Mobile warfare () is a military strategy of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

employing conventional forces on fluid fronts with units maneuvering to exploit opportunities for tactical surprise, or where a local superiority of forces can be realized. One of early CCP leader

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

's three forms of warfare (), mobile warfare was the primary form of warfare used by Chinese communist forces from the early 1930s to the conclusion of the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermitt ...

. The other two forms of warfare that Mao defined in ''

On Protracted War ''On Protracted War'' () is a work comprising a series of speeches by Mao Zedong given from May 26, 1938, to June 3, 1938, at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In it, he calls for a protracted people ...

'',

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrori ...

( zh, c=游击战, p=yóujīzhàn, labels=no) and positional warfare ( zh, c=阵地战, p=zhèndìzhàn, labels=no), were less frequently employed. The most notable example of Chinese mobile warfare was the

Long March The Long March ( zh, s=长征, p=Chángzhēng, l=Long Expedition) was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from advancing Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, occurring between October 1934 and ...

, a massive military retreat in which Mao marched in circles in

Guizhou ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province , map_caption = Map s ...

until he had confused the vastly larger armies pursuing him, and was then able to slip through

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

, although the retreat was completed by only one-tenth of the force that left for the Long March at Jiangxi. The Chinese

People's Volunteer Army The People's Volunteer Army (PVA), officially the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV), was the armed expeditionary forces China in the Korean War, deployed by the History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976), People's Republic of Chi ...

's first five campaigns in the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

were characterized by a strategy of mobile warfare, in which the PVA encircled the enemy through maneuvers and sought to annihilate the enemy. Then it entered a stage of positional warfare, when both the PVA and UN forces fought to a stalemate along the

38th parallel north Following are circles of latitude between the 35th parallel north and the 40th parallel north: 36th parallel north The 36th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 36 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Africa, th ...

References

{{Reflist

Sources

*''Seeking Truth From Facts'': RAND 1991, page 136. The book is mostly about post-Mao developments within the Chinese military.
various English-language sources using the phrase
Military strategy Military history of the People's Republic of China Military history of China Mao Zedong

See also

References

Sources