Site of the Shangxi Reorganization in Yanping

Site of the Shangxi Reorganization in Yanping

In 1948, the headquarters of the Communist Party of China’s Min-Zhe-Jian Provincial Committee moved to the Taoping area of Cunwei Village in Fengshan Township (now Nanshan Township, Yanping District, Nanping City). At that time, the situation in the Nan-Gu-Ou region was tense, with the enemy concentrating relatively superior forces to suppress revolutionary masses in an attempt to wipe out the Provincial Committee and its leading main forces.

Amid the severe enemy threat, the Provincial Committee’s radio received a Xinhua News Agency broadcast of the telegram “Major Changes in China’s Military Situation,” learning about the significant victories in the Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin campaigns, which greatly boosted morale. In December 1948, the Provincial Committee successively issued the “Decision on the Urgent Task of Launching Armed Struggle to Assist the Liberation of Min-Zhe-Jian by the People’s Liberation Army” and the “Instructions on the Urgent Tasks of Striving for the Liberation of the People of Min-Zhe-Jian,” pointing out that the current urgent tasks were to mobilize and organize all forces, actively expand the Party and train cadres, recruit large numbers of youths, rapidly expand territory and troops, proactively crush enemy offensives, and assist the People’s Liberation Army in liberating Min-Zhe-Jian.

On New Year’s Day 1949, the Provincial Committee held a cadres’ meeting in Taoping, Cunwei Village, Fengshan Township, Nanping, attended by nearly 100 people including Zeng Jingbing, Zuo Fengmei, Chen Guifang, Wang Yiping, Su Hua, Huang Liyu, as well as county-level and above cadres from the Nan-Gu-Ou region and key members of the Provincial Committee’s armed forces. At the meeting, Zeng Jingbing summarized the struggle experience of eliminating local tyrants and distributing grain, as well as thwarting enemy encirclement, analyzed the major victories of the national liberation war and the favorable conditions for persisting in guerrilla warfare in the Nan-Gu-Ou region, and called on all Party members and cadres to resolutely overcome all difficulties, persist in mobilizing the masses, expanding the Party and training cadres, disintegrating the enemy, and annihilating the enemy. The meeting passed the “Action Program of the Min-Zhe-Jian People’s Guerrilla Column,” which clearly stated that the Min-Zhe-Jian People’s Guerrilla Column was a self-defense armed force born from the struggle of the people of Min-Zhe-Jian and was part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, with all actions fully complying with the programs and policies issued by the CPC Central Committee and the Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. It also specifically put forward ten action guidelines, whose main spirit included: leading and uniting all oppressed people against the burning, killing, and looting by Chiang Kai-shek’s troops; refusing conscription, taxation, grain levies, and forced labor; overthrowing the reactionary regime; mobilizing the masses to organize peasant associations and poor peasants’ groups to improve farmers’ lives and implement rent and interest reductions; protecting industry, commerce, and overseas Chinese families; welcoming defections from Chiang Kai-shek’s troops and annihilating all die-hard reactionaries and reactionary armed forces. After the meeting, the Provincial Committee’s headquarters moved from Taoping to Shangxi.

In early February 1949, in Shangxi Village, Nanping, in accordance with the directives of the Central Military Commission, the Provincial Committee reorganized the various guerrilla armed forces under the Min-Zhe-Jian Provincial Committee into the People’s Liberation Army Min-Zhe-Jian People’s Guerrilla Column (People’s Liberation Army Min-Zhe-Jian Border Column), with Zeng Jingbing serving as both commander and political commissar, Zuo Fengmei as deputy political commissar, Chen Guifang as deputy commander and chief of staff, and Huang Liyu as director of the political department. The Column’s three directly affiliated battalions and one training unit actively cooperated with the advancing Liberation Army to liberate Northern Fujian.

To facilitate commemoration by future generations, in May 1988, the Nanping Municipal Committee and Municipal Government of the CPC established the “Monument to the Founding of the Min-Zhe-Jian People’s Guerrilla Column” within the “Lingyun Pavilion” on the small hill of the Second Peak in Jiufengshan Park, Nanping, with the inscription authored by Zuo Fengmei.

Source: People’s Government of Nanping City