Communism In Malaysia And Singapore

Although in the past few years occasional brief monographs on se lected aspects of the Communist movement in some parts of the Singapore-Malaysian area have been published, a comprehensive booklength study has not appeared thus far. The present volume is an initial step in that direction. It is, in the main, a political survey which has taken account of social and economic factors only when the par ticular focus of the book demanded it. Since most of what has been written up till now about Communism in Singapore and Malaysia has concerned itself with the Malayan guerilla insurgency and its various ramifications in the late forties and fifties, the following pages have placed primary emphasis on events in the last five years, especially on the period since the formation of the Federation of Malaysia on Sep tember 16, 1963. The absence, moreover, ofa formal "above ground" Malaysian Communist Party today has of necessity structured this inquiry in terms of the operations of various shifting Communist fronts and their relationship to the problems of the present Singapore and Malaysian political environment upon which they feed. Communism in Malaysia today, as Malaysian security officials whom this writer interviewed, repeatedly emphasized, is a matter of scattered eruptions and comparatively isolated front activity with few if any inter-organizational linkages. Research certainly confirms a picture of a rather fragmented movement. Along with Malaysia's geographic peculiarities this circumstance has dictated a region by region approach in the following pages.

"Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party includes background papers, previously unseen Communist Party documents, propaganda posters, and other data. These materials, from both sides of the conflict, shed new light on the Malayan Communist Party, and present history as dialogue and debate."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The history of communism in Malaya (including Singapore) almost coincided with the rise and fall of communism worldwide, best epitomized in Europe by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Operating through the Malayan Communist Party, communism posed an existential threat to Malaya. While the communist threat in peninsular Malaya was manifested dramatically in armed struggle with guerrillas in the jungle, in Singapore it was primarily in the form of united front subversive activities, interspersed with episodes of violence and assassinations. This new book examines the MCP’s quest for political power in Singapore in the midst of a raging Cold War between communism and the free world, with particular focus on events in the 1950s and 1960s. From its close collaboration with the two leading communist great powers (USSR and China) to its united front strategy of infiltrating student, trade union and political organizations, the MCP’s activities are related here in a clear and engaging manner

Is there a risk that Malaysia's racial mixture and its weighted political and economic structures could again explode into the kind of violence which, in 1969, was only just prevented from setting the whole country on fire? And has Singapore's success been bought at a price in civil liberties too high for its health in the future? Four years of th

"This CD is part of the researcher's edition and contains all available transcripts of VMR broadcasts made from 1969 to 1981"--Disc surface.