The MCP’s discourse and activities show its hybrid nature as both a Chinese association and a communist party. In practice, the MCP’s double rootedness in Malaya and China as a Chinese association was achieved through the mechanisms of interwar globalization, that is, the discursive practices of the internationalization of both the Chinese snd Malayan revolutions as well as the attempt to indigenize the MCP. As the only Malayan Chinese association, the MCP both embraced the movement for Chinese rights in the British colony and campaigned for the overthrow of the Malayan and Chinese governments. The MCP’s Malayanization discourse mirrored British preferential policies toward Malays, whereas the Comintern’s rhetoric of colonial emancipation resonated with the MCP’s discourse of the emancipation of oppressed peoples by the Chinese, which echoed Sun Yatsen’s ideas. Different policies toward immigrant Chinese in Indonesia and Malaya resulted in different outcomes in the relationship between Chinese immigrants and indigenous nationalism. Yet, similarly, Chinese political parties in Indonesia (including leftist) embraced the national indigenous identity while also retaining a Chinese identity.

An unintended result of the MCP’s interaction with the Comintern was the strengthening of Chinese networks globally through the institution of the party and of the League Against Imperialism. The Comintern pushed the MCP to establish connections with other communists in Southeast Asia while fomenting a world revolution and requested that the MCP involve locally born Chinese along with non-Chinese in its movement. Comintern Chinese networks also ran through the CPUSA and its empire in the Philippines in addition to the Comintern network focused on Southeast Asia. Comintern interactions with the MCP represented a case of synthesis. The organizational culture of the Bolshevik Party offered a democratic participation model alternative to that of the British state. It was based on a culture of self-criticism and therefore allowed room for local communists to criticize the Comintern. The Comintern’s mutually reliant regional relationship with the MCP as a CCP chapter helped the MCP carve out its niche as liberators from British colonialism and provided for the livelihood of Southeast Asian Chinese communist enclaves through the network, connected by corridors of money, culture, and communication.