In 1930 the Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT. It was launched by Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan and Wang Jingwei. The attention was turned to root out remaining pockets of Communist activity in a series of five encirclement campaigns.

The first encirclement campaign against the Hubei–Henan–Anhui Soviet was an encirclement campaign launched by the Chinese Nationalist Government that was intended to destroy communist Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet and its Chinese Red Army in the local region. It was responded by the Communists' first counter-encirclement campaign at Hubei–Henan–Anhui Soviet, in which the local Chinese Red Army successfully defended their soviet republic in the border region of Hubei, Henan, and Anhui provinces against the Nationalist attacks from November 1930 to 9 March 1931.