National Service Riots of 1954 May 13 Chinese

[fivestars]

Singapore's earliest attempt to introduce a compulsory conscription rule in 1952 was vigorously resisted by the Chinese Middle School students. On 13 May 1954, violence erupted when hundreds of students clashed with the police. As a result, 26 were injured and 45 students arrested. The National Service riots marked the beginning of intense communist subversion in the Chinese Middle Schools, which became a breeding ground of communist sympathisers in Singapore.

Background
Before Singapore's independence, Chinese education in Singapore had progressed principally due to the contributions of rich Chinese philanthropists. Chinese schools were run by governing bodies which comprised members selected more because of their prestige than knowledge of running an institution. The British government did not provide for Chinese schools. When it came to economic opportunities, the colonial government also preferred the English-educated, leaving the Chinese-educated dissatisfied.

The Chinese schools in Singapore had strong China inclinations. When China became a communist country, communism had a strong influence on the Chinese-educated community. Before the establishment of Nanyang University in 1955, the highest level of Chinese language education in Singapore was offered by the Chinese Middle Schools (the equivalent of secondary schools and junior colleges today).

National Service Ordinance
The National Service Ordinance was introduced by the British government in 1952 (it took effect in 1954), on the ground that people seeking self-government should be able to defend themselves. The Ordinance required males between the ages of 18 and 20 to register for part-time National Service, and later to be called up into the Singapore Military Force (SMF) or the Civil Defence Corps (CDC) for training. Failure to register by the deadline would risk offenders a six-month jail term or a fine of $2,000, or both. Initially the idea had full public support and registration for the National Service went smoothly and 98% of eligible students had registered themselves.

But the National Service ruling angered the Chinese Middle School students because they were compelled to defend the same British order that had discriminated against them and in which they saw no future. Largely, the Chinese who felt that they were not treated as equals by the British did not feel oblige to serve the colonial government. Moreover, the temporary disruption to the process of education in Chinese schools caused displeasure within the Chinese community.

While the Ordinance incited resentment towards the colonial government, the National Service issue was godsend to the communist activists. The communists now had an ally in the Chinese Middle School students and they exploited the students' grievances to their political advantage.

Description
On 13 May 1954, 500 students held a demonstration against the National Service Ordinance. 500 Chinese schoolboys and girls tried to march onto the Government House (Istana Negara) to lodge their protest. When they failed to disperse, the Riot Squad stepped in and the event turned violent. Twenty-six people (20 students and six police) were injured. The police arrested 44 boys and one girl, all above 16. They were released the following day on bail. Later, as the demonstration gained momentum, 1,000 students locked themselves in at the Chung Cheng High School. The police forced them out the next day.

On 18 May, the students pursued their protest with a 55-strong delegation demanding that students be exempted from National Service, which was turned down. As more student demonstrations were expected in the weeks ahead, Directors and Principals of ten boys' and girls' high schools announced on 21 May that their schools would be closed for summer vacation two weeks earlier, a decision which affected 15,000 Chinese students. This sparked off defiance; the next day, on 22 May, 2,500 boys and girls locked themselves into the Chung Cheng High School. Parents of the students came down to the school at dawn on 23 May to fetch their children but were met with opposition from student leaders who tried to prevent the parents from entering the school. The police later persuaded the leaders to let the parents pass and the school grounds were cleared peacefully by 11 am.

Aftermath
Because of the vigorous resistance, the first big-scale attempt to recruit male youths for part-time national service died a natural death. The colonial government agreed to postpone National Service. The demonstrations awakened the Chinese students' consciousness and strengthened the influence of student leaders. The riots made the students bold and in October 1954 they made a public proposal to form a Singapore Chinese Middle School Students Union (SCMSSU).

The authorities had used the force of the police to crush the riot of 13 May. In 1955 and 1956, when the process towards Singapore's self-government intensified, police-student clashes were to recur. The government tried to diffuse tension by making concessions to student demands but when the students grew too radical and violent under the influence of the SCMSSU, the police organised themselves effectively. With the help of the army, the police was able to prevent civil disorder arising from student unrests.

For the communists, the demonstrations against the National Service Ordinance and the following use of force by the police played into their hands. These developments aroused public sympathy towards the students' cause and gave a tremendous boost to open left-wing activity in the Chinese Middle Schools. Communist subversion in the Chinese Middle Schools was to heighten subsequently under the banner of the SCMSSU.



