well as the people’s peaceful labor, and participate in national construction.

3. As a tool to faithfully implement the political program and political line of the CPC, this military must be completely and unconditionally placed under the absolute leadership of the CPC.   “The Party commands the gun”, not the other way around. China’s military power belongs only to the Party, not to any individual. The supreme leadership and command of the military belongs to the CPC Central Committee and the CPC Central Military Commission (CMC), and all military actions are subject to the commands of these two organizations. The Party’s organizations at all levels must be established in the military to serve as the core of leadership of the troops (departments) at all levels. Leaders’ responsibility system under the unified, collective leadership of Party committees is one of the fundamental systems for the Party to exercise absolute leadership over the military.

4. This military carries out vigorous political work. The political work of the PLA refers to the ideological and organizational work carried out by the CPC in order to exercise leadership over the military, and it is the lifeline of the people’s military. Its main contents include: strengthening the building of Party organizations in the military, giving play to the core leadership role of the Party committee, the fighting fortress role of the Party branch, and the vanguard and exemplary role of Party members; implementing progressive political education for officers and soldiers, infusing revolutionary spirit and advanced thought, cultivating the spirit of patriotism, internationalism, and revolutionary heroism; implementing political democracy, economic democracy, and military democracy; implementing the principles of unity between the military and the civilians, unity of officers and soldiers, and disintegrating the enemy; and selecting officials based on integrity and ability. The CPC sets up political commissars and political organs in the regiment and units equivalent to the regiment and above, and allocates corresponding political staff to lead and manage the political work of the military. The tasks of political work are: to ensure the Party’s absolute leadership over the military and the nature of the people’s military, to ensure the implementation of the Party’s lines, principles, and policies, to ensure that all commanders and soldiers complete tasks by giving full play to their enthusiasm and creativity in fighting for the people, working and training.

5. This military practices democracy under centralized leadership, establishes strict discipline, and maintains and carries forward the fine traditions and style of the people’s military. It strictly implements the three main rules of discipline (follow orders in all your actions; don’t take a single needle or piece of thread from the people; turn in everything captured) and eight points for attention (speak politely; pay fairly for what you buy; return everything you borrow; pay for anything you damage; don’t hit or swear at people; don’t damage crops; don’t take liberties with women; don’t ill-treat captives), respects the government, and cares for the people; always maintains a correct political direction, flexible strategies and tactics, and arduous and simple work style, and is united, alert, earnest and lively.

6. This military must make itself more modern and standardized, implement unified command, unified system, unified organization, unified discipline, and unified training, and become more organization conscious and have a stronger sense of discipline and planning with greater accuracy, and keep equipping troops with modern weapons and new technologies to improve combat effectiveness.

7. This military must strengthen education and training with strict requirement, vigorously carry out training activities for all, improve the scientific and cultural knowledge of officers and soldiers, master new technologies and the latest tactics, comprehensively improve the military and political quality of commanders and soldiers, run academies well and train qualified military personnel.

8. This military must strengthen military scientific research and focus on summarizing its own war experience into theory while drawing on the useful elements of ancient Chinese and foreign military thinking to develop modern Chinese military science.

The Thought of People’s War 

The CPC members, with Mao Zedong as the main representative, creatively applied the Marxist-Leninist principle of the historical role of the people to the practice of Chinese revolutionary war, thus forming a complete set of people’s war thoughts.

1. Revolutionary war is a people’s war. Only by mobilizing and relying on the people can a revolutionary war be waged. The  war power is different not only due to military power and economic power, but also manpower and people’s support. The mighty power of war is deeply rooted in the people. The soldiers and the people are the foundation of victory. It is the people, not the reactionaries, who are truly powerful. Revolutionary war is the cause of the people. The mobilization of soldiers and civilians can overwhelm the enemy and make up for weapons and other deficiencies, making it the prerequisites for overcoming all war difficulties. The political mobilization of the military and civilians is the most basic condition for winning the war.

