Campaign To Suppress Bandits in Western Hunan - Campaign

Campaign

The campaign was fought in two stages, with the first stage lasted from October 15, 1950 – November 15, 1950. The communists amassed a total of ten regiments to first attack bandits in northern region of western Hunan based in the Dragon (Long, 龙) Mountains. After ten days of continuous attacks, the local bandits were completely annihilated. A half a month long mop up operation continued finally resulted in annihilation over four thousand bandits. In the south, on October 20, 1950, communists took the town of Suining (绥宁) and Jing (靖) County occupied by the bandits and surrounded over six thousands bandits by cutting off their escape route to the north. After fierce battles which ended on November 15, 1950, over fifty-five hundreds bandits were annihilated, and Jiang Xieqin (蒋燮琴), the local nationalist commander-in-chief of the Third Front Army of the Southern China Anticommunist National Salvation Army was captured alive.

The second stage of the campaign begun in mid-November 1950. Communists deployed a total of eleven regiments, seven of which were assigned to conduct local mopping up operations. Another four communist regiments attacked and took regions including Nine Dragons Mountain (Jiulongshan, 九龙山), Phoenix (凤凰), Mayang, (麻阳), Huang (晃) County, and Passage (Tongdao, 通道), and by the end of December 1950, the local bandits were completely annihilated. The campaign concluded with communist victory and the complete elimination of the problem of bandits that plagued western Hunan for several centuries.