Jan 6, 1941: Kuomintang launches the Southern Anhui Incident, shocking the world

On Oct 19, 1940 He Yingqin and Bai Chongxi, in the name of the chief and deputy chief of the national government military commissions, forced the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army against Japan in the south of the Yellow River to withdraw to the north within a month. On one hand the Communist Party of China (CPC) rejected this unreasonable demand, but on the other hand the CPC, considering the overall situation of the war, promised to dispatch the New Fourth Army in Anhui to the north of the Yangtze River. On Jan 4, 1941, the headquarters staff of the New Fourth Army and more than 9,000 New Fourth Army troops in Anhui began to move north of the Yangtze River. As they were approaching the area of Maolin in Jingxian County on the 6th, they were ambushed by seven divisions totaling more than 80,000 Kuomintang troops. After a bloody battle that lasted seven days, the New Fourth Army's supplies of food and ammunition were exhausted. Only some 2,000 of them broke through enemy lines, while the rest laid down their lives or were captured. Ye Ting, commander of the New Fourth Army, was detained when he went to the headquarters of the Kuomintang troops to negotiate. Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the Army, and Zhou Zikun, chief of staff and Yuan Guoping, director of the political department, were killed. This was the Southern Anhui Incident, which shocked China and the rest of the world.