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James Myburgh writes on how LKY clawed back popular support through the battle for merger with Malaya

The previous article in this series described the first few years in office of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and the Peoples Action Party (PAP). The article had concluded with the two by-elections in mid-1961 in which it appeared that the bottom was dropping out of the PAPs popular support.

It had lost a substantial chunk of the support of the Chinese-educated when it had expelled the populist non-Communist Ong Eng Guan from the party. Ong had easily defeated the PAP candidate in the by-election held following his resignation as an MP.

The pro-Communists too had withdrawn their support from the PAP in the Anson by-election in July 1961, and again the PAP candidate had gone down to defeat, this time to David Marshall, the Workers Party candidate.

This article describes the final political showdown between the non-Communists and the pro-Communists in the PAP, in the context of Singapores move towards independence through merger with the anti-Communist Malay Federation, and other territories, to form the new state of Malaysia.

I

Most African and Asian nationalist leaders of the 1950s had received Western-style educations in the language of the colonial power, something which distinguished and separated them from the great mass of (traditional) society. In his 1956 book Nationalism in Colonial Africa Thomas Hodgkin noted how the African nationalist leaders of that generation were the products of European schools and universities. They are asserting claims of a kind that have already been asserted by Europeans, around which a European sacred literature has been built up. And they have to state their case in a language that will be intelligible to their European rulers.

As an opposition politician between 1954 and 1959 Lee Kuan Yew fitted this mould. He had eloquently and acerbically presented the case against the British, in English, in the Legislative Assembly. But while he was fluent in both English and Malay, and had tried to learn Mandarin, he could not actually speak the dialect used by the great mass of the Chinese-speaking population of Singapore, namely Hokkien.

In an article in June 1959 the journalist Vernon Bartlett recalled attending a PAP rally in Bukit Timah in March 1956. Lee Kuan Yew spoke brilliantly in English, very effectively in Malay, and so haltingly in Chinese that he had frequently to rally his audience by interrupting himself and shouting merdeka. I can think of no other instance of a Prime Minister who finds it difficult to talk the language of the people he is called upon to govern. It is an obvious handicap although it is a tribute to his ability.[1]

There was only one small upside to the PAPs two disastrous by-election campaigns in April and July 1961. Previously Lee Kuan Yew had had to rely on first Lim Chin Siong and then Ong Eng Guan to mobilise the Chinese-speakers for the PAP. Over these months he finally forced himself to learn how to speak Hokkien. When I started, I was fumbling, awkward, almost comic. But here I was in front of them, suddenly able to express myself fluently in their dialect. I may have been unidiomatic, even ungrammatical, but there was no mistaking my meaning, delivered with vigour, feeling and conviction as I argued, cajoled, warned, and finally moved some of them to go with me.

On 18th July 1961, the leaders of the pro-Communist camp, Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan, S Woodhull and James Puthucheary, met with the British Commissioner Lord Selkirk at his Eden Hall residence to ask what the British response would be if Lee Kuan Yews government fell. Selkirk, who regarded Lee with some disdain (a feeling which was reciprocated) said that if this was done in terms of the constitution, he would not interfere in efforts to depose Lee. Selkirks view, as expressed in a despatch to London, was that even if the next Government is much further to the Left or even communist manipulated, we must allow the full democratic processes to work under the Constitution, provided there is no threat to the internal security situation which requires our intervention.[2]

Lee Kuan Yews response was to press the issue and call for a motion of confidence in his government in the Legislative Assembly. In his address he accused Selkirk and the British of trying to engineer a collision between the non-Communist and the pro-Communist left to force the PAP government to instigate the security clampdown that he alleged the British secretly wanted.[3] In reality he was using this opportunity whereby it was the pro-Communists who could be framed as the British stooges to force a split with the pro-Communists.

If the motion were not carried, Lee Kuan Yew told the Assembly, his government would resign, and new elections would be held. In the end the vote early the following morning was passed by 27 votes out of 51. 26 PAP assemblymen voted for it and one opposition MP (CH Koh) did as well. Thirteen PAP assemblymen, along with Ongs group of three, abstained. Eight opposition MPs, including David Marshall, voted against it.[4]

The 13 PAP MPs who had abstained in the motion now joined with Lim, Woodhull and Puthucheary and announced their intention of forming the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front) party at the end of July, which they then launched at a mass rally of 10000 people on 14th August 1961.[5] Dr Lee Siew Choh, a non-Communist, became chairman, Lim Chin Siong secretary general, and Fong Swee Suan the organising secretary. PAPs majority in the Legislative Assembly now stood at only 26, though there were eight members of the more conservative SPA on the opposition benches.

While Lee Kuan Yew and what was left of the PAP had narrowly retained their majority, they had miscalculated the actual balance of forces between the pro-Communist and non-Communists within the PAP. The pro-Communist breakaway led to the obliteration of the PAP at branch level. Thity-one out of 51 branches crossed over to the Barisan Socialists, as did 19 out of the 23 branch secretaries appointed by the PAP leadership. The Works Brigade and Peoples Association mutinied and were wrecked from within.

Many of the young Chinese-educated activists that Lee Kuan Yew and his group had carefully screened for any Communist links (with Special Branch help) and whom they had then promoted, turned out to have been Communist moles. The mastermind of the uprising in the PAP branches and PA was, it turned out, none other than Lees parliamentary secretary, Chan Sun Wing.[6]

As Dennis Bloodworth later noted, if the communists were like radioactive dust as Lee Kuan Yew had once described them to him the English-educated leaders of the PAP sadly lacked anything resembling a Geiger counter. How was it that 19 out of 23 organising secretaries of the party had at once defected to the Barisan, along with several other Chinese-educated activists that that Lee and his grouping had appointed to strategic posts, trusting in their non-Communism?

Part of the answer must be, Bloodworth noted, that the communists were professional infiltrators who were not going to be caught out telling a truth. They had carefully studied Lee Kuan Yew and knew how to get around him by telling him what he wanted to hear. For their part, the PAPs English-educated leaders were desperate for Chinese-speaking lieutenants. These events, Bloodworth noted, had revealed the narrow corner into which the English-educated had been driven their dependence on men they could not quite trust to speak for them to men they did not quite understand.[7]

II

In response to these setbacks Lee Kuan Yew and two of his top lieutenants, Ong Pang Boon and Ahmad Ibrahim, took a break from their administrative duties and went into their constituencies to gauge the popular mood over the recent turn of events. This was uncertain but not hostile. There was still everything to play for.

The emergence of the Barisan Sosialis as a communist-dominated opposition and the British acceptance of their legitimacy now drove the merger with Malaya forward. It was widely expected that if there was no merger the PAP would be defeated at the next election and Singapore would then sooner rather than later flip over to the Communist camp. This was not acceptable to the Tunku or to the British government in London.

To restore the PAPs electoral position Lee Kuan Yew also needed to create a perception of the inevitability of merger. As he noted, The Chinese-speaking in Singapore, like the Chinese-speaking everywhere in Southeast Asia, traditionally preferred to sit on the fence until they saw clearly which way the wind was blowing. They would support whoever they perceived to be the winning side.

