Creeping Aggression in Southeast Asia
TSIANG, T. R.
RED CHINA'S NEXT MOVE: Creeping Aggression in Southeast Asia By T. F. Tsiang Permanent Representative of China in the United Nations WITH 1953, the Korean chapter of the Far Eastern conflict...
...Korea has almost no Chinese community...
...In Southeast Asia, on the other hand, Chinese efforts at expansion have been on a much smaller scale, but more fruitful...
...They have used it in Korea since the summer of 1951, likewise with good results...
...Some people may say that the Korean chapter is not quite finished because the Korean peace conference remains to be arranged...
...At that conference, the emphasis was laid on the "liberation" of the peoples of Southeast Asia, rather than Korea...
...Chinese casualties in Korea number roughly 700,000...
...From now on, the major effort of the Communists will be directed at Southeast Asia...
...With the shifting of the scene, there will also be a change in Communist tactics...
...They know that offers of negotiation and peace create hopes in the free world, slacken the military effort of their enemy, and divide the free nations...
...It is the tactic of "creeping aggression...
...They are nourishing a so-called "free Thai" government on the border near Burma and Thailand...
...In the first place, these countries have in their midst 11 million Chinese whom the Communists try to exploit as tools of revolution and expansion...
...I am convinced that they will use this type of diplomacy to the utmost in Southeast Asia...
...The armistice in Korea was an absolute necessity so far as the Communists were concerned...
...The conscription of peasants to keep the ranks of the Communist armies at full strength, though disguised as volunteering, was in fact worse than the press gang...
...This sacrifice of blood spread despair and discontent throughout the villages of China...
...In spite of the years of war and sacrifice involved, the Thirty-eighth Parallel, roughly, will remain the boundary line between North and South Korea...
...I hope further that the military strength of the Associated States of Indo-China and of Thailand will be quickly enhanced...
...The Communists have no illusions in regard to the conference itself...
...He and his associates did not choose to go into Korea...
...But that conference, if and when it meets, will not change matters in the least...
...They know further that when they offer negotiations and peace, they can count on the support of the neutralist nations, particularly India...
...I do not think they will resort to large-scale war such as we have witnessed in Korea...
...In the two thousand years of the Chinese Empire, both Korea and Southeast Asia have attracted the attention and ambition of conqueror-emperors...
...the initiative remains theirs...
...So far, they have met with no real opposition to their propaganda against Western imperialism and for Asian nationalism...
...If the products of Southeast Asia should be controlled by the Communists and lost to the free world, the economic consequences would be enormous...
...RED CHINA'S NEXT MOVE: Creeping Aggression in Southeast Asia By T. F. Tsiang Permanent Representative of China in the United Nations WITH 1953, the Korean chapter of the Far Eastern conflict ended and the Southeast Asian chapter began...
...I hope the free world rapidly gains in accurate knowledge of the nature of the enemy and that it can devise suitable counter-tactics both in war and in diplomacy...
...Its essence is to tell the world from time to time that they are ready to negotiate, and that they, and they alone, desire peace...
...1954 and the years following will not only find Southeast Asia occupying the center of the stage, but will also witness a new kind of drama...
...They will continue the warfare in Indo-China along the lines they have pursued so far...
...The financial burden of keeping a million men fighting in Korea, imposed on a population which had suffered from decades of both international and civil war...
...The Communists have found young people from Southeast Asian countries ready and willing to undergo military and political training under their auspices...
...In a word, offers of negotiations and peace serve as a good chaser to this cocktail of "creeping aggression...
...Unification of Korea will not come through the decision of such a conference...
...I think such fears are groundless...
...They have found that tactic too costly, both economically and in arousing the free world to action...
...Their insistence on the inclusion of certain neutralist Asian nations in the conference, even without the right to vote, is likely to befuddle world public opinion, particularly Asian opinion...
...Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma—are an ideal sphere of expansion...
...They do think they can make political capital out of the preliminary arrangements leading to the conference...
...They undertook the adventure only because of Soviet pressure...
...The Communists used phony diplomacy in the civil war in China with remarkable results, fooling both the Chinese and the Americans...
...I am convinced that the war in Korea will not be renewed and that diplomacy will be in the nature, not of negotiations, but of psychological warfare...
...Finally, phony diplomacy will be used parallel to civil war and subversion...
...In the second place, Southeast Asia has natural resources of which the Chinese Communists stand in great need—particularly rice, rubber, tin and oil...
...The military adventure of the Chinese Communists in Korea has cost them too much, in both blood and treasure...
...Communist military action in Indo-China and Malaya will be supplemented by a bigger effort at subversion...
...It may be recalled that, shortly after the establishment of the Communist regime in Peking on October 1, 1949, there was held in Peking an Asian trade-union conference...
...Taking this historical record as a whole, we cannot escape the conclusion that the profits were meager and the cost enormous...
...In the third place, historical experience leads the Chinese Communists to prefer Southeast Asia to Korea as a sphere of expansion...
...In Korea, the latest Communist expedition was in fact China's seventh, the first of which occurred twenty centuries ago...
...To the Communists, these preliminary talks at Panmunjom are all-important, while the conference itself, if and when held, is of no importance at all...
...They are convinced that Southeast Asia will prove a fruitful field...
...If that war had been continued for one more year, the Reds would have brought about their own downfall...
...Some fear that the Communists may renew the war in Korea...
...To the Chinese Communists, the countries in Southeast Asia—Indo-China, Thailand...
...The North Korean aggression in the summer of 1950 was a surprise to Mao Tse-tung...
...made large-scale famine inevitable...
...This again is not true of Korea...
...If at present they seem to have bargaining power in regard to the Korean peace conference, that power has been gratuitously given to them by neutralists and wishful thinkers...
Vol. 37 • February 1954 • No. 5
