The Malayan Communist Party as Recorded in the Comintern Files

We are expecting, after the above meeting, to call the conference of party, with Malayan, Chinese,
indian (sic) and Javanese attend, before the first of April. When the day and work of this
conference is finally considered and discussed at the said meeting, we shall inform you with details
and for instruction. 4
This letter, which refuted criticism that the MCP implemented terror, might have been a reply to
the AAS’s letter which had reached the MCP on 30 January 1931. Unfortunately, the latter was not
contained in available files. Nonetheless, we can conjecture that in that letter the AAS criticized the
MCP’s radical political line expressed in its report, dated 2 January 1931, to the AAS (shown
above). From a technical point of view, we can understand it took about a month for the MCP to
receive a comment from the AAS. Another possibility is that the letter received on 30 January was
the FEB’s letter to “Malayan Comrades”, dated 17 December 1930 mentioned above.
When analyzing the contents, we can discern that while in January the MCP took a radical stand, in
February, barely a month afterwards, it changed its stand to a moderate one. During this one month,
the MCP might have known the change of strategies of the Comintern (see Chapter I). It is not
recorded as to whether there arose internal disputes in the MCP or not. Nonetheless, it sounds
rather strange that the author of this letter did not know what the MCP had reported in January.
Meanwhile, it is interesting that the Party conference was not exclusively dominated by Chinese,
but was represented by each ethnic group. Apart from a Malay representative, there was a Javanese
representative. Their presence presumably reflected the MCP’s endeavor to extend its influence
among the Malays. According to C. F. Yong, however, it was not until March 1935 that the MCP
decided to establish a unification committee in Singapore with five members – two Chinese, one
Tamil, one Javanese and one Annamite. 5
On the matter of an assault on Tan Kah Kee’s manager by his employees, C.F. Yong wrote that the
fire which destroyed one of Tan’s rubber factories on 7 August 1928 was rumored to have been the
work of his employees. In the early 1930s, the anti-Japanese movement was considered very
important by the communists. As Tan, a very prominent member of the national bourgeoisie, was
the preeminent leader of the anti-Japanese movement, an assault on his company’s manager might
not have been considered a correct revolutionary act.
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