Lee sought to win public opinion over through a series of twelve radio broadcasts over the course of four weeks in September / October 1961. Versions were recorded and broadcast in Malay, English, and Mandarin. In these he explained the history of the PAPs relationship with the Communist underground and disclosed the secret meetings he had held with The Plen and made the case for why independence through merger with Malaya was an imperative. As he put it:

Everyone knows the reasons why the Federation is important to Singapore. It is the hinterland which produces the rubber and tin that keep our shopwindow going. It is the base that made Singapore the capital city. Without this economic base, Singapore would not survive. Without merger, without a reunification of our two governments and an integration of our two economies, our economic position will slowly and steadily get worse. Your livelihood will get worse.[8]

The Barisan Sosialis sought to undermine the PAP government by stoking industrial unrest and trying to mobilise (unsuccessfully this time) the Chinese middle school students. They were thrown off balance however by the sudden lurch towards merger. Their leaders, including the pro-Communists, were publicly committed to independence through merger. They were thus in the difficult position of trying to head off the move in practice while pretending to be in support of it in principle.

The deal struck by Lee with the Tunku was that while the federal government would take over responsibility for foreign affairs, external defence, and internal security, Singapore would retain significant autonomy in the new federation, including control over labour and education policy. In return it would send only 15 representatives to the federal parliament in Kuala Lumpur, not the 25 to 30 that its population warranted. Singapore citizens would not be allowed to vote in the Malay Federation and vice versa.

In response the Barisan Sosialis called for a full merger with Malaya on the same basis as the territories of Penang and Malacca knowing that this would not be acceptable to the Tunku as this would mean that Chinese voters would outnumber Malays. In a radio forum on 21st September 1961 the Barisan Sosialis chairman, Dr Lee Siew Choh, had reiterated this demand. We are asking for full and complete merger with the Federation with Singapore coming in as the 12th state of the Federation. In this case the citizens of Singapore would automatically become Federal citizens, he claimed.

The PAP representative on the panel, Goh Keng Swee, then dropped a bomb on this proposal. Goh pointed out that only 320000 of 650000 of Singapores electorate were born in Singapore and so could automatically qualify for citizenship under the constitution of the Malay Federation. The Barisan Sosialis proposal would thus, in effect, disenfranchise the other half of the adult population.[9]

In the referendum to be held on 1 September 1962 voters were given three choices: A) endorsing merger on the terms negotiated by Lee Kuan Yew; B) a complete and unconditional merger, as the Barisan Sosialis had called for; and C) an entry into Malaysia on terms no less favourable than those of the Borneo territories.[10] The Barisan Sosialis, Ong Eng Guang and David Marshall called for their supporters to cast blank votes. By this stage Lim had been outplayed tactically by Lee and a sense of inevitability had been created in favour of merger and the fence sitters in the Chinese community were beginning to come down in favour of the PAP. Of the 561 559 votes cast (the electorate was 624 000), alternative A received 397 626 votes, B 9422, and C 7911. 144,077 voters submitted blank votes.[11]

Although the matter had been under discussion for some time, the members of Singapores Internal Security Council could, up until this point, reach no consensus over whether, when and how security action should be taken against the pro-Communists. The Malay government had demanded a security clampdown ahead of merger and Lee Kuan Yew had, under pressure, acquiesced in principle. Lord Selkirk had refused to agree to this, as there was no good reason for it, and a number of the pro-Communists were now leaders of one of the main political parties in Singapore and their arrest without justification would, in my opinion, have serious repercussions for all three Governments concerned and also for Malaysia.[12]

III

The matter would however soon be forced by Indonesian President Sukarnos decision to try and kill Malaysia. Here it is necessary to go back and fill in some of the political background. Articles II and III in this series described the trajectory of Indonesia in the first several years after independence from the Dutch in 1949. In late 1957 President Sukarno had used the still outstanding West Irian question the failure by the Netherlands to hand over West New Guinea as a pretext to justify the dispossession and expulsion of the remaining population of Dutch nationals from that country.

Many Western commentators and diplomats, at the time, took at face value Sukarnos claims and huge sums of ink were expended on discussing the merits of this now largely forgotten issue. If only successive Dutch administrations had been less rigid and more yielding on this matter, the argument went, Dutch nationals in Indonesia would have been left unmolested. Such a view was soon undercut however by the actions taken by Indonesian authorities, led by the army, against the countrys ethnic Chinese minority.

The Chinese were a highly productive and entrepreneurial minority in Indonesia who, despite being banned from owning land, had taken the leading role in retail, commerce, and trade, in Java and elsewhere.

Following the 1949 Hague Agreement about a quarter of the countrys two million ethnic Chinese had chosen to reject Indonesian nationality. With Indonesias decision to switch diplomatic recognition to the victorious Chinese Communist Party government, many Kuomintang-supporting Chinese found themselves in diplomatic limbo, with neither Indonesian citizenship nor a foreign government able to represent their interests.

The precise status of other Chinese also remained uncertain through the 1950s, as the Indonesian government and Chinese Communist Party government negotiated around their status. In terms of a 1955 agreement between the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and Indonesia, ethnic Chinese would have two years in which to choose which citizenship to take. The dilemma was a familiar one to many other ethnically alien minorities following independence.

If they did not take citizenship of Indonesia, then they were vulnerable to being discriminated against on the ostensible basis that they were non-citizens. But, if they did, then they would no longer have a foreign government able to intercede on their behalf, or a place of sanctuary to which to flee, should the situation become intolerable. With the encouragement of Communist China many ethnic Chinese chose the former rather than the latter option.

It was commonly said in the mid-1950s that in Indonesia the nationalist resentments of the Intellectuals were directed against the Dutch, and those of the masses against the Chinese. As a press report from the late 1950s noted, over the years Chinese traders had penetrated to the remotest village, the most isolated island.

Their shops usually stock household requirements, a wide variety of sundry goods, foodstuffs, even fish and vegetables. Many of them even act as moneylenders to farmers, buying and fixing the prices of their products, even supplying their needs. The same is true in fishing villages along the coasts where they dominate the economic life of the fishermen. The Chinese are not new to rural areas. The majority of them have lived there for generations. They speak the language of the local people and in many ways are part of the rural scene.[13]

In his 1955 reports the journalist Guy Harriott described the Chinese as a universally detested minority. You must remember, he quoted one Indonesian minister as saying to him, that the revolution was for the intellectuals against Dutch political colonialism, but for the masses it was against Chinese economic colonialism, and to that extent the revolution has failed, for the Chinese still hold too many of the purse-strings.[14]

Frantz Fanon noted a similar bifurcation of nationalist sentiment in post-colonial Africa. He wrote that while on the morrow of independence the native bourgeoisie demanded the positions still held by Europeans, those lower down the class hierarchy imitate their leaders by going after the non-nationals with whom they are in more direct competition:

In the Ivory Coast, the anti-Dahoman and anti-Voltaic troubles are in fact racial riots. The Dahoman and Voltaic peoples, who control the greater part of the petty trade, are, once independence is declared, the object of hostile manifestations on the part of the people of the Ivory Coast. From nationalism we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave; their shops are burned, their street stalls are wrecked, and in fact the government of the Ivory Coast commands them to go, thus giving their nationals satisfaction.

The economic turmoil in Indonesia that followed the expulsion of the Dutch in late 1957 was not the cautionary economic lesson that might have been expected. Indeed, it only seems to have served to further inflame the resentments, and whet the appetites, of Indonesian racial nationalists.

