Concerning CPP liaisons with the USSR, Rosenberger wrote, “The Soviet hand became apparent in 1982 when a defector from the KGB testified before the U.S. Congress of his involvement in channeling funds to the CPP-ML. Evidence of another link was uncovered when military intelligence arrested an East German in Davao. Confiscated documents revealed that the CPP-ML maintained links with Soviet-sponsored solidarity groups in foreign countries through its International Liaison Committee.”
Rosenberger also cited, as another piece of evidence of CPP-Soviet links, the Philippine group’s attitude toward the Nicaraguan revolution. Like the Soviet Communists, the CPP supported the Sandinista regime, while the Chinese were denouncing it as “social imperialism.”[873]
Conclusion
Maoism appeared in the Philippines at the end of the 1960s, undoubtedly inspired partly by the Great Cultural Revolution in China, but also reflecting the student unrest of the period, and the decline of the older pro-Moscow party, the PKP. The new CPP, in turning immediately to guerrilla war against the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos, undoubtedly tapped the historic roots of rural insurrection, dating back not only to the Hukbalahap guerrilla struggle during World War II and postwar period, but also to the much earlier Philippine insurrections against the Spaniards and then against the Americans at the turn of the century.
The CPP and its New People’s Army had considerable success in leading rural armed insurrection in widespread areas of the republic during the Marcos era. However, after the overthrow of the dictatorship, its efforts were increasingly less successful. Also by that time, after giving strong support to the efforts of the CPP in that party’s early years, the Chinese party and government had lost much of their interest in Philippine Maoism by 1980, a loss that was offset to only a modest degree by help from the Soviet regime so long as it existed.
Singapore Maoism
Communism began in Singapore in 1925, when a Comintern agent, Fu Ta-ching, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, arrived there to try to coordinate the organization of scattered Chinese Communist groups in Malaya and Indonesia. In that year, the Nanyang (South Seas) Communist Party was founded with its base in Singapore, and it worked under direction of the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau. In 1930, the name of the party was changed to Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).[874]
With the post- World War II decolonization, Malaya, Singapore, and Sabah, and Sarawak (located in Indonesia) gained independence as the Federation of Malaysia. In 1965, Singapore withdrew from the Federation, and declared its separate independence.
However, the Communist Party of Malaya never recognized the separation of Singapore from the rest of Malaysia. Justus van der Kroef wrote, “Recognizing neither the merger nor the subsequent secession, Singapore communists, like their CPM counterparts, remain committed to a unification of the states on the Malay Peninsula (i.e., Malaya proper) with Singapore only, permitting Sabah and Sarawak, which unlike Singapore have remained in the original Malaysian Federation, to go their own way.”[875]
In pursuance of their advocacy of a reunited Malaya, the Communists of Singapore continued to be part of the Communist Party of Malaya, which sided with China when the Sino-Soviet controversy developed. As van der Kroef noted in 1973, “its front and associated organizations, the international orientation, and, to a significant degree, ideological complexion of Singapore communism, generally, may be considered as Pro-Peking.”[876]
For a number of years in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Singapore Communists worked within the People’s Action Party (PAP), the country’s principal left-wing party, headed by Lee Kwan Yew. They achieved considerable influence in the city-state’s trade union movement, and were subjected to considerable persecution by the government of Lim Yew Hock, the head of the Singapore regime during the years when Malaya was moving toward independence.[877]
By the time Lee Kwan Yew became Prime Minister of Singapore in the early 1960s, he had purged the People’s Action Party of Communist influence. By that time the trade unions were almost totally under PAP influence. The Communists regrouped in a front organization, the Barisan Socialis or Socialist Front.[878]
Justus M. van der Kroef summed up the situation of the Barisan Socialis during the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote, “In 1975 the Barisan Socialist, as during much of the past decade, beset by strict government supervision, internal leadership squabbles, and small membership, was capable of only very limited overt activities. … The Barisan, in any case, has little attraction for nonCommunist Singapore leftists and other opposition circles, partly because of a lack of confidence in the leadership of the Barisan’s fifty-seven-year-old- chairman, Dr. Lee Siew Choch, in the party’s Maoist-flavored, CPM oriented general program (the view that the party is not really indigenous but merely Peking’s cat’s paw is widespread), or in the party’s specific action demands.”[879]
However, the government of Lee Kwan Yew by no means totally dismissed the Communists as a potential influence in the country. Early in 1977, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, in a speech to personnel of the Singapore Navy, noted that “as of now, for Singapore at least, it is not a military threat and the counter measures do not therefore lie in the military field. The first defence against Communist subversion is economic. Provide the masses not only with a decent living but also hope of continuing improvement in the future, and you have the best safeguard against Communist revolution. When people are contented and happy, they do not support desperate measures such as armed revolution. … Communist agents not only find it difficult to recruit but they run a serious risk of being exposed and arrested because the police get information easily when the public has no sympathy for them, as is now the case in Singapore.”
However, in this same speech the minister deplored the ignorance of the nature of Communism, particularly in the Singapore armed forces, and announced that he was going to establish a course on Marxism-Leninism for senior military commanders. In addition to discussing “the Communist philosophy as expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and later developed by Lenin,” this course would place “special attention… on the history, organizational methods and operational systems of the Communist Party of Malaya… a detailed account will be given of the political struggle between the CPM and the PAP in Singapore between 1954 and 1963.”[880]
At least some Singapore Communists—members of the Communist Party of Malaya—continued to participate in that party’s guerrilla activities. However, in November 1989, Fang Chuang Pi, a Singapore leader of the CPM, who had been a fugitive since 1950 and had lived in Indonesia, China, and finally Thailand, announced that he and other Singapore members of the Malaya party were giving up the armed struggle, and intended to return home to participate in civil politics. He announced that they were ready to accept the separation of Singapore from Malaya as an independent country.[881]
874
Justus van der Kroef, in
875
Justus van der Kroef, in
876
Justus van der Kroef, in
878
Interview with Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, in Brussels, Belgium, September 4, 1964.
879
Justus van der Kroef, in
881
Jeanne S. Mintz, in