After the End of the Hundred Regiments War, Chiang Kai-shek openly praised the Eighth Route Army for its bravery in combat, but behind his back, he was jealous of the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and other communist units. In 1937, when the Eighth Route Army first came out of northern Shaanxi, there were only 45,000 people, but in just three or four years, the Eighth Route Army developed into 500,000 people, not counting some local armed forces, which made Chiang Kai-shek very worried and also triggered the later Anhui Southern Incident.
After the End of the Hundred Regiments War, Chiang Kai-shek found various reasons to engage in friction with the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and other units, and asked He Yingqin and Bai Chongxi to come down to the Eighth Route Army south of the Yellow River in the name of the Military and Political Department and the deputy chief of staff, and the troops of the New Fourth Army retreated to the area north of the Yellow River within a month, and reorganized the 500,000 Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army into 100,000 troops. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek also ordered Tang Enbo, Li Pinxian, Han Deqin, Gu Zhu and others to frequently launch attacks on the relatively weak New Fourth Army. Chiang Kai-shek felt that since there was no way to take the Eighth Route Army, which had already developed and grown, he would nip the New Fourth Army, which was still developing, and want to eliminate the New Fourth Army.
With regard to Chiang Kai-shek's unreasonable demand, Zhu De, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, Peng Dehuai, deputy commander-in-chief, Ye Ting, commander of the New Fourth Army, and Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the Army, refuted them. However, in order to take into account the overall situation of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it was still promised that the New Fourth Army could abandon southern Anhui and move north. Chiang Kai-shek did not buy the ccp's capitulation. On December 10, 1940, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Gu Zhutong, commander-in-chief of the Third Theater, and Shangguan Yunxiang, commander-in-chief of the 32nd Group Army, to secretly mobilize heavy troops, and also mobilized elite troops from the front line against Japan to prepare for the elimination of the New Fourth Army.
On January 6, 1941, when the Headquarters of the New Fourth Army and three columns directly under it marched to the Maolin area of Jing County, Anhui Province, they were suddenly attacked by more than 80,000 people from seven divisions of the Kuomintang Army. The New Fourth Army fought bravely for seven days and nights, but due to outnumbered and command mistakes, the losses were heavy; Ye Ting, commander of the New Fourth Army, was captured, Deputy Commander Xiang Ying was killed, Chief of Staff Zhou Zikun was sacrificed, Director of the Political Department Yuan Guoping was sacrificed, and the New Fourth Army Headquarters was completely destroyed and the entire army was destroyed.
However, in the defeat of southern Anhui, there was a successful breakthrough of one unit, which was a column led by Fu Qiutao. On the third day of the Anhui Incident, yizhong's radio station was destroyed and lost contact with the military department. Fu Qiutao immediately made a decision, quickly summoned the cadres to a meeting, and after only a few hours of discussion, he made a breakthrough plan, and the troops quickly moved to southern Jiangsu. Fu Qiutao had fought in southern Jiangsu for half a year, and the local mass base was very good, so he finally chose to go from this place.
Unlike Yizhong, the leaders of the New Fourth Army at that time disagreed, resulting in the loss of the best time to break through. In the end, more than 2,000 people successfully broke through, leaving seeds for the reconstruction of the New Fourth Army. In 1955, Fu Qiutao was awarded the rank of general.