With the Dutch gone and all constitutional restraints effectively obliterated the Chinese now came into their sights. In 1958 AJ Muaja published a pamphlet titled the Chinese problem in Indonesia. This described the biggest problem facing the country as the hold by that minority on the countrys economy. The Indonesian government had only recently awoken to the danger posed by Chinese predominance in commerce and trade, he wrote, and restrictive measures would soon need to be taken.[15]

Pro-Kuomintang Chinese were the softest targets within that population, and the axe fell on them first. The Indonesian government alleged that Taipei had supported the rebellions in Sumatra and the Celebes. This then became the pretext to act against their nationals across the country. In September 1958, a number of Chinese organisations were banned. Then, on 16 October 1958, the Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Nasution issued an order placing under government control all schools, business enterprises, estates, industries, insurance companies, shipping and mining firms partially or wholly owned by Chinese not citizens of countries having diplomatic relations with Indonesia. The Ministry of Education was to take over the schools and the business enterprises were to be seized and their assets placed under government control. This move, the UPI noted in its report from Jakarta, placed the affected enterprises on virtually the same footing as Dutch firms whose seizure began last December.[16]

The following day official teams were sent into these firms and schools. Military co-ordinators would run the organisations under martial law.[17] This move was followed up by further restrictions on Chinese schooling and the freedom of movement of aliens.

If the Chinese Communist government thought that its close relationship with Sukarnos regime would serve to protect its citizens, they would soon be disabused of this notion. Once again, the ever-worsening economic crisis facing the country also failed to stay the governments hand. An article by a Special Correspondent in The Straits Times on 14th July 1959 reported that This basically rich and resilient economy is in a pitiful mess... The currency is weak at the knees and growing weaker. On the official market the pound sterling is worth 84 rupiahs. On the black-market it fetches more than 400 rupiahs. To keep itself solvent the Government is churning out currency... The results, not surprisingly, is fast-rising inflation. A Bandung economist told me that the cost of living there has risen 20 per cent in the past three months. Luxuries like meat and eggs are for us things of the past, he said.[18]

A week later, on 21st July 1959, The Straits Times reported that Chinese businessmen operating in the regional areas of Indonesia had been given until 30th September to submit statements on the disposition of their enterprises, which had been ordered closed by the end of the year. Their two choices were (initially), firstly, to either completely close these enterprises or transfer them to Indonesian ownership; or, secondly, to transfer their shops to the major cities where theyd still be permitted to operate. The Jakarta newspaper Duta Masyarakat justified the ban by saying that Chinese merchants had greedily squeezed Indonesian businessmen for centuries and should be rooted out the economy.[19]

The ethnic Chinese population of Indonesia at this point was two and a half million of whom an estimated one million did not have Indonesian citizenship. The press estimates of the number of those likely to be affected by this ban ranged from 200000 to 500000 people. To avoid alien Chinese businessmen simply transferring ownership of their retail businesses to family members with Indonesian citizenship, government prioritised the takeover by co-operative organisations.[20]

The Indonesian Spectator magazine noted at this time that Many Chinese businessmen holding Red Chinese citizenship and affected by this regulation say they are not Communists. They took out Red Chinese citizenship because Indonesia recognised the Peking regime. Now they say they would prefer to live permanently in Indonesia if they could obtain Indonesian nationality. This does not seem feasible because the Indonesian Government reportedly is not enthusiastic about such a possibility.[21]

The Indonesian government, then enjoying the support of the Soviet Union, disregarded the protests of Communist China at the maltreatment of their citizens. In late 1959 the army began enforcing the expulsion of Chinese traders from rural areas. This attack on the livelihoods ultimately led to an estimated 119000 ethnic Chinese choosing exodus and repatriation to mainland China, a country in which most of them had never set foot before.

A series of two articles in The Straits Times in December 1959 by Dr R. Rajagopal described an Indonesian economy in total crisis.[22] The value of the currency had collapsed, inflation was out of control, retail trade had slumped, industrial output was down, imports of consumer goods had dried up, many industrial plants had folded, or were only operational part time, investment and foreign investment was nil. Government expenditure went to payment of foreign debts ($105m a year) and meeting the costs of a grossly overstaffed civil service (of 2,5 million) and its mammoth army of 220 000.

Rajagopal noted that exports had reached a peak in 1957, Dutch assets having only been seized right at the end of that year, of seven billion rupiahs. This had fallen to 4,2 billion rupiahs in 1958. Since then, the fall had continued further. The projected estimates for 1960 will be far below even the 1958 level since there has been a fall in output in the seized 253 Dutch estates and enterprises which have been placed under army supervision. The ban on Chinese rural traders earlier in the year meanwhile had resulted in the large-scale and ongoing flight of capital into Singapore, Hong Kong and the Malay Federation running into billions of dollars.

IV

One reason Sukarno was able to get away with the systematic ruination of the Indonesian economy was that the Soviet Union and the United States of America were trapped in an ongoing struggle for the loyalties of the new nation, with the focus of the US on securing the Indonesian army for the anti-Communist camp. One US government document described the stakes as follows:

Indonesias large population (sixth ranking in the world), wealth of natural resources, and strategic location constitute a major prize in the East-West struggle. All the major trade routes between the Far East and points west must pass through or near this massive island complex. The loss of Indonesia to the communists would gravely undermine the Free World military position in the Western Pacific.

The Soviets and Indonesian Communist Party (the PKI) had encouraged Sukarnos destructive revolutionary racial nationalism, as it suited their ends, while the Americans had tried to appease it, taking a neutral position on inter alia the dispute over Western New Guinea. The worse the economic conditions in Indonesia became however, the closer it moved to the revolutionary moment, and the greater its dependence on Soviet aid. The PKI which was not in cabinet but had great influence over Sukarno had power but avoided responsibility for the economically destructive policies it had helped initiate.

In 1960 Sukarno now moved towards launching war against the Dutch for control of Western New Guinea. In a meeting at the White House in October 1960 Joseph Luns, the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, warned President Dwight D. Eisenhower that now that Dutch nationals had been ousted, property confiscated, debts repudiated, diplomatic relations terminated there was no instrument left toSukarnoexcept the use of force.

When Eisenhower asked him whether Western New Guinea was not more of an expense to the Dutch than an asset Luns confirmed that this was the case. The Dutch however had a responsibility toward the Papuans, who were a completely different people to the Indonesians, to uphold the same principle of self-determination under which Indonesia itself had become independent.

Luns warned that the only thing which could surely stopSukarnofrom aggressive action would be aUSwarning that it would act against such aggression. The Americans however prevaricated over granting this request.

The US government was divided about what to do. In a memorandum submitted to the new US President John F Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk argued that the Netherlands should be prevailed upon to withdraw from West New Guinea. The dispute, he argued, has permittedSukarno, as leader of a popular national crusade, to make any challenge to his leadership appear unpatriotic; helped enable the Communists to undermine the conservative influence of Army leaders; and diverted attention from urgent internal problems.[23]

The Central Intelligence Agency meanwhile argued that such appeasement would buy the United States nothing. In a memorandum it argued that Communist ascendancy in Indonesia could not be curbed for as long asSukarnoremained in power. The CIA stated that:

We consider it likely that Indonesias success in this particular instance will set in train the launching of further irredentist ventures Success would be bound to cement relations between Indonesia and theUSSR, which, in addition to throwing the full weight of its political support behind the West Irian campaign, is liberally providing Indonesia with military aid specifically designed to enable her to oust the Dutch from West Irian by force of arms. PresidentSukarnos prestige and power in Indonesia and in Asia as a whole would grow immeasurably since nothing succeeds like success.[24]

Sensing President Kennedys irresoluteness on this and other matters, the Soviet Union now sought to prepare the Indonesians for war with the Netherlands by sending through a huge quantity of armaments along with military advisors. In a memorandum to the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned in December 1961 that the Soviet Union was making a determined effort to win over Indonesia. The Soviets had wooed the Indonesians by supporting the latters position on West New Guinea and have plied them with massive economic and military aid. Soviet military aid commitments total $840 million A major Soviet objective appears to be the seduction of the one remaining pro-Western element in Indonesia the Army.[25]

In early 1962 Indonesia created an area command for West New Guinea under Major-General Suharto and began infiltrating troops into the territory through dropping paratroopers and landing guerrillas.[26] Faced with an imminent war the US now pressured the Dutch, who would not be able to defend West New Guinea against the Soviets and their Indonesian proxies without American help, into agreeing to a withdrawal in August 1962. The United Nations would take over briefly and then, after a brief transitional period, hand over control to the Indonesians. The Papuans and their right to self-determination were sacrificed like pawns to the demands of a voracious Indonesian imperialism.

V

Although a Soviet-backed war against the Dutch in Western New Guinea had been averted through Americas appeasement of Sukarno, the CIAs warnings from 1961 were soon realised. With West Irian now in the bag Sukarno now sought to keep national frustrations directed against external enemies and the army occupied by challenging and trying to destroy the yet unborn state of Malaysia.

In December 1962 armed rebels had, at the direction of Sheikh Mahmud Azahari, tried to seize power in Brunei in early December with the goal of scuppering Sarawak, North Borneo, and Bruneis merger with Malaya, and establishing an independent state in its stead. The British had had a days warning and were able to secure the airfields from the rebels in time. The revolt was then put down by British and Gurkha troops flown in from the British military bases in Singapore. Lord Selkirk would comment that the revolution came within an inch of being completely successful.

The British suspected at once that this had been with the support of Indonesia as Azahari had spent much time in Jakarta recently and would not have acted without a green light from Sukarno. This was confirmed by Sukarno himself, a week after the revolt, when he called on all Indonesians to support the rebels, saying that those who did not do so were traitors to their own souls.

In a despatch to Prime Minister Harold MacMillan Selkirk commented that Sukarnos words seem to me to echo some of the bouncing threats which we had to listen to from Hitler in the latter thirties, and with the introduction of Russian arms and military preparations for West Irian, he is now a formidable military power who clearly shows signs of wanting to flex his muscles. The following year Antony Head, the British High Commissioner in Malaysia, would describe Sukarno in similar fashion as an unpredictable, mystical demagogue with some resemblance to a minor Hitler.

Azahari had also been seen meeting with Lim Chin Siong in Singapore ahead of the revolt. The Barisan Sosialis now also came out in public support of the rebels. Then, at a rally on 23 December 1962 Lim Chin Siong gave the partys wholehearted support to Indonesia for its pro-revolution stand and said that we are confident that with the support of the newly emergent nations in the world the people of Kalimantan Utara (North Borneo) will soon achieve their national aims.[27] A few days later Lim again supported the rebellion in his New Years message and warned of the turning point in the political development of Malaya leading to the establishment of a Fascist and military dictatorship in the country. The left-wing forces must then make the necessary judgment on the matter.[28]

The tension further escalated after Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio announced a policy of confrontation (Konfrontasi) towards the Malay Federation to scupper the incorporation of Sarawak and Sabah into Malaysia (the Sultan of Brunei eventually pulled out of his own accord). Subandrio said such a policy was unavoidable because at present they [the Malaya government] represent themselves as accomplices of neo-colonialists and neo-imperialists, pursuing hostile policy towards Indonesia.[29] Confrontation, as pursued by President Sukarno, would come to encompass the breaking-off of trade relations, the infiltration of bands of guerrillas into North Borneo, the seizure of British and Malaysian assets, the landing of Indonesia troops on the Malay mainland, as well as terrorist actions in Singapore itself. This would all, Dennis Bloodworth noted, heavily compromise the left wing in Singapore.[30]

The Barisan Sosialis actions had created a consensus on the Internal Security Council on the need for action by December 1962, though there were still disputes over its precise scope. Operation Cold Store carried out in early February 1963 resulted in 115 suspected pro-Communists rounded up by the police. These included Lim Chin Siong, S Woodhull, James Puthucheary, Lim Hock Siew, Poh Soo Kai, assistant secretary general, D Puthucheary and Fong Swee Suan.[31] The Barisan Socialist MPs were, on the insistence of Lee Kuan Yew, not detained. In his autobiography Lee noted that this time there were no riots, no bloodshed, no curfews after the arrests. Everybody had expected that there would be a clean-up, and the public understood that the communists had it coming to them.

A document compiled and released by the ISC explaining the rationale for the operation said that before the Brunei revolt Lim Ching Siong had been in regular secret contact with Azahari. It also accused the Communists in the United Front of trying their utmost to prevent the State of Singapore from attaining complete independence through Merger with the Federation of Malaya despite this having been endorsed by an overwhelming majority in the National Referendum.

In an address to the Legislative Assembly on the operation Lee Kuan Yew accused the leaders of the pro-Communist movement, such as Lim, of having made veiled threats of an imminent turn to violent struggle. To us who have known the Communists for so long, and studied their thinking and their methods, the meaning is clear, he commented. They will use constitutional methods as long as these are useful to them. At the same time, they are ready to use more violent methods strikes riots, and, in the last resort, armed insurrection. These considered statements were made by persons of authority in the Communist front movement and were intended to prepare their cadres for stronger action when the time was ripe.[32]

VI

The endorsement of Lee Kuan Yews position in the referendum, and the detention of many of the most able open front leaders, had put the pro-Communists on the back foot. It would take years for the PAP to restore its party structures.

Lee Kuan Yew sought now to rebuild the PAPs popular support ahead of the elections he wanted to hold ahead of merger (then scheduled for 31st August 1963) by going out into the constituencies from November 1962 onwards, on an increasingly frequent basis. The shopkeepers, community leaders and leaders of all (non-Communist) local associations would be mobilised in advance by PAP assemblyman and government officials. I travelled in an open Land Rover, and with a microphone in my hand and loudspeakers fixed to the vehicle, spoke to the crowds that would have gathered and be waiting for me when I made scheduled stops. The government officials who travelled with Lee then followed up on the peoples requests for surfaced roads, drains power, streetlights, standpipes, clinics, schools, community centres. The easier needs they dealt with quickly; the more difficult ones I promised to study and meet if practical.

With the Communist threat which had impelled merger forward now in rapid retreat, the government of the Malay Federation sought to row back on the concessions that had been granted to Lee Kuan Yew in the run up to the referendum. Lee had to fight to ensure that Singapore would retain control over broadcasting and the raising of government revenue, after merger. He also suspected that the Tunku would like to have a more pliable and servile Chinese leader in charge of Singapore (such as Lim Yew Hock), of the kind the UMNO leader was used to dealing with in the Malay Federation. At a meeting in late June 1963, presided over by Malay Federation Minister Khir Johari, the SPA agreed to combine with UMNO, the MCA and the MIC to form the Singapore Alliance, to challenge the PAP at the elections expected later that year.[33]

In his autobiography Lee Kuan Yew wrote that his reception on his constituency tours had initially been frosty or indifferent, but as the population saw him standing up against the unreasonable demands of the government of the Malay Federation popular sentiment started to swing behind him.

Speaking in Hokkien and Mandarin, I had convinced the Chinese that I was not a stooge of the British, that I was fighting for their future. The Malays backed me because they saw me fighting the Chinese communists. The Indians, as a smaller minority, were fearful and therefore reassured to find me completely at home with all races, speaking bazaar Malay and English to them and even a few words of greeting in Tamil. News of how each tour had been more successful than the last spread rapidly by word of mouth in the coffee shops and through the press and television. It generated a groundswell of enthusiasm among the people, especially the shopkeepers and community leaders.

For various reasons the date of merger had been pushed back to 16th September 1963. The Malay Federation government was however stalling on enshrining in the constitution, or official documents, various assurances given to Lee during the final talks on merger held in London in July earlier that year. To force the issue Lee Kuan Yew announced a unilateral declaration of independence on 31st August, and a few days later announced that the Legislative Assembly would be dissolved, and elections held. He privately warned the British that if the Malay Federation did not implement the agreement by nomination day on 12th September, he would fight the election on a platform of seeking a mandate for independence outside of Malaysia. This brinkmanship worked and with prodding from the British the Malay Federation government grudgingly acceded to Lees demands.

In early August at a summit in Manila with the Tunku and President Diosdado Macapagal of the Philippines, President Sukarno had agreed to the formation of Malaysia provided that a UN mission confirmed that it was the will of the people of Sabah and Sarawak. On 14th September the UN Secretary General U Thant, acting on the recommendation of the UN team, confirmed that a sizeable majority of the population of these two Borneo territories wished to join Malaysia.[34] On the 16th of September 1963 Malaysia came into being.

Indonesia rejected these findings however, saying it would not recognise the new state, and signs were put up in the Indonesian capital Jakartas main thoroughfares saying, Crush Malaysia. Following the establishment of Malaysia on the 16th there were two days of rioting in Jakarta in which the Malaysian and British embassies were ransacked, and the latter torched. Houses and cars belonging to British businessmen and diplomats were also attacked. British and Malaysian firms and estates started being seized. Sukarno then announced the halting of all trade with Malaysia and promised to fight and destroy Malaysia.[35]

VII

The date of Singapores elections was announced on the 12th as to be held on 21st September 1963. It was also announced that Singapores 15 members of Parliament in Kuala Lumpur would be drawn from the 51 members elected, in proportion to their partys share of the vote. The main parties were the PAP, the Barisan Sosialis, Ong Eng Guans radical populist United Peoples Party (UPP), and the pro-UMNO Singapore Alliance. The Barisan Sosialis put up posters with pictures of their detained leaders including Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and others. The PAP meanwhile centred their campaign entirely around Lee Kuan Yew.

In their election manifesto the PAP warned that the Barisan Sosialis hope to win by splitting the 72 percent of non-Communist votes cast in the recent referendum. If this 72 percent could be fragmented between the PAP, the Alliance and others, the Communists hope that the Barisan Sosialis might just slip in. It is, therefore, essential that this non-Communist vote should not be split. If this 72 percent unite solidly behind the PAP, then we can inflict a crippling defeat on the Communists. In a reference to Indonesias policy of confrontation the PAP added that such a victory would also act as a deterrent to foreign anti-Malaysia elements insofar as they harbour the illusion that the anti-Malaysia Barisan Sosialis has considerable support in Singapore.[36]

Immediately following the proclamation of Malaysia on the 16th Dr Lee Siew Choh, the Barisan Sosialis chairman, told a mass rally that his party would continue to oppose the new federation, and that it supported the demands of the people of the Borneo territories for self-determination and independence. Since neo-colonialist Malaysia seeks to frustrate and deny the people their legitimate hopes and aspirations and to prolong colonial domination in South-east Asia, we must continue to oppose neo-colonialist Malaysia. We continue our struggle against colonialism and imperialism in all their forms.[37]

This alignment of the Barisan Sosialis with the Indonesians and their objectives was not a popular one, especially given that the Chinese minority in Indonesia had recently been subjected to severe maltreatment. Devan Nair, whose wife was standing as a PAP candidate on his behalf in the election, pressed this point home in a speech a day or two later. He noted that in Indonesia, Chinese shops are looted and burned, Chinese schools are closed down and Chinese citizens go in fear of their lives. He stated that the Barisan Sosialis would blindly welcome the Indonesians into Singapore and will co-operate with the enemies of our prosperity and our way of life. Dr Lee Siew Choh and his party, he added, appear to think that President Sukarno is a better man than Lee Kuan Yew. We dont think so. We believe that the interests of the people of Singapore are more important than the anti-Chinese and anti-Malaysian policies of the Indonesians.[38]

In a broadcast on Radio Singapore on the eve of the elections Lee Kuan Yew further warned that if the Barisan Sosialis won the election through the splitting of the anti-Communist vote, the Malaysian government would declare an emergency and take over. In this case all the safeguards he had so carefully negotiated would be negated. Such a Communist government, anti-Malaysia as the Barisan Sosialis is, with links taking orders from the Indonesian Communists, will bring calamity on Malaysia.[39]

In a despatch to London ahead of the poll Deputy High Commissioner Philip Moore reported that although the PAP seemed to have the edge, and may well win a majority, the outcome was still highly uncertain. The PAP had governed effectively and well over the past 18 months, but its primary weakness was their lack of party organisation in the constituencies and in particular among the Chinese-speaking members of the electorate, who number 63 per cent.[40]

In the event the PAP secured an unexpectedly large majority. It won 46,9% of the vote and 37 seats to the Barisan Sosialis 33,24% and 13 seats. The UPP won 8,39% with Ong holding onto his seat in the Hong Lim constituency albeit with only 44,5% of the vote to the PAPs 33,3% and the Barisan Sosialis 20,6%. The Singapore Alliance won only 8,4% of the vote down from the 27% its constituent parties had won in 1959. It lost all its seats to the PAP including those previously held by UMNO in predominantly Malay constituencies. The PAP also won back the Anson constituency with Marshall, standing as an independent, receiving only 4,9% of the vote.

1959 elections

1963 elections

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Singapore Revisited (VII): Showdown with the Communists - OPINION - Politicsweb

A Virginia parent, whose remarks at a Loudoun County school board meeting against critical race theory and cultural Marxism went viral this week, described on "Hannity" how the tenets public schools are using regarding CRT are similarto how Chinese Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong successfully divided the society she lived in as a young child in the 1960s.

Earlier this week, Xi Van Fleet spoke during a school board meeting in Leesburg condemning the school board for the critical race theory curriculum it is imposing on young students.

"We are teaching our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history. Growing up in China, all of this sounds very familiar. The Communist regime use the same critical theory is to divide people. The only difference is that used class instead of race. This is indeed the American version of the Chinese cultural revolution," she said at the time.

On "Hannity," Van Fleet expanded on her warning to America as a onetime victim of mandated Maoist indoctrination:

"I just want to let the American people know that what is going on in our schools and in our country is really a replay of the cultural revolution in China," she said, calling the similarities "terrifying."

"[Critical race theorists] use the same ideology, the same methodology, even the same vocabulary. The ideology is cultural Marxism."

At school in Maoist China, Van Fleet recalled being divided into groups of "oppressor" and "oppressed' based on what social class the student came from.

The same is happening today in schools and other institutions, except it is based on White and non-White races, she noted.

Chinese dissenters from the Maoist doctrine were labeled "counterrevolutionary", as dissenters in America are labeled "racist" a moniker that in both regards is "like a hat that fits all" that can ruin one's life and livelihood.

Van Fleet added that the left's intent on "cancel culture" and "canceling" everything from public statuary to references to uncomfortable historic events, to historic figures they deem flawed is the same thing that Mao sought when he essentially erased thousands of years of Chinese cultural history.

"We basically canceled the whole Chinese civilization pre-Communism and we changed our school names, street names, store names, even our personal names," she said.

"Wokeness to be specific we used class wokeness in China," she also recalled.

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"Your level of wokeness determines your chance to get a promotion or to get benefits and who decides your level of wokeness? The party leaders," she said, implying the same can be said in the United States for people and workers who do not ascribe to their moral superiors' intended ideologies.