2. Under China’s social conditions featuring uneven political and economic development, it is necessary to first establish revolutionary base areas in the vast rural areas where the reactionary ruling power is weak, and adopt a “wave-like” policy to gradually expand them as a support for the people’s war. Only by establishing a solid base can a great military, political, economic, and cultural revolutionary front become a strategic base for mobilizing the people, increasing arms, developing production, and preparing leaders, and serve as a good battlefield for consolidating the rear and combat by providing manpower and material support for the people’s military. By so doing, the military can achieve the war goals of preserving and developing itself, and destroying and expelling the enemy. To establish and develop rural revolutionary base areas, it is necessary to combine armed struggle with the agrarian revolution, establish revolutionary political power, and organize and arm the people extensively. At the same time, urban and rural areas in non-base regions should not be ignored. To fight a people’s war under modern conditions, it is a must to build a solid and powerful strategic rear.

3. A revolutionary war is a war fought for the interests of the people, and a program of struggle and basic policies that represent the interests of the vast majority of the people must be implemented. In war, a military must take into account the long-term and immediate interests of the people, attach importance to the development of production, reduce the burden on the people as much as possible, and do its best to improve the lives of the people, so as to mobilize and motivate the people to support the long-term revolutionary war.

4. A military must unite with all classes, strata and social groups that can be united, make use of all available contradictions, and form the broadest united front, so that the revolutionary war can have the broadest social foundation and international sympathy and assistance, and isolate and attack the main enemy to the greatest extent possible.

5. Armed struggle which is the main form of struggle should cooperate with other forms of non-armed struggle, including struggles of workers, peasants, youth and women, struggles on the economic, diplomatic, and ideological and cultural fronts, legal and illegal struggles, open and secret struggles, etc., to continuously increase the war power for revolution and reduce the counter-revolutionary war power, so that the balance of power will gradually change in its favor and the purpose of gaining strength and defeating the enemy can be achieved.

6. As the backbone of the people’s war, the people’s military adopts a system of combining the main corps (field army) with the local corps, combining the regular military with the guerrillas and militia, and combining the armed civilians with unarmed ones. The main corps can carry out combat missions beyond the local area at any time, and the local corps performs the tasks of defending the local area and attacking the local enemy; the guerrillas and militia are the assistants and reserve forces of the regular force, and mainly perform the tasks of directly cooperating with the regular force in fighting and defending the local area in a given area. The three types of armed forces have different divisions of labor and work closely together, which is the correct organizational form for carrying out the people’s war.

7. It implements strategies and tactics suitable for the people’s war, and utilizes troops and combat forms in a flexible and mobile manner.

Strategic and Tactical Thoughts of the People’s War

In the long-term practice of guiding China’s revolutionary war, Mao Zedong created a set of strategies and tactics of the people’s war with Chinese characteristics, which has become a magic weapon for the people’s military to defeat the enemy and win the war when the enemy is stronger with superior weapons and equipment. The basic guiding principle is: proceeding from the actual situation to fight our own way based on what weapons we have and what enemies we fight against at what time and place; be flexible and mobile, fostering strengths and circumventing weaknesses, seize the initiative, and strike at the enemy one by one by taking advantage of their contradictions; opposing adventurism in attack, conservatism in defense, and escapism in retreat, so as to effectively achieve the goal of preserving itself and annihilating the enemy.

1. Pursuing active defense and opposing passive defense. When the enemy is stronger, in the strategic defense stage, a military must carry out a protracted defensive war on the strategic interior line and a quick-decision offensive war on the exterior line to exhaust the enemy and gradually change the overall balance of war power before finally pushing the strategic defense to the strategic offensive.

2. The main goal of combat is to annihilate the enemy’s forces, not to defend or seize cities and localities. The seizure or defense of cities and localities is the result of annihilating a large number of the enemy’s forces.

3. To annihilate the forces of the enemy, a military must implement the principle of concentrating superior forces and annihilating the enemy one by one, strive to fight a war of annihilation, and in special circumstances inflict annihilating strikes on the enemy; and try to avoid a war of attrition in which the gains outweigh or equal the losses.

4. To achieve a war of annihilation, we must carefully choose the direction of strike and the target of attack and annihilation by first attacking scattered and isolated enemies, and then attacking concentrated and strong enemies, concentrate superior forces in every battle, encircle the enemy on all sides, and wipe them all out.

