In December 1946, after the setback of the failed attempts to take Easy County (Yi Xian, 易县) and Full City (Man Cheng, 满城) regions, the nationalists redeployed their forces along the railroad from Beijing to Baoding to fragment the enemy base into smaller pieces. However, when carrying out the new strategy, the nationalist force was overstretched and the region between Wangdu (望都) and Zhengding to the south of Baoding was thinly manned: the vast area of over 200 km stretch of land was only guarded by a detachment of the 32nd Division of the nationalist 3rd Army and four regiments of the nationalist 5th Security Division totaling 20,000 troops. The communists decided to take this advantage by launching a campaign aimed to sever the nationalist communication / transportation line in central