. . . drawing a long sigh to cover up my tears,
I Moan over the people's sufferings!
He might well have been writing of the massive human misery that was to afflict China 23 centuries later. Beginning with Communist usurpation of power on the mainland 13 years ago, it has exceeded the bounds of mankind's capacity for suffering. Hunger and repression, those hateful twin products of Chinese Communism, impelled beginnings of the Great Leap Outward long before the Great Leap Forward was undertaken and failed.
At least three and a half million people have run away from Communism on the mainland. Two million came to Taiwan to perpetuate the Republic of China and prepare for the day of mainland liberation. They included some of China's most able people: government leaders, professional people, businessmen and industrialists, military chiefs. About a million and a half reached Hongkong and Macao, and they are still coming — under the most difficult conditions and at the risk of their lives.
Comparison is sometimes made with the exodus from East Germany. That was also a steady flood before the building of the Wall. But there is a big difference. The German route formerly was wide open: a subway ticket was sufficient. China is principally bounded by countries which are Communist or neutralist. There is no escape that way. The vast Pacific is closely watched by beach and coastal patrols. Practically speaking, Hongkong and Macao are the only portals — and so small as to be easily watched.
Nevertheless, the refugees keep coming, wave after wave of them, by land and sea. Many have perished but many have made it, and still do. Their story constitutes one of the strongest possible condemnations of Communism and an unmistakable omen of its downfall. At first it wasn't so difficult. The Hongkong border was open, and the Communists were too busy consolidating their control to worry about the escape of two or three million people. Flight became much more difficult after 1951. Additionally, Hongkong authorities began to worry about overcrowding of the colony, and the welcome mat was withdrawn. It is admitted today, however, that Hongkong's amazing progress and prosperity would not have been possible without the great human resource provided by the refugees.
The most memorable mass exodus to freedom occurred in 1954. On January 23 of that year, 14,343 Chinese prisoners of war, who had surrendered to the United Nations forces in Korea, arrived in free China after resisting all sorts of Communist threats and cajoleries to get them back. They wanted to come to Taiwan because they knew it was a land of freedom under the Chinese flag and that they would have a chance to fight their way back to liberate relatives and friends on the mainland. Because of the historical significance, January 23 has been proclaimed Freedom Day to serve as a beacon of hope to the hundreds of millions who are still groaning under the chains of Communism.
Case of Tibet
Another large exodus of refugees took place after the rape of Tibet early in 1959. After the Red hordes brutally put down the heroic Lhasa uprising, thousands of Tibetans fled to India with the Dalai Lama. Tens of thousands more eventually made their way to Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and northern India. Some came to Taiwan. A small number of children have been resettled in Switzerland with the help of an international charity organization.
The most recent outpouring of suffering masses occurred in April and May of 1962. This time Hongkong again was the destination. About 70,000 hungry people from Kwangtung and other mainland provinces swarmed to the Hongkong border, forcing British authorities to erect their own "wall" of barbed wire. Even after Mao Tse-tung ordered tightening of border controls, tens of thousands still tried to get to Hongkong and Macao. The British authorities have deported many refugees, yet about one in five has eluded the vigilance of the Hongkong police and sought shelter under the roof of relatives, friends or sympathetic residents.
Between periods of mass flight, individual defections and escapes in small groups never ceased. Some of the desperate gained their freedom by swimming to Kinmen (Quemoy) from the Fukien coast. Pilots like Shao Hsi-yen, Kao Yu-chung and Liu Cheng-sze flew to freedom. Others held legitimate exit papers or elected not to return from official missions abroad. This group included important personages whose flight indicates the seriousness of Peiping's plight.
These are major Communist defections over the last few years:
* Chow Ching-wen, deputy governor of Chihlin, one of the few non-Communist intellectuals to hold high office under the Communist regime. He refused to go back to the mainland after arriving in Hongkong several years ago. As a man who has been on the fringe of Communist power, he has been doing writing to expose Red tyranny and chicanery.