5. We should adopt an appropriate form of combat and combine mobile warfare, positional warfare, and guerrilla warfare. As far as the whole process of the Chinese revolutionary war is concerned, mobile warfare is the main form of warfare that exhausts and annihilates a large number of enemies and determines the outcome of the war; positional warfare is an important form of warfare with the same function and mainly performing the task of blocking and restraining the enemy in the strategic defense stage and of attacking and annihilating the defending enemy and seizing cities in the strategic offensive stage; guerrilla warfare is not only an indispensable auxiliary form of warfare to cooperate with regular warfare, but also should be elevated to a strategic position under certain conditions, which is why it was the main form of combat of the Chinese revolutionary war for a certain period of time. The above-mentioned three types of warfare have different emphases in different periods and should be employed flexibly according to the actual situation of the war. A military strategic shift with the transformation of the main combat form as the main content should be implemented in a timely manner.

6. We should strive to be proactive, avoid being passive, execute favorable decisive battles, and avoid unfavorable decisive battles, especially in the initial battle. Every battle must be prepared in advance with a view to being able to cope with the most difficult and complex situations, and fight no battle unprepared or we are not sure of winning.

7. We should carry forward the fine fighting style of fighting bravely and continuously without fear for sacrifice and fatigue, and being brave in close combat and combat at night; being good at having a rest in the gaps between operations to facilitate further battles.

8. We should defeat the enemy with the existing equipment while constantly enriching and improving it with combat capture.

9. We should employ various methods to annihilate the enemy, including combining military strikes against the enemy with political disintegration, exploiting contradictions within the enemy, and carrying out powerful political offensives together with the strong pressure of military strikes .

10. We should vigorously organize support to the front lines and ensure logistics support, the mobilization and replenishment of personnel and materials and rescue.

The Thought of National Defense Development 

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the CPC became China’s ruling party, and the center of the Party’s military work was subsequently shifted to consolidating and modernizing national defense. To this end, Mao Zedong created the theory of national defense development by proceeding from the actual situation of military struggle, accommodating the needs of the new situation and tasks and summing up the practical experience of consolidating and building national defense.

1. Planning China’s war preparations against aggression. Efforts should be made to comprehensively analyze the development and changes of the international strategic situation, accurately assess the threat of war, predict the possibilities of war and peace, and make scientific judgments on the issues of war and peace; maintain a high degree of vigilance against the war attempts of imperialism and hostile forces and make serious preparations for the worst-case scenarios; build a strong national defense to defend national sovereignty, territorial integrity and legitimate rights and interests from being violated, defend the people’s democratic dictatorship, safeguard world and regional peace, and ensure security for promoting socialist construction at home; leverage the contradictions in the international arena, establish a united front against imperialism and hegemony, create conditions for delaying the war, and foster a favorable environment for peaceful construction.

2. Implementing the strategic guideline of active defense. We should proceed from the international strategic situation and China’s national condition in setting the goals and guidelines for national defense development. As a socialist country, China will never seek hegemony overseas, never invade others, and never allow others to invade us. China implements strategic defense which is not passive defense, but offensive defense, decisive battle defense, and active defense for counter-offensive and offensive.

3. Correctly handling the relationship between national defense development and economic development. We should put economic development in the first place. National defense development must be compatible and coordinated with our economic development, and the development of national defense forces must be based on economic development. While developing our economy, we must attach importance to strengthening our national defense.

4. Modernizing China’s national defense. National defense modernization is an indispensable requirement of modern warfare, and it is the only way for military building to develop to an advanced stage. In China’s national defense modernization, it is necessary to learn from the experience of foreign countries, take a development path that suits China’s national conditions, and adhere to the principle of independence, self-reliance, and hard work. Under the unified leadership of the CPC, we must mobilize and rely on both the military and civilians to build national defense together. In the military struggle to consolidate national defense, we must comprehensively use military, political, economic, diplomatic, cultural and other means which are in our national interest, on just grounds and with restraint.

5. Making the national defense force more revolutionary, modern and well-structured. It is necessary to uphold the absolute leadership of the CPC over the military and maintain its nature of the proletarian military. The military building should maintain an appropriate scale, focus on quality improvement, and keep developing to a higher level. A standing army of various services and arms should be built.

6. Establishing a complete national defense scientific research and defense industry system. We should implement the policy of civil-military integration and peacetime and wartime combination; develop weapons and equipment according to the country’s national and military conditions, with particular emphasis on the development of contemporary cutting-edge weapons and technical equipment such as missiles and nuclear weapons.

