In Mao’s China (1949–1976), coal shortage limited industrialization and economic growth. Under the conditions of a Western embargo, the adoption of Soviet mining technology in accordance with the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance (1950) was the only choice when the Chinese coal mining industry was predominantly manual and needed mechanization to increase its output.

The Soviet and Chinese documents examined in this chapter from 1956 to 1965 on Sino-Soviet co-operation in science and technology in the coal industry reveal a genuine sense of fraternal co-operation but different managerial cultures within the socialist ecumene, with not only different expectations but also different ways of doing things and very different resource bases. This chapter provides new insights into China’s position in the Eastern Bloc and vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The findings confound our understanding of this period as one of deep ideological hostility on the part of the PRC party-state toward the capitalist West, showing instead that in international trade and co-operation, the priority was not ideology but rather economic development.

In spite of the hopes of many anti-colonial activists, the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War did not stop Western imperialism in Asia and Africa. In response, a number of new religious and political organizations engaged in transnational anticolonial activities and aspired to transform what they believed was an unfair post-war world order. From 1923 to 1924, the Indonesian communist Tan Malaka envisaged a federation of Eastern communists, while the Senegalese Lamine Senghor and Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh, both members of the French Communist Party's Union Intercoloniale, established the Ligue de Defense de la Race Negre. In such organizations, ideas of national liberation were intertwined with pan-regional concepts and ideas of internationalism. Chinese delegates’ participation in the organization of the League Against Imperialism (LAI) was also part of this global zeitgeist among non-Western intellectuals seeking a world free from colonial oppression. Asianist ideas, especially regarding an alliance between India and China, underlined the participation of Indian and Chinese LAI delegates, as Carolien Stolte also shows in her chapter. Indeed, both Indian and Chinese nationalism were channelled through internationalism in the early interwar period.

The idea of the world anticolonial revolution that would end Western imperialism in China, too, was at the heart of the ideology of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD, est. 1912). Having evolved in part from international anti-colonial ventures of its founder, “the father of the Chinese nation,” Sun Yat-sen, the GMD propagated Chinese liberation and revival among overseas Chinese communities and fundraised for the revolution among them and foreign powers. From 1923 to 1927, Sun Yat-sen's government in South China allied with the Soviet Union, which provided the GMD with military aid on condition that the GMD restructured after the model of the Bolshevik party and worked in a united front with the then small and young Chinese Communist Party (CCP, est. 1921). By 1927 however, the CCP's resultant membership and influence expansion, especially in the countryside where the CCP undermined the GMD's power base, led the GMD to break the alliance with the CCP and the Comintern.

Internationally, the Comintern initiated the anti-imperialist organizations and all communist parties had anti-imperialist departments. In 1925, the Comintern sent the head of the anti-imperialist department of the American Workers’ Party, Charles Shipman, to Mexico to establish the All-American Anti-imperialist League (AAAIL).

The MCP’s discourse and activities show its hybrid nature as both a Chinese association and a communist party. In practice, the MCP’s double rootedness in Malaya and China as a Chinese association was achieved through the mechanisms of interwar globalization, that is, the discursive practices of the internationalization of both the Chinese snd Malayan revolutions as well as the attempt to indigenize the MCP. As the only Malayan Chinese association, the MCP both embraced the movement for Chinese rights in the British colony and campaigned for the overthrow of the Malayan and Chinese governments. The MCP’s Malayanization discourse mirrored British preferential policies toward Malays, whereas the Comintern’s rhetoric of colonial emancipation resonated with the MCP’s discourse of the emancipation of oppressed peoples by the Chinese, which echoed Sun Yatsen’s ideas. Different policies toward immigrant Chinese in Indonesia and Malaya resulted in different outcomes in the relationship between Chinese immigrants and indigenous nationalism. Yet, similarly, Chinese political parties in Indonesia (including leftist) embraced the national indigenous identity while also retaining a Chinese identity.

The MCP’s discourse and activities show its hybrid nature as both a Chinese association and a communist party. In practice, the MCP’s double rootedness in Malaya and China as a Chinese association was achieved through the mechanisms of interwar globalization, that is, the discursive practices of the internationalization of both the Chinese snd Malayan revolutions as well as the attempt to indigenize the MCP. As the only Malayan Chinese association, the MCP both embraced the movement for Chinese rights in the British colony and campaigned for the overthrow of the Malayan and Chinese governments. The MCP’s Malayanization discourse mirrored British preferential policies toward Malays, whereas the Comintern’s rhetoric of colonial emancipation resonated with the MCP’s discourse of the emancipation of oppressed peoples by the Chinese, which echoed Sun Yatsen’s ideas. Different policies toward immigrant Chinese in Indonesia and Malaya resulted in different outcomes in the relationship between Chinese immigrants and indigenous nationalism. Yet, similarly, Chinese political parties in Indonesia (including leftist) embraced the national indigenous identity while also retaining a Chinese identity.

Chinese immigrant communists who were members of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) invented the national discourse of a multiethnic Malayan nation in 1930 through the medium of a semantic slippage of the Chinese word minzu (nation, nationality, ethnic group). The MCP, which mixed elements of a traditional Chinese association and a Bolshevik party, was a product of the ideological and organizational hybridization common to anti-imperialist organizations in Southeast Asia in the interwar global moment. The Malayan nationalism of the MCP built on the official nationalism of the British government and was shaped by Comintern ideas concerning the internationalism of national communist parties and by the need for political inclusion of immigrants in the Malayan body politic. This idea of a Malayan nation wherein nationalism and internationalism did not contradict each other was a derivative discourse originating in colonialism, though it became central to the Malayan nation after independence. The heterogeneous origins of the Malayan national concept highlight the ambiguities of nationalism and help us understand why this concept is still under debate today.

