From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

People’s Daily
, carried a
front page photo of him with me seated on his left. The photo showed him better
than he was face-to-face. Years later, I kept being asked by journalists and
writers what he was like. In all honesty I could only say I did not know. What I
had seen was a shadow of the man who had led the Long March, built up a
guerrilla army into a powerful fighting force, fought the Japanese in guerrilla
actions until their surrender in August 1945, defeated the KMT Nationalist
Army, and ultimately made the Communist Party supreme in China from 1949.
He did liberate China from poverty, degradation, disease and hunger, although
famine killed millions because of his Great Leap Forward in 1958. But he did
not liberate the Chinese people from ignorance and backwardness. Yes, “the
Chinese people have stood up” as Mao proclaimed at Tiananmen on 1 October
1949, but they do not yet stand tall.
I had my second meeting with Hua at the Great Hall of the People for two
hours later that afternoon. He continued in the same language of the day before,
that as a socialist country China firmly supported the struggle of Third World
countries in opposing imperialism, colonialism and hegemonism. Likewise, it
supported the revolutionary struggles of all countries, and the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) had relations with many Marxist-Leninist parties in the
world but did not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Party
relations were one thing and state relations were another. I said I did not
understand the logic of these statements. Instead of meeting my argument
directly, he said how the Malaysian government dealt with the MCP and its
activities and what their relations with each other should be were “altogether an
internal matter of the Malaysian government”.
On Indochina, he emphasised China’s “international duty” to support the
peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in resisting “US aggression”. Soviet
efforts to interfere and sow discord were unlikely to succeed as these countries
would not give up their hard-won independence to another big power. It was a
hint of the Sino-Soviet contest and impending problems with Vietnam.
This ended the two formal meetings in my programme. The following
afternoon could be “talks or rest”. We spent the morning of 13 May visiting the
Great Wall and the Ming tombs. It was warm, dry and dusty. We were all thirsty.
We ended up with a full Chinese lunch which I washed down liberally with beer

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at a restaurant near the Ming tombs. As we drove back in the Red Flag limousine
without air-conditioning, I felt drowsy.
When we arrived at the Diaoyutai guesthouse, the protocol officer was
standing at the door to say that Premier Hua was waiting to have a meeting with
me. They had given us no notice during the whole morning that there would be a
meeting that afternoon, or I would not have gone on that long, tiring excursion.
The programme had stated either a meeting or tour of the Temple of Heaven.
Since they had taken us on such an exhausting journey to the Great Wall and the
Ming tombs, we had assumed that the afternoon was free. I was fatigued from
the walk up the Great Wall and drowsy from the beer at lunch and the hot, dusty,
90-minute drive back. Their tactics reminded me of those of the communist
cadres in Singapore who often tried to wear us down. I went upstairs to wash
with cold water, drank several glasses of Chinese tea and freshened up as best I
could. I went down at 4:00 pm to what was to be a two-hour meeting.
We spent some time fencing over the niceties of party-to-party and
government-to-government relations. I asked, “Will you support an Indonesian
communist party which sets out to liberate Singapore or consider that an unjust
war?” He replied, “The question is hypothetical and does not exist. The
Indonesian invasion of East Timor was wrong. The people of East Timor should
have the right to choose their own social systems and government.” I persisted,
“Is the Malaysian Communist Party, calling itself the Malayan Communist