Author
Nor-Afidah Abd Rahman

 

[khunking]

Why smear when the British colonists are supposed to provide the protection?

Singapore's earliest attempt to introduce a compulsory conscription rule in 1952 was vigorously resisted by the Chinese Middle School students. On 13 May 1954, violence erupted when hundreds of students clashed with the police. As a result, 26 were injured and 45 students arrested. The National Service riots marked the beginning of intense communist subversion in the Chinese Middle Schools, which became a breeding ground of communist sympathisers in Singapore.


Author
Nor-Afidah Abd Rahman

 

[fivestars]

The Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China was drawn up in March 1912 and formed the basic government document of the Republic of China until 1928. It provided a Western-style parliamentary system headed by the weak president. However, the system was quickly usurped when Song Jiaoren, who as leader of the KMT was to become prime minister following the party's victory in the 1913 elections, was assassinated under the orders of President Yuan Shikai. Yuan regularly flouted the elected assembly and assumed dictorial powers. Upon his death, China disintegrated into warlordism and the Beiyang Government operating under the Constitution remained in the hands of various military leaders.

The Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek established control over much of China by 1928. The Nationalist Government promulgated the Provisional Constitution of the Political Tutelage Period in 1931. Under this document, the government operated under a one-party system with supreme power held by the National Congress of the Kuomintang and effective power held by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. In Leninist fashion, it permitted a system of dual party-state committees to form the basis of government. The KMT intended this Constitution to remain in effect until the country had been pacified and the people sufficiently "educated" to participate in democratic government.

Seventeen Taiwanese National Assembly delegates selected by the ROC government in a photo with then President Chiang Kai-shek in 1946The current Constitution traces its origins to the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War when the impending outbreak of the Chinese Civil War pressured Chiang Kai-shek into enacting a democratic Constitution that would put an end to KMT party rule.

The Chinese Communists sought a coalition, made of one-third Nationalists, one-third Communists, and one-third of members from other parties, to form a coalition government that would draft the new Constitution. However, Chiang Kai-shek refused to relinquish to hold on power and insisted on having the Nationalist Government draft the Constitution and then holding nation-wide elections in which the Communists would be permitted to participate. Unable to resolve the impasse, the KMT-drafted Constitution was adopted by the National Assembly on December 25, 1946, promulgated by the National Government on January 1, 1947, and went into effect on December 25, 1947.

The Constitution was seen as the third and final stage of Kuomintang reconstruction of China. The Communists, though invited to the convention that drafted it, boycotted and declared after the ratification that not only would it not recognize the ROC constitution, but all bills passed by the Nationalist administration would be disregarded as well. Zhou Enlai challenged the legitimacy of the National Assembly in 1947 by accusing KMT hand-picked the members of the National Assembly 10 years earlier and thus could not have legal representativity of the Chinese people.

 

[fivestars]

The founding of the ROC was centered on the Three Principles of the People (san min zhuyi): Nationalism, Democracy, and People's Livelihood (also translated "Socialism"). "Nationalism" meant standing up to Japanese and European interference, "democracy" represented elected rule modeled after the Diet of Japan, and the "people's livelihood" meant government regulation of the means of production. Another subordinate principle was the "republic of Five Races", which emphasized the harmony of the five major ethnic groups in China (Han, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and Uyghurs), represented by the colored stripes of the original Five-Colored Flag of the Republic. The Five Races Under One Union principle and the five-colored flag were abandoned in 1927.

The Constitution originally established a republic with a National Assembly and five branches of government, named Yuan(院), which are: the Executive Yuan, Legislative Yuan, Judicial Yuan, Examination Yuan, and Control Yuan. In practice, the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan have become marginal organizations, while the National Assembly was abolished in 2005. Although in practice the government on Taiwan has become a presidential system, the constitution itself is unclear as to whether the system is intended to be presidential or parliamentary and this has led to some deadlock when, as after the 2000 Presidential elections, the legislature and presidency was held by different parties.

