The communists had not fully recovered yet from the last encirclement campaign and Wang Ming's protégés including Xiang Ying had to agree with Mao Zedong's decision to adopt the proven strategies in the earlier campaigns by letting the nationalists penetrate deep into the communist base and then to counterattack individual isolated enemy formations as they were dispersed.

On July 10, 1931, the communist main force left western Fujian and traveled more than five hundred kilometers back to Xingguo in southern Jiangxi and waited their opportunities to counterattack.

By the end of July 1931, nationalists had discovered that the communist main force had withdrawn to Xingguo, and Chiang Kai-shek immediately ordered his troops to simultaneously attack southward from north and westward from east, so that communists would be forced onto the eastern bank of Gan River and annihilated.

The communist high command decided to change their strategy by breaking through in the center and move eastward to the regions of Liantang (莲塘), Liangcun (良村), and Huangbi (黄陂).

The communists ordered their 12th Army (missing its 35th Division) of the Chinese Red Army to move toward Yue'an (乐安) to lure the nationalists northeastward, while the communist main force secretly returned to Xingguo by quietly passing a ten kilometer-wide gap in the nationalist encirclement in the mountain.

Realizing further fighting was impossible, nationalists were forced to abandon their plans by starting to withdraw in early September, 1931.