If as a theorist Mao Tun was without a theory, as a polemicist he was without a polemic. What plagued him there also hurt him here, and for the same reason: he did not as yet have any firm conviction regarding his standpoint. He did not have a solid base to operate from.

On December 9, 1963, Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in presenting a general policy statement of his government for the coming year to the Singapore Legislative Assembly, noted that in Singapore's Nanyang University “a situation is developing which if left unchecked will make it more a University of Yenan than of Nanyang,” and that “Indeed the problems of Nanyang can never be resolved until the political abuse the Communists make of it is exposed and stopped.” Lee's remarks, like his previous ones on the subject of Nanyang University, did not fail to touch on a raw nerve of the University's problems. But as in the past, the raising of the spectre of Yenan has tended to obscure the complex patterns of pride and prejudice and the dilemmas of educational policy confronting the Malaysian Chinese community and indeed the hua ch'iao (Overseas Chinese) of Southeast Asia generally, of which the University is but an expression. Nanyang University's problems today provide an index to the paradoxes and the conflicting appeals as a whole that stir the community whose interests it was originally designed to serve.

This article surveys the development of Chinese education within South-East Asian Chinese societies, and briefly relates it to the integration and assimilation of the hua ch'iao into indigenous societies.

The Chinese are still divided into two groups. One group is very left in its views, very vociferous, very active, very humourless, very narrow minded and forceful, and knows what it wants and intends to achieve its objects by fair means or foul, regardless of what the rest of the population may think. The other group is undoubtedly immensely larger, though one might be excused for not realising this, as it lacks cohesion and the people in it merely wish to be left alone to carry on their normal avocations. Since it has no strong feelings not only does this group not speak out, but in many cases it finds the line of least resistance is to support the other group when asked to do so.

The 1962 Annual Report for the District of Kuching, The Sarawak Gazette, May 31, 1963.

When the Chinese Communists finally consummated their seizure of power in mainland China, one of the first tasks which faced them was that of elaborating a formal institutional structure for the exercise of regular public authority. Indeed, while the new leadership now undoubtedly enjoyed de facto control over the country and the mass of the people, it found itself quite destitute of those normal channels of state regulation and administrative management which serve to bestow legitimacy on a claimant to the role of national government and to distinguish a duly constituted, relatively stable political order from an altogether fluid interlude of revolutionary action predicated on ad hoc use of organised force under a central direction. The Party soon moved to make up for this grave deficiency by creating, on paper at least, a complex mechanism of state administration to back up its bid for recognition as the official spokesman for the Chinese nation and, concurrently, provide it with the wherewithal to play that role effectively.

What mild men revolutionaries are! That is the impression I jotted down after a talk late in March 1964 with Jacques Vergès, managing editor of the review Révolution. This periodical, No. 9 of which was published in May, is the best-produced and most effective publication of the pro-Chinese movement in France. Thanks to its English edition and forthcoming Spanish edition, the review's field of action stretches from France to Africa and even to the American continent. Révolution, with its articles contributed from all parts of the world, is looking more and more like a liaison journal for the groups and movements of the Maoist International now coming into existence.

The Chinese Communists have not hesitated to alter their Party documents—in effect rewriting history—when such changes have seemed desirable for political purposes. It is well known, for example, that the texts of various documents in Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works differ significantly from the originals. In this article we offer evidence suggesting that a fundamentally important Party document—On Contradiction (Mao-tun Lun)—was not written in the summer of 1937, as Party history asserts. Rather, it was composed at a much later date, copying the theses of Stalin and Zhdanov. By thus falsifying the date of composition, the Chinese Communists could bolster their covert assertion of Mao Tse-tung's primacy as a Marxist theoretician.

There has been an impression among students of China that foreign trade data published by Peking are generally more reliable and accurate than its other statistics. This confidence is based on the following grounds. First, since the early years of the régime most foreign trade has been handled by a small number of state companies under the Foreign Trade Ministry. These companies are large in size and well organised, hence they must have respectable accounting and statistical systems. The exports and imports by private firms existing in the early 1950s were recorded by the customs office. Therefore, foreign trade turnovers for the period as a whole are relatively complete and free from serious errors. Secondly, since foreign trade always involves other countries as trading partners, which usually publish their trade statistics in great detail, it is unwise, if not impossible, for the Chinese authorities to falsify their own foreign trade statistics.

The Chinese and Russian Communists, as Marxist-Leninists, are fundamentally hostile towards religion, and are committed to its ultimate eradication. Although their attitudes towards religion are similar, their prescriptions for dealing with it are different. In essence, this difference arises from two divergent conceptions, one optimistic, the other pessimistic, regarding the progress of religion towards oblivion in a situation where the Communist Party has assumed leadership and where the “social” roots of religion have supposedly disappeared. The Chinese hold the optimistic view, a position which may be explained in part by the fact that institutional religion has traditionally been weak in China. I quote here C. K. Yang's description of institutional religion in China as it emerged in the modern period:

As an organised body, modern institutional religion had a very small priesthood, divided into minute units of two or three priests each, largely unconnected with each other. It had barely enough financial resources for subsistence for this scanty personnel. It was deprived of the support of an organised laity. … It did not participate in various organised aspects of community life such as charity, education, and the enforcement of moral discipline. There was no powerful centralised priesthood to dominate religious life or to direct operation of the secular social institutions.