In his 1976 annual report, the Malaysian Inspector General of Police admitted that “armed assault units of the Communist Party of Malaya” were active “astride the Thai border areas and within Peninsular Malaysia in the northern states of Kedah, Perak, Pehang and Kelantan.”[813]
Split in Communist Party of Malaya
In the early 1970s there were two serious schisms in the Communist Party of Malaya, leading to the formation of rival parties. Justus van der Kroef has sketched the origins of these two divisions in the ranks of the Malayan Maoists.
Concerning the first split in the CPM, Professor van der Kroef wrote, “the long-drawn-out nature of the people’s war had aroused distrust of the leadership of Chin Peng. As a consequence, twenty recent recruits of allegedly doubtful loyalty were assassinated by party leaders in 1967. During 1970, new fears of extensive infiltration by young Chinese recruits reportedly led to a draconian order by the CPM Central Committee that commanders of the MNLA units should kill all members thirteen years or older who had joined since 1962. Amid accusations that the Central Committee was betraying the MNLA, most of the ‘Eight Regiment,’… seceded from the party. Led by former CPM Kedah state committee member Yat Kong, the secessionists established a rival party calling itself the Communist Party of Malaya (Revolutionary Faction), or CPM (RF).”
Concerning the second break in the ranks of the CPM, Professor van der Kroef wrote, “Undaunted, the CPM continued to press for new purges in other MNLA ‘regiments,’ and an even more serious secessionist movement developed in the ‘second district’ unit of the MNLA’s Twelfth Regiment,’… a movement in which some elements of the ‘Eighth Regiment’ joined. This second secessionist movement culminated in the establishment of the Communist Party of Malaya (Marxist-Leninist), or CPM (ML) on August 1, 1974, with its own fighting force, the MPLA. Confusingly, the name was also adopted by the CPM (RF) for its combat units.”[814]
In his 1976 annual report, the Malaysian Inspector General of Police said that there had been clashes with units of both the Communist Party of Malaya and the CPM (Marxist-Leninist).[815] In 1976, Justus van der Kroef reported that “the CPM’s guerrillas are said to have their base west of the Jungei River in Thailand’s Patani Province, while the CPM (RF) operates from the Sadao area of southern Thailand.”[816]
The two split-offs from the CPM maintained their separate identities until 1983. In that year, they were reported as joining to form the Communist Party of Malaysia.[817] The name is of interest because, traditionally, the CPM did not accept the existence of Malaysia—with its three segments, Malaya, Sarawak, and Sabah—and insisted on seeing Malaya as it had been before 1957 independence, including both the segment on the Malay Peninsula and the city of Singapore.
The Chinese and the Malayan Maoists
From the time they came to power, the Chinese Communists supported their counterparts in Malaya, morally, politically, and otherwise. And the Communist Party of Malaya gave unstinting support to the Chinese in the Sino-Soviet dispute.
Professor van der Kroef has noted that one of the most important pieces of aid that the Chinese provided for their Malayan counterparts, a broadcasting outlet, was useful not only for the CPM but also for transmitting news about Maoist parties in neighboring countries. Van der Kroef said “The CPM’s VOMR, a clandestine radio transmitter situated some 1,900 miles from the Malaysian capital in Hengyang, south of Changsha in the People’s Republic of China… is the principal medium of Malaysian communism. … Most broadcasts are in Mandarin; a few have been in Malay...”[818]
The Chinese party used appropriate occasions to underscore its continuing support of the Communist Party of Malaya, and presumably of its ongoing guerrilla activities. Thus in 1980, on the occasion of the fiftieth birthday of the CPM, the Chinese party sent a message of congratulations.[819]
Such support for the CPM certainly was an impediment to establishment of any kind of close relationship between the governments of China and Malaysia. Although diplomatic relations were established between the two countries in 1974, a decade later Malaysian officials were still emphasizing the difficulties that continuing Chinese backing of the CPM were putting in the way of “further development of bilateral relations.” Malaysian Foreign Minister Tan Sri Ghazah Shafie publicly made this point to visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian in March 1984, as he also did to Chinese CP Secretary-General Hu Yaobang a few months later, when that Chinese dignitary visited Kuala Lumpur.[820]
If the Chinese party and government stayed loyal to the Communist Party of Malaya, the CPM similarly was intensely loyal to the Chinese, before and after the death of Mao Tse-tung. Thus, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1967, the CPM sent a message to the Chinese party that began: “It has been repeatedly proved by experience that Comrade Mao Tse-tung is indeed the Lenin of our time, that Mao Tse-tung’s thought is Marxism-Leninism at its highest in the present era, that the Communist Party of China headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the standard-bearer of world revolution, and that socialist China, which upholds the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, is the centre of world revolution.”[821]
Almost four years later, the CPM published its new constitution, and that document declared that “The CPM uses the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought as the guide for its ideology.” It also endorsed the Maoist notion that “the path of encircling cities from the countryside” was “the only correct lane.”[822]
After the death of Mao, the CPM in its 1977 theoretical statement, issued on its anniversary, April 30, described “the ‘international situation’ as developing ‘favorably,’ as ‘Socialist China’ had become more consolidated and powerful.”[823] In 1978 it proclaimed, “Under Hua Kuo-feng, ‘socialist China is a strong bulwark for world revolution.’”[824]
The CPM opposed the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, attacking “Soviet socialism” for making Indochina “a beachhead for dominating the Asia Pacific region.” It also endorsed establishment of U.S.-China diplomatic relations, saying that it “considered these diplomatic ties a victory for the thought and policy of Mao Zedong for its dictum.”[825]
So long as the CPM continued military struggle against the government of Malaysia, there is no indication that it swerved from its ideological alignment with the Chinese party and government. There was some evidence that China encouraged the ending of CPM guerrilla activities.
Groups that broke away from the CPM in the 1970s did not split because of disagreements over Maoism. The CPM-Marxist Leninist was described as “Peking oriented.” However, according to Professor van der Kroef, the ideological position of the CPM (Revolutionary Faction) was “unclear” in 1978.[826] After the merger of the dissident groups to form the Communist Party of Malaysia, Jeanne S. Mintz noted, “The rival communist parties engaged in bitter exchanges, each professing to be the true standard bearer of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought and accusing the other of being unwilling to negotiate to resolve their differences.”
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