← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 18043 | Posts: 42 | Started: 2005-05-01
2005-05-01 07:53 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01morris.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th]New York Times[/URL] May 1, 2005 The War We Could Have Won By STEPHEN J. MORRIS Washington
THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war's end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute.
The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers' cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam's leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, "our side," South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular roots. Hence it could never prevail, not even with a half-million American troops, making the war "unwinnable."
This simple explanation is repudiated by powerful historical evidence, both old and new. Its proponents mistakenly base their conclusions on the situation in Vietnam during the 1950's and early 1960's and ignore the changing course of the war (notably, the increasing success of President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization strategy) and the evolution of South Vietnamese society (in particular the introduction of agrarian reforms).
For all the claims of popular support for the Vietcong insurgency, far more South Vietnamese peasants fought on the side of Saigon than on the side of Hanoi. The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972 - at the time the biggest campaign of the war - the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. The South Vietnamese relied on American air support during that offensive.
If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight "a poor man's war."
Even Hanoi's main patron, the Soviet Union, was convinced that a North Vietnamese military victory was highly unlikely. Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support. The former Soviet chargé d'affaires in Hanoi during the 1970's told me in Moscow in late 1993 that if one looked at the balance of forces, one could not predict that the South would be defeated. Until 1975, Moscow was not only impressed by American military power and political will, it also clearly had no desire to go to war with the United States over Vietnam. But after 1975, Soviet fear of the United States dissipated.
During the war the Soviets despised their North Vietnamese "friends" (the term of confidential bureaucratic reference, rather than "comrades"). Indeed, Henry A. Kissinger's accounts of his dealings, as Nixon's national security adviser, with President Thieu are models of respect when compared with the bitter Soviet accounts of their difficulties with their counterparts.
In secret internal reports, Hanoi-based Soviet diplomats regularly complained about the deceitfulness of the North Vietnamese, who concealed strategic planning from their more powerful patron. In a 1972 report to Moscow, the Soviet ambassador even complained that although Marshal Pavel Batitsky, commander of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, had visited Hanoi earlier that year and completed a major military aid agreement, North Vietnamese leaders did not inform him of the imminent launch date of their Easter Offensive.
What is also clear from Soviet archival sources is that those who believed that North Vietnam had more than national unification on its mind were right: Its leaders were imbued with a sense of their ideological mission - not only to unify Vietnam under Communist Party rule, but also to support the victory of Communists in other nations. They saw themselves as the outpost of world revolution in Southeast Asia and desired to help Communists in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and elsewhere.
Soviet archives show that after the war ended in 1975, with American power in retreat, Hanoi used part of its captured American arsenal to support Communist revolutions around the world. In 1980 some of these weapons were shipped via Cuba to El Salvador. This dimension of Vietnamese behavior derived from a deep commitment to the messianic internationalism of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Vietnam today is not the North Vietnam of 1955, 1965 or 1975. Like post-Mao China it has retreated from totalitarianism to authoritarianism. It has reformed its economy and its foreign policy to become more integrated into the world. But those changes were not inevitable and would not necessarily have occurred had Mikhail Gorbachev not ascended to power in Moscow, and had the Soviet Union and its empire not collapsed. Nor would these changes necessarily have occurred had China not provided a new cultural model for Vietnam to follow, as it has for centuries.
Precisely because Vietnam has changed for the better, we need to recognize what a profoundly ideological and aggressive totalitarian regime we faced three, four and five decades ago. And out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970's and why.
In 1974-75, the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Hundreds of thousands of our Vietnamese allies were incarcerated, and more than a million driven into exile. The awesome image of the United States was diminished, and its enemies were thereby emboldened, drawing the United States into new conflicts by proxy in Afghanistan, Africa and Latin America. And the bitterness of so many American war veterans, who saw their sacrifices so casually demeaned and unnecessarily squandered, haunts American society and political life to this day.
Stephen J. Morris, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is writing a book on the Vietnam War in the Nixon years.
2005-05-01 10:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]What is also clear from Soviet archival sources is that those who believed that North Vietnam had more than national unification on its mind were right: Its leaders were imbued with a sense of their ideological mission - not only to unify Vietnam under Communist Party rule, but also to support the victory of Communists in other nations. They saw themselves as the outpost of world revolution in Southeast Asia and desired to help Communists in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and elsewhere.[/QUOTE] How does this square with the fact that Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the (Maoist) Khmer Rouge, and then later fought a border war with China?
Also, when occupying Cambodia they erected a border along the Thai/Cambodian border (conscripting Cambodian forced labour) in order to keep out insurgent forces travelling in the opposite direction. Is there any evidence that Vietnam gave assistance to Communists in Thailand?
2005-05-01 12:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]How does this square with the fact that Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the (Maoist) Khmer Rouge, and then later fought a border war with China?
Also, when occupying Cambodia they erected a border along the Thai/Cambodian border (conscripting Cambodian forced labour) in order to keep out insurgent forces travelling in the opposite direction. Is there any evidence that Vietnam gave assistance to Communists in Thailand?[/QUOTE]
Indeed. The author makes some interesting arguments, but ultimately they're unsatisfying.
The author leaves out the obvious ethnic hatreds that fueled the passions of the entire region. Take as just one example the role of the Overseas Chinese. Sukarno in Indonesia faced a "communist" insurgency that was all about advancing Overseas Chinese interests. The same problem with the Overseas Chinese was a big part of the instability in Thailand and (I think to a lesser degree) in the Phillipines. Most importantly, the "communist" unrest in Malaysia was related directly to the Malay-Chinese conflict that led, mercifully, to the independence of an Overseas Chinese Singapore.
I should add that it was precisely the establishment of a home base for the Overseas Chinese in Singapore - a sort of Israel for the Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia - that was the crucial factor in ending the crisis, IMHO. Suddenly the Overseas Chinese saw another effective means of group self defense that didn't necessite kissing up to the Red Emperor of Beijing and all that entailed. Besides, the Overseas Chinese are ethnically distinct for those Northerners, being mostly from Fujian province and southern places like that. But the great Harry Lee (aka Lee Kwan Yew) gave them another outlet for their energies. With a secured homeland, the Overseas Chinese saw little further to gain from trying to subvert the other countries of the region, and so they removed the funding and suppport of those movements. It was the independence of Singapore as a viable Overseas Chinese state that removed all the fuel from the "communist" fires of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
And it's not like the freeking Overseas Chinese don't bloody know this. Oh, they know. I swear that those people are scarier than the Jews.
How in the world is it that nobody ever talks about that????
And note well that just as soon as the Vietnamese had rid themselves of the French and American imperialists, the FIRST THHING THEY DID was to turn on their own Chinese population, that provoked the "communist" PRC into attacking the northern border areas to secure ethnic Chinese interests.
And I'm not saying that the Chinese were even half the story. The American and French imperialists fought with the Montanards, the aboriginal peoples of Southeast Asia who were displaced centuries before by the invading Viets from what is now southern China. If it was all about ideology, then why did we find such willing allies in the Montanards?
The Cambodians and Laotians have their own historical-ethnic bones to pick with the Vietnamese, and the Chinese.
The author simply IGNORES all that. Why can't he see that communist ideology was merely a universalist mask - an ideological banner - for the expression of the most vulgar ethnic interests????
It's just amazing.
And frankly it really drives me nuts.
I have an advanced degree in Russian studies, and never once in all the years at university did I hear a professor even suggest that Bolshevism had more to do with Maimonides than with Marx. I mean, what level of willful self delusion is required to blink out of existence the fact that the entire Bolshevik leadership was Jewish, with a few exceptions, most of which were other national minorities? You have to be pretty damned smart to go through your whole life studying a subject and never confront the obvious fact that ideology merely comoflauged deep Darwinian hatreds, spinning yourself one line of delusional bullshit after the next to keep your mind form apprehending the obvious.
But I digress.
Despite the complete contempt I have for Marxism as a religion, and as much admiration that I have for the brave American soldiers who served there, I am compelled to admit that America was a rapacious imperial agressor and that the Vietnamese communists were great patriots who defended their native soil with a persevering courage unsurpassed in the 20th century. These were men and women who endured more punishment from the Empire than we can even imagine. I suggested that Ygg include in his classics list the film The Tunnels of Cu Chi, as an example of the sacrifice national survival sometimes requires, but he hasn't taken up that suggestion.
Anyway, I say Death to the Empire and Long live free Vietnam.
End of rant!!
