One mystery in the
CCP-Khmer Rouge relationship is why the CCP failed to lend a hand to the ethnic
Chinese in Cambodia, even to the Huayun members
who had been in service to the cause of the CCP. A significant number perished
as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s radical policies. Nicholas Khoo argues “the
reason for China’s decision to ignore the ethnic Chinese factor in
Sino-Cambodian relations, but to emphasize it in Sino-Vietnamese relations, is
geopolitical in nature.” Khoo’s argument sheds light on the events in 1978.
To explain why the CCP chose to ignore the issue of the ethnic Chinese in
earlier years, this section argues that the fundamental reason for this
attitude was the ideological affinity between the CCP and the Khmer Rouge. The
racial bonds were outweighed by the shared revolutionary zeal between these two
parties. Before and during the Cultural Revolution, the overseas Chinese who
had returned to China were grouped together with the “landlords, rich peasants,
counterrevolutionaries, bad guys.” Tagged as the “class enemies,” many overseas Chinese and
people who had Haiwai
guanxi (overseas connections) in China were persecuted. Thus
the CCP was not in a position to criticize the Khmer Rouge for its radical
policies towards the Cambodian Chinese. The overseas Chinese fell victim
to the radical policies of both regimes.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the CCP developed wide networks in the Cambodian Chinese communities. The number of schools using and teaching Chinese increased from 173 in mid-1950s to 231, after China and Cambodia established diplomatic relations in 1958. One Chinese middle school, known as Duanhua Zhongxue, had more than 4,000 students. Many of its students and teachers were closely associated with Huayun. Huayun was a loosely formed organization. Its core was Qiaodang, or the Overseas Branch of the CCP. The Huayun members had infiltrated many Chinese newspapers and communities in Cambodia. For example, the leading Chinese newspaper in Cambodia, Mianhua Ribao (Khmer-Chinese Daily), was created in 1956 by some Huayun members and the local pro-PRC leaders of various Chinese associations. A large amount of its profit was transferred to and deposited in Bank of China (Hong Kong).
As for the leadership and organization of the Huayun, Guo Ming was in charge of the Huayun in Cambodia. Guo Ming’s real name was Wu Kunxi. He had been a Qiaodang member in South Vietnam and was assigned to operate in Cambodia in 1950. As the communist parties of the three Indochinese countries were dominated by the Vietnamese from the beginning, the Qiaodang in Indochina was, in a similar way, mostly made up of the ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, especially those from Cholon, Saigon. Pan Bing, another senior leader of the Huayun, was the editor-in-chief of the MianhuaRibao (Khmer-Chinese Daily). According to Guo Ming’s recollection, the activities of the Chinese newspapers, schools, and associations were under the direct oversight of the Chinese embassy.
There were three layers within the organization of the Huayun in Cambodia. The first layer was the open activities headed by Pan Bing; the second layer was the semi-open activities headed by Tang Bingming, a teacher at Duanhua Zhongxue; the third layer was the clandestine activities headed by Guo Ming. The Huayun networks were extremely well-informed. According to one Huayun member Zhou Degao, the networks even detected the assassination attempt by the Kuomintang agents against Liu Shaoqi, who visited Cambodia in 1963. Zhou also claimed that the Huayun obtained advance information that Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon were to be arrested after the rebellion broke in Samlaut in 1967. Under the Chinese embassy’s directive, this piece of information was sent to Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, who soon fled to the Khmer Rouge bases in the jungle.
From 1955 to 1970, despite the rapid development of the Huayun in Cambodia and Pol Pot’s visit to Beijing in 1965, the Huayun members maintained scarce contact with the Khmer Rouge. They stood aloof from the armed struggles started by the Khmer Rouge in Samlaut from 1967. This stand derived from the CCP’s policy of keeping Sihanouk neutral in the Vietnam War and winning over his acquiescence to the Vietnamese communist’s use of Cambodian territory to hide and transport supplies to insurgents in South Vietnam. The aggressive actions taken by the Huayun members in Cambodia such as their pro-Mao rhetoric and criticism of Sihanouk at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, sufficed to push him to close all the Chinese newspapers and entertain the idea of recalling to Phnom Penh the Cambodian ambassador in Beijing. Thus there was no question that the Sino-Cambodian relationship would have been completely destabilized if the Huayun members had ever gotten involved in the rebellions initiated by the Khmer Rouge. It was only under the Khmer Rouge’s request in 1966 that these two sides finally established a direct relationship. The Huayun submitted the request from the Khmer Rouge to the CCP, which in response appointed one Huayun member Chen Sheng to liaise with the Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea.
