Campaign to Defend Siping

Chinese Communist machinegun position

Date	April 17–May 19, 1946
Location	Siping, Jilin, China
Result	Stalemate; Nationalists take Siping but not Changchun

Belligerents

Republic of China

Communist Party of China

Commanders and leaders

Strength

100,000

85,000

Casualties and losses

6,800

8,000

The Campaign to Defend Siping (四平保卫战) was a struggle between the Nationalists and the communists for the control of Siping during the Chinese Civil War in the post World War II era. The nationalists have combined this campaign with the Battle of Siping as part of the battle, but this was rather misleading since the strategies for both sides were totally different from the strategies in this campaign and unrelated to each other, furthermore, the commanders for both sides in this campaign were completely different from the Battle of Siping. More importantly, the nationalists in the Battle of Siping was in name only, because they were former nationalists (mostly warlords ostensively under nationalist reign) turned Japanese puppet regime forces who rejoined the nationalists after World War II, and the local bandits recruited by the nationalist administrators to fight off communists, since Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist regime simply did not have the resource to rapidly deploy his forces into the region. In fact, in the Battle of Siping, Chiang’s own force did not even participated in the fights. This campaign was characterized by the fact that the supreme commanders of both sides had overestimated their strength and set unrealistic goals that could doom their troops in the field, but in both cases, the brilliant frontline commanders on both sides had successfully averted the potential catastrophes by convincing their respective supreme commanders to change their original decisions.

After the defeat of Jinjiatun Campaign, the nationalists resumed their offensive with vengeance. In a short period of just two days, the nationalists were able to regroup and re-supply completely, and continued their push toward Siping. Chiang Kai-shek was determined to take Changchun after taking Siping, and Mao Zedong was equally determined to hold Siping to the end and prevent the nationalists from taking both Siping and Changchun. Both sides realized the upcoming campaign would be a difficult one and both sides placed one of their best field commanders in charge: Du Yuming for the nationalists and Lin Biao for the communists.

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