7. Strengthening the building of national defense reserve force. We should combine a capable standing army with a strong reserve force; implement the militia system; implement the guideline of “combining local and foreign features” and “playing the role of both labor and force” so that the militia can contribute significantly to both production and national defense; and improve the national defense mobilization system .

8. Strengthening strategic rear building. We should build a strategic rear area to provide a solid strategic support for future  wars against aggression; strengthen battlefield building according to the needs of future wars and make appropriate strategic reserves;  and prepare for war and famine.

9. In dealing with the invasion of foreign enemies, we must also  employ the concept of the people’s war. We should continue with the fine tradition of defeating the enemy with superior equipment by using the existing equipment; give full play to the power of the people’s war, carry out national defense education among the people; and mobilize the people to actively support and participate in the struggle to defend national defense in various forms and means.

II. Formation and Development

After the first Opium War in 1840, China gradually became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. In order to resist foreign oppression and class oppression, the Chinese people waged heroic, tenacious and continuous resistance struggles. However, both the spontaneous armed struggle of the peasants and the old democratic revolution led by Sun Yat-sen all ended in failure. Historical facts have proved that the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie cannot solve the theoretical and practical problems of the revolutionary armed struggle in China. Only after the Chinese proletariat became an independent political force and independently led the revolutionary armed struggle, did a military theoretical system in line with China’s national conditions gradually form and guide the Chinese revolution to victory through armed struggle.

Under the influence of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, after the May 4th Movement in 1919, a group of advanced revolutionary intellectuals in China embraced Marxism-Leninism and established a communist organization in 1920. The fist National Congress held in July 1921 founded the CPC. The first program adopted by this Congress affirmed in principle the historical task of overthrowing the old regime by revolutionary means. Cai Hesen and Zhou Enlai put forward in Party publications in 1922 that the old ruling classes should be completely disarmed and that “without the revolutionary military, the warlords cannot be overthrown” (Chronology of Zhou Enlai, p. 57, edited by the Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, Central Literature Publishing House, People’s Publishing House, Beijing, 1990) and other propositions. During the Great Revolution (1924-1927) when the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) and the CPC cooperated, a large number of CPC members were sent to work in the Whampoa Military Academy, the National Revolutionary Army and the National Army Allied Forces and trained a group of early CPC military backbones. Ye Ting Independent Regiment and other departments became armed forces directly controlled by the CPC organization. Some CPC leaders made many expositions on the political work of the revolutionary military, and put forward the proposition that the proletariat should lead the founding of the peasant revolutionary military and overthrow the feudal rule in the countryside. In particular, Mao Zedong’s Analysis of Various Classes in Chinese Society and Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan expounded the view that the vast number of peasants in China played a huge role in the revolution.

The Chinese Communists truly realized the importance of armed struggle in the Chinese revolution after Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei successively launched counter-revolutionary coups in the spring and summer of 1927 which caused the revolution to fail. At this critical juncture, several leaders emphasized the importance of controlling the armed forces. On July 4, 1927, at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong pointed out that in response to the serious situation caused by blindly following the instructions of the Comintern and blindly giving in to the KMT, Mao Zedong proposed that we must “preserve force” and “go up the mountain”. “If we don’t preserve our force, we will not be able to respond to future incidents.” (The Revised Chronicle of Mao Zedong (1893-1949), Vol. 1, p. 203, Central Party Literature Press, Beijing, 2013) In the same month, the CPC Central Committee made a plan to launch armed uprisings in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangdong. On August 1, the Nanchang Uprising led by Zhou Enlai, He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng fired the first shot of armed resistance against the KMT reactionaries. This marked the beginning of the CPC’s independent leadership of the armed struggle and the creation of a revolutionary army and the Agrarian Revolutionary War. On August 7, the CPC Central Committee held an emergency meeting in Hankou which decided to launch the agrarian revolution and armed uprising. In his speech, Mao Zedong emphasized that the whole Party “must pay great attention to the military, and must know that political power is obtained by force”. (Mao Zedong Military Works, Vol. 1, p. 2) From August 1927 to June 1928, the Party led nearly a hundred armed uprisings across the country, and began the struggle to found the Red Army and establish revolutionary base areas. It was under such historical conditions that Mao Zedong Military Thought was gradually formed and developed in order to meet the historical needs of guiding China’s revolutionary war.