Nonetheless, the Huayun members would
have to pay a dear price for their estrangement from the Khmer Rouge’s armed
struggles. The turning point came with the Lon Nol coup d’état in March 1970.
The new regime closed all the Chinese schools and dismissed all the Chinese
associations. Under the instruction of the Chinese embassy that later withdrew
its staff after China terminated relations with the Lon Nol regime, any Huayun member whose
identity had been exposed should withdraw into the countryside and join the
struggle. They could either join the Khmer Rouge or Vietnamese forces. In the
end, hundreds of Huayun members
entered the liberated zones controlled by the Khmer Rouge. But they received a
lukewarm welcome from their haughty Khmer Rouge comrades. In April 1970, Guo
Ming had a meeting with the Khmer Rouge leaders Vorn Vet, who was then the
secretary of the Southwest Zone and also secretary of Phnom Penh, and Zhang
Donghai who was a Cambodian-born Chinese. Zhang unleashed a few sharp questions in their meeting:
Why did you refuse the
requests of establishing contact which had been made several times by the CPK
(Communist Party of Kampuchea) two or three years ago? As Cambodian Chinese,
why did you join the anti-American struggles in the South Vietnam but not the
Cambodian revolution?
Because of your attitude like this, we could not understand. Thus we believe you are carrying out Liu Shaoqi’s revisionist route. You are Liu Shao’s revisionist faction and pro-Vietnamese faction at the same time. After the coup on 18 March 1970, many of you entered the guerrilla zones in the countryside, what is you purpose—to take shelter or to join the anti-American struggles led by the CPK?
Guo Ming, the head of the Huayun, replied by invoking the instructions from the CCP. Guo said that he was recalled to Beijing in 1966 and was instructed by the Zhongqiaowei (Overseas Chinese Affairs committee of the PRC) that the Huayun in Cambodia should be developed in an inconspicuous manner and not be publicized. They should try to let Sihanouk hold power in order to assist the anti-American struggles in South Vietnam. This conversation disclosed the deep-rooted displeasure and suspicion of the Khmer Rouge towards the Huayun members, whose fate was foreshadowed. Guo Ming’s efforts to assuage the suspicion of the Khmer Rouge obviously went to no avail. Dozens of people entered into the Southwest Zone and one third died of malaria within one month. Zhang Donghai insisted that they should stay in the jungle, in the malaria–infested area. He claimed that the members had to undertake political study, thought reform, and labor work.
Altogether more than one thousand Huayun members and Jinbu Qingnian (progressive youth) entered the liberated zone. In January 1971 in Kratie, they formed the Teweihui (the Special Committee), which consisted of nine members as the core of leadership. Three of them were ethnic Chinese who came from South Vietnam in the 1950s. The committee was headed by Pan Bing, the former editor-in-chief of the Mianhua Ribao. Zhou Degao was in charge of the liaison with the Khmer Rouge. The primary leader Guo Ming was not in the committee. He would take overall charge of the liberated and the “white zones”—the un-liberated zones, and his focus would be on the underground work in the un–liberated zone. Under Guo’s leadership the underground networks, “small groups of learning Mao Zedong thoughts,” absorbed almost three hundred members in the next three years.