 

[fivestars]

On January 10, 1947, Governor Chen Yi announced that the new ROC Constitution would not apply to Taiwan after it went into effect in mainland China on December 25, 1947 as Taiwan was still under military occupation and also that Taiwanese were politically naive and were not capable of self-governing. Later that year, Chen Yi was dismissed and the Taiwan Provincial Government was established. From March 1947 until 1987, Taiwan was in a state of martial law. Although the constitution provided for regular democratic elections, these were not held in Taiwan until the 1990s.

On April 18, 1948, the National Assembly added to the Constitution the "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion." These articles greatly enhanced the power of the president and abolished the two term limit for the president and the vice president. In 1954, the Judicial Yuan ruled that the delegates elected to the National Assembly and Legislative Yuan in 1947 would remain in office until new elections could be held in Mainland China which had come under the control of the Communist Party of China in 1949. This judicial ruling allowed the Kuomintang to rule unchallenged in Taiwan until the 1990s. In 1991, these members were ordered to resign by a subsequent Judicial Yuan ruling.

In the 1970s, supplemental elections began to be held for the Legislative Yuan. Although these were for a limited number of seats, they did allow for the transition to a more open political system.

 

[fivestars]

In the late 1980s, the Constitution faced the growing democratization on Taiwan combined with the mortality of the delegates that were elected in 1947. Faced with these pressures, on April 22, 1991, the first National Assembly voted itself out of office, abolished the Temporary Provisions passed in 1948, and adopted major amendments (known as the "First Revision") permitting free elections.

On May 27, 1992 several other amendments were passed (known as the "Second Revision"), most notably that allowing the direct election of the President of the Republic of China, Governor of Taiwan Province, and municipal mayors. Ten new amendments to replace the eighteen amendments of the First and Second Revisions were passed on July 28, 1994. The amendments passed on July 18, 1997 streamlined the Taiwan Provincial Government and granted the Legislative Yuan powers of impeachment. The constitution was subsequently revised in 1999 and 2000, with the former revision being declared void the same year by the Council of Grand Justices. A further revision of the constitution happened in 2005 which disbanded the National Assembly, reformed the Legislative Yuan, and provided for future constitutional change to be ratified by referendum.

Passing an amendment to the ROC constitution now requires an unusually broad political consensus, which includes approval from three-fourths of the quorum of members of the Legislative Yuan. This quorum requires at least three-fourths of all members of the Legislature. After passing the Legislature, the amendments needs ratification by at least fifty percent of all eligible voters of the ROC irrespective of voter turnout.

All amendments have been consolidated into a single text of twelve articles, maintained as a separate part of the Constitution.

 

[fivestars]

When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the political leadership of the Nationalist Party fell to Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, respectively the left wing and right wing leaders of the Kuomintang. The real power, however, lay with Chiang Kai-shek who, as superintendent of the Whampoa Military Academy, was in near complete control of the military. With this military power, the Kuomintang confirmed their power on Guangzhou and Guangdong (the province containing Guangzhou) and Guangxi (the province north of Guangdong). The Nationalists now had a rival government in direct opposition to the warlord government based in the northern city of Beijing[6]. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, whom he admired greatly, Chiang Kai-shek, who assumed leadership of the Kuomintang in 1926, had little contact or knowledge of the West. Sun Yat-sen had forged all his political, economic, and revolutionary ideas primarily from Western materials that he had learned in Hawaii and later in Europe. Chiang Kai-shek, however, knew almost nothing about the West; he was firmly rooted in his Chinese identity and the Chinese culture he was steeped. As his life progressed, he became more militantly attached to Chinese culture and traditions. His few trips to the West confirmed his pro-Chinese outlook and he studied the Chinese classics and Chinese histories assiduously[7]. Of the three Principles of the People of Sun Yat-sen, then, the principle he most ardently and passionately adhered to was the principle of nationalism. Chiang was also particularly committed to Sun's idea of "political tutelage"; using this ideology, Chiang built himself into the dictator of the Republic of China, both in the Chinese Mainland, and when the national government was relocated to Taiwan[8]. Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, General Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition to defeat the northern warlords and unite China under the party. With their power confirmed in the southeast, the Nationalist government appointed Chiang Kai-shek commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, and the Northern Expedition to suppress the warlords began. Chiang had to defeat three separate warlords and two independent armies. Chiang, with Soviet supplies, conquered the southern half of China in nine months. A split, however, erupted between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party; this split threatened the Northern Expedition. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, however, healed the split by ordering the Chinese Communists to obey the Kuomintang leadership in everything. Once this split had been healed, Chiang Kai-shek resumed his Northern Expedition and, with the help of Communist strikes, managed to take Shanghai. There he began to eliminate the Communists in what is today known as the Shanghai massacre of 1927 and the Nationalist government, which had moved to Wuhan, dismissed him. Unfazed, Chiang set up his own alternative government in Nanjing. When the Wuhan government collapsed in February 1928, Chiang Kai-shek was the only Nationalist government still standing[9].