2005-05-01 13:12 | User Profile
Walter,
Interesting comments about Singapore. I'd never thought of it like that before but now that you mention it, it makes a whole lot of sense.
I have to say I'm pretty amazed that someone who is "a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is writing a book on the Vietnam War in the Nixon years" could be ignorant of the role that ethnicity and race plays in Asian politics. Anyone who's talked politics with an Asian for 5 minutes knows all about how the Japanese are hated by the Koreans and the Chinese, who are hated by the Vietnamese, who have a history of inter-ethnic strife with the Khmer... and so on.
It's funny how umbrella-ideologies like Communism inevitably fracture into schisms that seem to almost perfectly align with ethnic divisions. So someone who is studying (for example) the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia can dismiss it as a purely ideological rift between Maoist agrarian peasant reformers and Marxist-Leninist (or whatever the hell the Vietnamese were) communists, and just gloss over the ethnic aspect altogether.
2005-05-01 14:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]It's funny how umbrella-ideologies like Communism inevitably fracture into schisms that seem to almost perfectly align with ethnic divisions. So someone who is studying (for example) the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia can dismiss it as a purely ideological rift between Maoist agrarian peasant reformers and Marxist-Leninist (or whatever the hell the Vietnamese were) communists, and just gloss over the ethnic aspect altogether.[/QUOTE]
Exactly. I mean, what exactly does he make of the fact that the internationalist-communist Vietnamese who were as he surmises primarily interested in leading a prooletarian revolution in Southeast Asia turned on their own Overseas Chinese as a first order of business, and that "communist" China waged war on them for that action? Or the fact that these good "anti-racists" mercilessly persecuted the mixed race children of American GIs?
But don't get me started. Orwell has a name for this: doublethink. The author of this article is a master practitioner.
I've worked for a few Overseas Chinese. They are a rich, rich, rich group. And unlike the Yids they're totally NOT into ostentation. No showing off, at least not among the older generation. Showing off your wealth only attracts the attention of the British imperialists and the poor Malay bumi putras ("sons of the soil").
Hey, I'm not exagerrating. Those folks run that entire part of the world. I forget exactly, the the Overseas Chinese are a small part of the Phillipino population but they control a majority (I think even a large majority) of the Phillipines economy. Now, regardless of the comparative talents and work ethics of the Overseas Chinese and the Philippinos, that sort of thing is bound to lead to ethnic conflict.
Another part of the world where our "intellectuals" with their cookie-cutter credentials roundly ignore the obvious ethnic nature of the conflict is Latin America. The "communist" movements in El Salvador had a lot more to do with Cortez than they did with Trotsky.
2005-05-01 15:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]I've worked for a few Overseas Chinese. They are a rich, rich, rich group. And unlike the Yids they're totally NOT into ostentation. No showing off, at least not among the older generation. Showing off your wealth only attracts the attention of the British imperialists and the poor Malay bumi putras ("sons of the soil"). [/QUOTE] Me likewise. My old boss from a previous job was an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who arrived in Australia as a boat person at the age of 5 with nothing but the shirt on his back and now... well, did I mention that he was my boss? :lol:
One time he was telling me about how his family had to flee and he mentioned how rich his family was back there. They owned several factories and employeed several hundred Vietnamese. He said that before he left his father had buried a whole lot of gold bars on a plot of family land, so that one day they'll be able to go back and reclaim part of their lost fortune. If not this generation, then the next...
[QUOTE]Hey, I'm not exagerrating. Those folks run that entire part of the world. I forget exactly, the the Overseas Chinese are a small part of the Phillipino population but they control a majority (I think even a large majority) of the Phillipines economy. Now, regardless of the comparative talents and work ethics of the Overseas Chinese and the Philippinos, that sort of thing is bound to lead to ethnic conflict.[/QUOTE]
There were a few pogroms against Overseas Chinese in Indonesia and (I think) Malaysia during the "Asian Economic Crisis" a few years ago. When I say "pogroms" I mean rapes, murders, lynch mobs, heads on poles paraded through the streets etc. Really gruesome stuff. It received very little attention in Western media that I know of, but you can bet that Chinese state television covered every gruesome detail.
[QUOTE]Another part of the world where our "intellectuals" with their cookie-cutter credentials roundly ignore the obvious ethnic nature of the conflict is Latin America. The "communist" movements in El Salvador had a lot more to do with Cortez than they did with Trotsky.[/QUOTE]
Very interesting. I read a while ago about the persecution/ attempted genocide of the Miskito Indians by the Sandanistas in Nicaragua and it being kind of similar to what's happening to the Montagnards in Laos, however it was part of a pro-Reagan puff piece about why the contras were the good guys, so I took it with a pinch of salt. I'm pretty ignorant about Central/South America. Did you see "Motorcycle Diaries"? There was a scene where Jesus-wannabe Ché Guevara is preaching to the inmates of a leper colony and he launches into a racial bit about "our great mestizo race". It totally blindsided me, but I should have known that's part of what the cult-of-Ché is all about.
2005-05-01 15:53 | User Profile
I am only answering to the heading of this new thread and my answer is.......
No way Jose, you can beat the army of a country but if you don't have the "peoples army" or the will of the people then all you can do is to keep them as slaves and you will never conquer them, just like the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and the US to the Iraqis.
The US is in danger, in danger of becoming a third world country by loosing everything that took us two hundred years to obtain including our freedom and as long as we obey the orders of the Neocons that's the road that we will be on.
Where once we were a diamond now we are becoming a piece coal and maybe that's good because someday with the preassure of the American people we will be a damond once again.
2005-05-01 17:11 | User Profile
My take on Vietnam was that the leaders of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong were real Communists, but that their followers were Nationalists of a kind.
2005-05-05 12:57 | User Profile
Here's a thing I googled up from the Indonesian Communist Party at the time the Indonesian military was slaughtering the commies by the tens of thousands in the mid-1960s.
Note well the main concern of the author even as these events were unfolding.
[QUOTE]From: People of Indonesia, Unite and Fight to Overthrow the Fascist Regime - Editorial of Hongqi (Red Flag), No.11, 1967 - After staging the counter-revolutionary 1965 coup d'etat, the Suharto-Nasution Right-wing military clique, faithful lackey of U.S. imperialism and anti-communist ally of Soviet revisionism, established a fascist dictatorship of unprecedented ruthlessness in Indonesia. For the past year or more, it has followed an out-and-out traitorous, dictatorial, anti-communist, anti-China and anti- popular counter-revolutionary policy.
It has imposed a white terror in Indonesia on an unprecedented scale, slaughtered several hundred thousand Communists and revolutionary people and thrown into prison another several hundred thousand fine sons and daughters of the Indonesian people. All Indonesia has been turned into one vast hell. By engaging in bloody suppression, it attempts in vain to wipe out the Indonesian Communist Party and stamp out the Indonesian revolution.
[B]This clique cherishes an inveterate hatred for socialist China, which resolutely supports the revolutionary struggle of the Indonesian people. [U]It has repeatedly carried out serious provocations against the Chinese people, whipped up anti-China, anti-Chinese campaigns and practised inhuman racist persecution against overseas Chinese.[/U] It has vainly tried to sabotage the traditional friendship between the Chinese people and the overseas Chinese in Indonesia on the one hand and the Indonesian people on the other, and to prevent the Chinese people from supporting the Indonesian people's revolution.[/B]
In the final analysis, the many kinds of persecution against the Indonesian Communist Party and the Indonesian people by the Suharto-Nasution Right-wing military clique will only serve to hasten the arrival of the upsurge in the Indonesian revolution and speed its own doom. The heroic Indonesian Communists and people can neither be cowed, suppressed, nor wiped out. The determination of the Indonesian people to make revolution is unshakable, so is the Chinese people's determination to support their revolution. No reactionary force on earth can obstruct this. At present, the Indonesian Communists and revolutionary people are regrouping their forces for a new battle. The August 17, 1966 Statement of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Indonesian Communist Party and the Self-Criticism it endorsed in September, which were published by the magazine Indonesian Tribune not long ago, are a call to the Indonesian Communists and the Indonesian working class, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and all anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary forces to unite and engage in a new struggle.
The two documents of the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party are a telling blow at U.S. imperialism and its flunkeys, the Suharto-Nasution fascist military dictatorial regime, and the revisionist leading clique of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and a tremendous encouragement to the revolutionary people of Indonesia.