* Fu Tsung, a gifted young pianist, defected two years ago while studying music in Poland. He said there was no future for a musician under the Chinese Communist system. Fu has electrified the concert halls of the free world with his talent.
* Chiang Kui-lin, a wireless operator of the New China News Agency's Cairo Bureau, defected while pretending to be ill. A veteran Communist newsman who covered the Korean War, he knows a lot about the Communist propaganda machine. He is now a radio station worker in Taiwan.
* Shao Hsi-yen, a former MIG-15 pilot reassigned to fly a DDT duster, flew to Korea in September, 1961. He also brought along Kao Yu-chung, the co-pilot. Shao and Kao shared an award of 500 ounces of gold presented by the Chinese Air Force for bringing their AN-2 biplane to Taiwan.
* Liu Cheng-sze, a combat pilot stationed at the Luchiao airfield in Chekiang, flew his MIG-15 to Taiwan last March while on a solo training flight. He received a CAF award of 1,000 ounces of gold. Like Kao and Shao, he has joined the CAF.
* Chao Fu, security officer of the Chinese Communist "embassy" in Stockholm, defected to West Germany last August. He is the first Red security man to defect while on assignment abroad. His account of conditions on the mainland coincided with the stories of misery told by other refugees. The fact that he, a security officer charged with the duty of watching over others, defected himself, indicated a complete breakdown of Communist controls.
* Kao Hao-jan, a Moslem imam, came to Taiwan from Hongkong in 1961 when he was supposed to go to meet Moslems in Southeast Asia and conduct united front activities.
* Eric Chou, a veteran journalist of the Communist paper Ta Kung Pao in Hongkong, defected to an undisclosed Western country early this year.
Magistrates Flee
Refugee shacks on Hongkong hillside (File photo)
Among refugees who stormed the Hongkong border last year are such interesting figures as Miss Liang Shueh-li, a Communist model driver, and Lo Tat-on a young railway worker who was once Mao Tse-tung's swimming companion. Both Miss Liang and Lo have come to Taiwan to start life anew.
The Red magistrate of Huiyang was intercepted after he was found in the refugee column. Reports from mainland said he committed suicide. Among successful escapees are the magistrate of Kaifeng, the mayor of Shanweikong and a group of Communist cadres of the Communist Youth League.
In the flight of refugees from the mainland several points deserve notice.
First, the freedom seekers are not from any particular sector of society. They include those from virtually every walk of life. This indicates that anti-Communist feeling is widespread.
Second, most are in their 20s. Their formative years were spent under Communist rule. Flight from the system they were taught to believe in demonstrates the failure of Red indoctrination.
Third, with few exceptions, escapees since 1951 are of proletarian background and supposedly were builders of Communism. That they voted against the system with their feet shows Communism's inability to find roots among the masses.
Fourth, the frequent defections of Communist cadres, military personnel and even security people point to collapse of discipline within the party itself.
Fifth, refugees have begun to escape in larger and larger groups. Those who escaped in the late 1950s did so individually for fear that confiding their plans to others would result in betrayal. Such fear has largely disappeared. The Reds have lost their iron grip on the people.
Sixth, political repression was the main reason behind the mass flights in the early years. Now hunger has become a major factor. In Chinese history, uprisings and rebellions are usually preceded by famine.
Seventh, a sizable number of the escapees are overseas Chinese residents and students who were lured back to the mainland by pie-in-the-sky promises. Their disillusionment with the Communist system and subsequent flight are bound to produce profound effects on the vast Chinese community overseas.
Scene from movie "14,000 Witnesses" depicts Chinese Communist POWs voting for freedom (File photo)
These points provide eloquent refutation of those who consider the Chinese Communists eight-foot giants to be appeased and never offended.
Running away from Communist tyranny and its accompanying evils is an expression of passive resistance. Meanwhile, active opposition to Communism among the six hundred million Chinese still shut behind the Bamboo Curtain has never ceased since the Reds overran the country 13 years ago. Although less sensational than the Hungarian uprising, the anti-Communist fight on the Chinese mainland is more significant in the sense that it is persistent and growing in size.
