In December 1949, Chengdu was liberated and the Southwest Campaign ended. In the entire Southwest Campaign, the People's Liberation Army destroyed more than 900,000 enemy personnel, including various armed forces that revolted and surrendered, and completely smashed the dream of US imperialism supporting Chiang Kai-shek to divide the southwest and build the capital Chongqing.
Although the southwest region was liberated, the remnants of the Kuomintang and the bandit armed forces in the southwest region carried out counter-revolutionary riots and various harassment and sabotage operations in Sichuan, Xikang, Guizhou and Yunnan, and became the most serious areas in the country. At that time, there were more than 300 bandits in Sichuan, 148 bandits in Yunnan, 541 bandits in Guizhou, and a large number of bandit armed activities in Ya'an, Xichang and other places in Xikang. After the rebellion of the rebel forces of the Kuomintang army, there were also 14 regiments that went up to the mountains to become bandits, and the bandits in the entire southwest region were armed with up to 500,000 people.
In Sichuan in the early days of liberation, banditry was very active. Long before the Huaihai Campaign, Chiang Kai-shek sent a large number of spies to infiltrate the southwestern provinces, and together with the local feudal forces, he planned a "contingency plan" and held "training classes for guerrilla cadres" in Sichuan, Guizhou, and other places, training more than 5,000 reactionaries as the backbone of his development of bandit armed forces and sabotage of people's construction and economic construction.
When Sichuan was just liberated, these bandit armed forces left behind by the Kuomintang in Sichuan were hidden everywhere under the intimidation of our army, and did not dare to cause trouble, but by January 1950, these bandits saw that our army was busy taking over the city, busy receiving and reforming the uprising, and surrendering troops, so they took the opportunity to collude with the local landlords and bullies, coerced the backward masses, and killed revolutionary cadres, seriously endangering local stability and the safety of people's lives and property, and the Longtan Temple massacre was a very typical example.
Zhu Xiangli was born in Shuxiang Mendi, his father was a Qing Dynasty Xiucai, and later participated in the League. Zhu Xiangli joined the Communist Party of China in 1933 and engaged in the student movement. In 1938, Zhu Xiangli went to Yan'an to study at kang da, and after graduating from the kang da, Zhu Xiang li successively served as an education officer of the 386 brigade of the 129th division of the Eighth Route Army, the director of the Linfen intelligence station, and the director of the intelligence department of the first sub-district of the Taiyue Military Region. In 1947, Zhu Xiang left as the director of the Enemy Engineering Department of the Political Department of the Eighth Column of the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Military Region, and in November 1949, Zhu Xiangli became the director of the Political Department of the 178th Division of the 60th Army, and went south with the troops, and after the liberation of Chengdu, he was responsible for the urban takeover and the transformation of the rebel troops.
In January 1950, just as the transformation work was proceeding smoothly, Zhu Xiangli received an order from the headquarters of the Central Military Commission to report to Beijing and prepare to serve as the first military attaché of the People's Republic of China stationed abroad (Bulgaria). On February 5, 1950, Zhu Xiangli, escorted by a reinforcement squad of fighters, set off from Shibantan Town to return to Chengdu. When they traveled more than 20 miles to the Yuanshan Temple under the jurisdiction of Longtan Temple Town, they were attacked by kuomintang remnants.
The bandits quickly surrounded Zhu Xiangli and the guards, eight of whom were burned alive in a house by the bandits, and Zhu Xiangli and two other fighters retreated to a courtyard, but were also quickly found out by the bandits and imprisoned in the Courtyard Mountain Temple. In the face of the enemy's severe torture, Zhu Xiangli was awe-struck by comrade justice, loudly condemned the rebels for indiscriminately killing innocents, and righteously and sternly rejected all kinds of unreasonable demands.
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. Later, the monks of the Yuanshan Temple buried his body and buried it hastily in the vegetable field behind the temple. When the troops found Zhu Xiangli's body, they found 24 wounds on his body, which is the famous "Longtan Temple Massacre".
