Chin Peng

Uncommon card · No. 161272

Chin Peng (21 October 1924 – 16 September 2013), born Ong Boon Hua, was a Malayan communist politician, guerrilla leader, and revolutionary. He was the longest-serving General Secretary of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the leader of its armed wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). A Maoist, he led the CPM from 1947 until the party's dissolution in 1989. Chin was born into a middle-class family in Sitiawan, now a part of Perak. In 1939, at the age of 15, he became a revolutionary and fled to Kuala Lumpur in 1940. He joined the CPM in 1941, and quickly involved himself in local party committees and labour unions in Perak. Throughout the Second World War, Chin fought as an anti-colonialist guerrilla in the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) against the Japanese occupation of Malaya, allying with Force 136, a British-funded covert resistance movement. He was subsequently awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE). As the most senior surviving member of the...

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