One may ask why there is still a need to publish another book on, or relating, to Chin Peng's memories after he had rather successfully promoted his memoirs entitled 'Chin Peng: My Side of History'. (Singapore, Media Masters, 2003)

A straightforward reason is that he has lived long enough to witness the evolution of the modern history of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, China, Soviet Union/Russia, the Southeast Asian region and probably the United States.

Above all, Chin Peng has been willing to recall rather honestly all the twists and turns in international relations, albeit from his own perspective.

He and certain other members of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) were and still are respected by their ideological and institutional former enemies who served as British and Australian commanders and soldiers during the Pacific War and the Malayan Emergency.

In her book published in London in 2000, a Briton born and brought up in British Malaya, Margaret Shennan, said she remembered Chin Peng as "an intelligent Chinese youth" operating covertly with the Perak-based 5th Regiment of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) which included Bob Chrystal as its "instructor in jungle warfare".

Shennan recalled how a "remarkable" British woman, Nona Baker, and her brother Vincent were saved and protected during the Japanese Occupation by the 7th Regiment of MPAJA based in east Pahang, and how the duo helped communist guerillas to learn English songs. (Margaret Shennan, 'Out in the Midday Sun - the British in Malaya, 1880-1960', London, John Murray, 2000; p. 288)

Indeed, since the Homeric Battle of Troy, stories of love, personal admiration and respect and friendship among belligerent personalities have always been fascinating and inspiring in amidst cynicism in human affairs.

Academic approach

However, the format of the latest book - 'Dialogue with Chin Peng - New Light on the Malayan Communist Party' (Singapore, SUP, 2004) - takes an academic approach that is designed to "extract" unanswered or puzzling questions about the CPM from the 1930s to 1989.

It may be hard to read and the reasoning is certainly not linear. However, it can serve as supplementary reading to Chin Peng's more romantic and sentimental memoirs which he co-authored with Australian journalist Ian Ward and his editor-wife Norma Miraflor.

As a matter of fact, Chin Peng's words as recorded, almost verbatim, in the book predated those he related to Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor whom Chin Peng met only in 2000, a year after the Canberra dialogue.

However, the basic storyline and major personalities in it are more or less similar.

'Dialogue' is certainly a must-read for those interested in specialised research into the CPM , the Pacific War in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, the Cold War in Southeast Asia and other aspects of the modern political history of Malaysia and Singapore.

It contains more details of CPM's ideological involvement in the dispute between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in the 1960s as well as in the internal squabbles between Mao Zedong and his factional and ideological rivals like Liu Shao Chi.

It also reveals more about the CPM's relations with Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP) and Lee Kuan Yew, and the communications between CPM and the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) which, in the early 1960s, was the third largest communist party in the world outside the Soviet Union and China, and certainly the largest in the Muslim world.

Rare account

Also included is a brief but rare biodata of a legendary Malayan communist of Indian origin, the late RG Balan.

It says Balan joined the MPAJA in 1942, editing Tamil news sheets and quickly graduating to the party. In 1947, he was one of the three CPM delegates to the (British) Empire Conference of Communist Parties held in London, the other two being Rashid Mydin and Wu Tien Wang.

According to records contained in the book, soon after returning from the London conference, Balan was elected to the CPM's Central Committee and also organised the Perak Rubber Labourers' Union, which helped to spark a wave of strikes in early 1948.

He was detained on May 30, 1948 and not released until 1961 and, in absentia, was elected CPM vice-president in 1955.

The last time details about Balan were recorded seem to be in Anthony Short's controversial masterpiece on the Emergency, written in the late 1960s in the University of Malaya and published in London in 1976.

Balan, by joining the CPM-led resistance, must have been a rare character in the years when the majority of Indians in British/Japanese Malaya were either politically apathetic or split between the pro-British and anti-British factions.

These details are not found in Chin Peng's early memoirs probably because that was not meant to be a history of the CPM, but his personal recollections.

But any attempt to honestly reconstruct the history of the CPM cannot afford to leave out dimensions like the participation of Malays, Indians and Orang Asli in the party and its armed units, especially during the Occupation.

Even globally, no purportedly updated history and roll of honour for World War II and its Pacific component would be complete without due recognition and credit given to those like Balan, who continued to fight in the Malayan underground movement after the ignominious fall of Singapore on Feb 15 1942 until liberation on Aug 15, 1945.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.