struggle. In the Philippines, the Huk rebellion continued into the mid-
1950s before being crushed with substantial American assistance. In
Burma, despite wartime collaboration with socialists within the Anti-
Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), the Burmese Communist
Party took the path of armed insurgency aimed at overthrowing the
socialist government of Prime Minister U Nu. Though both these
insurgencies owed much of their guerrilla strategy to the Chinese
Communist Party and the writings of Mao Zedong, neither was
beholden in any direct way to the CCP. Their timing may have been
due to a Comintern decision, but both arose mainly as a result of
wartime disruption and post-war tension, political disappointment,
and a naked struggle for power.
In Indonesia, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed in-
dependence immediately following the Japanese surrender. Dutch
determination to reassert colonial control, however, precipitated a
three-year war for independence in which nationalists and commu-
nists at first fought side by side. In 1948, a communist attempt to seize
control of the independence struggle (the Madiun rebellion) was put
down by forces loyal to the nationalist leadership. This had the unfore-
seen result of gaining American support for Indonesian independence,
which came on 27 December 1949, less than three months after the
proclamation of the People’s Republic of China. In a move designed to
establish its neutralist credentials, the new government in Jakarta took
the lead in requesting the GMD to terminate all activities in Indone-
sia, thus clearing the way for diplomatic relations to be established
between Jakarta and Beijing in August 1950.^10
In none of these revolutionary movements did overseas Chinese
take leadership roles. In Malaya, by contrast, overseas Chinese inspired
and led the insurgency, and membership of the Malayan Communist
Party (MCP) remained overwhelmingly Chinese. During the war,
the Chinese community had been most oppressed by, and most
opposed to, the Japanese occupation, and recruitment into the
communist-controlled Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army was
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia