In the end Chin Peng, who died in a Bangkok hospital this morning, did not get his wish to spend his last days in the town of his birth, Sitiawan, where he was born in 1924.
Lingering resentment for the violent campaign he led as secretary general of the Communist Party of Malaya during the Emergency (1948-60) factored in the government’s decision to ignore one of the conditions of the 1989 peace agreement between it and the CPM that allowed for the return of CPM leaders.
However, another denial - that of the significance of the CPM in the struggle to gain independence for Malaya in 1957 - will almost certainly be cancelled out in time.
Although it is said that history is written by the winners, it’s a losing battle that the eventual winners in the Emergency struggle are waging to block out the role that the losers - CPM - played in hastening the grant of independence to Malaya by the British colonial authority.
When the man who was born Ong Boon Hua (he was given the nom de guerre Chin Peng after joining the CPM in 1940) first petitioned the government for the right to return in 2000, the CPM's role in the independence struggle was barely acknowledged.
Thirteen years later, at his death, that role is being, albeit grudgingly, conceded by all but the most blinkered of right wingers in Malaysia.
No doubt this will be small consolation for someone who dedicated the greater part of his life to what was the 20th century’s biggest delusion: that one could build an enduring polity on the basis of a command economy in which everyone would give according to his ability and take according to his/her need.
Lingering resentment for the violent campaign he led as secretary general of the Communist Party of Malaya during the Emergency (1948-60) factored in the government’s decision to ignore one of the conditions of the 1989 peace agreement between it and the CPM that allowed for the return of CPM leaders.
However, another denial - that of the significance of the CPM in the struggle to gain independence for Malaya in 1957 - will almost certainly be cancelled out in time.Although it is said that history is written by the winners, it’s a losing battle that the eventual winners in the Emergency struggle are waging to block out the role that the losers - CPM - played in hastening the grant of independence to Malaya by the British colonial authority.
When the man who was born Ong Boon Hua (he was given the nom de guerre Chin Peng after joining the CPM in 1940) first petitioned the government for the right to return in 2000, the CPM's role in the independence struggle was barely acknowledged.
Thirteen years later, at his death, that role is being, albeit grudgingly, conceded by all but the most blinkered of right wingers in Malaysia.
No doubt this will be small consolation for someone who dedicated the greater part of his life to what was the 20th century’s biggest delusion: that one could build an enduring polity on the basis of a command economy in which everyone would give according to his ability and take according to his/her need.
Making his way north
This must have seemed an intoxicating notion to the teenaged Chin Peng while he was growing up in Perak in the late 1930s when he switched from being a Sun Yat Sen supporter to being an ardent CPM cadre.
A riveting account of those years can be found in My Side of History, Chin Peng’s 2003 memoir of his days fighting the British colonials, then the Japanese invader (1942-45) for which he was lauded with British honors, and after the British had returned, warring against them for the liberation of Malaya.
Just when Chin Peng began to tire of the struggle in 1960 and decided to make his way from bases the CPM established on the Thai-Malaya border to the safe haven of Beijing, he was told on the escape route, at stops in North Vietnam and in China, that the communist struggle in Southeast Asia was entering a triumphant stage.
Chin Peng’s decision to leave the CPM bases on the border followed the long series of setbacks his guerrillas suffered, driven out of their rural hideouts in Perak, Pahang, Selangor and Johor by the Briggs Plan, introduced in 1950 by General Harold Briggs.
The plan moved Chinese residents in the rural areas to ‘New Villages’ where security forces monitored the movements in and out of the villages with the result that that food supply lines to the communists were cut off.
This must have seemed an intoxicating notion to the teenaged Chin Peng while he was growing up in Perak in the late 1930s when he switched from being a Sun Yat Sen supporter to being an ardent CPM cadre.
A riveting account of those years can be found in My Side of History, Chin Peng’s 2003 memoir of his days fighting the British colonials, then the Japanese invader (1942-45) for which he was lauded with British honors, and after the British had returned, warring against them for the liberation of Malaya.
Just when Chin Peng began to tire of the struggle in 1960 and decided to make his way from bases the CPM established on the Thai-Malaya border to the safe haven of Beijing, he was told on the escape route, at stops in North Vietnam and in China, that the communist struggle in Southeast Asia was entering a triumphant stage.Chin Peng’s decision to leave the CPM bases on the border followed the long series of setbacks his guerrillas suffered, driven out of their rural hideouts in Perak, Pahang, Selangor and Johor by the Briggs Plan, introduced in 1950 by General Harold Briggs.
The plan moved Chinese residents in the rural areas to ‘New Villages’ where security forces monitored the movements in and out of the villages with the result that that food supply lines to the communists were cut off.
Thus starved of supply, the communist guerrillas, in the mid-1950s, had to head for the Malaya-Thai border area where they established new bases as their struggle by the end of the decade looked increasingly forlorn.
Distaste for Deng Xiaoping
But if the refuge-seeking Chin Peng was disheartened by the end of the 1950s, his hosts in North Vietnam and China during his flight from the CPM's theatre of operations, were expectant.
Le Duan, long-time secretary general of the communist party in North Vietnam and Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party luminary, both of whom hosted Chin Peng to monologues over dinner, informed their Malayan comrade that conditions in Southeast Asia were ripe for the victory of what, in Cold War era parlance, was called “wars of national liberation.”
Le Duan’s optimism was the more pivotal to the fortunes of the non-communist nations in the region. For by the mid-1960s, North Vietnam would begin the push for the liberation of the south of the country which was under a succession of military regimes that were corrupt and ineffectual.
In 1975, the north’s push to reunite the country succeeded but three years later, Deng would begin the drive to supplant China’s command economy with state capitalism, a move that within a decade would be emulated by Le Duan’s successors in Vietnam.
In his memoirs, Chin Peng’s distaste for Deng is discernible over the fact of China having opted for the capitalist road to economic betterment.
At least, history provided Deng the chance to repudiate a grotesque and failing communist experiment and try a road that has brought scores of millions of the Chinese out of poverty.
It has turned out that history afforded Chin Peng no such consolation, not even accommodation of the homing instinct of an ageing revolutionary for a grave besides his parents.
Le Duan, long-time secretary general of the communist party in North Vietnam and Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party luminary, both of whom hosted Chin Peng to monologues over dinner, informed their Malayan comrade that conditions in Southeast Asia were ripe for the victory of what, in Cold War era parlance, was called “wars of national liberation.”
Le Duan’s optimism was the more pivotal to the fortunes of the non-communist nations in the region. For by the mid-1960s, North Vietnam would begin the push for the liberation of the south of the country which was under a succession of military regimes that were corrupt and ineffectual.
In 1975, the north’s push to reunite the country succeeded but three years later, Deng would begin the drive to supplant China’s command economy with state capitalism, a move that within a decade would be emulated by Le Duan’s successors in Vietnam.
In his memoirs, Chin Peng’s distaste for Deng is discernible over the fact of China having opted for the capitalist road to economic betterment.
At least, history provided Deng the chance to repudiate a grotesque and failing communist experiment and try a road that has brought scores of millions of the Chinese out of poverty.
It has turned out that history afforded Chin Peng no such consolation, not even accommodation of the homing instinct of an ageing revolutionary for a grave besides his parents.
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