In these two documents, the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party sums up the experience and lessons of the Party in leading the Indonesian people's revolutionary struggle, criticizes the Right opportunist errors committed by the leadership of the Party in the past, points out the road for the Indonesian revolution, and lays down the principles for future struggle. [/QUOTE]
2005-05-05 13:12 | User Profile
[URL=http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=library.document&id=952]Here's a blurb [/URL] about Burma around the same time.
See a pattern emerging?
[QUOTE]A few months later, U Nu again raised the issue of anti-government activities during his visit to China. Mao told him explicitly that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence included noninterference in each other's internal affairs. Internal disputes within a country, Mao continued, should be dealt with by that country alone, and other countries should neither intervene nor exploit those disputes. A government chosen by its own people should be recognized by other countries.
Burma had recognized the PRC, and China had recognized U Nu's government. Because China and Burma shared a long border, it was very possible that opponents of government would cross the border in both directions. China would neither use Burmese dissidents on its territory to harm the interests of the Burmese government nor launch a military invasion against Burma. China would not instigate anti-government activities within Burma.
[B]As to the [U]radical elements among overseas Chinese in Burma[/U], Mao pledged, China would advise them to stay away from the internal affairs of Burma, to abide by the laws of Burma, and to make no contact with the political parties that used violence against the government. Communist organizations among the overseas Chinese had been disbanded. Regarding the Burmese Communist Party, Mao asked U Nu to open informal negotiations with them. If the negotiations could reach an agreement, Mao said, it would be an ideal situation.[/B][/QUOTE]
2005-05-05 13:18 | User Profile
This book sounds interesting. It compares the Jews and Overseas Chinese. It apparently makes the specific connection between their respective ethnic interests and the "communist" insurgencies they led.
[QUOTE]Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe Edited by Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid. Seattle: U Washington P, 1997. 335 pp.
"Tension between Chinese and non-Chinese throughout Southeast Asia is less problematic today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s," writes Daniel Chirot in the introduction to this volume. However, he also asks, "is the fact that the Chinese have been disproportionately more enriched by the boom than other communities going to make them a more obvious target of resentment" in an economic downturn? An intriguing question, and all the more so in light of the recent drop in growth rates across Southeast Asia.
The chapters of Essential Outsiders unfold against the background of the anti-Semitic atrocities of World War II. The Holocaust had become a "rational evil" for Central Europeans, in the words of Steven Beller, because the wealth derived from their aptitude for commerce made native populations jealous and frustrated by secretive collaboration with domestic elites. But the contributors also show that anti-Semitism developed very quickly at the end of the 19th century, and attribute this to antiliberal nationalism on which the societies had been founded. In times of upheaval, such as the rapid modernization that Europe underwent 100 years ago and Southeast Asia is still undergoing today, the societies founded on such ideologies will become less tolerant.
This distinction of national character is revealed in the treatment of immigrant Chinese in Southeast Asia. In countries that must accommodate many ethnic groups, such as Indonesia, the founding ideology of "civic" nationalism often can allow for Chinese assimilation into the elite, but in Malaysia, which emerged from colonialism only to fight a bitter war against an ethnic-Chinese-led communist insurgency, "blood" nationalism (with one "definitive people," the Malays, in the phrase used by Prime Minister Mahathir) predominates.
Although democracy means the Muslim Malay ruling elite must find ways of compromise with the Chinese (who make up fully one-third of the population), ethnic quotas set since the early 1970s are nonetheless intended to create a Malay middle class and gradually exclude dominant Chinese industrialists. While communities of overseas Chinese had been living in Southeast Asia for centuries, there came a peak inflow of 300,000 per year at the end of the 19th century. Chinese were eventually able to come to terms with Thai rulers, as well as with Filipino society, but have faced anti-Sinitic riots in Malaysia (1969) and Indonesia (as recently as 1984) and expulsion from Vietnam as boat people in 1978-79.
The present crisis has raised ethnic tensions (Malaysia is attempting to deport the mostly Indonesian immigrant labor force), but for business leaders, including ethnic Chinese, it has so far had much more important impact on operating style. For instance, The New York Times recently described the fall of one of Thailand's 15 banks (12 of which are Chinese family run), Nakornthon, under pressure of IMF-bailout conditions to open the banking industry. [/QUOTE]
2005-05-05 13:23 | User Profile
I wish I had time to look into this further. There's really little doubt that the "communist" insurgencies that were the ideological bugaboo of contimptible mediocrities like Robert McNamara were really just run-of-the-mill ethnic conflicts that ended in mass slaughter.
Why do our historians resist this?
Disraeli was right. The whole thing is at bottom one human group fighting another for resources and survival.
2005-05-05 17:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]How does this square with the fact that Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the (Maoist) Khmer Rouge, and then later fought a border war with China?
Also, when occupying Cambodia they erected a border along the Thai/Cambodian border (conscripting Cambodian forced labour) in order to keep out insurgent forces travelling in the opposite direction. Is there any evidence that Vietnam gave assistance to Communists in Thailand?[/QUOTE]The Vietnamese displaced the Chams, Khmers and Montagnards in their drive into the Saigon and Mekong River delta. Vietnam had long been in Cambodia before Nixon ordered the American army to invade in 1970, an act that should have occured a minimum of 3 years before. Vietnam went into Cambodia post-1975 victory because ethnic Vietnamese were being persecuted and killed by the Khmer. That part of Cambodia formed by the Mekong backing up could be some of the world's most abundant farmland. When circumstances dictate, Vietnam once again will invade.
China imposed its will on Vietnam though the Vietnamese won the body count war. Historically the Chinese long have had differences with their southern neighbor.
2005-05-05 17:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] I suggested that Ygg include in his classics list the film [B][I]The Tunnels of Cu Chi[/I][/B], as an example of the sacrifice national survival sometimes requires, but he hasn't taken up that suggestion.
Anyway, I say Death to the Empire and Long live free Vietnam.
End of rant!![/QUOTE][B][I]The Tunnels of Cu Chi[/I][/B] is greatly myth. Some Vietnamese did live there, but they were damned few. The Vietnamese were, and are not, above inflating aspects of that war.
2005-05-05 17:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]I should add that it was precisely the establishment of a home base for the Overseas Chinese in Singapore - a sort of Israel for the Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia - that was the crucial factor in ending the crisis, IMHO. Suddenly the Overseas Chinese saw another effective means of group self defense that didn't necessite kissing up to the Red Emperor of Beijing and all that entailed. Besides, the Overseas Chinese are ethnically distinct for those Northerners, being mostly from Fujian province and southern places like that. But the great Harry Lee (aka Lee Kwan Yew) gave them another outlet for their energies. With a secured homeland, the Overseas Chinese saw little further to gain from trying to subvert the other countries of the region, and so they removed the funding and suppport of those movements. It was the independence of Singapore as a viable Overseas Chinese state that removed all the fuel from the "communist" fires of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.[/QUOTE]I am not alone in my admiration for Lee Kuan Yew. From my book: [QUOTE]Not surprisingly those Americans who protested most against the flogging of an American student caught vandalizing cars with spray paint in Singapore were those who bore little responsibility for public order. The formidable Mr. Lee explained the difference between East and West in an interview aired by Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. In the West society was thought to serve the individual's interests with every individual allowed to do what he wants. In the East society's interests - or group interests - not the individual's are emphasized. Mr. Lee assessed the protest coming from the United States as representing a country where punishment or restraint was not inflicted on individuals, and this failure to impose limits on individuals was responsible for the chaos in the United States. Mr. Lee speaking in Mandarin cited drugs, violence and other social ills of the United States, and thoughtlessly added the American society may be the richest and most prosperous in the world, but "it is hardly safe and peaceful".[1]
[COLOR=Red]The redoubtable Mr. Lee of Singapore within one generation had transformed an outpost of British imperialism into the greatest and most modern city-state in the world. Singapore had been severed from Malaysia because Chinese preponderance in Singapore was not thought conducive to racial harmony by the native Malays. This economic miracle was accomplished by Mr. Lee's abandonment of his long cherished socialist ideals. Then he relied on the native Chinese capacity for hard work and brainpower. What should be remembered about Mr. Lee was that a man born in prewar Saigon, schooled in England where he won a coveted double first at Oxford and a man who did not speak educated Chinese until he had passed the age of 21[/COLOR],[2] had been able to achieve the most conspicuous modern economic success with no governmental aid from the United States and no advice from American think tanks. For this achievement the American establishment has yet to forgive him. His country rather than Israel has become the preferred model for development for Asian countries. For this accomplishment the New York [I]Times[/I] will not forgive him. One of the most galling suggestions made concerning Mr. Lee was made by William Safire, the reluctant concession by the New York [I]Times[/I] to what it regarded as conservatism. Mr. Safire wrote a fitting punishment for the Singapore of Mr. Lee would be a United States' refusal to help if the Malays decided to attack and reclaim Singapore for their own.[3] This did seem excessive even for a spiteful New York Jew. Perhaps what galled Mr. Safire was the refusal of Singapore to release the young miscreant who vandalized cars to a kibbutz in Israel so that he might be reeducated in a manner befitting a Jew.[4]
2005-05-05 21:51 | User Profile
Excellent thread, gentlemen.
