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The Chinese International of Nationalities: the Chinese Communist Party, the Comintern, and the foundation of the Malayan National Communist Party, 1923–1939*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2014

Anna Belogurova
Anna Belogurova*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Brown University, 79 Brown Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA E-mail: anna_belogurova@brown.edu
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Abstract

In the global ideological movements of the early twentieth century, notably communism, new political concepts moved across different cultures. Together with the process of internationalization, this led to problems concerning the translation and interpretation of linguistic terms. Based on little-studied sources deposited in the Comintern archive in Moscow, this article shows that, although the members of the newly formed Malayan Communist Party (1930) were virtually all Chinese, it became the first organization to discuss directly the possibility of a multi-ethnic Malayan nation within the borders of the Malay Peninsula. As the Comintern encouraged the establishment of ‘national’ communist parties, the ambiguity of the Chinese word minzu resulted in the emergence of a discourse regarding the Malayan ‘nation’, which would be liberated from colonialism under communist leadership.

Keywords

Chinese migrationCominternglobalizationinternationalismMalayan Communist Partynationalism
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 447 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Timothy Cheek, John Fitzgerald, Michael Hathaway, Liu Hong, Steven Hugh Lee, Yeh Wen-hsin, and the members of the China Studies Group at the University of British Columbia, as well as to two anonymous readers and the editors of this journal for their invaluable suggestions. My thanks also go to Yeap Chong Leng, Lin Hsiao-ting, Paul Alexander Rae, and Konstantin Tertitski for help in acquiring sources, to Craig Smith for useful discussions, and to Matthias von dem Knesebeck for translations from German.

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102 Ibid., p. 4.

103 ‘To the Malayan comrades’.

104 ‘A letter from the Central Committee’; RGASPI, 495/62/1/1–17, ‘To the Central Committee’.

105 RGASPI, 514/1/634/93–158, ‘Minutes of the third representative conference’, pp. 118–19.

106 RGASPI, 495/62/1/23–7, ‘Resolyutsiya priniataya posle obsledovaniya raboty vremenogo komiteta v 1929 (Resolution adopted after investigation of the work of the [Nanyang] Provisional Committee in 1929)’.

107 RGASPI, 514/1/632/7–28, ‘Otchet or polozhenii v Nanyane (Report about the situation in Nanyang)’, January 1930.

108 RGASPI, 514/1/634/93–158, ‘Minutes of the third representative conference’, p. 120.

109 RGASPI, 533/10/1818/3–29, ‘Nanyang de baogao: a report of Indonesia, Jan. 16, 1929’; RGASPI, 495/62/1/1–17, ‘Otchet Malayskogo Komiteta profsoyuzov (The report of the Soviet of Trade Unions of the Malay archipelago)’; ‘To the Malayan comrades’.

110 Zhongguo yu Nanyang (China and Malaysia), [Bulletin of Jinan University], 1, 1918, in Kequn, Meng, ed., Nanyang shiliao xubian (Compilation of Nanyang historical materials), Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2010Google Scholar, vol. 1, p. 1; RGASPI, 495/62/24/46–7, ‘List of circulars issued by the C.C. of the C.P. of Malaysia’.

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114 RGASPI, 495/62/13/36–8, ‘Zhongyang tonggao diqi hao (Central Committee circular no. 7)’, 15 September 1930.

115 ‘What workers should do’, p. 86; RGASPI, 495/62/5/9–20, ‘What the workers should stand for’, esp. p. 10.

116 CO, 273-572, ‘A review of the misery of the weak races of the East’, from Wenhua banniankan (Culture Biannual), February 1931, in MRCA, June 1931, pp. 49–51.

117 C. F. Yong, comment in ‘Early history of the Malayan Communist Party’, in Chin and Hack, Dialogues, p. 72.

118 Yu Yueting, ‘Ma Ning yige beiyiwang de liao bu chao de ‘zuoyi’ zuojia (Ma Ning: a forgotten extraordinary left-wing writer)’, in Ting, Zhao, ed., Shifan qun ying guanghui zhonghua (diershi juan) (Teachers heroes, shining China. Vol. 20), Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994, pp. 176–185Google Scholar.

