Taiwan Today

The recent death of Manavenbra Nath Roy furnishes as good an occasion as any for a review of the strategy of International Communism. There you have President Naguib of Egypt indicating his willingness to invite Soviet material and technology to Egypt both as a prod to Great Britain in the negotiations connected with the air bases in the Canal Zone and as an argument for United States economic aid. In his anxiety to promote Egyptian interests, President Naguib does not consider it too high a price to pay to open Egyptian doors ajar to the Russian bear. Here you have Prime Minister Nehru, who, in pursuit of South Asian leadership and the maintenance of Indian neutralism, has been consistently ready not only to welcome the agents of International Communism with open arms, but also to put India at the disposal of Moscow as a stepping stone for Communist, Imperialism to reach Indonesia, Burma and points east. Roy represented a period in the spread of International Communism to Asia when Communism reared its head behind the mask of nationalism. Between 1925-27, a regime whose international views had been based mainly on nationalism was used as camouflage for the sowing and early cultivation of Communism. While Michael Markovich Borodin and Roy had to flee the country in the summer of 1927, the strategy of International Communism succeeded in creating cadres and nuclei not only in the various social and political strata of Chinese society, but also in implanting them in the armed forces. The success of International Communism in putting into power the puppet Peiping regime in 1949 demonstrated huge stride in the development of new aspects of the strategy of International Communism. The basis of acquisition of power by Peiping was, unlike that of Orthodox Marxism, the peasantry rather than the industrial proletariat. While this is not stating that the Chinese Communist Party was "of the peasantry," it having no roots in any segment of Chinese society, the peasantry was the class of people made use of both in stirring up class struggle and in recruiting personnel for an independent armed camp under Communist generalship. Wherever the Communist Party had its main base, it instigated class warfare between peasant and landlord, utilizing the struggle as one means to raise itself to power. The organization and development by the Chinese Communist Party of its own army owed their initial success to the existence of a large peasant population without the benefit of a proportionately large reserve of arable land. The concept of "armed struggle" was basic to the Chinese Communist movement. As early as 1926, Stalin recognized the role that a Communist army would play in the success of International Communism in China. Stalin said, "In China, it is not the unarmed people against the troops of their own government, but the armed people in the form of its revolutionary army. In China, armed revolution is fighting against armed counter-revolution." Until 1949, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party had always been referred to as Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung, with Mao following Chu. Even today, though Mao is usually given precedence, Chu still figures as a partner in a sort of joint control. A third significant innovation of International Communism in China was the establishment of secure geographical "war bases" from which the Red Army could operate. The beginnings of the war base concept was found in Juiking in Kiangsi Province. When the enveloping and strangulating movement of government forces made Juiking no longer tenable in 1934, the Chinese Red Army undertook their long march to Yenan in Northwest China where their flank could be safely protected by the USSR. This security of the rear was an important asset to the Chinese Communists in their struggle with government forces. When Soviet Russia occupied Manchuria in 1945, both the rear and the flank of the Red Army in China became virtually impregnable. A fourth aspect of the new strategy of International Communism in China was the full exploitation of the concept of the "united front: Under this concept, the Chinese Communist Party allied itself with other dissident groups against an imagined foreign enemy and its alleged domestic accomplices. Stalin wrote in 1926 that "The Chinese revolutionaries, including the Communists, must make a special study of things military." The implication is that the Chinese Communist Party was only one among a number of revolutionary parties. It will be recalled that Mao Tse-tung declared war in the name of the Chinese Soviets against Japan in 1932. He called for a "united front" of all patriotic Chinese groups, including the government, to fight Japan. With the signature of the government and Communist Party agreement of 1937, Mao Tse-tung succeed in executing the "united front" strategy in full measure. The foregoing resume is suggestive of the variety and adaptability of International Communism. To suit the needs of given circum­stances, its strategy can be mild or drastic. It can be as inoffensive and innocent as an offer of material and technical aid; it can also shoot its way to power, when the opportunity offers. In the inherent expansionist nature of International Communism the continued and uninterrupted contributions that the Chinese Communist Party has made to the advancement of Communist objectives in other parts of Asia since 1949 are logically to be expected. The puppet Peiping regime's intervention in Korea and its large-scale assistance to Ho Chi Minh's forces in Indochina have caused the United Nations and the United States unmitigated headaches. The extension of the military power of the Peiping regime to the border of Burma in 1950 and to those of Bhutan, India and Nepal late in 1951 has contributed to provide protective flanks for the Communist parties of the respective countries, when and if they should be in possession of armed bases. The large Chinese communities in the Associated States of Indochina, Thailand, Malaya, Burma an Indonesia furnish International Communism in China with a reservoir of manpower from which it may take and train agents, in addition to indigenous members of the national Communist parties. Roy and Borodin represented the preliminary strategic period when materials and advice were given. We are not laboring under a hallucination when we see some parallel between the arrival of Borodin, Roy and company in Canton and the welcome that President Naguib is reported to have offered Soviet Russian aid and advice. We suspect that it is somewhat easier to greet their entry than to speed their departure. In Indochina, where the Communist Party, operating with the peasantry as its nuclei, has war bases scattered throughout the country and a flank well protected by a fraternal Chinese Communist army, the other extreme of Communist strategy is illustrated. Leaders not only of Asian countries, but also elsewhere, have need of continued and close study of the strategy of International Communism. Failing such study, we don't see how the free world can survive.