Chin Peng

Chin Peng OBE[a]
陳平
Portrait, c. late-1940s.
Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya
In office 6 March 1947 – 2 December 1989
Preceded by	Lai Teck
Succeeded by	None (party dissolved)
Personal details
Born	Ong Boon Hua (1924-10-21)21 October 1924 36 Kampung Koh, Sitiawan, Dindings, Straits Settlements
Died	16 September 2013(2013-09-16) (aged 88) Bumrungrad International Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand
Resting place	Chemor, Perak, Malaysia
Nationality	Malayan
Political party	Communist Party of Malaya
Spouse	Lee Khoon Wah ​ ​ (m. 1945; died 2008)​
Children	2
Parents	Ong Sing Piaw (father) Kuan Kheng Bee (mother)
Signature

Chin Peng^[b] (21 October 1924 – 16 September 2013), born Ong Boon Hua,^[c] OBE^[a] was a Malayan communist politician, guerrilla leader, and revolutionary, who was the leader and commander of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). A Maoist, he led the CPM as secretary general from 1947 until the party's dissolution in 1989.^[3]

Chin was born into a middle-class family in Sitiawan, now a part of Perak. In 1939, at the age of 15, he became a revolutionary and fled to Kuala Lumpur in 1940. He joined the CPM in 1941, and quickly involved himself in local party committees and labour unions in Perak.^[4] Throughout the Second World War, Chin fought as an anti-colonialist guerrilla in the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) against the Japanese occupation of Malaya, allying with Force 136, a British-funded covert resistance movement in Asia. He was subsequently awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

As the most senior surviving member of the CPM to emerge from the war, he founded the MNLA and engaged in a guerrilla war known as the Malayan Emergency against the British Empire and Commonwealth forces between 1948 and 1960, in a failed attempt to establish an independent Marxist–Leninist state in Malaya. His actions led to the revocation of his OBE. After the British–led independence of Malaya and the defeat of the CPM, Chin went into exile in China, then Thailand, and waged a second guerrilla campaign between 1968 and 1989 against the now independent Malaysian government. This campaign did not succeed, and ended with a final peace agreement in 1989, which dissolved the CPM permanently. He was however not permitted to return, and Chin died in exile in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013; he was 88.

Chin is considered one of the most controversial political figures in Malayan history. His detractors condemned him and the MNLA for committing numerous atrocities during the Emergency, and characterised him as an ideological fanatic and terrorist.^[5][6][7][8] However, he was also credited for contributing towards the Malayan independence process, and was seen as a prominent rebel leader and anti-imperialist against colonialism in Malaya.^[9][10][11] He was the last surviving postwar revolutionary leader to have successfully fought for independence from colonialism in Asia.^[12]

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