2005-05-06 05:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]How does this square with the fact that Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the (Maoist) Khmer Rouge, and then later fought a border war with China?[/QUOTE]
As EG pointed out above, the Khmer Rouge began to slaughter ethnic Vietnamese along with any ethnic Cambodians who appeared subject to foreign influences, and the North Vietnamese Army went in and put a stop to Pol Pot's killing fields. And thank a Merciful God for that.
So the deep ethnic hatreds that fueled the conflict are clear.
By the way, who were those darned "[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people]boat people[/URL]" in the late 1970s?
[QUOTE]In 1979, Vietnam was at war with China, and many ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam felt that the government's policies directly targetted them also became boat people.[/QUOTE] The question is how does the author square all of these facts with his insistence that the conflict was all about ideology.
Such studied ignorance.
EG: On the greatness of Lee Kwan Yew, I think the world still hasn't fully comprehended the man's greatness. Forget your Suns, Chiangs, Maos, and Dengs. Harry Lee was the man who illuminated the path forward for all of China. Shanghai with its gleaming office towers is consciously a clone of Singapore. The future greatness of China - and the future economic and military might of is assured - is the beloved child of Lee Kwan Yew. God help us all.
2005-05-06 06:23 | User Profile
Lee Kwan Yew's racial views:
[url]http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Human%20Rights/barr2.html[/url]
[QUOTE]Racism is rarely far from the surface of Asian societies, and this is especially true of those multiracial societies that feel the need to promote racial tolerance as part of official ideology. Yet even in these cases, promoting racial tolerance does not necessarily imply the promotion of racial indifference. Singapore's multiracialism, for instance, encourages a high consciousness of one's race even as it insists on tolerance. Further, it has been considered by many as a covert form of discrimination in favour of the majority Chinese and against the minorities, especially the Malays. This article is an attempt to advance our understanding of Singapore's idiosyncratic version of multiracialism by casting new light on the thinking of its primary architect, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.[/QUOTE]
2005-05-06 09:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]Lee Kwan Yew's racial views:
[url]http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Human%20Rights/barr2.html[/url][/QUOTE]
Great stuff.
If you've ever been to Singapore (I have) you'll notice that everybody's welcome to come and try to make money so long as you don't question that Singapore is the Overseas Chinese state and that the main business of the Overseas Chinese is BUSINESS.
Work hard, take risks, trade, make money. For Heaven's sake keep your contractual obligations. But enjoy the nightlife, even if it is a tad tame by former standards. And try to enjoy the sun (it does get awfully muggy though). You're more than welcome to try to make it in Harry Lee's town and have some fun while doing it!
But don't even think about trying to change the place politically. They'd have you arrested and sentenced to life in prison. They'll kill you - I mean taken out and shot - if they catch you with illegal drugs. They'll have a martial arts expert CANE YOUR ASS RAW if you vandalize property. And they'll fine you if you chew gum (seriously, Harry Lee doesn't like used chewing gum on his sidewalks - just doesn't put up with it).
Lew Kwan Yew says "just work hard, take risks, make lots of money, consume to your heart's content and STFU!"
It wouldn't work for most white, Christian Americans, but it's tailor made for the Confucian Chinese.
I say more power to them.
2005-05-06 12:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]If you've ever been to Singapore (I have) you'll notice that everybody's welcome to come and try to make money so long as you don't question that Singapore is the Overseas Chinese state and that the main business of the Overseas Chinese is BUSINESS.[/QUOTE]The jewel of SE Asia. On way in from AP big sign: death penalty for drug dealers. Plenty of expat Brits still there, sipping on their Singapore slings at Raffles. Have no idea how much money they're making, maybe just scared to return to London with its violent dark immigrants.
2005-05-23 04:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis][url="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01morris.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th"]New York Times[/url] May 1, 2005 The War We Could Have Won By STEPHEN J. MORRIS Washington.[/QUOTE] A couple of questions: is Morris' schtick that he has uncovered a whole bunch of new material from declassified NSC documents and Russian sources? If not, what can he add to the already massive body of serious work on this war?
The spin on that short article misses, I think, the significant point of will. Ho and his gang, for all that they bled, were fighting for everything, their desire to run their country. (For better and worse.) At the Paris Peace table, I would offer that Ho's people sensed a weakness of American will. I find it odd to assert that our will would have been greater in 1975 than in 1972, given that Nixon ran on "get out of Viet Nam" twice. Even LBJ had made overtures to Ho before he'd thrown up his hands and commented "you can't work with that guy." (From Harry Summers' book, IIRC)
Which was precisely the point, I think, that for an important mass of Viet Namese from the North it was an all or nothing game. If the author just brushes past the issue of Dau Tranh and will, I wonder if his book will be worth reading. Now, if he has scads of new stuff from Russian and declassified sources that sheds light not previously seen, OK, might be worth a look. From the library.
2005-05-23 05:09 | User Profile
When "the greatest military in the world" can't take down a bunch of rice-eating Reds on bicycles, the world's in trouble.
2005-05-23 06:06 | User Profile
Before you can have their bodies you must have their minds.
The US keeps on trying to fight the world according to the American rules and that's no longer valid.
You can send a whole army on elephants to destroy the enemy but all the enemy needs is a mouse to run betweent the leggs of the elephans and they will go crazy.
Like the Chinese general said " most wars are won and lost even before they are fought".
2005-05-23 08:12 | User Profile
The Wars in Korea And Vietnam were planned at the end of WWII.
L. Fletcher Prouty, an Air Force Colonel, was a frequent guest on Tom Valentine's show "Radio Free America". He exposed many of the "secrets" that the global plutocrats would rather stay burried.
He was also one of the persons on whom the character "Colonel X" in Oliver Stone's movie "JFK" was based.
His book "The Secret Team" details many of the misdeads of "our" intelligence agencies in the WWII - Post Vietnam War era.
[url]http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=508765088[/url]
2005-05-23 13:27 | User Profile
One of the better classes I ever took in college was "American Involvement in Vietnam: 1945-1975" (I got an A-). The conclusions I reached at time I took that course (1991), were nearly indentical to those in the article Walter posted, as it happens.
2005-05-23 16:54 | User Profile
On the topic of the role of the Overseas Chinese in the terrible troubles in Southeast Asia of forty years ago, here are a few quotes from a wonderful and engaging book called "Lords of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese" by Sterling Seagrave. [QUOTE] pg. 251 "For social as well as economic reasons, most Chinese clustered in thriving commercial centres of Penang and Kuala Lumpur, which meant that they outnumbered the Malays in these two most important locations. Selangor state, the site of the federal capital, Kuala Lumpur, was rich in tin deposits. In the late nintheenth century, Chinese tin miners had arrived and fought a six-year civil war over who could control Selangorââ¬â¢s tin deposits. On one side was the Ghee Hin kongsi, mostly Hokkien. Fighting them was the Hai San kongsi, primarily Hakka. Eventually, the Hokkien group and its Malay allies won. This established Hokkien Chinese firmly on top of the Malay Peninsula and in the capital region.
The Hakka did not get their revenge until a century later.
Furtive, sometimes bloody struggles between rival Chinese groups became part of life in Malaysia thereafter. In the richest market, Singapore, Hokkien had to share tax farming with the Teochiu, squeezing out Cantonese and Hakka altogether. In Perak state, in the north, tin mining was ruled jointly by rival Hokkien and Hakka groups. Never were their quarrels over politics, just over money.
Politics only came into it briefly in the 130s when KMT agents from Nanking tried to take over Malayaââ¬â¢s Chinese guilds and associations. The KMT was so notoriously corrupt that [U]even anti-communist Chinese[/U] resisted their embrace. During the Japanese occupation, the [U]Communist Party of Malaya[/U] (MPC) was the only established resistance. [U]Many in its ranks were frustrated Hakka[/U], whose ambitions in life had been blocked by Hokkien domination of the economy. British secret agents joined in guerilla operations with the MPC. [U]The Japanese fought back by cultivating latent anti-Chinese sentiments among rural Malays,[/U] which after the war helped to polarize ethnic hatreds. The Malays resented Chinese war profiteering, Chinese guerilla atrocities, and the ability of wealthy Chinese to buy their way out of Japanese forced labour battalions.
