Sarah Paine

Often on the boundaries of provinces and very difficult terrain where provincial authority, let alone national authority, simply does not extend.

And Mao thought that there were certain prerequisites for a good base area.

And one is strategic terrain.

It's got to be defensible.

so that the weaker communist forces can defend it against conventional nationalists or conventional Japanese armies.

So that's key.

Pick your terrain carefully.

Also, you need to have a strong Red Army presence there to make it work.

You need numerous organized workers and peasants.

You've got to have some local support there.

And then you need a good party organization.

So this is Mao's idea of what you need for a base area.

And he believed that you needed to match

your military unit, the type of military unit, to the territory.

And he said there are three kinds of territory.

There's base areas, there is enemy control areas, and then there is the interface in between, which is where guerrilla forces are going to be roaming.

So he was all about deploying the Red Army to the comparatively safe base area.

They'll protect that.

You might send guerrilla detachments to some of the guerrilla areas, but really only really small things would you ever send into enemy territory.

Moreover, he has prerequisites to fight.