Southern Jiangsu Party, Government and Military Organs Move to Lixiang

Date and cause

After the Tangma Battle of November 1941 the leading party, government and military organs of southern Jiangsu and the main body of the New Fourth Army moved to Lixiang and the surrounding area. The battle itself was fought in what is now Liyang; its course lies outside this entry, which records only what the move meant for Lixiang.

Organs stationed at Lixiang

According to the district government's website and to the Party History Channel of People's Daily Online, the organs at Lixiang and its neighbourhood included the CPC Jiangsu-Anhui Regional Committee, the wartime Southern Jiangsu Administrative Office and the 16th Brigade of the 6th Division of the New Fourth Army. The district government's website calls the place the command centre of the war in southern Jiangsu and notes that historians have called it the Little Yan'an of southern Jiangsu — a description this site marks as reported usage rather than its own assessment. The names of the organs follow the wording of the sources and are neither simplified nor rewritten.

Activities

New Fourth Army commanders including Chen Yi, Jiang Weiqing and Zhong Guochu directed operations from here and issued such measures as the Administrative Programme for Southern Jiangsu. The lives of individuals belong to a biographical section and are not set out here.

Uncertainties

The sources give neither the dates on which each organ arrived and left Lixiang nor the buildings used as offices. November 1941 is the date of the Tangma Battle, not the date on which the organs actually moved, and this entry does not merge the two.