When Kuomintang forces took Beijing, as the city was the de jure internationally recognized capital, though previously controlled by the feuding warlords, this event allowed the Kuomintang to receive widespread diplomatic recognition in the same year. The capital was moved from Beijing to Nanjing, the original capital of the Ming Dynasty, and thus a symbolic purge of the final Qing elements. This period of KMT rule in China between 1927 and 1937 became and is still known as the Nanjing decade.

Finance minister of China and Kuomintang official H.H. Kung and two other Chinese Kuomintang officials visited Germany in 1937 and were received by Adolf Hitler.[10][11][citation needed]

In sum, the KMT began as a heterogeneous group advocating American-inspired federalism and provincial independence. However, after its reorganization along Soviet lines, the party aimed to establish a centralized one party state with one ideology - Three Principles of the People. This was even more evident following Sun's elevation into a cult figure after his death. The control by one single party began the period of "political tutelage," whereby the party was to control the government while instructing the people on how to participate in a democratic system. After several military campaigns and with the help of German military advisors (German planned fifth "extermination campaign"), the Communists were forced to withdraw from their bases in southern and central China into the mountains in a massive military retreat known famously as the Long March, an undertaking which would eventually increase their reputation among the peasants. Out of the 86,000 Communist soldiers that broke out of the pocket, only 20,000 would make the 10,000 km march to Shaanxi province. The Kuomintang continued to attack the Communists. This was in line with Chiang's policy of solving internal conflicts (warlords and communists) before fighting external invasions (Japan). However, Zhang Xueliang, who believed that the Japanese invasion constituted the greater prevailing threat, took Chiang hostage during the Xi'an Incident in 1937 and forced Chiang to agree to an alliance with the Communists in the total war against the Japanese. The Second Sino-Japanese War had officially started, and would last until the Japanese surrender in 1945. However in many situations the alliance was in name only; after a brief period of cooperation, the armies began to fight the Japanese separately, rather than as coordinated allies. Conflicts between KMT and communists were still common during the war, and documented claims of Communist attacks upon the KMT forces, and vice versa, abound.

In these incidents, it should be noted that The KMT armies typically utilized more traditional tactics while the Communists chose guerilla tactics, leading to KMT claims that the Communists often refused to support the KMT troops, choosing to withdraw and let the KMT troops take the brunt of Japanese attacks. These same guerilla tactics, honed against the Japanese forces, were used to great success later during open civil war, as well as the Allied forces in the Korean War and the U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.

Full-scale civil war between the Communists and KMT resumed after the defeat of Japan. The Communist armies, previously a minor faction, grew rapidly in influence and power due to several errors on the KMT's part: first, the KMT reduced troop levels precipitously after the Japanese surrender, leaving large numbers of able-bodied, trained fighting men who became unemployed and disgruntled with the KMT as prime recruits for the Communists. Second, the KMT government proved thoroughly unable to manage the economy, allowing hyperinflation to result. Among the most despised and ineffective efforts it undertook to contain inflation was the conversion to the gold standard for the national treasury and the Gold Standard Script (traditional Chinese: 金圓券; pinyin: jīn yuán quàn) in August 1948, outlawing private ownership of gold, silver, and foreign exchange, collecting all such precious metals and foreign exchange from the people and issuing the Gold Standard Script in exchange. The new script became worthless in only ten months and greatly reinforced the nationwide perception of KMT as a corrupt or at best inept entity. Third, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his forces to defend the urbanized cities. This decision gave the Communists a chance to move freely through the countryside. At first, the KMT had the edge with the aid of weapons and ammunition from the United States. However, with the country suffering from hyperinflation, widespread corruption and other economic ills, the KMT continued to lose popular support. At the same time, the suspension of American aid and tens of thousands of deserted or decommissioned soldiers being recruited to the Communist cause tipped the balance of power quickly to the Communist side, and the overwhelming popular support for the Communists in most of the country made it all but impossible for the KMT forces to carry out successful assaults against the Communists. By the end of 1949, the Communists controlled almost all of mainland China, as the KMT retreated to Taiwan with a significant amount of China's national treasures and 2 million people, including military forces and refugees. Some party members stayed in the mainland and broke away from the main KMT to found the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, which still currently exists as one of the eight minor registered parties in the People's Republic of China.

