PEOPLE

The Boat People
Chinese and their families in China, as well as family reunions, wen
to be encouraged.
Liao's article may have k n mimed mainly at a domestic audience
and was probably intended to reassure thosc: Chinese with relatives
overws that the discrimination thcy had suffered during the cultural
revoiution and at the hands of the 'Gang of Four' had ended.
It may alm have been designed to encourage skilled Chinese abroad
to come home to srsiat with the progmm of modernization and econornic
growth. However, if its intention was also to reassure the
eounwies of South-East Asia about Peking's policy on the sensitive
imes of dual nationality snd allegiance, it had precisely the opposite
effect in Indonesi~, Malaysia and Singepore. Singapore authorities
thought Liao's phrasing sounded like 'communist liberation' jargon.
One key pssagc worried them:
Most of the OYCMPB
Chineae src working people, who arc the masacs fming
the bast of the paaiotic united front nmong overseas Chinese a d m a force
we should rely on . . . the majority of tbc bourgeois clasa arc paeriotk. Thcy
hve also made contributions to the economic and cultural development in
he countries where thcy live and arc pn of the motive force fur combating
impcrhlism, hcgcmoni~m nnd colonialism and winning national and =on-
ornic independence in the* countiits . . . we should work energetiully
among them and strive to form the brosderjt patriotic united front among the
wemas Chinese.
Four months later, in April 1978, China made a stand against
Vitmam by *king to protect the rights of tens of thousands of ethnic
Chinese it was claimed were being persecuted and driven into
southern China by Vietnamese authoritics. Vietnam's recent
'socialization' measures had especially affected ethnic Chinese with
private+nterprise interests and Liao's statement was to prove an
embarrassment whm Hanoi parried with the charge drar China was
'throwing a life-btlt to Vianamcsc capitalists of Chinese stock',
Then, in early June 1978, Hanoi twisted the blade: 'If those Hoa
capitalists lived in China, they would surely have to go through a
similar mnsformation'. The point was valid. Peking had not protested
at the 'mialist u~nsformation' of North Vietnam in the
1950s; neither, more recently, had Chi- done anything to defend
ethnic Chinese from the excesses of the Khmer Rouge rCgime, its
ally in Kampuchea.
Stability
Later in the year, Indonesia's foreign minister, Dr Mochtar, made
the point that the 'big question mark' about Peking's contentious
policy was that overseas Chinest, while told to remain law-abiding
residents of their host country, were expected also to maintain social
and economic links with China - links that Liao had referred to as
those between 'kinsmen'. Dr Mochtar said Indonesia - with four
million ethnic Chintse, one million of whom were theoretically
Chinese citizens and 800 000 st~teless - wanted to set how Peking
applied its professed policy on overseas Chintse. He added, referring
to the flight of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam: 'When developments
occurred in Vietnam we wtre of course intercstcd, buse
that was the proof of the very question which we were so curious
about, And to say the least, what happened in Vietnim with regard
to the overseas Chinese did not reassure us!
Whm ASBAN foreign ministers held their regular annuml meeting
fur 1979 on the Indonesimn island of Bali, their mood was sombre.
Late on 30 June, thcy issued a joint communiqud which dealt again
with the two related issues that dominated the gathering: the Indo-
Chinese refugee crisis and the armed conflicts ecntred on Indo-
China. This time they put Vicmam in the dock. There wtre a number
of reasons for the hardening of ASBAN'S position. Tht five
memk governments were still divided in their diagnosts of the root
causes of the outflow from Viemam (whether it was due to policies
of the Vietnamese, Chineac or American governments, or a combination
of factors), But they had becomc convinced that Vietnamese
authorities had the power to control the rate of exodus, and could
only be prevailtd upon to do M, through pressure from international
opinion. As they knew from the attitude of thc US, British and Australian
governments, international action was now possible,
Singapore, as before, led the attack, In a dramatic speech to the
opening session, Foreign Minister Rajaratnam proposed that the
five MEAN governments should aide with anti-Vietnemese foms in
Kampuchea, (He later told the press he believed ASEAN and friendly
non-communist governments should provide arms and material sup-
port to the resistance movement in K~mpuchea, just as the Soviet
Union was giving aid to Vietnam.) In his speech, he branded Victnam
as an expansionist power with ambitions to dominate the whole
of South-East Asia. He claimed that Hanoi was deliberately expel-