A Grubstake for the Chinese

Peppery General Sir Gerald Templer, Britain's High Commissioner for the Communist-bandit-ridden Malayan Federation, flew in to London to report to the British Colonial Office on his first tour of duty in the rubber-rich equatorial peninsula. In machine-gun tones, he rattled off his news:

P: The average monthly killing rate of Communist terrorists is 93, and going up steadily. "This," said Templer, "is a most heartening sign."

P: Casualties among the 250,000 British and Malayan security troops, who are stalking the Reds, are down 30%; the rate of terrorist activity has fallen 18%.

He was confident, he said, but not complacent. So long as any sizable number of Malaya's peaceful Chinese colony sympathizes with the guerrillas, it is doubtful whether the British can wipe the guerrillas out entirely. The problem is to give Malaya's 2,500,000 economically powerful Chinese some kind of political voice without stirring up the peninsula's 2,500,000 indigenous Malays.

Templer arrived back in Malaya to find that a Chinese leader, Dato Sir Cheng-lock Tan, had already made a start toward solving the problem.

Cheng-lock Tan, 69, is Britain's best Chinese friend in Malaya (he was knighted last year for services to the empire). A stalwart antiCommunist, whom the Reds once tried to assassinate, Tan founded the Malayan-Chinese Association in 1949 to provide Malaya's Chinese with a spiritual alternative to Marxism. At first, the association stuck to practical philanthropy: it forked out $650,000 to help resettle Chinese squatters moved out of bandit-infested jungles. But Tan was not satisfied. He threatened to resign unless the association backed his political program, and he got his way. Henceforth the M.C.A. will be a hard-hitting political party.

Tan's highest hope is to forge the Malayan Chinese into good Malayan citizens, loyal to the British Commonwealth. His Chinese party will press for full citizenship for Malayan-born Chinese (two-thirds of its members); those born in China will be "weaned so that they transfer their love and affection and loyalty from China to Malaya." "What matters," says Tan, "is the creation of a Sino-Malay spirit," and he thinks this can be done by giving the Chinese squatters a grubstake in the land. "A land title," says Tan, "is the hoop that holds the barrel together."

To win over the Malays, optimistic Sir Tan offers to establish a $163,000 fund for Malay social welfare, and to sponsor multiracial clinics. The British wish him well, but older colonial hands think his path is long and difficult.

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