After the Anhui Incident in 1941, the New Fourth Army headquarters and directly subordinate units totaled more than 9,000 people, but the New Fourth Army was not destroyed. On January 25, 1941, the Central Military Commission established the reorganized New Fourth Army Headquarters in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, on the basis of the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army of the New Fourth Army in Central China, and appointed Chen Yi as the acting commander of the New Fourth Army, Liu Shaoqi as the political commissar, Zhang Yunyi as the deputy commander, Lai Chuanzhu as the chief of staff, Deng Zihui as the director of the Political Department, seven divisions and an independent brigade under the jurisdiction of the New Fourth Army, and a fifth branch of the Kang Da, with a total of 90,000 people in the whole army, which not only was not eliminated, but grew even stronger.
After the Reconstruction of the New Fourth Army, the Kuomintang cut off all the grain and salaries of the New Fourth Army, so when the New Fourth Army was just rebuilt, it was not to say that it was fighting against Japan, and it was very difficult to survive, and it was not possible to plunder the common people like the Japanese army of the Nationalist Army and survive by grabbing grain. Later, life became more and more unbearable, and Zhang Yunyi, deputy commander of the New Fourth Army and commander of the Second Division, saw a business opportunity.
At a meeting, Zhang Yunyi was choked by inferior smoke and gasped for breath, in fact, it was not inferior smoke, it was all officers and soldiers rolling up with leaves, and Zhang Yunyi felt that he could run a tobacco factory by himself. At that time, the New Fourth Army had just conquered the town of Tongcheng in Tianchang County, and there was a tobacco factory in the town, which was on the verge of closure because of the wanton exploitation by the Kuomintang authorities and the market squeeze by the compradors. After the officers and men of the New Fourth Army came to the door and proposed that the troops should participate in the operation, the personnel funds were also out of the troops, and the boss could sit on one-fifth of the profits without doing anything, the director of the factory was very happy and resolutely agreed.
Commander Chen Yi also personally named this tobacco factory "Pegasus". The New Fourth Army was also self-made at that time, specially invited from Huainan Daily to edit and design patterns, the shanghai underground party helped to build six cigarette machines, but also helped to print, anyway, they did not dare to print newspapers and leaflets during the day, the printing press was idle, just can help print cigarette boxes, but also as a cover.
When Pegasus brand cigarettes were first put into production, they could print more than 600 cigarettes a day, except for some supply troops, others began to take civilian routes in order to open up sales channels, so the price was set very low. Because the quality of the cigarettes was particularly good, they soon received a rush from the masses to buy, and merchants in enemy-occupied areas such as Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou risked their lives to order goods. Later, due to the shortage of supply, the New Fourth Army also continued to purchase machinery, build factories, increase workers, and increase the night shift, producing 1200 cigarettes a day. This practice of the Second Division not only solved the employment problem of the local people and the problem of sales channels for tobacco farmers, but also fattened the troops.
After the establishment of the Second Division Tobacco Factory, it went from being so poor that it could not even eat enough food, and once became a rich man in central China, handing over 300,000 yuan of French currency to the military every month. In 1944, when there was a major drought in North China, the Second Division took out 16 million yuan in one go to support the disaster area, and all the units of the Eighth Route Army were stunned. In fact, not only the Second Division, but also the base areas opened up by the Seventh Division in the Anhui River are more prosperous, and in the New Fourth Army, there is a saying that "the Seventh Division is rich, the whole army is a full army." According to Lai Chuanzhu, chief of staff of the New Fourth Army, from January 1944 to January 1945, in just one year, the Seventh Division handed over 44 million yuan in cash to the military department, which was converted into 230,000 taels of gold at the price at that time. The food standard of the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army is very high, 10 yuan per month, the staple food is rice, in addition, everyone has pocket money, a toothpaste, three cigarettes, the most advanced weapons and equipment, the strength of the army has reached 30,000 people, it can be said that the soldiers are strong and strong, with money everything is easy to do, and the combat effectiveness is quickly raised.
In stark contrast to the New Fourth Army, the Kuomintang army, at that time in Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, there were also Kuomintang guerrillas, the strength was not weak, but they were beaten by the Japanese army to escape, ran away, and could not survive behind the enemy's back, and many troops surrendered to the Japanese army and became puppet troops. At that time, even if it was the Central Army of the Kuomintang Army, the officers and men at the bottom were very seriously exploited, and the reason why the New Fourth Army was treated so well, in addition to its operation, there was also a very important reason that officers and men were equal, there were very few things to eat empty wages, and the punishment for corruption was also very large, so the soldiers' ideological will would be very firm when fighting.
At that time, the various departments of the New Fourth Army were still collecting taxes from Japanese businessmen on the river, and what the Japanese businessmen did not expect was that the New Fourth Army still drove steel steamboats, and finally the New Fourth Army used the "anti-Japanese donations" collected from Japanese businessmen to buy guns and cannons to fight the Japanese army. There were Japanese ships that wanted to chase, but the New Fourth Army from the guerrillas of the eight southern provinces still had a way, Zhang Aiping later came up with an idea, that is, to set up a dark pile under the water, and the Japanese army that did not know the underwater conditions was stranded after it, and then it was strafed by a machine gun of the New Fourth Army, and later the Japanese army did not dare to chase casually. The equipment of the various units of the New Fourth Army was much better than that of the Eighth Route Army in the later period, and the cavalry regiment of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army of Peng Xuefeng fought against the Japanese cavalry in a battle at Shashan set in 1942, and cut off more than 200 Japanese troops in a round of hedging for nine minutes.
In 1943, the Second Division of the New Fourth Army, which was strong and strong, simply set up its division headquarters in Lai'an County, which was only one river away from Nanjing, and frequently destroyed the Jinpu Line, blowing up the Jinpu Line and causing it to sway many times. The First Division of the New Fourth Army led by Su Yu and the Sixth Division of the New Fourth Army led by Su Yu built the base area in the hinterland of the Japanese army and opened up a base area in southern Jiangsu, Ye Fei led his troops all the way to the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai, blew up four Japanese planes, causing a great shock, but the Japanese army could do nothing about the New Fourth Army. On the part of the Kuomintang army, in the Battle of Yuxianggui in 1944 at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, an unprecedented rout occurred, which made China's international prestige fall to the bottom. The same land, the same resources, the same people, but under the leadership of different people, it has produced diametrically opposite effects.