ABSTRACT

By the early summer of 1951 even Mao conceded that the time for largescale offensives, at least for the moment, was past and that his armies must go over to “piecemeal” warfare. He cabled Peng that

The [immediate] past campaigns have shown that our enveloping, outflanking and penetrating operations at both campaign and battle levels have encountered such great difficulties that we were prevented from achieving the goals of completely annihilating several US divisions or even a whole US division or regiment.