However, the Huayun members were rejected by the Khmer Rouge as soon as they arrived in the jungle, not only because of their disengagement from the Khmer Rouge struggles in the 1960s but also due to the increasing hostilities of the Khmer Rouge toward the VWP since 1970 when the Khmer Rouge started to purge those VWP-trained Khmer communists. The hostilities toward the VWP extended to the Huayun members because some of their key leaders were ethnic Chinese from South Vietnam, though this did not mean that the Khmer Rouge trusted those originating in Cambodia. In mid-1971, the Huayun in the Southwest Zone were asked by Zhang Donghai to terminate the work of 42 Huayun members because they came from the Huayun organizations Vietnam. In December 1971 in the same zone, Zhang asked the Huayun to transfer their leadership to the Khmer Rouge. After receiving a reply that they would wait for the instruction from the CCP, Zhang simply ordered the detention of their leaders, including two from the nine–member special committee. Finally they were released on the condition that they would be withdrawn to the Northeast Zone. Zhang later told the Huayun leader that the authentic reason was that they were creating a state within a state and a party within a party (Guozhongzhiguo, Dangzhongzhidang in Chinese) and the CPK would not tolerate such developments. Zhang said they should join the ranks of the Khmer Rouge if they wanted to pursue revolutionary struggles in the country. In Cambodia no foreigners were allowed to conduct their own revolution. The Huayun leaders finally realized that the Khmer Rouge had determined not to allow the existence of the Huayun and in particular its connections with the CCP.
Facing rejection from
the Khmer Rouge, in October 1972 the Huayun leaders
convened in the Northeast Zone. This conference was chaired by Guo Ming and all
the nine special committee members attended. They decided all the organizations
established by the Huayun since
they entered the liberated zones should be dismantled. The future of the Huayun members would
be decided by the CCP. In November 1972, they sent two representatives—the
heads of the Huayun in
the Northeast Zone and the Southwest Zone—to Beijing to consult the CCP leaders.
After travelling through the Ho Chi Minh Trail and taking a stopover in Hanoi,
they finally arrived in Beijing in February 1973. Before returning to Cambodia
in April, they were received and instructed by a CCP cadre surnamed Tian. Below
are Tian’s instructions:
The CCP and the Khmer Rouge have reached the agreement of transferring all the core leaders and members of the Huayun to the Khmer Rouge.The Huayun members should wait patiently even if they were still excluded by the Khmer Rouge.The astounded Huayun representatives tried to convince comrade Tian that the CPK would not accept them. They highlighted the developments that eventuated in the Southwest Zone and expressed their concerns. Tian answered:
This is the great
deployment of the CCP and Chairman Mao. You have to accept this decision and
report faithfully to the Khmer Rouge when you returned. You shall not get
dismissed without instruction. If so, you will be disciplined.
In all disappointment
the representatives further asked if all the Huayun members could return to China if
the CPK finally decided not to accept them. Tian replied:
The Huayun members could not enter China if the Khmer Rouge excluded you in the end. Only a few members would be allowed to return to China at most.
After returning to
Cambodia, they reported the CCP’s decision to Nuon Chea. In the end, around one-hundred Huayun members moved
back to Vietnam from late 1974. However, a few years later with the
deterioration of the Sino–Vietnamese relationship almost all of them were
arrested by the Vietnamese government on a charge of China’s fifth column. Some
of them were not released until the normalization of the Sino–Vietnamese
relationship in 1990. Only a few key leaders were permitted to travel to China.
In 1977, the Chinese embassy shortlisted four key members and requested the
Khmer Rouge to approve their return to China. But most Huayun members were
neither accepted by the Khmer Rouge nor allowed to return to China. The Huayun turned
out to be the CCP’s expendable tool. In the eyes of the CCP leaders, the
treatment of the majority of the Huayun members
did not deserve to be raised with the Khmer Rouge and risk the bilateral
relationship.
The Huayun members were
left by the Khmer Rouge to stew in their own juice and forbidden to return to
Phnom Penh when it was liberated. They were excluded from the communes, and had
to reclaim the jungle lands and raise their own crops for food. This proved to
be a better fate than the majority of the Cambodian people. These
abandoned Huayun members
were at least not specifically targeted at and sent to the starving communes.