Communist efforts to recruit students and often unsuccessful attempts to tap into the student movement were contingent on GMD education in overseas Chinese schools. The Guomindang promoted Asianist ideas aiming to increase Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, including the idea of a regional International of Nationalities. On one hand, the GMD’s education policies were responsible for the rise of Chinese identification among the locally born Chinese. The rise of Chinese identity among locally born Chinese contributed to increasing the MCP’s popularity among students on the eve of the war and after the start of the Japanese occupation in 1942. On the other hand, the younger generation of Malayan-born Chinese rebelled against GMD indoctrination, which, however, successfully instilled in them identification with China. Both the MCP and the Communist Youth League had similar shortcomings due to the lack of cadres, finances, and knowledge of language. Teachers in Chinese schools, who often had communist views, instilled in their students the “modern” cosmopolitan outlook, which included Western music, arts, and communism.

Due to its Chinese membership and its national status as the communist party of Malaya, the MCP embraced two national identities, Chinese and Malayan, and represented two nations. Bolshevik language both empowered and hindered the MCP as a Chinese association and as a communist party. By 1934, dictated by the MCP’s logic of survival as an overseas Chinese organization, the MCP started to practice United Front tactics. Over the course of the 1930s, the MCP was supported by some affluent members of the Chinese community, as the overseas bourgeoisie were concerned about a better government in China. Yet the radical antibourgeois and anti-British language of the MCP resulted in a loss of support among affluent members of the Chinese community on the eve of the war. The majority of the Chinese community was neither anti-British nor anticapitalistic. The Bolshevik concept of a proletarian nation and anti-British rhetoric hindered the MCP in its ability to attract a following and excluded the Chinese bourgeoisie as potential members of its communist party. At the same time, the Bolshevik language of the revolution helped to strengthen the MCP’s ambitions.

Structural, contextual, and contingent factors led to the improbable survival of the MCP in the interwar years. When the Japanese invaded Malaya, the MCP’s influence was strongest among the Chinese community. The experience of the Japanese occupation, first in China and then in Malaya, further shaped the territorial notion of Malaya for the MCP, and the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese population resulted in mass support for the party. The MCP’s Malayan nationalism connects with how another Chinese association, the Malayan Chinese Association, credited with the creation of coalition politics in Malaya, embraced the discourse of multiethnic Malayan nationalism after the war. The MCA also led the Malayan nation to liberation in 1957 through a political alliance of ethnic parties, which had first been envisioned by the MCP in 1930. The MCP and the MCA’s efforts ran along parallel tracks. These were the outcome of the Malayan multiethnic environment, British policies, and the localization of Chinese organizations. One cannot fully understand revolution and nationalism either in China or in Malaya except in conjunction with one another.

An unintended result of the MCP’s interaction with the Comintern was the strengthening of Chinese networks globally through the institution of the party and of the League Against Imperialism. The Comintern pushed the MCP to establish connections with other communists in Southeast Asia while fomenting a world revolution and requested that the MCP involve locally born Chinese along with non-Chinese in its movement. Comintern Chinese networks also ran through the CPUSA and its empire in the Philippines in addition to the Comintern network focused on Southeast Asia. Comintern interactions with the MCP represented a case of synthesis. The organizational culture of the Bolshevik Party offered a democratic participation model alternative to that of the British state. It was based on a culture of self-criticism and therefore allowed room for local communists to criticize the Comintern. The Comintern’s mutually reliant regional relationship with the MCP as a CCP chapter helped the MCP carve out its niche as liberators from British colonialism and provided for the livelihood of Southeast Asian Chinese communist enclaves through the network, connected by corridors of money, culture, and communication.

Communist efforts to recruit students and often unsuccessful attempts to tap into the student movement were contingent on GMD education in overseas Chinese schools. The Guomindang promoted Asianist ideas aiming to increase Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, including the idea of a regional International of Nationalities. On one hand, the GMD’s education policies were responsible for the rise of Chinese identification among the locally born Chinese. The rise of Chinese identity among locally born Chinese contributed to increasing the MCP’s popularity among students on the eve of the war and after the start of the Japanese occupation in 1942. On the other hand, the younger generation of Malayan-born Chinese rebelled against GMD indoctrination, which, however, successfully instilled in them identification with China. Both the MCP and the Communist Youth League had similar shortcomings due to the lack of cadres, finances, and knowledge of language. Teachers in Chinese schools, who often had communist views, instilled in their students the “modern” cosmopolitan outlook, which included Western music, arts, and communism.

The establishment of the Malayan “national” party and the emergence of the discourse of a Malayan nation through a translation slippage of the word minzu (nation, nationality, people) coincided with a growing need for a Malayan identity among the Chinese in Malaya. Alongside the emerging sense of a local Malayan Chinese identity among intellectuals and a growing anxiety among Chinese about the Chinese identity of their children, these trends led to the effective dual Malayan and Chinese identity of MCP members. For the MCP, the unintended consequence of the Comintern’s activity was the discursive foundation of the Malayan nation through the establishment of a national party and the promotion of the Malayan revolution led by the MCP, which consisted of Chinese immigrants along with a small number of Malays. In the same time period, concerns about political rights in other European and American colonies in Southeast Asia shaped Chinese political participation in indigenous nationalist projects and their identities vis-à-vis local populations, such as in the Philippines. Malay concepts of national belonging in Southeast Asian colonies did not accommodate an immigrant population, unlike the Comintern idea of an internationalist nation.