On this day 78 years ago, on February 20, 1947 (January 30, 1947), the Battle of Laiwu was a great victory. In January 1947, Chiang Kai-shek gathered more than 310,000 elite Kuomintang troops and launched a massive attack on the Shandong Liberated Area on the north and south lines. Chen Cheng, the chief of the enemy staff, personally arrived in Xuzhou to command, and claimed: "The success or failure of the party-state depends on the battle of Lunan; only success is allowed, and failure is not allowed." At that time, the Ouzhen Group of the enemy army on the southern front attacked Linyi in the north with 8 integrated divisions, and the three armies of the Li Xianzhou Group on the northern front were supported by Laiwu and Xintai on the Jiaoji Line in an attempt to make a decisive battle with the East China Liberation Army in Yimeng Mountain District. Under the leadership of Chen Yi and others, the East China Liberation Army decided to avoid the main force of the enemy on the southern front, give up Linyi on its own initiative, and hide seven columns of our main force in the starry night to march north, in order to annihilate the enemy on the northern front; at the same time, two columns disguised the main force, blocking the enemy on the southern front near Linyi, creating the illusion of a decisive battle with the enemy and crossing the river westward. Therefore, the deceived enemy concentrated most of his troops and cautiously advanced towards Linyi; on the other hand, he ordered the army on the northern front to quickly move south and penetrate into the middle of Shandong. From February 20 to 23, the East China Field Army surrounded and annihilated all the enemies going south in the Laiwu area. This campaign annihilated 7 enemy divisions 60,000 more than people, captured Li Xianzhou, deputy commander of the enemy's second appeasement zone, recovered 13 cities, and connected the three liberated areas of Shandong, Bohai and Jiaodong.