 

[fivestars]

The Kuomintang was founded in Guangdong Province on August 25, 1912 from a collection of several revolutionary groups that had successfully overthrown the Qing Dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution, including the Revolutionary Alliance, as a moderate democratic socialist party. Thus, the party traces its roots to the Revive China Society, which was founded in 1895 and merged with several other anti-monarchist societies as the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905.


Sun Yat-sen [middle] and Chiang Kai-shek [on stage in uniform] at the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924.Sun Yat-sen, who had just stepped down as provisional president of the Republic of China, was chosen as its overall leader under the title of premier (traditional Chinese: 總理; pinyin: zǒnglǐ), and Huang Xing was chosen as Sun's deputy. However, the most influential member of the party was the third ranking Song Jiaoren, who mobilized mass support from gentry and merchants for the KMT in winning the 1912 National Assembly election, on a platform of promoting constitutional parliamentary democracy. Though the party had an overwhelming majority in the first National Assembly, President Yuan Shikai started ignoring the parliamentary body in making presidential decisions, counter to the Constitution, and assassinated its parliamentary leader Song Jiaoren in Shanghai in 1913. Members of the KMT led by Sun Yat-sen staged the Second Revolution in July 1913, a poorly planned and ill-supported armed rising to overthrow Yuan, and failed. Yuan dissolved the KMT in November (whose members had largely fled into exile in Japan) and dismissed the parliament early in 1914. Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor in December 1915.


Chiang Kai-shek, who assumed the leadership of the Kuomintang (KMT) after the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against Yuan Shikai. In order to join the Chinese Revolutionary Party, members must take an oath of personal loyalty to Sun, which many old revolutionaries regarded as undemocratic and contrary to the spirit of the revolution. Thus, many old revolutionaries did not join Sun's new organisation, and he was largely sidelined within the Republican movement during this period. Sun returned to China in 1917 to establish a rival government at Guangzhou, but was soon forced out of office and exiled to Shanghai. There, with renewed support, he resurrected the KMT on October 10, 1919, but under the name of the Chinese Kuomintang, as the old party had simply been called the Kuomintang. In 1920, Sun and the KMT were restored in Guangdong. In 1923, the KMT and its government accepted aid from the Soviet Union after being denied recognition by the western powers. Soviet advisers – the most prominent of whom was Mikhail Borodin, an agent of the Comintern – began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, establishing a Leninist party structure that lasted into the 1990s. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their separate party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties.

Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques, and in 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from the Tongmenghui days, was sent to Moscow for several months' military and political study. At the first party congress in 1924, which included non-KMT delegates such as members of the CCP, they adopted Sun's political theory, which included the Three Principles of the People - nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood.

 

[da dick]

why the hell are you spamming crap about taiwan here? and going off-topic in the same topic you started?!?! nutz. why don't you go cut and paste some rubbish about how you taiwanese spooks liked to suck your jap colonist dick, in the bad olde days? get lost, spook.

 

[fivestars]

The reason of Chinese Singaporean do not like to join NS is because:-

1) Chinese leave China due to Chinese had been force by Military Government to join KMT Military Government to war with China Communist. Yunan, Hockien, TeoChew, KwangTung and Hainam had to serve NS. Many people die in the war.

2) Local born Singaporean Chinese had no conection with British and British only takecare English speaking Chinese. Without understanding Chinese and bias on Chinese as communist, it is main reason riot start.

3) NS is not communist issues. NS is KMT issues that lead by Military Government Chiang Kai Shek. It is no link to Communist Malaya with Chinese Speaking Singaporean. If had also English speaking Singaporean and local politic associte.