Communist efforts to recruit students and often unsuccessful attempts to tap into the student movement were contingent on GMD education in overseas Chinese schools. The Guomindang promoted Asianist ideas aiming to increase Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, including the idea of a regional International of Nationalities. On one hand, the GMD’s education policies were responsible for the rise of Chinese identification among the locally born Chinese. The rise of Chinese identity among locally born Chinese contributed to increasing the MCP’s popularity among students on the eve of the war and after the start of the Japanese occupation in 1942. On the other hand, the younger generation of Malayan-born Chinese rebelled against GMD indoctrination, which, however, successfully instilled in them identification with China. Both the MCP and the Communist Youth League had similar shortcomings due to the lack of cadres, finances, and knowledge of language. Teachers in Chinese schools, who often had communist views, instilled in their students the “modern” cosmopolitan outlook, which included Western music, arts, and communism.

Structural, contextual, and contingent factors led to the improbable survival of the MCP in the interwar years. When the Japanese invaded Malaya, the MCP’s influence was strongest among the Chinese community. The experience of the Japanese occupation, first in China and then in Malaya, further shaped the territorial notion of Malaya for the MCP, and the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese population resulted in mass support for the party. The MCP’s Malayan nationalism connects with how another Chinese association, the Malayan Chinese Association, credited with the creation of coalition politics in Malaya, embraced the discourse of multiethnic Malayan nationalism after the war. The MCA also led the Malayan nation to liberation in 1957 through a political alliance of ethnic parties, which had first been envisioned by the MCP in 1930. The MCP and the MCA’s efforts ran along parallel tracks. These were the outcome of the Malayan multiethnic environment, British policies, and the localization of Chinese organizations. One cannot fully understand revolution and nationalism either in China or in Malaya except in conjunction with one another.