The resistance movement on the mainland can be roughly divided into three stages. Stage one runs from 1949 to 1952. The oppositionists were remnants of government troops, landlords and comparatively prosperous peasants. Stage two extends from 1953 to 1957 with the main line of resistance made up of an increasing number of people from all walks of life. Stage three begins in 1958 and is still developing. During this stage, virtually every element outside the Communist party has become a participant.
Relatively few government troops and so-called "capitalists" and "landlords" were able to make it to Taiwan during the 1949 evacuation. Those who stayed behind were at the mercy of Communist vengeance. For self preservation, they formed into bands and took to the hills to fight the Red oppressors.
These armed anti-Communist guerrillas gave the Communist regime a difficult time. Mao Tse-tung admitted the seriousness of the situation in a report to the third plenary session of the seventh Communist Party Central Committee on June 6, 1950. Besides listing instances of assassination and subversion by anti-Communist elements, he said Red troops fought against no fewer than a million and a half guerrillas between April, 1949, and May, 1950. He placed suppression of the armed revolt on the list of eight priority tasks for the Communists.
Yunnan Guerrillas
Outbreak of' the Korean War in mid-1950 intensified the anti-Communist activities. In addition to armed attacks, opposition forces also resorted to the spread of rumors and political sabotage. When the United Nations forces under General MacArthur reached the Yalu River, a 3,000-man guerrilla unit was formed in southern Manchuria ready to blow up factories and bridges in anticipation of an invasion by the UN troops. In central China, the few months following the outbreak of the Korean War witnessed 261 riots, 178 assassinations, 284 armed robberies, 225 small-scale attacks on local governments and 20 acts of sedition. These incidents exacted a Communist toll of 2,716 killed and injured.
On the Yunnan border, General Li Mi's 10,000 irregulars had more than 360 encounters with the Communists, tying down no fewer than 200,000 Red soldiers until most of the guerrillas were airlifted to Taiwan in late 1953. Some anti-Communist irregulars stayed behind and continued their fight against the Communists until they were evacuated to Taiwan in 1961.
In Sinkiang, troops loyal to the government fought several pitched battles with the Communists under the leadership of Yolbar Khan and other local leaders until they were annihilated in July, 1950. Yolbar Khan himself succeeded in getting away. After a perilous journey of several months, the aging leader reached Taiwan with a small group of survivors.
These armed revolts had important effects. They prevented the Peiping regime from throwing more troops into the Korean War, and indirectly helped prevent Red invasion of Taiwan, then still insecure.
Several factors accounted for failure of the armed uprisings. For one thing, the resistance movement was without popular backing. The peasant masses and the intellectuals had hopes for the new Red regime and did not join in the anti-Communist fight. For another, the free Chinese government in Taiwan was too busy preparing for the defense of the island to give effective support to the anti-Communist guerrillas.
The Communists were able to maintain the momentum of their initial success. Their morale was high and their organization tight. Acute difficulties were yet to come. They were able to concentrate efforts on eliminating open resistance.
A great change took place in the second phase of mainland resistance Peasants, workers and intellectuals, previously indifferent or even hostile to the anti-Communist movement, were beginning to realize that the Communists were both evil and inefficient. Revolutionary gains were withdrawn as quickly as the Reds felt they were secure enough to clamp down on the people. Anti-Communist activities during this period were concentrated on sabotage, which was hard to combat and which caused considerable damage to the Communist economic program.
Farmers were disgruntled because the small plots of land confiscated from former landlords and transferred to them were taken away. They were forced to join agricultural cooperatives and subjected to numerous privations that they had not known even in the worst times of pre-Communist days. To show their displeasure, the peasants secretly burned forests, slaughtered farm animals and worked perfunctorily in paddies that were no longer their own. Secret societies mushroomed among the peasant masses. Some bolder spirits even proclaimed themselves "emperors" to liberate their fellow farmers from the Communist tyranny.