At the warââ¬â¢s end, Chinese in the MPC tried to use constitutional means to oppose the restoration of British rule, supported by a coalition of left-wing and liberal groups. [U]So, even before the Cold War began, communism and the Chinese became linked in Malay minds.[/U][/QUOTE]
2005-05-24 09:15 | User Profile
Here's an excerpt from Lords of the Rim on Thailand. It sounds eerily similar to how our own experiment with multiculturalism is shaping up.
[QUOTE]pg. 190 With its economy, throne and nobility largely in Chinese hands, Siam effectively became (after Cosinaââ¬â¢s Taiwan) the worldââ¬â¢s second Overseas Chinese state ââ¬â if a strangler fig can be considered a proper tree. Then Westerners interfered.
Rama IV and his son fended the West off with concession sof trade and territory. Parts of the Malay Peninsula and the Shan States were relinquished to Britain, and the French were given Laos and Cambodia. In 1896, the French and British generously agreed to keep the remainder of Saim as a buffer between them.
Western treaties were imposed that pre-empted many Chinese enterprises. Chinese were left with only the domestic rice monopoly, opium and the rackets to compensate for their losses, the throne enlarged the racket franchises, for gambling, brothels and alcohol. The Chinese best equipped to get these were underworld syndicates.
The Coolie Boom in the last decades of the nineteenth century altered the delicate balance and made the Saimese nervous. For the first time, large numbers of women arrived, so fewer Chinese would be assimilated by intermarriage. A Chinese national identity began to emerge with the construction of the first community-wide organization, Tian-hua Hospital, followed by a Chinese chamber of commerce, guilds, newspapers and schools where children were removed from Saimese culture and taught Chinese curriculum in dialects.
The government felt threatened. Overseas Chinese were outlaws, unrecognized by any Chinese imperial government, and without any sense of themselves as national. But now they were being husteled by republican fund-raisers to see themselves and Chinese rather than as Teochiu or Hokkien. In 1909, the Manchu government declared that all persons born of Chinese fathers were Chinese nationals, no matter where they had been born of lived. After six hundred years of cohabitation, the Overseas Chinese in Siam were becoming subversive.
In 1910, when Rama VI ascended the throne at the age of 29, the ancient collusion broke down. An Anglophile educated at Cambridge and trained by the British army, he was estranged from the traditional system. When he commanded courtiers with Chinese blood to move to one side of the throne room, 90 percent of the courtiers did. It was obvious that the Chinese did not only control the economy, but the inner circles of the royal court. The young kind could either get into bed with the Chinese, as had his royal ancestors, or he could break with tradition and see where that got him. To attack such a fixed arrangement was ver brave, very foolish ââ¬â or both. The king made no effort to disguise his antagonism. He was going to level the playing field. But this was not a playing field.
It was a particular sore point that the Chinese had always paid a lower head-tax than the poorest Siamese. When Rama VI decreed that henceforth all residents would pay the same tax, triads rioted in the streets, the bloody violence convincing the king that the Chinese were a malevolent force.
After brooding on the matter, the king published in the Siamese press a bitter indictment titles ââ¬ÅJews of the East.ââ¬Â The greatest similarity between Chinese and Jews, he said, was their racism. No matter where thy lived, Chinese remained loyal only to their own kind, and only so long as it suited their selfish interests, driven by greed. Their sole purposes was to amass as much money as possible, and the leave. They felt no obligation. They expected every privilege and evaded every responsibility. To them all non-Chinese were barbarians to be robbed, cheated and exploited. He mentioned the bogus insurance companies run by Chinese, and the creative bankruptcies they engineered to fob off debts while protecting their personal wealth. He said they sucked money out of Saim and other Asian countries and remitted it ot the families in China, not out of charity but to salt it away. One day, he concluded, there would be a reaction against them everywhere.[/QUOTE]
2005-05-24 16:40 | User Profile
Excellent posts by Walter Yannis. I will be reading Seagrave's book. Of course, the world, most notably the West, has yet to recognize the immense consequences from China's renascence.
2005-05-25 00:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe]One of the better classes I ever took in college was "American Involvement in Vietnam: 1945-1975" (I got an A-). The conclusions I reached at time I took that course (1991), were nearly indentical to those in the article Walter posted, as it happens.[/QUOTE] Been studying this on and off since college in the late 70's. By 1972, the will to win in Washington was lacking, though a lot of means were still available. The means to turn many setbacks around were cast away, for example the Marine Combined Action Platoon counter insurgency program. It is not insignificant that when America stopped mucking about and got serious, the Christmas Bombings for example, things happened on the political level rather quickly. So, maybe you are right.
I find it hard to believe that the Vietnamization process would succeed in the long run because: Ho was better organized, he had guaranteed support from his big friends, and there was significant weakness in the South's leadership, not to mention a lack of support among many the regular Dats and Thieus.
2005-05-25 00:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE]And I'm not saying that the Chinese were even half the story. The American and French imperialists fought with the Montanards, the aboriginal peoples of Southeast Asia who were displaced centuries before by the invading Viets from what is now southern China. If it was all about ideology, then why did we find such willing allies in the Montanards?
The Cambodians and Laotians have their own historical-ethnic bones to pick with the Vietnamese, and the Chinese.
The author simply IGNORES all that. Why can't he see that communist ideology was merely a universalist mask - an ideological banner - for the expression of the most vulgar ethnic interests????[/QUOTE]Suggested reading beyond "Lords of the Rim"?
2005-05-25 06:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]Suggested reading beyond "Lords of the Rim"?[/QUOTE]
I have no suggestions for further reading, and I am open to anybody else's suggestions.
I wish to emphasize that I really don't know much about this. It's just that years of practicing law have trained my nose to smell the issue everybody's trying to avoid at a thousand yards. And the role of the OC in the larger crisis is CERTAINLY one of those issues.
Seagrave at least raises the question, much to his credit, although he seems to cop out and blame it all on mindless racism, as if the Malay's dislike of how th the OC ruled their entire economy for their own benefit was somehow irrational.
I'll try to find and type/post here the passage in Lords of the Rim about how the Overseas Chinese in Burma were leading the Communist insurrection there, and how Mao met with the Burmese military junta leaders and promised (in exchange form something) to tell the OC to STAND DOWN.
I mean, helloooo? Anybody home? The Vietnam War was part of this larger Southeast Asian crisis, in which the OC were implicated up to their gills.
It's the role of the OC in Vietnam and Cambodia that have me somewhat baffled.
I suspect that the role of the OC was reversed in Vietnam and Cambodia - places ruled by the French - in relation to places like Malaysia and Burma, which were ruled by the Brits.
In Malaysia and Burma and Indonesia (which was Dutch until WWII and then again shortly thereafter), the OC lead Communist insurrections, and wealthy OC financed them. This much is clear The guerilla leaders appeared to be OC sub-ethnic clans that had lost prior power struggles within the larger OC community, and the financiers seemed to be the wealthy of those same clans or other OC clans with their own larger agendas.
In contrast, in Vietnam and Cambodia, it looks like the French (and later the Americans) sided directly with the OC against the natives, and so naturally in those places the Communist insurrection was lead by ethic Vietnamese (Ho, who was a founding member of the French Communist Party, and also was present in 1918 when Moscow fell to the Bolsheviks, there's a plaque near the Bolshoy Theater commemorating this) and ethnic Cambodians.
This would make sense of the otherwise unexplained fact that the "boat people," who fled for their lives on the open ocean in dilapidated boats after the victory of Giap and his Vietnamese warriors, were mostly ethnic Chinese. Recall again that China invaded Vietnam to put a stop to that spasm of ethnic cleansing. Recall also once more that the Cambodians turned on the diaspora Vietnamese upon Pol Pot's victory, which led to Giap's invasion in 1979 (I think, or was it 1978?). It appears that the Vietnamese were playing the OC diaspora role in Cambodia.
Certain questions naturally arise:
What was the ethnicity of the leaders (overt or covert) of the South Vietnamese government?
What connections (if any) did US intelligence services have with OC communities throughout Vietnam? (side question: did the OC in Vietnam tend to be Catholics?)
What connection, if any, did US intelligence services (or the military) have with OC syndicates supplying opium and heroin through Bangkok (Seagrave talks about this and the fantastic career of one OC banker who founded Bangkok bank based on gangster money and really sharp banking practices!)
