The Malayan Communist Party as Recorded in the Comintern Files

It seemed rather strange that the unified party of all Malayans irrespective of nationals ( 民 族 .
ethnicity) had been organized a year before and yet the AAS continued to refer to the abolishment
of the organisational independence of all national groups and to the tasks of unifying them. This
was obviously a response to the relevant portion of the MCP’s letter dated 7 February. It stated that
the Party would call a national party conference to be attended by Malays, Chinese, Indians and
Javanese. The MCP itself might be conscious that it was in reality still dominated by Chinese and
there was no concerted, united movement of Chinese, Malay and Indian members. Another
possible reason was simply that the AAS had only very bare information on the situation in Malaya.
And if the MCP’s representatives were not sufficiently trusted in Shanghai, that situation seemed to
correspond to the point raised by Wang Yung Hai. He had stated in his letter that the four comrades
who composed the report to the FEB knew very little about contemporary conditions in Malaya.
These situations might be construed by the AAS that the MCP was yet to be a national united party.
2. FEB’s Secret Mission to Malaya
(1) Background of the mission
Having advisory personnel who would directly inspect and lead the MCP was considered necessary
by various sections. The ES wrote on 23 October 1930 that the FEB should inspect the MCP. Wang
Yung Hai’s 28 December 1930 letter had requested that regular connections be established between
the FEB and, before that, the appointment of Huang Moh Hang as a tentative representative for that
purpose. On 2 January 1931, the MCP had requested the AAS to send a member of “Hindu” and
“Java” Communist Parties to lead propaganda work among Indians and Malays. A month later, on
1 February 1931, the AAS replied that the FEB should directly contact the MCP. On the same day,
ES asked the CCP to send a comrade to Malaya.
Before the MCP was formed, the Plenum of the NPC in 1928 had requested the Comintern to send
personnel to undertake surveys and for labour and women’s movements in Malaya. After its
formation, the MCP requested in a Russian-language letter of 25 November 1930 for comrades to
be urgently dispatched who could aid their work and for the Comintern to discuss this issue with
the CC of the CCP (seeⅡ, note 36). These matters appeared evidently resulted in the dispatch of
three FEB staff. As Kurihara has noted, from about 1931, apart from the CCP networks, the FEB
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