Riots were reported frequently. Granaries were burned or sacked. Red cadres were attacked or killed. One of the most serious peasant revolts occurred in Teng county, Kwangsi, on October 1, 1953, when 6,000 angry farmers, protesting a resettlement plan, fought the Communists for a whole week with weapons taken from an arsenal.
The Kwangsi revolt was surpassed both in Scale and, duration by a Moslem uprising in Kansu between December, 1954, and January, 1955. The peasants in eight counties refused to hand over their "summer levy" of grains. They formed themselves into bands to resist the Red authorities and held Red troops at bay for nearly two months. Before they were suppressed, some 2,000 Red soldiers were dead or wounded and more than 100 public buildings in smoking ruins.
Besides these large-scale uprisings, riots by groups of several hundred farmers each were reported from all over China. The uprisings were put down, but the relationship between the Communist regime and the peasantry was never again the same.
Good Life Delayed
Workers began to join in the resistance movement because their promised good life did not materialize. They were subjected to longer working hours for less pay, corporal punishment in case of failure to meet norms and other forms of mistreatment. Deaths by illness and accidents multiplied. Disillusionment was followed by resentment.
Resistance among workers took many forms, including sabotage, absenteeism, poor workmanship, demonstrations and even strikes. The workers' revolt was responsible for many industrial "accidents" and failure to reach production targets.
Intellectuals, whom the Communists wooed with great success in their guerrilla days, were among the first to detect Red chicanery. Expression of their disillusionment brought Communist vengeance down upon them. In Shanghai alone, more than 68,200 intellectuals were severely reprimanded, tried or sent to labor camps on the eve of the infamous "Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend" movement.
The blooming and contending of 1957 opened the floodgates of the pent-up hatred of the intelligentsia. Professors, students, fellow-travelers, even Communists themselves joined together to fire a verbal broadside against the Red regime. The concerted attacks from the intellectuals nearly toppled the monster that had unleashed the wave of criticism.
At the height of "bloom and contend", college students in the big cities had something resembling the brief period of freedom enjoyed by the Hungarian freedom fighters before they were crushed by Russian tanks. Handbills denouncing Communism changed hands freely on campus and streets. Liberals took over student bodies from the Communist cadres. The anti-Communist students in big cities even established contacts among themselves. A planned demonstration by college students in Peiping and Tientsin on June 5, 1957, was nipped in the bud when they were confined to their schools and the campuses were ringed by Communist soldiers.
But the biggest jolt for the Red rulers came at Hanyang on June 12. More than 1,000 students of Hanyang Middle School started a riot that lasted three days. Angry students beat up Communist officials, distributed handbills calling for the overthrow of Mao Tse-tung and expressing hope for return of the legitimate government under President Chiang Kai-shek. Students attempted to storm an arsenal but failed.
After the student revolt was quelled, the Communists spent more than a month rounding up the participants and questioning them at mock trials. On September 6, the Communists announced the death sentence for Wang Chien-kuo, deputy principal and a member of the Communist Youth League, and two teachers. Four other teachers were sentenced to jail terms of from five to fifteen years. The students were packed off to labor camps.
Although articulate opposition from the intelligentsia was, silenced by the "anti-rightist" campaign, the "new class" had been exposed in its true colors. Communist deception and brutality taught the intellectuals never to trust the Peiping regime.
Third Phase
The introduction of the "three red banners" (general line for socialist construction, the great leap forward and the people's communes) in 1958 marked the beginning of the third phase of anti-Communist resistance. Besides the Tibetan revolt in 1959, the Communist regime has been shaken to its foundations by a combination of popular resentment, successive famines, economic failure and the disintegration of party discipline. According to intelligence reports from the mainland, such manifestations are occurring everywhere on the Chinese subcontinent. These are examples:
* Tens of thousands of farmers in seven counties on the borders of Hupei, Honan and Anhwei provinces clashed with Communist cadres when the Reds refused to permit them to keep all the produce from their "private" lands. Several detachments of Communist militia joined the rebellious peasants. The combined forces fought Red regular troops for more than two weeks early this year. When the Communists sent reinforcements to crush them, they withdrew to the Tapi mountain range to carry out guerrilla activities.