To repeat, I don't know much about this, but I'm 100% certain that this is the two ton armadillo in the living room.
Why won't anybody talk about this?
Other than the OC, a couple of which first enlightened me on this issue.
Walter
P.S. The OC hate the Japanese more than anybody else. They view the Malays and Indonesians as sort of retarded younger brothers that they have to manipulate carefully. But the Japanese they hate with a fury I have rarely seen.
2005-05-25 07:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]I have no suggestions for further reading, and I am open to anybody else's suggestions.[/QUOTE]OK - I have a suggestion for your reading list. Got any suggestions about how we can win a war a little closer to home, based on your experience?
Vietnam is now all water under the bridge, but the simple answer I always thought of why we lost Vietnam was simply our press didn't think it important and hence glorified Ho as a hero and their cause heroic, whereas actually they made Saddam look like a saint.
2005-05-25 09:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]OK - I have a suggestion for your reading list. Got any suggestions about how we can win a war a little closer to home, based on your experience?
Vietnam is now all water under the bridge, but the simple answer I always thought of why we lost Vietnam was simply our press didn't think it important and hence glorified Ho as a hero and their cause heroic, whereas actually they made Saddam look like a saint.[/QUOTE]
I think it's important that we understand the ethnic drivers of the Vietnam War. I think that Disraeli was right on when he wrote that at bottom all human conflict is ethnic.
We need to get this straight if for no other reason that this current war is being sold to us with the same kind of cheap ideological sloganeering used to convince us 40 years ago that killing a million Vietnamese, spending billions we couldn't afford, wasting nearly 60,000 of our own guys, and doing irreparable harm to our own political system in the process, was just the niftiest idea since beer in a can.
If we can show that the War in Vietnam - a disatrous undertaking by any standard - was at bottom an ethnic conflict masked by patently absurd ideological soundbites like "spreading freedom and democracy", then it should be easier to show the ethnic interests lurking behind the same kind of tawdry media branding foisted on us in this current war.
If it is true that one diaspora people led us over the cliff forty years ago in Southeast Asia, maybe the question of the role of a certain other diaspora people in this current was would naturally arise.
2005-05-25 09:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]If we can show that the War in Vietnam - a disatrous undertaking by any standard - was at bottom an ethnic conflict masked by patently absurd ideological soundbites like "spreading freedom and democracy", then it should be easier to show the ethnic interests lurking behind the same kind of tawdry media branding foisted on us in this current war. You're really reaching though here, as far as I can tell, trying to relate this all to the overseas Chinese.
If it is true that one diaspora people led us over the cliff forty years ago in Southeast Asia, maybe the question of the role of a certain other diaspora people in this current was would naturally arise.[/QUOTE] Go ahead, but I can't see really how there's much relationship between them, then and now. Vietnam is a long way from the middle east, and the jewish establishment as far as I can tell was overwhelmingly in opposition to that war. If they also led us over the cliff, it was in exactly the opposite direction.
2005-05-26 06:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] I have no suggestions for further reading, and I am open to anybody else's suggestions. And the role of the OC in the larger crisis is CERTAINLY one of those issues. I'd guess your instincts are sound.
[QUOTE]
I mean, helloooo? Anybody home? The Vietnam War was part of this larger Southeast Asian crisis, in which the OC were implicated up to their gills.
[/QUOTE]
yes, however, the Viet Namese, called by the French in the 1800's the Prussians of Asia (I respect) are no shrinking violets.
[QUOTE] It's the role of the OC in Vietnam and Cambodia that have me somewhat baffled.[/QUOTE]Less than you might think, based on what I have read. When I read Seagrave, I may change my mind. :biggrin: [QUOTE]In Malaysia and Burma and Indonesia (which was Dutch until WWII and then again shortly thereafter), the OC lead Communist insurrections, and wealthy OC financed them. This much is clear The guerilla leaders appeared to be OC sub-ethnic clans that had lost prior power struggles within the larger OC community, and the financiers seemed to be the wealthy of those same clans or other OC clans with their own larger agendas.[/QUOTE]Aye, I find that assessment very rational.
[QUOTE]
In contrast, in Vietnam and Cambodia, it looks like the French (and later the Americans) sided directly with the OC against the natives, and so naturally in those places the Communist insurrection was lead by ethic Vietnamese (Ho, who was a founding member of the French Communist Party, and also was present in 1918 when Moscow fell to the Bolsheviks, there's a plaque near the Bolshoy Theater commemorating this) and ethnic Cambodians.
[/QUOTE]
The other problem was that of the "Mandarin" class in Viet Nam. Viet Namese who were the rich and middle class Catholics in the ruling class. Can't blame the OC for that factor. The alienation of the Catholics from many "man on the street" Viet Namese was exploited by the reds, north and south, to political advantage. "Lackeys of the foreign round eyes!"
[QUOTE] This would make sense of the otherwise unexplained fact that the "boat people," who fled for their lives on the open ocean in dilapidated boats after the victory of Giap and his Vietnamese warriors, were mostly ethnic Chinese. [/QUOTE]Walter, not so sure about that. Massive numbers of no fooling Viet Namese hit the bricks, see above on the classes they came from. I worked with a guy when I was in High School who was a "boat people" and he was no Chinaman, he was Viet Namese through and through.
[QUOTE]Recall again that China invaded Vietnam to put a stop to that spasm of ethnic cleansing. Recall also once more that the Cambodians turned on the diaspora Vietnamese upon Pol Pot's victory, which led to Giap's invasion in 1979 (I think, or was it 1978?). It appears that the Vietnamese were playing the OC diaspora role in Cambodia.[/QUOTE]Never looked into that, very interesting.
[QUOTE] 1. What was the ethnicity of the leaders (overt or covert) of the South Vietnamese government? [/QUOTE]Overt, Viet Namese, Catholics mostly. VN had and have a significant ethnic antipathy for Chinese, goes back a few centuries.
[QUOTE] 2. What connections (if any) did US intelligence services have with OC communities throughout Vietnam? (side question: did the OC in Vietnam tend to be Catholics?) [/QUOTE] Good question.
[QUOTE]3. What connection, if any, did US intelligence services (or the military) have with OC syndicates supplying opium and heroin through Bangkok (Seagrave talks about this and the fantastic career of one OC banker who founded Bangkok bank based on gangster money and really sharp banking practices!)[/QUOTE]The alliances with drug traders throughout Indochina was one of convenience: the old "politics makes strange bedfellows" bit. I do not doubt for a minute the involvement of OC in the distro network to include via chinatowns in LA and Sf: those guys had contacts everywhere, particularly in Singapore.
[QUOTE] To repeat, I don't know much about this, but I'm 100% certain that this is the two ton armadillo in the living room. Why won't anybody talk about this? [/QUOTE] Dead?
P.S. The OC hate the Japanese more than anybody else. They view the Malays and Indonesians as sort of retarded younger brothers that they have to manipulate carefully. But the Japanese they hate with a fury I have rarely seen.[/QUOTE]Aye. Chunking, Nanking. 'Nuff said.
2005-05-26 17:03 | User Profile
From Lords of the Rim:
[QUOTE]Page 146
Confucians speak loftily of shinyung, but feuding between the paramilitary syndicates of dialect groups has always been fierce, provoking clan wars that could be murderous and end in open combat. This ruthless and bloody rivalry divided East and South East Asia into Chinese commercial territories any centuries before Westerners arrived. The port of Chuan-chou was Chinaââ¬â¢s business port for generations, during which the Henghua dialect group was riding high. This was the group eventually taken over by the Muslim trader Abu, who betrayed Southern Sung to the Mongol invaders . . . Although they are no longer the richest, Hokkien continue to be the most numerous and widespread of all Overseas Chinese, and are in the majority in Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. Amoy, their home base in Fukien province opposite Taiwan, is a superb harbor on the south-west coast of an island called Mansion Gate, literally guarding the approaches to the ââ¬Åmansionââ¬Â of Hokkien in the Chiu-lung River Valley. Since the 1300s, the Hokkien had become the most powerful Overseas Chinese dialect group, but during the Second World War they were singled out of victimization by the Japanese, particularly in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula . . .
Page 147
The majority of Chinese in Indochina are Cantonese speakers from the Pearl River delta, but since the Vietnam Wary they have been persecuted, expelled and reduced in numbers. The remainder of the Overseas Chinese scattered all of the world, are Hakka, Hokchiu, Henghua, and Hainanese, plus a large number of Wu speakers from Chekiang province an Durban Shanghai.
