Prolonged People's War
| People's war | |||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 人民战争 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 人民戰爭 | ||||||||||||||||
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People's war, also called protracted people's war, is a military-political strategy first developed by the Chinese Communist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976). The basic concept behind People's War is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the countryside (stretching their supply lines) where the population will bleed them dry through a mix of mobile and guerrilla warfare. It was used by the Communists against Imperial Japanese Army in World War II and the Communist Government in the Chinese Civil War.
The term is used by Maoists for their strategy of long-term armed revolutionary struggle. After the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Deng Xiaoping abandoned People's War for "People's War under Modern Conditions," which moved away from reliance on troops over technology. With the adoption of "socialism with Chinese characteristics", economic reforms fueled military and technological investment. Troop numbers were also reduced and professionalisation encouraged.
The strategy of people's war was used heavily by the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War. However protracted war should not be confused with the "foco" theory employed by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
In its original formulation by Mao Zedong, people's war exploits the few advantages that a small revolutionary movement has—broad-based popular support can be one of them—against a state's power with a large and well-equipped army. People's war strategically avoids decisive battles, since a tiny force of a few dozen soldiers would easily be routed in an all-out confrontation with the state. Instead, it favours a three-stage strategy of protracted warfare, with carefully chosen battles that can realistically be won.
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