Cold War in Southeast Asia

Even while the world is hearing a great deal from the Chinese Communists themselves about the restive state of mind of their students and intellectuals, Red China is making a strenuous, often ruthless, and exceedingly expensive effort to take captive the mind of youth everywhere southward from Formosa into Indonesia, and westward into Burma. It is estimated that there are from twelve to fourteen million Chinese in the various states collectively known as Southeast Asia. Everywhere they control the retail trade; and, in the last few decades, they have become influential in banking, big business and in the import and export trade. Few are poor, most are well off and many are tremendously wealthy. Their grip upon the economy of the whole area is such that if they were solidly united in support of the Communist regime in China and devoted to the extension of its influence, the independence of the countries in which they are domiciled would not be worth much. It is the conquest of this area through the “overseas Chinese,” psychological first, then economic and then political, upon which Red China is bent—with the Kremlin’s enthusiastic support of course. In this campaign they have been successful enough so far to reduce many Occidental obs rvers to pessimism and defeatism, and to worry everyone.

Why that worry is justified is the major theme of a book entitled South of Tokyo by John C. Caldwell (Regnery, $3.50). I say it is the major theme because the reader is going to get half way through the book, wondering what the theme is, if it has any, before he discovers that it is not just a collection of character sketches or essays on Far Eastern topics—all very good reading and very interesting, but seemingly leading nowhere in particular.

RG

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Rodney Gilbert

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Even while the world is hearing a great deal from the Chinese Communists themselves about the restive state of mind of their students and intellectuals, Red China is making a strenuous, often ruthless, and exceedingly expensive effort to take captive the mind of youth everywhere southward from Formosa into Indonesia, and westward into Burma. It is estimated that there are from twelve to fourteen million Chinese in the various states collectively known as Southeast Asia. Everywhere they control the retail trade; and, in the last few decades, they have become influential in banking, big business and in the import and export trade. Few are poor, most are well off and many are tremendously wealthy. Their grip upon the economy of the whole area is such that if they were solidly united in support of the Communist regime in China and devoted to the extension of its influence, the independence of the countries in which they are domiciled would not be worth much. It is the conquest of this area through the “overseas Chinese,” psychological first, then economic and then political, upon which Red China is bent—with the Kremlin’s enthusiastic support of course. In this campaign they have been successful enough so far to reduce many Occidental obs rvers to pessimism and defeatism, and to worry everyone.

Why that worry is justified is the major theme of a book entitled South of Tokyo by John C. Caldwell (Regnery, $3.50). I say it is the major theme because the reader is going to get half way through the book, wondering what the theme is, if it has any, before he discovers that it is not just a collection of character sketches or essays on Far Eastern topics—all very good reading and very interesting, but seemingly leading nowhere in particular.