The Hakka people are distinctive because they are latecomers from far inland. Accordant to tradition, they originated to the north in arid Shansi Province, but to escape Mongol invasion they fled south to the mountains of Kiangsi. The Han River begins near the border of Kiangsi, so it was natural for the Hakka to haul their mountain rice downriver to sell to the Teochiu, who marketed it by boat along the coast. Gradually, Hakka formed a subordinate relationship with the Teochiu and accompanied them to Hong Kong and Hainan Island. When the Teochiu became the principal rice marketers in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaya, many Hakka went with them, becoming the fourth largest Overseas Chinese group, after the Hokien, Teochiu and Cantonese. [B]The Hakka have enjoyed a disproportionate amount of influence because they have produced many gifted an aggressive leaders, including the republican revolutionary Dr. Sun Yan-sent, and Singapore statesman Lee Kuan Yew.[/B][/QUOTE]
2005-05-27 00:18 | User Profile
I really need to read that book. :rockon:
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]From Lords of the Rim:[/QUOTE]
2005-05-27 05:35 | User Profile
Seagrave (see two posts above) tells us that the Teochiu and Hakka clans of the OC controlled the rice trade in Vietnam.
A [URL=http://www.askasia.org/frclasrm/readings/r000189.htm]watered down high school teachers' guide to the Vietnam War [/URL] contains this:
[QUOTE]Huge tracts of land in southern Vietnam were turned over to French settlers and Vietnamese collaborators. The resulting plantation system of agriculture transformed southern Vietnam into a rice exporting area, while per capita rice consumption in Vietnam itself declined. Taxes of every kind multiplied.[/QUOTE]
Can one assume then that the collaborators with the French in controlling the rice trade were really Hakka, Teochiu and other OC and NOT ethnic Vietnamese? Were the OC oppressing the Vietnamese peasants like the Jews of Eastern Europe oppressed the Slavic peasantry?
Did we step into French shoes by collaborating with the ethnic enemies of the Vietnamese? (In regard to the Montanards, certainly, but to what extent, if any, did we work with the OC against the Vietnamese peasants?)
If memory serves, Ho called his movement the Rice Rebellion. Why rice? Rebellion against whom???
2005-05-27 06:10 | User Profile
Here's an [URL=http://www.cascambodia.org/chinese_cam.htm]interesting article [/URL] (quite long, bookmarked for later reading) on the OC of Cambodia.
The ethnic [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people]Chinese fled en masse in 1979[/URL], and made up a big part of the boat people.
[QUOTE]In 1979, Vietnam was at war with China, and many ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam felt that the government's policies directly targetted them also became boat people. [/QUOTE]
See this from [URL=http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/search/search.php?word=E-boatpeopl]History Channel:[/URL]
[QUOTE]BOAT PEOPLE
boat people, term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979. More than one million people became refugees. Many perished, and others, upon reaching other Southeast Asian countries, discovered they could not remain permanently. The United States, Canada, and other nations accepted most of the refugees in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Although people continued to flee Vietnam into the mid-1990s, nearly all later boat people have been regarded as economic, not political, refugees. In 1996 the United Nations decided to end the financing of the camps holding the remaining 40,000 boat people, and Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines returned most of the remaining refugees to Vietnam. The term boat people has also been used to describe political and economic refugees from other areas, such as Haiti, who fled their homelands by similar means.[/QUOTE]
2005-05-28 01:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Teochiu and Hakka clans of the OC controlled the rice trade in Vietnam.
Can one assume then that the collaborators with the French in controlling the rice trade were really Hakka, Teochiu and other OC and NOT ethnic Vietnamese? Were the OC oppressing the Vietnamese peasants like the Jews of Eastern Europe oppressed the Slavic peasantry?
Did we step into French shoes by collaborating with the ethnic enemies of the Vietnamese? (In regard to the Montanards, certainly, but to what extent, if any, did we work with the OC against the Vietnamese peasants?)
If memory serves, Ho called his movement the Rice Rebellion. Why rice? Rebellion against whom???[/QUOTE] Looks like a productive line of inquiry. OC would have connections to Asian rice markets, established over some years. In an age where trade secrets were both jealously guarded and hard to uncover, it seems a reasonable scenario. Plenty of Mandarin sorts in Saigon to get their skim off the top.
As to working the OC vs VN peasants, that's a tougher nut to crack. If the Sung tie in was strong, per Madame Chiang and her family on Taiwan, perhaps, but I see Chiang as having an interest in his own influence, and not ours, becoming pre eminent in such a relationship.
For my money, American foreign policy was not dextrous enough in the East to have counted coup on Chiang when the French colonial power base left.
Someone is bound to have studied that.
2005-05-28 06:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE][Angeleyes]As to working the OC vs VN peasants, that's a tougher nut to crack. If the Sung tie in was strong, per Madame Chiang and her family on Taiwan, perhaps, but I see Chiang as having an interest in his own influence, and not ours, becoming pre eminent in such a relationship. [/QUOTE]
Seagrave talks about KMT involvement in all that. I'll see if I can locate it and type some of it in here. Basically, the KMT was soooooo damned corruupt that even the OC blushed. There were deep tie-ins - Chiang himself is not ethnic Han.
[QUOTE]Someone is bound to have studied that.[/QUOTE]
So one would think, but aside from a few words from Seagrave, nobody seems to want to talk about it. At least as far as I am aware.
You know, OC, Malays and others don't like talking about it, either. Especially when they have to do business together. It's one of those "No Offense" situations Ygg talks about. Bringing any of that up is a very socially painful thing.
As an aside, another similar No Offense situation is the question of caste among Asian Indians. If you're in a situation with a bunch of Indians present, it's really a BAD MOVE to ask questions about the caste system and what caste they're in. I did that once like the big Midwestern cluck I am, and man talk about taking the punch bowl away from the party. The whole mood of the meeting changes. This is a major, major no-no.
Important social safety tip from old Walter.
2005-06-05 19:39 | User Profile
an excerpt from: [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399140115/qid=1118000309/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-9204677-8558466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846]LORDS OF THE RIM - The Invisible Empire of the Oversea Chinese[/URL] by Sterling Seagrave (C) 1995 G. P. Putnam's Son 200 Madison Ave New York, New York
Chapter 10 THE CANNIBAL
IN A NATION WHERE RULERS AND ENTREPRENEURS ARE traditionally at odds,
such as China, greed is the opposite of virtue. In a nation where rulers and entrepreneurs collaborate, such as Japan, greed is easily confused with patriotism. Add an overdose of military ambition and the effect is intoxicating. Tsuji Masanobu blended these elements with messianic energy and visionary genius. For a while he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet. He was involved in some of World War II's boldest exploits, including the escape of General Honda Masaki from Allied encirclement in Burma, he was personally responsible for the grisly purges of civilians in MaIaya and Singapore during the war; and it was he who contrived the nightmare bIoodbath of Overseas Chinese known as Sook Ching. When he was not busy watching his men murder Chinese, Tsuji was cutting deals with Chinese gangsters and entrepreneurs. Thanks to such deals, many Overseas Chinese quislings emerged from the war rich men, future leaders of the Pacific Rim. Tsuji, not incidentally, was a cannibal; in Burma he hosted a dinner party where the main course was the liver of a captured American pilot.
By the 1920s, Japan was ready for Tsuji. All people are vulnerable to what Carl Jung called "psychic epidemics." Nobody upsets the Japanese more than they upset themselves. When they are calm, they are among the worldââ¬â¢s most rational people, but they are completely irrational about vengeance. They feel like perpetual victims, intimidated by the group, policed by samurai, ruled by tyrants who hide behind silk screens. In the l9th century, when Commodore Perry's gunboats forced it to open up after centuries of deliberate isolation, Japan for the first time felt abused by Westerners, and although they suffered much less at Western hands than the Chinese did, they could not endure humiliation with the same fortitude. Tsuji, the superpatriot, made it his mission to exact revenge.
Yamagata Aritomo and other farsighted Japanese military leaders saw to it
that they paid particular attention to Western arms and methods and closely studied the Gerrnan army model. While rationalJapanese were fascinated by their great experiment with industrialization and democratization, Tsuji and others used modernization as a cover to build a separate military power base for conquest on the Asian mainland.
