Campaign To Defend Siping - Outcome

Outcome

The brilliance of the frontline commanders on both sides was obvious toward the end and after the campaign. Chiang Kai-shek was overjoyed with the taking of Siping and ordered the nationalists to immediately continue their attack and to take Changchun without a break, so that the enemy would not have the chance to regroup. Du Yuming, the nationalist frontline commander was well aware that his exhausted force must rest and regroup for sometime before launching anymore attacks on the enemy. Furthermore, Du and his fellow officers were also keenly aware that the majority of the enemy force in the rural regions was unscathed and was waiting to ambush them out in the open if the exhausted nationalists had ventured into the terrain hostile to the mechanized force. Du and his officers were determined not to give the enemy the opportunity they had been waiting for, and in a rare example among Chiang’s most trusted subordinates, Du Yuming refused to carry out Chiang’s order and successfully convinced Chiang to stop the planned offensive to allow the nationalists to consolidate their gains in Northeast China, and thus foiled the enemy’s hope of possible ambush.

Equally brilliant, the communist commander Lin Biao dared to ignore Mao Zedong’s order and withdrew from the city on his own, thus successfully avoided total annihilation of his defending force by the numerically and technically superior adversary. However, Lin Biao was more fortunate than his counterpart in that he did not have to convince Mao for his decision and actions because Mao had realized his error and concurred with what Lin Biao’s had done. However, neither Chiang’s original plan of continuing to take Changchun nor Mao’s original plan of holding Siping had materialized and thus the campaign ended in a stalemate.