Xiao Jinguang (1903.1.4~1989.3.29), a native of Changsha, Hunan. In 1920, he joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League. The following year, he went to the Soviet Union to study. In 1922, he transferred to the Communist Party of China. After returning to China in 1924, he served as a party representative of the 6th Division of the 2nd Army of the National Revolutionary Army and participated in the Northern Expedition. After the defeat of the Great Revolution, he went to the Soviet Union for the second time to study. In 1930, he returned to China and successively served as chief of staff and director of the political department of the Fujian-Guangdong-Gansu Military Region, and principal of the Central Military and Political School. In December 1931, he was appointed political commissar of the 5th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In 1933, he successively served as the commander and political commissar of the Jianlitai Garrison District, the political commissar of the 11th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and the political commissar of the 7th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. After the Long March arrived in northern Shaanxi, he served as the director of the Military Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the commander of the 29th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he was the director of the General Left Behind Office of the Eighth Route Army, the commander of the Left Behind Corps (later political commissar), and the deputy commander of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Jinsui Joint Defense Army.
Xiao Jinguang in Yan'an (1940)
During the Liberation War, he served as deputy commander and chief of staff of the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army. In the winter of 1946, he was also the commander of the South Manchuria Military Region. In 1948, he was appointed commander of the 1st Corps of the Northeast Field Army and led his troops to besiege Changchun. From November of the same year, he led his troops to participate in the Battle of Pingjin and the Battle of Crossing the River, liberated Wuhan, marched into Hunan, and commanded the Battle of Hengbao. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as commander of the Navy and vice minister of national defense. He was awarded the rank of Grand General in 1955.
The main contents of General Xiao Jinguang's military thinking are:
First, carry out vigorous political work and comprehensively improve the military and political quality of the people's army
1. The building of the people's army should be centered on strengthening the Party's work. The absolute leadership of the Communist Party is determined by the nature of the people's army, and the improvement of the army's political quality depends on effective political work. Therefore, we must resolutely implement the spirit of the resolution of the Gutian Conference, establish and improve the party's organizations at all levels, carry out targeted education of the party's principles and policies, correct erroneous thinking at an appropriate time, and confirm the political direction. It is necessary to advocate the study of Marxism, the study of cultural knowledge, and the transformation of the army into a fighting school. Great attention should be paid to arousing the political consciousness and revolutionary heroism of commanders and fighters, and the grievance movement and the meritorious service movement are all very good forms of political education. It is necessary to attach importance to the work of transforming the old army, and in the case of the weakness of the Red Army, it is very meaningful to do a good job in the work of uniting, nurturing, and transforming the insurrection personnel. It is necessary to give the insurgents political trust, concern for life, and ideological education. Educating officers and men at the lower levels in the three major democracies of politics, economy, and military affairs is an effective way to transform the old army.
2. The improvement of the army's combat capability depends on regularized training. As far as commanders are concerned, strategic and tactical thinking is the key to the success or failure of command, and it is necessary to strengthen the study of military theory. For combatants, it is mainly to improve the level of tactical technology. The command is of vital importance to the improvement of the combat effectiveness of the army, and it is necessary to clarify the work responsibilities of the command, strengthen the planning work of the command, and pay special attention to the training of staff officers. It is necessary to strictly lead troops, strictly carry out military life, and use all kinds of rules, regulations, charters, and rules to manage and educate the troops. In light of the course of war and changes in the operational environment, we should carry out training in new military theories and tactical techniques.
Xiao Jinguang during the agrarian revolution
Second, proceeding from the reality that the enemy is strong and we are weak, we should practice flexible and mobile operational guidance
1. In the case of the Red Army's weakness and unstable base areas, what is needed is more guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare than offensive and position warfare. Guerrilla warfare is not only a tactical issue, but should be elevated to the level of strategic warfare. In order for the instructors of guerrilla warfare to put themselves in the position of the initiative, they must adopt a proactive strategy and use their forces flexibly and in a planned and flexible manner. During the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, in the stage of strategic defense, it is necessary to implement the strategic principle of giving priority to guerrilla warfare but not abandoning mobile warfare under favorable conditions. It is possible to adopt effective guerrilla regiments to penetrate deep behind the enemy's lines, cooperate with each other in the two major battlefields frontal and behind the enemy's rear, and fight flexibly and flexibly. In order to persist in holding on to the enemy and later containing the enemy, causing the enemy's forces to disperse, taking care of one or the other, and improving the situation from the dissipation of the enemy's and our strengths. In the stage of strategic counteroffensive, movement warfare is the mainstay, with special use of roundabout encirclement tactics. For the people's army, which mainly adopts the form of guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare, close combat tactics can best play its specialty.
(2) The people's army must undertake the task of establishing and consolidating revolutionary base areas. To carry out the construction of revolutionary base areas under the situation where the enemy is strong and we are strong, we must be prepared to "change the situation with war," and the army is an indispensable basic force. It not only undertakes the task of cracking down on the invading enemy and defending the base areas, but also serves as a place for training and reserving cadres and as the main force in production and operation; at the same time, it also shoulders the heavy task of mobilizing the masses and opening up the base areas behind enemy lines. When the problems of the base areas and the masses are solved, the victory in the war will have a foundation. In the military struggle in the base areas, we should wage a tit-for-tat struggle against the enemy, drag the enemy into a quagmire, and exchange local difficulties and sacrifices for overall victory.