Van Fleet added that she knows from experience that "freedom is fragile" and that many other Chinese-Americans also know the struggle and see the parallels between the left's cultural Marxism and the Maoist revolution of the 1960s.

"[C]ritical race theory is not antiracism. It itself is racist. It is divisive, destructive and it is dangerous."

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VA parent who survived Mao: Scholastic critical race indoctrination 'a replay' of Mao's 'cultural revolution' - Fox News

In February the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, held a gala reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to announce a momentous accomplishment: the elimination of extreme rural poverty in China. The grand eventin an enormous ballroom with hundreds of dignitaries flown in from around the countrywas carefully timed to kick off a year of celebrations to mark the Chinese Communist Partys founding one hundred years ago. A country that many people once saw as synonymous with poverty had achieved the unattainable, Xi declared, creating a miracle that will go down in history.

Evoking history was more than self-congratulatory. For a party that aims to guide China toward domination of the futureespecially in crucial industries such as electric vehicles, renewable energy, and artificial intelligencethe first priority is controlling the past. In its telling, history brought it to power and, because it rules so well by doing things like eliminating poverty, history has decided to keep it there. For the Chinese Communist Party, history is legitimacy.

But just to make sure that history really appears to be on its side, the party spends an inordinate amount of time writing and rewriting it and preventing others from wielding their pens. Few Chinese leaders have done so with as much verve as Xi, who launched his reign in 2012 by making a major speech at an exhibition on Chinese history. Since then, he has waged war on historical nihilismin other words, those who want to criticize the partys missteps. Xi has many goals, such as battling corruption, fostering innovation, and projecting power abroad through his Belt and Road Initiative, but controlling history underlies them all.

This belief in the power of history is one of the few constants in the CCPs hundred-year saga. Though based on one creed, its ideology has actually been a blunderbuss of strategies: it started as a group of orthodox Marxists who looked to the industrial proletariat to lead the revolution, lurched to a rural-based party that tried to foment a peasant rebellion, morphed into a ruling party dominated by a personality cult built around Mao Zedong, transformed itself into an authoritarian technocracy, and now presents itself as in charge of a budding superpower dominated by a strong, charismatic leader.

These stages are united by three interlocking ideas. One has been held by many Chinese patriots since the nineteenth century: that modernizing China means making it wealthy and powerful rather than free and democratic.1 Another, also shared by Chinese patriots, is that only a strong state can achieve this. And finally, that history anointed the Communist Party to achieve these utilitarian goals.

The Chinese Communist Partys centenary coincides with unprecedented interest in how the country is ruled. After it took power in 1949, the CCP was seen by many as a Soviet Union copycat. In the 1960s, when ties between Beijing and Moscow unraveled, Western countries began to see China as an ally against the Soviets. When the party adopted capitalist-style economic policies in the late 1970s, China became a land of economic fantasies. Pathbreaking efforts to explain its governing structures remained mostly limited to a narrow field of Sinologists, investors, and activists.

That has changed over the past decade with Chinas emergence as a nascent superpower. An early example of this popular interest in how China is run was Richard McGregors The Party: The Secret World of Chinas Communist Rulers, which gave an overview of the CCPs widespread influence on Chinese society.2 McGregors book was an important corrective to the dominant storytold by many foreign journalists, think tankers, businesspeople, and government officialsthat China was becoming more and more like the West by adopting the Wests own mystical forces: the marketplace and the Internet. McGregor countered this naivet, showing how the CCP dominated not only politics but also academia, nongovernmental organizations, and the economy. In particular, its control of economic life has resulted in a hybrid capitalist state system rather than the neoliberal one imagined by many. Even private companies ultimately answer to the party: last year, for example, the government quashed the stock market listing of Jack Mas Ant Group, in part because Ma was seen as too outspoken.

When McGregor wrote his book, the CCP had 78 million membersnearly the population of Germanybut it now has roughly 92 million. While large in absolute terms, it is still only 7 percent of Chinas population, allowing it to control politics, economics, and society without losing its exclusivity. Anyone can apply to join, but applicants are carefully vetted and huge numbers are rejected. That makes it similar to the Soviet Unions narrowly based Communist Party, and indeed the Chinese founders modeled it on the Soviets Leninist system, making it hierarchical, disciplined, and mission-focused. But while the Soviet Communists lost power and were banned in 1991, the Chinese Communists have thrived by doing something rarely associated with an authoritarian system: adapting.

Marxism is not inherently adaptive, instead relying on historical determinism to analyze social development and chart a political path. Change was supposed to come via the industrial proletariat, which would realize it was being exploited, revolt, and set society on the road to communism. But by the 1930s Chinas Communist Party had found that this template didnt apply to a country with few industrial workers. Hounded by the armies of the ruling Kuomintang government and on the verge of extinction, the CCP began to improvise.

After much internal struggle, party leaders sided with Mao in acknowledging that the CCP had to be rural-based. They also forged alliances with non-Communist groups, such as religious believers, landowners, middle-class entrepreneurs, and freethinking writers. Once the party consolidated power, it was most successful when it applied the same flexibility in ruling China, such as adopting market-style economic policies and allowing nonparty members a greater say in public life.

In From Rebel to Ruler, his new history of the CCP, Tony Saich of the Harvard Kennedy School argues that the party also owes its survival to two much more hard-edged institutions: its organization and propaganda departments. The first keeps detailed dossiers on all members, allowing it to vet them for reliability and weed out those who dont follow what the party euphemistically calls correct behavior. And by tightly controlling who serves where and for how long, it prevents local leaders from building up fiefdoms that might foster bad governance or even challenge central control.

The CCP also keeps its millions in line through propaganda and indoctrination. It has more than three thousand party schools across the country. At times, foreign observers have written mirthful stories about how Milton Friedman was being taught at this or that party school, or made it seem as if one of them was Chinas version of the Kennedy School. There is some truth to these accountsmarket economics are taught, as are skills needed to be an effective civil servant. But the schools underlying goal is to make sure that party members know the priorities of whatever leader holds power.

As a longtime observer of the CCPhe first went to China in 1977 as a student from Holland and has returned regularly ever sinceSaich is able to give a sweeping and cogent history of it. Some of the book might be too detailed for general readers, but the introduction and conclusion are highly readable, summarizing major themes of the partys history. One is a belief in its infallibility, which partly stems from its improbable history. It was founded in Shanghai by a group of thirteen young Chinese men inspired by the Russian Revolution; Saich writes that the outcome

set in motion a movement that would create the most powerful political organization in the world, overseeing an economy that would come to rival that of the United States. It is an extraordinary story of survival, disaster, and resurrection. Given the conditions under which the movement labored, the CCP should never have come to power.

Saich gives a memorable account of a fellow Dutchman, Henk Sneevliet, who in 1921 was sent by Moscow to liaise with Chinese Communists. Sneevliet was present at the CCPs first meeting and was singularly unimpressed by themso much so that he advised against forming a full-fledged party. Instead, he argued that progressives should first pursue broader goals and link up with potential allies as a way to avoid destruction.

Over time, however, the CCPs real challenge turned out to be less institutional than ideational: if the party is so great, why is its history littered with so many failures, such as policies that caused the worlds deadliest recorded famine, or purges and social experiments that wiped out millions of opponentswith almost no one held accountable? How could history have legitimized an organization with this patchy record?

Party leaders developed two tactics to make history appear to be on their side. One is to blame foreigners, a storyline that plays well in a country whose official national history is of foreigners humiliating it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, foreigners (often simplified as the West) are blamed for stoking tensions with Taiwan, encouraging opposition in Hong Kong, uncovering reeducation camps in Xinjiang, and trying to undermine CCP control by supporting nongovernmental organizations, academic exchanges, and other forms of peaceful evolution.