* In the wake of the refugee exodus in April-May, Canton witnessed three large-scale riots as a result of Communist efforts to prevent refugees from leaving the railway station. The first riot occurred on May 23 with some 10,000 refugees taking part. The same thing happened again on June 1 with 50,000 participants. When Mayor Tseng Sheng attempted to persuade the rioters to disperse, his car was overturned and three of his body-guards were killed. The third incident occurred on June 4. Deputy Governor Sun Chin-yi of Kwangtung was roughed up by the angry refugees when he tried to disperse them. Such violence is significant, because it has moved into the cities for the first time.
* In Sinkiang, a sharp reduction in rations at the turn of the year triggered off a series of granary robberies. On June 18, a shipment of rice destined for the Soviet Union was intercepted by hungry people neat Hami. After wiping out the Communist guards, the mob divided the loot and fled, leaving no clues to their identity.
* Since the end of last year, five new anti-Communist organizations have been formed in Shanghai, Chekiang, Kwangtung and Yunnan. They have been distributing anti-Communist handbills and spreading rumors of an imminent invasion from Taiwan. Although some members have been arrested, the Reds have failed to suppress the organizations.
* Between July 27 and September 22, the Communist authorities in Kwangtung were shaken by no less than 14 bombings. Some of these were heard by residents of Hongkong add Macao. Blasts occurred in railway stations, warehouses, checkpoints, steamships, arsenals and office buildings. Scores were killed and many wounded. In each case, the Communists were unable to catch the real bomb-throwers.
Revolt Possible
Although experts on Communist affairs in Taiwan do not expect a Hungarian type revolution on the mainland in the immediate future, they do not exclude the possibility. They estimate that the Communist regime is hated by at least 95 per cent of the population. These disillusioned, unhappy people, including a large number of card-carrying Communists, can be expected to rise against the Red rulers the moment free Chinese in Taiwan begin their counteroffensive. This prediction of the experts coincides with testimony given by defector Chao Fu recently before the U.S. Congress.
Free housing for refugees located just outside Taipei (File photo)
Meanwhile, the free world has to shoulder the burden of assisting and resettling refugees from the Chinese mainland. In Taiwan, the government-supported Free China Relief Association has helped re-establish nearly 75,000 refugees. Emergency relief is provided for those who need it. Refugees subsequently are given vocational training, other schooling or small loans to start businesses. Except for latecomers, all have been absorbed in Taiwan society.
Of the former prisoners of war from Korea, most elected to serve in the armed forces. Many since have distinguished themselves in combat duty. Some 5,000 are still in the armed forces, more than 4,000 have taken part in industrial reconstruction work or business, more than 1,000 are in government service or teaching in schools, an equal number are studying in colleges or military schools, and some 2,000 are engaged in farming.
While the mass flight of refugees last year prompted the Hongkong government to seal the border, the Chinese government threw open Taiwan's door for all who want to come. Through November, 673 had arrived from Hongkong and Macao, and more are being processed. However, the majority will stay in Hongkong because they are mostly from Kwangtung and have friends or relatives in Hongkong.
Those who came to Taiwan were warmly received. The Free China Relief Association gave each of them clothing, other necessities and cash allowance. Free room and board was provided at reception centers. Medical service was made available, and many needed it. Refugees stay in the centers until they find jobs and housing. Government and private assistance is given in resettlement. So far 285 of the new arrivals have found employment, 97 are living with relatives, 172 have been sent to schools and the rest are waiting for their chance at a new life. Those who went to live with friends or relatives were given cash grants.
For large-scale placement of refugees the cabinet has set up an ad hoc committee to assume overall direction. The resettlement plan calls for placement on farms in eastern Taiwan, participation in industrial work, continued schooling and special assistance for intellectuals, scientists, professionals and former Communist officials.
Virtually every one of the six hundred million Chinese on the mainland is a potential refugee as long as the Communist regime exists. Taiwan obviously cannot accept all of them, nor can any other land. The real solution of the refugee problem awaits the downfall of Communism.