People’s Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam by Marc Opper

Author:Marc Opper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

III. The Nature of MCP Rule

The MCP’s insurgency was devoted to the establishment of a Malayan Democratic People’s Republic made up of a united front of all races that would pursue the twin goals of economic development and social justice. In practice, support for the MCP was limited in both its scope and its magnitude. It was, first and foremost, limited almost entirely to the ethnic Chinese community. Even within the Chinese community, support for the movement was confined to a small number of rural Chinese. Even before the British actively contested control of the countryside (of which more below), civilian compliance with the demands of the MCP was low, requiring the application of a significant amount of coercion against the civilian population.

The MCP’s retreat into the countryside at the beginning of the Emergency brought it into contact with the rural Chinese, who, since 1945, had been the objects of state harassment and violence. Harsh British measures against the rural Chinese drove them into the arms of the MCP and bolstered the image of the Party as the protector of the rural Chinese. Squatters provided both active support to the MCP as well as compliance with its demands for supplies. Merchants and businessmen generally refused, often at the cost of their lives.53

However, the MCP’s focus was national rather than local and it sought to cripple the British economy through widespread economic sabotage. Already firmly in opposition to rural “elites” such as merchants and businessmen, the attack on larger, more capital-­intensive assets ensured that no support from wealthy, urban Chinese would be forthcoming. Behind the policy of sabotage lay the assumption that British capitalists owned rubber estates and that these estates formed a large and vulnerable target that could be used to exert pressure on the government. Sabotage of ethnic Chinese businesses (such as shipping and transport) was designed to both bring down the economy and punish noncompliance with MCP demands for funds.54

Whether on large estates or smallholdings, the slashing of rubber trees was Page 187 →often punishment for the refusal of either estates or individual tappers to comply with the MCP’s demands. The firebombing of buses was likewise an attempt to force compliance. However, the result, to quote one mid-­ranking MCP commander, was often to “harm the interests of the masses” as rubber tappers, bus drivers, ticket sellers, and others lost their jobs even as the largest shareholders or owners lost relatively little, as many of them had insurance.55

The campaign of economic sabotage was deeply unpopular and though a number of activists continued to support the MCP, compliance with its demands for manpower and supplies was slipping even as early as 1950. Faced with such disobedience, the MCP applied coercion. In February 1950, after a number of villagers of Simpang Tiga in Sitiawan, Perak refused to comply with orders from the MCP, a squad of MCP guerrillas burned the village to the ground.56 A former MCP commander explained that this action occurred because MCP cadres in that area did not

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