The other way the CCP explains problems is to blame members for following the wrong policies, even if at the time they were the partys official position. Hence when Mao died and his policies were overthrown, a group of leaders known as the Gang of Four was scapegoated and its followers purged, even though all were following Maos ideas.

This whipsawing doesnt encourage the sort of inner-party democracy that is supposed to prevail. In theory, members are allowed to say what they want inside the party as long as they accept final decisions and loyally carry them out. In practice, the ever-shifting correct line means that its best to keep ones mouth shut for fear that a statement that seems innocent now will become compromising later. This was especially true in the Mao era, when political rivals were purged and killed. But even in modern times, leaders who once were in favor are now sidelined or even jailedfor example, the onetime contender for the top position in China, Bo Xilai. As Saich notes, the concept of struggle permeates the partys language and actions:

This heritage created an especially violent language that was combined with the inability to accept criticism of the core concepts. Harsh rhetoric and even violence were deemed acceptable when dealing with criticsnot only those who attacked the party from without but also often critics from within. The concept of loyal opposition was rejected.

Hence the partys history has been especially tumultuous, with really only one peaceful transfer of powerfrom Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002. All others have been accompanied by purges and show trials, including Bos dismissal from all his posts and expulsion from the party on the eve of Xis elevation in 2012.

But as Bruce J. Dickson writes in The Party and the People, assuming that the CCP rules mainly through fear is a lazy way of understanding China. The adaptability that the party used to make broad shifts in policy also helps explain how it rules on a daily basis. Leaders are often hypercautious and fail to anticipate problems, but once they decide to react, they do so quickly and bring huge resources to bear.

One example that Dickson cites to good effect is the Covid-19 crisis. As is now well known, local authorities tried to cover up what seemed like a minor health crisis in Wuhan, but when it blew up, central party leaders came down hard. Local officials were switched out and the government launched a blanket shutdown of the region, and later of large swaths of the country. It mobilized doctors and nurses from all across China, built pop-up hospitals, and sent in the military. Within a few months, the CCP had Covid-19 largely under control.

As Dickson notes, the partys adaptability and responsiveness is conventional wisdom in serious China-watching circles.3 Its just that this sort of nuanced understanding doesnt fit the dominant view today of China as a strategic threat that rules through brute force or big data. These caricatures are especially convincing from afar, which increasingly is how journalism and analysis are carried out. But they do little to explain how China has risen so quickly and why there is so little opposition to the party inside the country.

Dicksons book gives a useful overview of the various bodies that run China and the partys involvement in them. He also surveys a series of important questions, such as why the CCP doesnt like civil society or religious groups. He is especially strong on the issue of nationalism, which many foreign observers assert is growing in China, especially among young people. Dickson gives a sure-footed assessment of public opinion data to show that this is not the case, and that young people are in fact less nationalistic than their parents generation.

As to why so little opposition exists in China, Dickson doesnt dispute that this is partly the result of public securityopponents are rounded up and frequently given draconian jail sentences. But at least as important is the fact thataccording to surveys and anecdotal evidencea huge proportion of the Chinese people appear to be fairly satisfied with how the CCP runs their country. Many critics might wish this werent so, Dickson writes, but then how to explain why dissidents have so little following? China has no one like Andrei Sakharov or Aleksandr Solzhenitsynopposition figures who commanded widespread respect among the population.

In a chapter asking the eternal question Will China Become Democratic? Dickson analyzes how most Chinese understand the term. Surveys show that few define democracyminzhu in Chineseas meaning elections, the rule of law, political freedom, and equal rights. Instead, most see it in terms of outcomes, especially ruling in the peoples interest. That is minzhu, and that is what they favor.

This doesnt mean that Chinese people are passivemany do protest when they feel they are being treated unfairly. But, Dickson writes, as long as incomes continue to rise, higher education is more accessible, health care more available and affordable, air more breathable, and so on, they are not likely to demand competitive elections, a multiparty system, rule of law, free speech, and other institutional features of democracy. The difference in how democracy and good governance are understood helps explain why many outsiders see the CCP as repressive and authoritarian, while most Chinese have come to see it as relatively responsive and capable.

Over its long history, the CCP has had strategies other than adaptive authoritarianism, as Timothy Cheek, Klaus Mhlhahn, and Hans van der Ven demonstrate in another book published to coincide with the partys centenary, The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives. These poignant biographies include a liberal infamously purged by Mao in the 1940s, the wife of a deposed party secretary, an upright Communist who retreated to a hermit-like existence after the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, and a 1940s movie actress who was later purged. According to the editors, these lives show that the party also encompassed a liberal, cosmopolitan strand that at times was central:

Its proponents believed that China needed change and that the Party was necessary to achieve it. But they also were committed to intellectual and moral autonomy, the right to criticize the Party, and the decentralization of power.

The person who best fits this description is not profiled in this volume but hovers over all these books like a patron saint: Gao Hua, a historian at Nanjing University who died of liver cancer in 2011 at the age of fifty-seven. Gao grew up during the Cultural Revolution and witnessed the violence that Mao unleashed, much of it announced in handwritten posters that were plastered along the streets of his hometown. Many of them made reference to a purge in the 1940s that was aimed at authors, artists, and thinkers who had traveled to a poor, mountainous region of western China to join the Communists in their wartime redoubt in the small city of Yanan.

Gao was intrigued and wanted to learn more. That was difficult, because most books were banned during the Cultural Revolution. Then luck intervened. Several thousand books had been locked up in a warehouse near his home, and the kindly gentleman in charge let Gao and one of his friends borrow some. Gao read hundreds of banned books, including the novels of Ding Ling and the essays of Wang Shiwei, both of whom Mao had purged in Yanan twenty-five years earlier.

By the time Gao entered Nanjing University in 1978 he instinctively knew that this purge held a key to understanding the traumas that his country had gone through. He began collecting memoirs, papers, documents, and other accounts. Twenty-two years later, he published his lifes work, How the Red Sun Rose: The Origin and Development of the Yanan Rectification Movement, 193045.

The Red Sun, of course, is Mao, and the answer is that he rose through bloody purges that destroyed lives and forced obedience. In standard Communist histories, the Yanan Rectification Movement is portrayed as a great victory for the revolution, a harnessing of intellectuals to the sacred task of saving China under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party. Many official accounts put it on a par with the May 4th Movement, a genuine outpouring of creativity and energy in 1919 that launched the most fertile period of thought in modern Chinese history. What Gao showed, however, was that Yanan was the opposite: a sterilization of Chinese intellectuals, who could avoid persecution only by becoming apparatchiks.

In a postscript to the book, Gao describes his upbringing, motivation, and research methods. He had to make do without access to official archivesfrom the start, his project was seen as too sensitive for him to be permitted to see government documents. He was regularly denied research grants, promotions, and the chance for a senior position at another university. Every book he bought and photocopy he made was financed on his puny salary. He wrote his enormous work at his kitchen table, chain-smoking and drinking tea, his reputation growing until people made pilgrimages to Nanjing to seek him out.

His early death robbed him of the chance to write his next book, which his friends say was to have focused on what happened after the Communists, remolded by Mao into a tool of his control, assumed power in 1949. But in some ways, his lifes work was finished. His book punctures what is perhaps the CCPs ur-myththat it started as a pure, clean band of idealists fighting for China. Although never published in China, Gaos book was released by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000 and since then has gone through twenty-two printings. Two years ago it was masterfully translated by the veteran duo Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian.