119 CO, 273-585, MRCA, March 1933, pp. 21, 24.

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121 RGASPI, 495/62/20/1–6, ‘Magong lianzi tonggao di yi hao. Dantuan zhongyang guanyu waiqiao dengji lülie yu womende gongzuo de jueyi (MCP Central Circular no. 1. Resolution regarding the Alien Registration Ordinance)’, 12 October 1932.

122 Francis Kok-Wah Loh, Beyond the tin mines: coolies, squatters, and New Villagers in the Kinta Valley, Malaysia, c. 1880–1980, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 33.

123 Kuhn, Chinese among others.

124 RGASPI, 495/62/28/18–36, ‘Magong dier ci zhong zhihui yi yijuean (The resolutions of the second plenum of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the MCP)’, 20 February 1940.

125 RGASPI, 495/62/27/1–5, ‘Magong lai jian (A document received from the MCP)’, 25 August 1934; RGASPI, 495/62/22/1–7, Guo Guang, ‘Magong lai xin san hao (A letter from the MCP no. 3)’, 24 March 1934.

126 RGASPI, 495/62/24/13–16ob., ‘Report of Labour Federation of Malaya no. 1 to the Profintern’.

127 CO, 273-580, MRCA, October 1932, p. 37; RGASPI, 495/62/27/7, ‘Malai zhongyang laijian (A document received from the Central Committee of the MCP)’, 25 August 1934.

128 CO, 273-572, MRCA, December 1931, pp. 31–48; RGASPI, 495/62/22/14–17, Central Committee of the MCP, ‘Surat yang terbuka kepada saudara-saudara kita malayu dan Indian (An open letter to our Malay and Indian brothers)’, 1934; CO, 273-616, Straits Settlement Police Special Branch, ‘Review of communism in Malaya during 1934’, Political Intelligence Journal, 31 December 1934, pp. 2, 3.

129 Guo, ‘Letter from the MCP, no. 3’, p. 5.

130 CO, 273-630, ‘Supplement no. 1 of 1937 to the Straits Settlements Police Special Branch Political Intelligence Journal: review of communist activities in Malaya, 1936’, pp. 3, 4; CO, 273-630, ‘Straits Settlement Police Special Branch report for the year 1936’, p. 7.

131 RGASPI, 495/62/29/65–86, ‘Sokraschenniy perevod broshury Malaya segonya sostavlennoi na kitayskom yazyke, 1939 (Abridged translation of brochure “Malaya today”, composed in Chinese, 1939)’.

132 Cheah, , Red star, pp. 71Google Scholar, 322 n. 37.

133 McVey, Rise of Indonesian communism.

134 ‘Early history of the Malayan Communist Party’, p. 74, n. 13.

135 Guo, ‘Letter from the MCP no. 3’, p. 5; Shanghai Municipal Police Files (henceforth, SMP), D6152, ‘Letter from Guo Guang to the FEB, 15 August 1934, pp. 1–6.

136 SMP, D6954, ‘Letter from H.B.M. Consulate-General concerning Malayan communists’, 30 August 1935.

137 RGASPI, 495/62/28/53–84, ‘Maijin (Forward)’, December 1939–early 1941.

138 Belogurova, Anna, ‘The civic world of international communism: the Taiwanese communists and the Comintern (1921–1931)’, Modern Asian Studies, 46, 6, 2012, pp. 1602–1632CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arsan, Andrew, Lewis, Su Lin, and Richard, Anne I., ‘Editorial: the roots of global civil society and the interwar moment’, Journal of Global History, 7, 2, 2012, pp. 157–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

139 See Liu, Lydia, The clash of empires: the invention of China in modern world making, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006Google Scholar.

140 RGASPI, 495/14/385/12, ‘Dokladnaya zapiska politicheskoi komissii IKKI (The report of the political commission of the Eastern Secretariat of the ECCI)’, 27 July 1935; SMP, D7376, Letter of the Siamese Communist Party to the MCP, 5 March 1936; Guo, ‘Letter from the MCP no. 3’, p. 6.