In September 1927, Mao Zedong launched the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Autumn Harvest Uprising. When the uprising troops attacked Changsha according to the original plan and suffered serious setbacks, he resolutely led his troops to transfer to the countryside where the reactionary ruling force was weak, and established the first rural revolutionary base area in Jinggangshan area where the armed forces of workers and peasants were separated. In April 1928, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the troops of the Nanchang Uprising and the peasant army of the Southern Hunan Uprising to join forces with the troop led by Mao Zedong in Jinggangshan, thus forming the 4th Army of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army. From the Autumn Harvest Uprising to the end of 1929, Mao Zedong led the reorganization of the workers’ and peasants’ revolutionary army in Sanwan; for the Red Army, he raised three tasks, i.e., annihilating the enemy, fighting local tyrants to raise money, and win over the public, and formulated the “Three Rules of Discipline and Six Points for Attention”; in line with the guiding principle of Letter from the CPC Central Committee in September, he presided over the 9th National Congress of the 4th Army of the Red Army and drafted its resolution. These explorations identified a series of military building principles on how to build the revolutionary army with peasants as the main component into a new type of people’s army of proletarian nature and featuring close ties with the people. From the meeting in Jinggangshan to the autumn of 1931, Mao Zedong and Zhu De summed up and put forward the sixteen-character formula of the Red Army’s guerrilla warfare principle, “When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy is stationed, we disturb; when the enemy is tired, we fight; and when the enemy retreats, we chase” which guided the Red Army to smash the enemy’s encirclement for many times.; then Mao Zedong put forward a series of operational policies and principles such as active defense, lure the enemy to go deep, concentrate troops to fight mobile warfare, quick-decision warfare, annihilation warfare, and organized and commanded the military and civilians in the central revolutionary base area to resist the KMT military’s first, second and third large-scale encirclement and suppression. During this period, Mao Zedong wrote Why Does China’s Red Regime Exist?, The Struggle in Jinggangshan, The Resolution of the 9th National Congress of the 4th Army of the Red Army and A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire. The above-mentioned practice and writings of Mao opened up the path for the Chinese revolution and its armed struggle to encircle cities from rural areas before finally winning the war of the whole country, and laid down the basic military building line and combat principles for the people’s military, thus successfully solving the three fundamental problems of the Chinese revolution, i.e., what path to take, how to build a military, and how to fight. This mark the initial formation of Mao Zedong Military Thought.

Since 1931, the leftist adventurism represented by Wang Ming copied the Soviet model and gained dominance in the CPC Central Committee with the support of the Comintern. It was detrimental to China’s revolutionary war which was at its height and led to the failure of anti-encirclement and anti-suppression campaign in the revolutionary bases across the country, especially the fifth one in the central revolutionary base area. As a result, the CPC Central Committee and the main force of the Red Army had to begin a strategic shift in October 1934. The Zunyi Conference held in January 1935 ended leftist adventurism and established Mao Zedong’s leadership in the Red Army and the Central Committee, thus salvaging the CPC, the Red Army of Chinese Workers and Peasants and China’s revolution at a critical juncture .

Under the leadership and command of the CPC Central Committee and the CMC with Mao Zedong as the core, the Red Army overcame difficulties in the Long March and successfully transferred to northern Shaanxi. On the eve of the Japanese imperialists launching an all-out war of aggression against China, the confrontation between China and Japan became the main contradiction. In December 1935, the CPC Central Committee held a Politburo meeting in Wayaobao, northern Shaanxi during which the policy of the Anti-Japanese National United Front was formulated. In December 1936, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other leaders of the CPC Central Committee, worked together with Zhang Xueliang, Yang Hucheng and other KMT patriotic generals and progressives to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Xi’an Incident and promote the establishment of the anti-Japanese national united front. In July 1937, China’s all-out war of resistance against Japan broke out. In August of the same year, the CPC Central Committee proposed at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo in Luochuan, Shaanxi Province that the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression must adopt the line of a comprehensive war of resistance and the general policy of lasting victory over the enemy and decided that the Eighth Route Army led by the CPC would change its military strategy from a regular domestic war to an anti-Japanese guerrilla war, fight independent mountain guerrilla warfare, build base areas, contain and annihilate the enemy, and cooperate with friendly forces. From the end of 1936 to the autumn of 1938, Mao Zedong published military treatises such as Strategic Problems in China’s Revolutionary War, Strategic Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War, On Protracted War, War and Strategic Problems and philosophical masterpieces On Practice and On Contradiction.

