On December 17, 1949, the Second Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, with the cooperation of fraternal troops, successfully ended the Battle of Chengdu, completely eliminated the Hu Zongnan clique, the last armed force of the Kuomintang army on the mainland, and completely smashed Chiang Kai-shek's dream of dividing the southwest and establishing the capital Chongqing.
Bandits in the southwest
When the southwest region was just liberated, there were more than 300 bandits in Sichuan, 148 bandits in Yunnan, 541 bandits in Guizhou, and even Ya'an, Xichang and other places in Xikang often had large bandit riots, and the bandits in the entire southwest region were armed with more than 500,000 people. Bandits in the southwest were premeditated by the Kuomintang before they were defeated, so banditry was rampant.
When Chiang Kai-shek lost the Battle of Huaihai, he began to send a large number of secret agents to infiltrate the southwest region, and united with the local feudal forces to establish 15 guerrilla zones, 35 special service groups, and 140 secret radio stations in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Xikang provinces.
Chiang Kai-shek also asked these agents to set up "guerrilla cadre training classes" in Sichuan, Guizhou, and other places to prevent landlords, bullies, bandits, and hooligans from conducting guerrilla tactical training; among them, five phases were held in Sichuan, training more than 3,000 reactionaries, and two sessions in Guizhou, training more than 1,600 reactionaries. After receiving their training, these reactionaries immediately carried radios and infiltrated various places to develop bandit armed forces, sabotage local economic construction, and carry out riots.
In December 1949, when our army entered Sichuan on a large scale, Mao Renfeng, director of the Kuomintang Secrecy Bureau, held an emergency meeting of the heads of bandits in Chongqing, once again specifically dividing the guerrilla areas, formulating various counter-revolutionary documents, and unifying the bandit armed forces department and the outline of action.
The establishment of these bandit armed forces was very political from the beginning, and had official names, such as army, division, brigade, regiment, battalion, company and other units. In the middle of January 1950, these bandits took advantage of the fact that our army was busy taking over the big cities, transformed the insurrectionary troops, and began to carry out large-scale riot activities, and also plotted against the rebel troops of the Kuomintang army or surrendered troops, dragging them together to riot, seriously endangering social order. By March 1950, bandits in the southwest had grown to a huge scale of 280,000 people, and there were more than 1,100 bandit materials with more than 100 people.
When the southwest region was just liberated, the cadre resources of the Southwest Bureau were very scarce, and sometimes only more than 10 cadres could be sent to a county, and even fewer cadres were sent to townships and towns, and it was even difficult to get a cadre. Under such circumstances, governments at all levels had to use the personnel left over from the Kuomintang army, but some of these retained Kuomintang officials were Kuomintang agents, or wavered in their political attitudes, and could easily be rebelled by Kuomintang agents.
In addition to the serious hidden dangers in the government, some of the Kuomintang troops who revolted or surrendered also rebelled under the instigation of Kuomintang agents, and in early 1950, the rebel units of the Kuomintang army in Guizhou alone were as high as 15 regiments.
Longtan Temple Massacre
Not only are there serious bandits in remote areas, but even near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, they are very serious. At the beginning of 1950, a group of reactionary officers led by Liu Changling, deputy commander of the Eighth Division of the Remnants of Hu Zongnan, Liu Gancai, head of the Security Regiment, and Liao Zongze, chief of the Special Agent Department of the Military Command, colluded with a group of mobilizing officers led by Longtan Temple to form a rebel army, with 8 brigades and 1 direct subordinate detachment, and launched a counter-revolutionary riot.
On February 5, 1950, the bandit army occupied the key pass of the Mountain Temple between Longtan Temple and Shibantan, fortified the area of Buka, and threatened the masses with force to enter the bandits. On the same day, Zhu Xiangli, director of the Political Department of the 178th Division of the 60th Army of the People's Liberation Army, was escorted by a guard squad and went from Shibantan to Chengdu to perform official duties.
Zhu Xiangli, director of the political department of the 178th Division, was an old revolutionary who had led the student movement in the early days, and in 1933, Zhu Xiangli was sent to
Zhangjiakou,
He studied in the military and political training class of the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Allied Army organized by patriotic generals Feng Yuxiang and Ji Hongchang, and successively served as a member of the propaganda section of the Political Department of the Anti-Japanese Allied Army Garrison Headquarters, a chief of the special affairs section, a member of the special service company of the Eighteenth Division of the Anti-Japanese Allied Army, and a deputy section chief of the Political Department of the Sixteenth Division, and publicized the party's propositions and program.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhu Xiangli served under the leadership of Chen Geng and Bo Yibo as director of the Intelligence Department of the Taiyue Military Region and deputy director of the Enemy Engineering Department of the Political Department of the Taiyue Military Region, responsible for intelligence work against Japan. After the liberation war began, Zhu Xiangli served as the director of the Enemy Industry Department of the Political Department of the Eighth Column of the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Military Region, and the director of the Political Department of the 178th Division of the Sixtieth Army.