According to Zhou Degao, there were 780 members in 1973 and over 100 had
perished in the jungles when the Khmer Rouge collapsed in 1979. Under the Khmer Rouge’s rule most ethnic Chinese in
Cambodia were driven into the stringently controlled communes and perished
under hard labor. According to Ben Kiernan’s estimation, half of the 430,000
ethnic Chinese in 1975 died in the next four years after the Khmer Rouge
occupied Phonm Penh.In comparison, the Huayun members’
exile into the jungles turned out to be less miserable than the violence
inflicted on other Cambodians and the Vietnamese by the Khmer Rouge—their
connections with the CCP at last did some help to alleviate their misery.
The Huayun members
became refugees when the PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam) forces brought down
the Pol Pot regime in 1979.
Threatened with deaths many ethnic Chinese in Cambodia pinned their hopes on the intervention of the CCP. They blamed the CCP when it failed to do so. For example, the Mingbao Monthly in Hong Kong published two open letters in May 1978 by the Chinese refugees from Cambodia. One was an open letter to Liao Chengzhi, who was recently rehabilitated and director of the newly established Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. Written in April 1978 by the Chinese in the refugee camps in Thailand, the letter questioned why the Chinese embassies refused to offer help and why China still supported the Khmer Rouge while the ethnic Chinese were being maltreated. Even the Chinese specialists in Cambodia had turned down their requests for help. In the end the letter raised the question “supposed the motherland neglected the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia, what is the use of talking about the policies of overseas Chinese and that the Chinese government protects the legitimate rights of the overseas Chinese?” The other letter was written by the Chinese refugees in Paris in February 1978 and sent to the Chinese embassy. The refugees accused the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh of ignoring their sufferings. They also questioned why China’s newly restored policies regarding overseas Chinese had not extended to the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. The letter called on the Chinese government to intervene.
The chapter titles of one book published in 1982 that compiled the letters written by the Chinese refugees from Cambodia aptly reflected their feelings about the CCP. Their sentiments are revealing:
One author expressed that when the refugees resorted to the Chinese specialists for help, they were either told to “consider the general interests—the interests between the two countries and the two parties and be patient,” or “that you were the exploiting classes in the past, and most of you are capitalists. Now you need to accept the labor education of the Cambodian government and be transformed into self-reliant laborers.” Otherwise, the Chinese specialists just walked away.
An examination of the available sources, then, suggests that the CCP did not raise with the Khmer Rouge, whether officially or privately, the issue of the ethnic Chinese and the Huayun members, who had served the CCP’s cause for many years. When Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Beijing on May 21, 1978, the Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua defended the Khmer Rouge against accusations of human rights atrocities. Huang said, “at the time of the conflict between Vietnam and Cambodia in which the Soviets supported the Vietnamese in its invasion against Cambodia, we were surprised to see that the U.S. was creating out of thin air and making a big issue of human rights in Cambodia.”
It is ironic that the
departure and ill-treatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam turned out to be a
much bigger issue than the developments in Cambodia. The ethnic Chinese issue
in Vietnam notably generated tensions and undermined the Sino-Vietnamese
relationship while the CCP turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by
the Khmer Rouge against the Huayun.
The Chinese government was put in an awkward position. The Vietnamese had good
reasons to ridicule the Chinese government by highlighting its indifference to
the suffering and deaths of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. Moreover they accused the Chinese government of “inciting
the overseas Chinese in Vietnam” and “fabricating the Chinese exodus issue in
Vietnam.” The Vietnamese move effectively undercut the CCP’s
propaganda efforts to cultivate favor with the overseas Chinese in order to
channel badly needed capital and investment to China.
There is no doubt that
the ethnic Chinese regarded the PAVN as their liberators as most Cambodians did
when the PAVN invaded Cambodia in 1979. The outcome was the product of China’s
policies toward the Huayun between
1975 and 1978. Sophie Richardson’s study cites the “mutual non-interference in
each other's internal affairs” of the Five
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in analyzing the relations
between China and Cambodia. But this approach evades the concealed parts of history,
in particular the CCP’s underground relationship with the Huayun in Cambodia
and its party–to–party relationship with the Khmer Rouge. It is also unable to
explain why China made a big issue of the Chinese exodus in Vietnam while
turning a blind eye to the welfare of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia.