These works made a systematic theoretical and philosophical summary of the 10-year experience of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, revealed the fundamental laws and basic guiding principles of the Chinese Revolutionary War, scientifically predicted the development of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and systematically answered the questions on how can the weak Chinese army with inferior equipment defeat the strong enemy with superior equipment in the revolutionary war; at the same time, it also clarified the nature of war and the scientific method of studying war, and revealed a series of general laws and common principles in the military field. This meant that Mao Zedong Military Thought was established as a scientific system of military theory with distinctive Chinese characteristics. Later, with the development of the war, Mao Zedong focused on building base areas, launching guerrilla warfare in the enemy’s rear, fighting against the friction-creating KMT diehards under the principle of upholding the Chinese united front against Japanese aggression, enhancing the political work of the military, and strengthening unity between the government and the military and between the people and the military. On many major issues such as unity and self-sufficiency of production in the army, a series of guidelines, policies and guiding principles were put forward, thus providing comprehensive and reliable theoretical guidance for winning the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

In April 1945, the Seventh National Congress of the CPC was held in Yan’an. In his political report “On Coalition Government”, Mao Zedong not only summed up the fresh experience gained by the whole Party and the whole army since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, but also made a further theoretical summary of the basic experience of the CPC in leading military struggles and army building, and elaborated on such concepts as “people’s war”, “the people’s forces” and “a series of strategies and tactics necessary for people’s war”. In his military report “On the Battlefield of Liberated Areas”, Zhu De systematically expounded the content of these scientific concepts, and in his conclusions on military issues, he proposed the concept of “Chairman Mao’s Military Thought”. Before and after the conference, leaders of the CPC Central Committee, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army also made some expositions on Mao Zedong Military Thought. Since then, Mao Zedong Military Thought has become the guiding theory of the CPC on the military front. In August of the same year, Japan announced its surrender, and the Chinese people’s 14-year War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, which began with the September 18 Incident, including the 8-year all-out war of resistance, ended in victory.

After Japan surrendered, the US supported the KMT authorities to monopolize the right of acceptance of surrender, and used negotiation as a cover to attack the liberated areas led by the CPC to seize the fruits of victory in the War of Resistance. The CPC Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong fought against the counter-revolution forces with revolutionary forces, and strove for peace and democracy with the war of self-defense. In June 1946, the KMT led by Chiang Kai-shek, with the assistance of US imperialism, launched a brazen attack on the Central Plains Liberated Areas led by the CPC. As a result, a local civil war turned into a full-scale one. The CPC led the troops and civilians in the Liberated Areas to resist, and developed the war of self-defense into a war of national liberation. This nationwide war of unprecedented scale is the final battle between the two fates of China. In this revolutionary war that the CPC secured victory, Mao Zedong Military Thought was comprehensively enriched and developed. Mao Zedong’s art of war guidance reached the level of perfection in commanding large-scale campaign with a total of more than 1 million troops deployed by both sides, especially the Liaoxi-Shenyang Campaign, Huai-Hai Campaign, Beiping-Tianjin Campaign and Crossing River Campaign. The CPC leadership with Mao Zedong as the core has created a series of new military theories, which not only enriched the theory of the people’s war and strategic defense, but also created unique theories of strategic offensive including strategic decisive battle and strategic pursuit; not only developed the theory of mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare, but also created the theory of large-scale positional warfare, including fortified battles in large and medium cities. In terms of army building, the political, economic and military democracy were implemented within the army, and the experience of new-style army reorganization and mass training, as well as large-scale struggle for winning over and disintegrating the enemy was summarized and promoted; the experience and theory of logistics required to support large-scale regular warfare were explored and summarized. During this period, Mao Zedong wrote Concentrating Superior Forces to Annihilate the Enemy, Three-Month Summary, Strategic Guidelines for the Second Year of the Liberation War, Current Situation and Our Tasks, Comment on the Great Victory in the Northwest and on the PLA’s New Army Reorganization Movement and Carrying out the Revolution Till Its Victory. The ten famous military principles it summarized and a  large number of combat command messages it drafted reflected the enrichment and development of Mao Zedong Military Thought during this period. Under the leadership and command of the CPC Central Committee and the CMC with Mao Zedong as the core, the victory of the War of Liberation was achieved sooner than expected. On October 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded.

