New Fourth Army

The New Fourth Army is identified in Mao Zedong’s commemorative speech as one of the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party and devoted to the people’s liberation and interests. Its brief but pointed appearance places it within the novel’s larger contrast between revolutionary ideals and the military organization through which those ideals are administered and publicly performed.

Revolutionary purpose

In the speech, the New Fourth Army is grouped with the Eighth Route Army as a force working entirely for the liberation of the people. Zhang Side served in the ranks of these forces, and the speech presents his death in service to the people as an example of sacrifice whose significance is measured by the cause it serves.

The speech also connects service to a willingness to accept criticism and correct shortcomings. Its account of adopting a proposal for fewer, better troops and a simplified administration presents organizational change as compatible with service to the people when the change is judged beneficial to them. The New Fourth Army thus enters the novel not through a separate campaign or character arc, but through a statement of institutional purpose and the principles invoked to justify action.

The army as institution in the plot

The novel’s immediate military setting is the division in which Wu Dawang serves. Its routines make political service concrete: officers assess subordinates’ conduct, career advancement depends on appointments and recommendations, and household duties can be treated as obligations to the military organization. The Political Instructor invokes the claim that serving the Division Commander and his wife is serving the people, turning a broad principle into a practical command governing Wu Dawang’s work.

When Liu Lian asks that Wu Dawang remain at the Commander’s house, his superiors agree, explaining that an orderly’s shortcomings reflect on the company. This arrangement shows how the organization’s rules are interpreted through personal requests and local decisions. The army’s stated mission remains the public rationale, while the ordinary administration of service affects individual assignments and prospects.

Restructuring and public language

Later, the Division Commander volunteers the division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army. The stated consequence is that the division will be disbanded; most companies are to be demobilized and a minority transferred. Promotions are suspended, changing the prospects of soldiers whose careers had depended on advancement within the existing structure.

Wu Dawang receives an exception: the Commander directs that work be found for him in a city in his home province and that his family be moved there, with employment arranged for his wife. His departure is then presented at a formal farewell as an early discharge, accompanied by a Third Order of Merit and the title Exemplary Servant of the People. The honors are announced as recognition of his study and service, though the officers and Wu Dawang himself had not known the ceremony would take this form. The contrast between administrative decisions made beyond his knowledge and their polished public explanation shows how institutional language can turn a complicated personnel outcome into a story of exemplary service.

Significance

The New Fourth Army’s appearance supplies a historical and ideological reference point for the novel’s recurring language of service. The speech’s account of serving the people is expansive and collective; within the plot, the same principle is repeatedly applied through specific commands, assignments, promotions, and personnel decisions. The novel’s military institutions therefore appear both as embodiments of an announced public mission and as systems in which discretion, hierarchy, and reorganization determine how that mission touches individual lives.