The Longtan Temple massacre caused a great shock at that time, and Deng Xiaoping, then first secretary of the Southwest Bureau and political commissar of the Southwest Military Region, pointed out when reporting to the central authorities on the situation in the southwest and the future work policy: "Nothing can be done without suppressing the bandits. On March 16, 1950, the Central Military Commission and Chairman Mao also issued the latest instructions on the struggle against bandits: "It must be made clear that the suppression of bandits is an important stage that cannot be surpassed in the current national revolutionary struggle, and is a necessary prerequisite for the establishment and restoration of people's power at all levels, as well as for the development of everything else." ”
After the orders of the Central Committee and Chairman Mao were issued, the major military regions of the People's Liberation Army quickly dispatched 39 armies and 140 divisions and more than 1.5 million troops to carry out a large-scale struggle against bandits throughout the country. The bandit leaders who planned the Longtan Temple massacre and their armed forces were also quickly wiped out by the People's Liberation Army.
In February 1950, shortly after the Longtan Temple massacre, the Southwest Bureau held a meeting and decided to make the suppression of bandits the central task of the work of the whole region. Under the unified deployment of the Southwest Military Region, the Third Corps, the Fourth Corps, the Fifth Corps, the Eighteenth Corps and the Seventh Army under the jurisdiction of the First Corps of the People's Liberation Army, a total of 13 corps and 37 divisions, were successively thrown into the operation of suppressing bandits.
In view of the serious problem of bandits in the southwest region at that time, the PLA garrison in Sichuan implemented the "division of the cadres" and carried out dragnet-style bandits in various regions. The Third Corps commanded six divisions of the 11th Army and the 12th Army, which were responsible for entering and suppressing bandits in the eastern Sichuan region; the Tenth Army commanded the Tenth Army, the Eighteenth Army, and the eight armies of the Fifteenth Army, which were responsible for entering and suppressing bandits in the southern Sichuan region; and the 60th Army commanded the 61st Army, the 62nd Army, and the seven divisions of the Seventh Army, which were responsible for entering and suppressing the bandits in the western Sichuan region.
Among the bandits in various provinces, the bandits in Guangxi are the most fierce, and the Gui forces led by Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi have been entrenched in Guangxi for decades and have deep roots here. The adult men in Guangxi have basically participated in militia armed groups, received military training, and almost every household has a gun; in addition, the terrain in Guangxi is relatively complex, which also brings great difficulties to the struggle against bandits.
Before Bai Chongxi's defeat in Guangxi, in the Guangxi Campaign that broke out from November to December 1949, the Kuomintang Warlords led by Bai Chongxi were annihilated, and the remnants of the defeated soldiers fled to the Vietnamese border areas and some hid in the mountains of Guangxi.
Beginning in January 1950, Li Tianyou, deputy commander of the Guangxi Military Region, began to be specifically responsible for the suppression of bandits in Guangxi, but by the end of November, the bandits in Guangxi had not only not been completely eliminated, but also showed a phenomenon of more and more suppression, and Chairman Mao also realized the seriousness of the bandit plague in Guangxi and severely criticized the Guangxi Military Region.
In addition, Chairman Mao also transferred the 21st Corps of the People's Liberation Army (reorganized from the Chen Mingren Corps of the Changsha Uprising in August 1948, commander Chen Mingren) to Guangxi, increasing the number of bandits in Guangxi to 200,000, and in this way, it took three years until 1953 to completely eliminate the bandits in Guangxi.
By the end of 1953, the People's Liberation Army had annihilated nearly 2.6 million bandits, and if you add the bandit suppression operations in the northeast, north China, and east China during the Liberation War, a total of more than 3 million bandit armed forces were annihilated, and 2,100 artillery pieces of various kinds and 1.31 million guns were captured, which completely stabilized the situation throughout the country and safeguarded the safety of people's lives and property.