In the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea from October 1950 to July 1953, the Chinese People’s Volunteers, under the command of the CMC headed by Mao Zedong, fought side by side with the Korean military and civilians and defeated the arrogant U.S. imperialist aggressors and its allies, making great contributions to defending China’s security, safeguarding world peace and promoting human progress. Through this war against aggression, China’s military has gained much fresh experience of defeating an enemy with superior equipment in modern warfare and specific geographical conditions in foreign countries. Among them, it includes experience of mobile warfare, close combat, night warfare, and small annihilation warfare under modern conditions; experience in solid position defense operations with tunnel warfare as the backbone and combined with field fortifications; experience in air battle which ensured the smooth flow of logistics and transportation lines in the theater; experience in coordinated operations of various services and arms and preparation for large-scale landing operations against the enemy. These experiences have enriched the content about the modern warfare guidance in Mao Zedong Military Thought.

From the early 1950s, Mao Zedong and the CMC led and commanded the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the liberation of coastal islands and border areas in self-defense and counterattack operations, and the defense of territorial waters and airspace; clearly stated that a strong and modern national defense must be built to accomplish the historical task of defending the national security and domestic economic development; formulated a strategic policy of active defense against foreign aggression; established the guiding ideology of developing high-tech equipment including missiles and nuclear weapons for self-defense and establishing China’s own national defense scientific research and defense industrial system and overall deployment; and put forward a series of guidelines for making the PLA more revolutionary, modern, and well-structured and promoting the development of militia, strategic rear, and China’s military science, thus forming Mao Zedong’s thought on national defense building, a new component of Mao Zedong Military Thought. 

III. Features and Value

Mao Zedong Military Thought is a model of the creative application of dialectical materialism and historical materialism to the military field. It adheres to the ideological principle of seeking truth from facts and proceeding from reality; takes answering and solving practical problems as the starting point and ultimate purpose, and has great practical significance; takes the interests of the people as its starting point, fully believes in the people, relies on the people, and respects the creative spirit of the people; combines the dauntless revolutionary spirit and a rigorous scientific attitude and emphasizes both having the courage to fight and being good at fighting, which is the basis for the people and their forces to defeat stronger enemies; combines Marxist-Leninist military theory and the reality of China’s revolutionary war, and is full of innovative spirit, opposes military dogmatism and empiricism and all things divorced from reality, and emphasizes that theory should develop with the practice; has a strong Chinese style, and at the same time draws the essence of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign military ideas.

Mao Zedong Military Thought creatively solved the theoretical and practical problems of how to carry out revolutionary armed struggle in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China and how to carry out military and national defense development after seizing power. In taking the road of encircling and eventually capturing cities from the countryside, building a new type of the people’s forces of a proletarian nature with peasants as the main component, implementing flexible strategies and tactics of people’s war, and modernizing national defense, it has greatly enriched and developed the military theory of Marxism-Leninism and constitutes a new milestone in the development of the proletariat’s military theory; created the superb war guiding art of defeating the strong by the weak in a just war, and provided a successful practical example and theoretical weapon for the oppressed nations and classes to be liberated and defeat the stronger enemy in a just war; revealed military laws that have reached an unprecedented depth and breadth, making it a “building” of extensive and profound military theory. It occupies an important position in the ideological history; in particular, its thought on military dialectics has a universal significance, as it provides the most basic position, viewpoint and method for people to scientifically understand the laws of various contradictory movements in the military field, and to correctly guide the practice of military struggle and military development.

In the new historical period, Mao Zedong Military Thought is still the guiding ideology for the CPC to lead the people of all ethnic groups in China to develop the military, national defense and military struggle. Every scientific theory bears the imprint of the times. To study Mao Zedong Military Thought, we must pro from its entire system, and master its basic standpoint, viewpoints and method for observing and solving problems, rather than mechanically using the specific conclusions it made in response to a certain reality at that time. Mao Zedong Military Thought did not end the truth, but opened up a broad road for further understanding of the truth. It is a very important task for the CPC and the People’s Liberation Army to uphold and continue to develop Mao Zedong Military Thought according to the new historical conditions.