The book is dense, long, and challenging. Professional historians have a hard time accepting all of Gaos efforts to psychoanalyze Mao and his motivations. But his achievement is overwhelming, calling into question the entire Communist project. Here was a Chinese historian, working in China, challenging the party on its most sacred soil.

Gao said that his goal was to follow the admonition of the great twentieth-century historian Chen Yinke, who died of heart failure after being persecuted during the Cultural Revolution: historians should observe the ocean in a drop of water. In this, Gao succeeded. He didnt just reconstruct erased history but uncovered a pattern of how the CCP has controlled generations of novelists and poets, artists and bloggers, videographers and citizen journaliststhe entire panoply of people struggling to make themselves heard, not just in the 1940s but for as long as the party has existed. While the CCP has succeeded in silencing most of them and convincing most others that they dont need to choose their leaders, Gao exemplifies an undercurrent of freethinking that remains alive one hundred years on.

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A Most Adaptable Party | by Ian Johnson - The New York Review of Books

These are names of the sons of a district-level communist leader in Tamil Nadu state, with the youngest set to marry Mamata Banerjee on Sunday.

Even little Marxism will not miss out when Socialism gets married in southern India this weekend with his big brothers Communism and Leninism in attendance.

All are the progeny of A Mohan, a district secretary of the Communist Party of India in Tamil Nadu state where left-wing ideology still burns red hot.

My first son was born during the fall of the Soviet Union and everywhere in the news I was reading that this was the end of communism, Mohan told AFP news agency.

But there is no end for communism as long as the human race lives on, so I named my first-born Communism, he said.

His next two sons were named Leninism whose five-month-old son Marxism will also attend the nuptials on Sunday and Socialism, the groom.

Pictures of the invitation to the wedding, embossed with hammer-and-sickle emblems, have gone viral on social media.

Socialisms bride-to-be, meanwhile, is P Mamata Banerjee, named by her grandfather after firebrand chief minister of West Bengal state, who recently defeated Prime Minister Narendra Modis right-wing party in state elections.

The fact that this other Banerjee also ended several decades of communist rule in 2011 in West Bengal to become its chief minister is not spoiling the party.

India leaned more towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and names such as Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Pushkin and even Pravda the name of the USSRs state newspaper are not unheard of, particularly in the south.

Tamil Nadus current chief minister is MK Stalin, named by his father in honour of the Soviet communist dictator just days before he died in Russia.

Mohan said that there was nothing unusual about his sons names. Some of his comrades gave their children names such as Moscow, Russia, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, he said.

But he admitted that his boys, especially Communism, were sometimes teased at school. One hospital refused to admit Communism when he was three years old.

They were scared of the name Communism and initially I faced a lot of troubles. But over time, things smoothed out, he said.

All three sons, now in their 20s, are fellow members of the local communist party, and Leninism named his son after none other than German philosopher Karl Marx.

Now I am waiting for a granddaughter from one of my sons, who I will name Cubaism, Mohan added.

Excerpt from:
Communism, Leninism to attend brother Socialisms Indian wedding - Al Jazeera English

As the Euro 2020 games are set to kick off, the debate around taking the knee continues to dominate the national conversation with some government ministers defending the act in the name of addressing racism, but criticising it when done in the name of Black Lives Matter.

But how did Black Lives Matter, a global movement centred on creating in world in which black peoples lives and futures count as much as anyone elses, become, for some, apparently synonymous with Communism?

Speaking on BBCs Question Time on Thursday evening, Education minister Gillian Keegan said that whats happening here is this in itself is actually being more divisive, its creating new divisions.

There are some Conservative MPs (that) are very much against it, why? Because Black Lives Matter stand for things that they dont stand for. Its really about defunding the police and the overthrow of capitalism, which is, you know, Black Lives Matter the actual political organisation, she said.

And on Friday, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said he and the government supported taking the knee when the symbolism is linked to reminding the world of how painful it is to be subjected to the racism that Marcus Rashford has been subjected to, whether on social media or elsewhere, I absolutely back.

If you then extrapolate to a Black Lives Matter movement that has a political agenda ... thats a different place, thats my point which is why I think we just have to differentiate and rightly back our team.

But where has this idea come from?

What are the aims of the Black Lives Matter organisations?

Plural, but with one key focus ending structural inequalities. There are two leading rallying groups under this banner: BLM US and BLM UK, and yet more factions across the globe after that.

On the US groups website, it states that its mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter UKs branch says: We believe we can create a world without systemic violence and exploitation, where all can live full and free lives. This is what we believe liberation is.

The collective also calls to defund the police and invest in communities which means to divest funds from police forces and reallocating them to non-policing measures geared towards securing public safety; critics of BLM peddle the false narrative that the slogan means to abolish the police altogether.

Some 20 per cent of Britons oppose the BLM movement, according to recent data.

A now defunct fundraiser page belonging to the UK branch referred to the overthrow of capitalism.

The Communist influence?

Theres a long history of anti-racism movements being labelled as subversive Communist campaigns by critics, either through a lack of understanding, or through an apparent aim to discredit the causes altogether.

On both sides of the Atlantic, this trope has been witnessed over decades, whether through the targeting of Dr Martin Luther King by FBI director J Edgar Hoover and the US government in the 1960s, to the persecution of Black British activists by the authorities in the 1970s.

Hoover often denounced the Communist influence within the Negro movement while targeting various equalities activists and placing them under surveillance.

And in July 1970, the Foreign Office sent a report on the Black Power Movement in the UK to the Immigration Department at the Home Office. It was compiled by the Information Research Department (IRD), a covert propaganda unit set up during the Cold War to tackle communist influences.

While there may well have been socialists within any civil rights group, during the Cold War it was generally not uncommon for anti-communist politicians to capitalise on the political tensions by linking civil rights campaigns to communism.

Miriyam Aouragh, a lecturer at the London-based Westminster School of Media and Communication, told PolitiFact: I am fairly convinced these are mostly attempts to smear anti-racist activists.

I think in some media, Marxist is dog-whistle for something horrible, like Nazi, and thus enables to delegitimize/dehumanize them.

In a video from 2015 which resurfaced last year, Black Lives Matter US co-founder Patrisse Cullors had said that she and her fellow organisers are trained Marxists.

We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folk, she told Jared Ball of the Real News Network.

Marxism is essentially underpinned by the principle of a classless society where the rich and the poor are equal.

The history of taking the knee

The act itself predates the Black Lives Matter organisation, which began life in 2013 and was reignited after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in May 2020.

For many years, anti-racism activists have long-associated kneeling with the concept of protest against discrimination and as a means of asserting ones rights.

English potter and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood created this medallion of an enslaved Black man kneeling, bearing the inscription Am I Not a Man and a Brother

(Medallion)

Notably, US civil rights figure Martin Luther King Jr took the knee during a march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

He made the gesture while leading a prayer outside the Dallas County Alabama Courthouse, along with several other equalities marchers, after the group of about 250 was arrested for parading without a permit.

Moreover, theres a renowned 18th-century image featured on a medallion, by English potter and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood of an enslaved Black man kneeling, with the inscription Am I Not a Man and a Brother.

The illustration was widely reproduced and the phrase became a rallying call for European slavery abolitionists.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. kneels with a group in prayer prior to going to jail in Selma, Alabama.

(Getty Images)

In 2016, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick embraced the symbol once again, taking the knee after refusing to stand during the pre-game national anthem because of how minorities are treated across the US.

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of colour, Kaepernick said at the time.

It soon trickled through to other sports, and continues to play a part in the global discussion around racism.

Read more:
Taking the knee, and how BLM became synonymous with Communism - The Independent