THE TABLET, Dumber 96th, 1930
THE
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA
VOL. 196, No. 5769
FOUNDED IN 1840
LONDON, DECEMBER 16th, 1950
SIXPENCE
PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER
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From a Correspondent
THE U.N. CITADEL
T HE immediate sequel to the Chinese invasion of Korea is to accelerate the pace of the world’s rearmament against the designs of those who direct policy in Moscow and Pekin. There could be no clearer avowal that behind all the forms o f diplomatic intercourse, the reality is understood. Every country in the world is involved, on one side or the other ; for in this great conflict there is no neutrality. The United Nations has consequently an immense strategical importance ; Lake Success is the point at which the American leadership is either greatly strengthened or greatly weakened ; and the tactics o f the Kremlin are to weaken it at all costs, in Asia particularly, where it is very galling that the thirteen nations, of the Far or Middle East, should make their appeals for mediation from the United Nations from the American side of the table. We have to divest ourselves o f the idea that the new Communist China was a country only anxious to concentrate on material improvement at home when it became alarmed by news o f bellicose American troops on its frontiers. What is happening in Viet Nam and Tibet and in Malaya belie that simple and comforting theory.
cruel imperialists are imprisoning, torturing, and flogging them ; and that these crimes must stop.
If the “American aggressors” come in for the major share of abuse, the “ British Imperialists” are not far behind. This December 4th rally was held in Peking, and several hundred returned Overseas Chinese protested against the British persecution of Chinese citizens in Malaya. National Committees, Democratic Leagues, Women’s Federations, Peasants and Youth Leagues were all represented, and the meeting followed the pattern of similar gatherings in Eastern Germany today, in the Hcnlcin-meetings in the Sudeten yesterday. Hu Yu-chih, Vice-Chairman of the Returned Overseas Chinese, said that the British were “employing all kinds of measures to harm the Chinese residents in Malaya in every way, because their political consciousness is comparatively high.” While recognizing the Chinese People’s Republic, they “ always follow US imperialism in becoming the stubborn enemy of the Chinese people,” and they had
Meanwhile, the head o f the South Korean Government has expressed his readiness to accept the help o f Chinese Nationalist troops, if the United Nations agree, and the wellknown Korean politician, the ex-Premier, Lee Bum Suk, has been named as Korean Ambassador to Nationalist China. Mr. Bum Suk served as a General in the Chinese Army in the war against Japan.
“ intensified their persecution o f the Malayan Chinese since the US aggression on Korea. The Chinese people in China and their countrymen abroad are united as one. They can never stand idly by when the British imperialists in Malaya are conducting such atrocities by arresting, jailing, slaughtering and deporting the Overseas Chinese. I f the British colonial authorities in Malaya pay no heed to this solemn warning and go on persecuting our countrymen, they will reap what they sow.” The Asiatic Base
It is important that the United Nations shall not lose sight o f the South Koreans. Nothing has served the Communist cause better than the Western readiness to believe that anticommunist Chinese or Koreans do not merit support. This attitude is all part of the same bias of mind which makes Western progressives still so ready to believe that if the Chinese communists invade Korea, they must have been frightened into doing so. Even a Minister o f the Crown, Mr. Richard Stokes, can spread this idea, apparently unaware o f the kind of language that is being used in Peiping to explain and popularize the many other manifestations of aggressive Communism which are emanating from Communist China today.
Malaya is very much a case in point. The Chinese guerrillas who continually make their way into Malaya to wage this war of attrition against one o f the key economic strongholds o f Britain, are spoken of in Peiping in language all too reminiscent of Hitler’s language about the Sudeten Germans, “ these tortured people,” when he was preparing to attack the Czechs.
Earlier this month the Director of the Commission of Overseas Chinese, Ho Hsiang-ning, welcomed a party of deported Chinese from Malaya, who then held a rally organized by the Chinese Communists. The general theme was that Malaya was developed by the Chinese but that now the
In the same vein are all the references to the liberation of Tibet by a People’s Liberation Army, and the announcement that the prisoners who surrendered are released after indoctrination, which they are said to describe as “ the happiest time of their lives," helping them “ to understand that unless the people of Tibet get rid of the imperialists they cannot rejoin the great family of China.” The intention is crystal clear to extend this process to India, and to all Asia ; China has been conquered for Communism as a base for the Communist revolution in this part o f the globe, exactly as the Russia of the Tsars was seen from the first as a base for the extension of the same revolution to Europe and the Middle East. The great quarrels between Stalin and Trotsky as Lenin’s heirs was entirely a quarrel about the proper road to the world revolution ; and Stalin's policy o f building Socialism in one country first was only a measure of tactical withdrawal for the consolidation of a great base. It will be a colossal error if people think o f Communist China as self-contained and unaggressive when it is neither. The safety o f Asia outside China really requires that the Chinese Communists shall not be free to plan where they will take the initiative and attack ; and this is one of the reasons why it was such a great mistake on Mr. Bevin’s part to hurry forward with his recognition.