3. Pay attention to the use of strategy and tactics. In the course of military struggle, we should distinguish between the stubborn forces and the middle forces, strive to win the latter, and concentrate our forces on attacking the former. The struggle against the diehards must persist and must not harm the fundamental interests of the proletariat and the masses of the people on any question; but the struggle must also pay attention to tactics and methods. There are military struggles, as well as ideological and political struggles, and the exact method of struggle to be adopted depends on the specific circumstances. The army must not only be able to "fight in arms," but also "fight in the heart" and divide and disintegrate the enemy.
Third, build a strong and modern people's navy
1. According to Mao Zedong's thinking on the building of the people's army, the construction policy of the people's navy at the beginning of its founding was to recruit a large number of young revolutionary intellectuals and scientific and technological personnel with the workers and peasants as the backbone and the People's Liberation Army as the basis, and to win, unite and transform the personnel of the old army and navy. To this end, it is necessary to ensure the party's absolute leadership and uphold the system of political commissars, so that political work will become the basic guarantee for naval construction. The navy personnel of the old army and the young intellectuals and scientific and technological personnel who have newly enlisted in the army should focus on raising their political consciousness; personnel from the PLA army should more importantly master technology.
2. In building the people's navy, we must do a good job in the "three piles" of politics, organization, and technology. On the one hand, it is necessary to explore new theories and methods of political work that are different from ordinary political work and have naval characteristics, and advocate the spirit of facing the fleet and facing the sea and serving the people's navy wholeheartedly; on the other hand, naval construction should be rapidly regularized, "governing the army before governing schools," schools should take learning as the center, and the troops should take training as the center, and strive to resolve the main contradiction of "man and technology." The role of human power and the role of political power can only be brought into play through technical business.
3. The construction of the people's navy is an important aspect of national defense construction, and the navy is a strategic branch of the armed forces. Modern naval warfare is a comprehensive three-dimensional war, and the people's navy must be built from the very beginning with a long-term view, and the idea of building a powerful and modern maritime combat force with five complete branches of the sea and air, water surface, underwater, coastal defense, and marine corps can coordinate operations.
4. Naval construction must proceed from reality, combine "necessary" and "possible", and proceed step by step. First of all, we should build a modern, offensive and defensive force, capable, and light maritime combat force, with "air, submarine, and fast," that is, naval aviation, submarine, and speedboat units, as the focus of construction. In the relationship between naval construction and national construction, we must be subordinated to the state's economic construction; in the relationship with the entire national defense construction, we must be subordinated to the corresponding development of the navy with the focus on the development of the air force and air defense; in naval construction, we must implement the principle of developing "air, submarine, and fast" and develop other branches of the armed forces accordingly. Naval construction must be based on the development of the country's industry, and the navy cannot be developed solely by buying equipment; it cannot be based solely on the number and tonnage of ships. It is necessary to establish a correct viewpoint on development, unify summing up past experiences, proceeding from actual conditions and foreseeing a vision for future development, and implement the principle of key construction and appropriate consideration for all-round development. This is used as a guide to train cadres and conduct research on naval military scholarship and military technology. In view of the trend of the development of the world's navies toward missileization and nuclear energy, it is proposed that China's naval construction should focus on submarines, combine cutting-edge technology with conventional equipment, and develop ship equipment from small and medium-sized to large-scale. While strengthening the coastal defense capability, the Navy builds the ability to advance into defense in depth. To build a strong navy, we must consider both strategically and tactical issues in campaigns, and our equipment must be missileized and electronic, and we must have several weapons and equipment that make the enemy afraid.
Xiao Jinguang inspected the Chinese People's Liberation Army Naval Senior College (1965)
Fourth, implement the strategic principle of active defense and give play to the advantages of the people's war at sea
The People's Navy is strategically defensive and tactically offensive. It is necessary to rely on coastal islands, with shore guns and mines as the backbone of defense, with torpedo boats, destroyers, and torpedo aircraft in coordination with the army to carry out anti-landing operations, submarines and aircraft to carry out active attacks on the enemy's maritime transport lines, and lay mines on the routes, give full play to the advantages of the people's war on the sea, turn many islands into "unsinkable aircraft carriers," and carry out effective defensive operations by taking advantage of their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. It is necessary to carry out large-scale guerrilla warfare of sea raids. Under conditions where the enemy is strong and we are weak, the task of the people's navy is to support and coordinate operations with the army and air force from the sea, and it should combine scattered guerrilla warfare at sea with the annihilation war of concentrated strike under favorable conditions, that is, the combination of the sabotage war at sea and the anti-landing war along the coast, and to defeat the enemy with its extensive, sudden, offensive, and flexible operational characteristics. With the advent of missiles and nuclear weapons, the depth of naval combat has been greatly expanded, and the specific form and scope of activities of the people's navy in implementing the strategic principle of active defense should be adapted to this and open up an independent battlefield at sea.
General Xiao Jinguang's military thinking played a certain role in the formation and development of Mao Zedong's military thought, in winning victory in China's revolutionary war, in guiding the people's army and national defense construction, and in guiding the construction and development of the troops mainly under his leadership and in the victory of operations, especially in the construction of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy after the founding of the People's Republic of China.