In February 1950, in order to enrich the strength of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Premier Zhou transferred a large number of senior cadres from the army, and Zhu Xiangli was tasked with serving as a military attaché stationed abroad in Bulgaria. But what no one expected was that when he passed through Cai Jiapo, Longtan Temple Town, he was besieged by bandits and suffered a tragic accident.
On February 5, 1950, Zhu Xiang, director of the Political Department of the 178th Division, was surrounded by hundreds of rebels when he left the slope of Yuanshan Temple in Longtan Temple. After being surrounded, the nine soldiers of the guard squad desperately resisted and covered the breakthrough of the chief, but because they were outnumbered, all the guards died heroically. Zhu Xiang left his body with a gunshot wound and hid in his old country house, but was still captured by the bandits who searched.
Faced with the threat of intimidation from the bandits, Zhu Xiangli, director of the Political Department of the 178th Division, loudly rebuked the bandits for killing innocents. The helpless enemy became so angry and angry that he stripped Zhu Xiangli of his clothes with great ferocity, cut off his tongue, ears, and eyes, and burned him alive with boiling water. After the sacrifice, the enemy took up a submachine gun to strafe, and when the troops found the body, they found that there were 24 bullet holes in the body.
Bandits in the Great Southwest
The Longtan Temple massacre shocked the whole country and aroused the attention of the central authorities to the national bandits. At that time, the Southwest Military Region sent an urgent telegram to the central authorities, requesting a large-scale liquidation of the bandits in the southwest region, and the central authorities agreed.
On February 8, the West Sichuan Military Region issued an order to suppress bandits, and the 558th Regiment of the People's Liberation Army, the 2nd Regiment of Chengdu Garrison and other departments were responsible for launching an attack on the bandits entrenched in Longtan Temple. On February 12, Qin Di, chief of staff of the 2nd Chengdu Garrison Regiment, led several scouts and a combat platoon to form a reconnaissance detachment and secretly went to Longtan Temple in disguise.
At 10:00 a.m., Qin Di led a small detachment that was preparing to enter the town when it was suddenly attacked by bandits. While fighting back, the squad quickly occupied the two high ground on the east side of Longtan Temple. Bandits surrounded the high ground from three sides. The squad fought tenaciously until dusk fell before the bandits were fully encircled. At night, the rebels organized another "death squad" of about 300 people to attack from the right wing. The squad defeated the bandits, captured more than 30 people including the bandit squadron leader, and captured a batch of weapons and ammunition.
In the early morning of the next day, the bandits gathered more than 200 people and approached the position from the left side. After the squad waited for the rebels to enter the ambush circle, they immediately opened fire, killing and wounding many rebels, and the bandits did not dare to attack again because of their heavy casualties. Late at night on the 13th, the squad took advantage of the gap between battles to interrogate the prisoners, and reconnoitred and judged that the bandits' command point was located in the Li Family Compound at the north end of Longtan Temple.
The squad organized a crack assault group to storm the compound, directly smashed the sleeping hall of the bandit leader, annihilated 19 people including the bandit leader on the spot, and disrupted the bandit leader's command system. Although the bandits at Longtan Temple were quelled, the bandit leader Li Caigan and others escaped arrest. On April 16, Li Caigan was executed by our army.
On March 16, 1950, the Central Committee issued a directive to the whole country entitled "Suppressing Rebels and Establishing a New Revolutionary Order", and at the same time, the Central Committee issued the "Instruction on Severely Suppressing Counter-Revolutionaries", requiring governments at all levels to immediately investigate and suppress all kinds of counter-revolutionaries.
On March 17, 1950, the Southwest Military Region held a meeting of senior cadres to suppress bandits, preparing to concentrate the strength of 20 divisions in Sichuan and make all-out efforts to suppress bandits. After that, the strength of the bandits in the entire southwest region was increased to 37 divisions, and the bandits in Yunnan, Sichuan, Xikang, Guizhou and other places were cleared and suppressed in an all-round way. This campaign lasted for three years, annihilating more than 1.16 million bandits and capturing more than 700 artillery pieces and more than 600,000 guns of various kinds.