As the 20th century dawned, Japan emulated the West by becoming an
aggressive imperialist power. In 1895 it took Taiwan from China. As spoils of war in 1905, she got from Russia the lower half of Siberia's Sakhalin peninsula, the lease of Manchuria's Kwantung peninsula, and most of Russia's Manchurian investments. In 1910 she annexed Korea. German holdings in the Pacific and in Shantung were seized during World War I, along with the big German naval base at Tsingtao. By 1920 Japan was a major imperialist power in North Asia.
Further conquest of the mainland appealed to Japanese gangsters,
militarist, and patriots alike. For Tokyo's growing economic needs, conquest was imperative. As her industry grew, Japan's need for raw materials became urgent. Her population outgrew domestic agriculture. Need for food imports became pressing. In the minds of someJapanese, these needs became mixed with the craving for conquest, domination, and revenge.
While Siberia was seen by some as the logical target, China was given the highest priority: most of Japan's foreign investments were con centrated there. In 1901 the Foreign Ministry offered to train, protect, and subsidize anyJapanese prepared to do business in China or Korea. The War Ministry persuaded members of the zaibatsu merchant dynasties (including Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Okura) to set up a company called Heavenly Peace to promote arms sales to Chinese warlords and revolutionaries. After the Manchu downfall in 1911, Tokyo undermined each new strongman to keep China from being reunited. Japanese agents of the paramilitary sects Black Ocean or Black Dragon backed rival warlords and provoked demonstrations.
Japanese were encouraged to emigrate to Manchuria to run confiscated
farms and commercial properties. Seeding Manchuria quietly enlarged Japan's presence on the Asian mainland. Not counting soldiers, a million Japanese moved to North Asia to make their fortunes, 800,000 to Manchuria alone. There, in an area the size of New England, much of it covered with red sorghum, life was good, thanks to strict secret police control and terrorist suppression of the Manchu population. Colonists lived better than Japanese at home.
An unexpected boost to Tokyo's ambitions came when World War I distracted
Europe, leaving the China trade to America and Japan. The United States was Japan's best export customer, and American trade with Japan was considerably larger than its trade with China. This could have become the constructive partnership of the Pacific Rimââ¬â but Washington and Tokyo were more interested in competing over China. Like jealous young suitors in a brothel, both America and Japan were convinced that they had a "special relationship" with China. In fact, Japan had been a frequent partner for centuries, but no matter how often they cooperated, they could never agree about who was in charge. Before the 1890s, China had always had a superior attitude, and Japan became resentful of every imagined slight. Cooperation is not a concept that comes easily to countries spellbound by absolutism.
After World War I, when Europe returned to Asia's markets, Japan saw it
as unfair competition. She could no longer survive without China's raw materials. If the West regained dominance, Japan would be elbowed aside. If Tokyo grabbed complete control, her trade and industry would be secure The Chinese would not play along. With the end of dynastic rule and the beginning of republican government, nationalism flooded down the Yangtze. There were boycotts of foreign goods and protests against foreign meddling. Tokyo could not decide whether to allow her position in China to deteriorate or to force China into a submissive role, as she had Manchuria and Korea. In Tokyo boardrooms, there was a lot of frustration, followed by agreement. Immediate action would be taken by all the conglomerates. In this hypnotic Japanese manner, military, corporate, government, and underworld appetites converged.
Unlike with Japan's military, fascinated by the destructive power of the
industrial age, the zaibatsu were avid practitioners of Sun Tzu, content to influence events obliquely. Civilian governments consistently favored big business over the military. Defense budgets were cut, the size of the army reduced, naval construction slowed. This had a predictable effect.
Rightists were alarmed. Society was becoming too bourgeois, merchants too
powerful, youth too vulgar. The feudal system, with its paternalism toward peasants, had been replaced by an industrial culture that trapped laborers in conditions of slavery. In these grim conditions, socialism and communism were taking hold. Growing food riots and strikes convinced patriots that the only solution was ââ¬Åthe blood of purification"ââ¬âa return to ancient values and authoritarian rule. Since 1900 secret organizations of superpatriots had multiplied, dedicated to domestic terrorism and foreign conquest. Business and political leaders were assassinated in spectacular ways, attracting attention to the political views of the killers. Japanese politicans were depicted as slaves of greedy businessmen. Curiously, the huge fortunes of Japanese army generals, and their method of acquisition, never became a major political issue.
The sumo match between overlarge army and overweight business came to a
thudding climax with the Great Depression. Massive unemployment in Japan was followed by famine. Villages starved, workers were on breadlines. Right-wing Japanese portrayed the Depression as a plot by Western racists. Militarists decided to seize what they needed or wanted in North Asia. Caution ceased to be their main concern.
Japan's obsession with North Asia was out of control. Only this would satisfy military needs, business needs, social needs, and appease the craving for revenge that energized the nobility, the zaibatsu, the military, the secret societies, and the underworld. They were convinced that the West had, for racial reasons, deliberately blocked their search for raw materials and marketplaces. The ultraright had long planned for this moment. To them, coexistence was irrelevant. Government leaders who disagreed would be assassinated.
The stronghold of this extreme thinking was not Japan, but Manchuria.
Japan's Kwantung Army, which occupied southern Manchuria, was allowed such an independent position after 1919 that it becarne a rival power base to Tokyo, a separate command not subject to scrutiny by civilian politicians and Tokyo government officials. This put Kwantung officers in a position to traffic in heroin and to extort money, goods, land, and favors from the Manchurian population, without supervision.
The decision to make the Kwantung Army independent turned out to be an
act of suicidal folly. With uncontrolled power and unprecedented access to wealth, its officer corps became insatiable, recklessly plotting conquest on the mainland. It was unnecessary to refer their plans to Tokyo. They conspired with generals at home to trigger martial law and eventually to bring about the installation in Tokyo of a military dictatorship. They were able to carry out terrorist acts inside Japan through cells of military fanatics who craved a return to purified authoritarian rule.
One of the Kwantung Army's first major conspiracies was the killing in
1928 of the Manchurian warlord Marshal Chang Tso-lin Then, in 1931, the Kwantung Army staged the phony Manchurian Incident, declaring that Chinese soldiers had dynamited the south Manchurian Railway and attacked Japanese guards. The army said it had no choice but to occupy Mukden. Actually, the bomb plot had been the work of young officers in Tsuji's group, including his alter ego, Ishiwara Kanji. A brilliant graduate of staff college, Ishiwara had spent three years studying in Germany, whereââ¬âlike so many Japanese officersââ¬âhe had become infatuated with the concept of Total War expounded by Clausewitz and refined by Moltke. On his return to Japan, Ishiwara became a lamboyant instructor at staff college. To young Japanese officers, it was intoxicating to think in terms of total destruction, purification by fire, annihilation of the enemy, and mass suicide for mythic ends. These apocalyptic visions stirred the primal juices of supermen.
Central to Ishiwara's vision, and to that of Tsuji and other hot bloods,
was that Japan must save the world frorn misguided ideologies, including parliamentary democracy. Their mission involved Total Wars against Russia, Britain, and America. Entire societies would be incinerated. Like the metal of meteorites folded into katana swords, the people of the world would be melted and reforged underJapan's hammer. The Kwantung Army would lead the way. A first step was for China to welcome Japanese domination in Manchuria.
The West did nothing. When the seizure of Manchuria was not repudiated,
militarists concIuded they could contrive further ''incidentsââ¬Â and take Chinese territory at whim. Following its annexation, Manchuria became the main supplier of heroin down the China coast, displacing the Shanghai-based Green Gang. The gang's Ku brothers, one of whom ran the Shanghai waterfront while the other served on Generalissimo Chiang's general staff, negotiated an accommodation with the Japanese army that persisted until 1945, covering drug distribution and the swap of American Lend Lease materials. In the 1930s, Japan earned over $300 million a year from distribution and sale of Manchurian opium and heroin. pp128-133
Tsuji intended to let the Overseas Chinese know that their masters had arrived Since the 1890s, the Japanese had tried to persuade all Chinese to get behind Japan's leadership in the struggle with the West. Few Chinese, at home or abroad, trusted Tokyo. After centuries of coping with their own bureaucratic treachery, the Chinese had ~ew illusions about Japanese leadership. Educated Chinese knew that the Japanese viewed them as hopelessly, biologically corrupt. Perhaps, but they were far from stupid. They saw through Japanese propaganda about Asian harmony, and understood long before the West did that militarists working with gangsters had used the Kwantung Army to seize power in Tokyo. Thus in their eyes, the Japanese army had become a gangster terrorist army, no better than the KMTââ¬âbut much more ruthlessly efficient. Failing to persuade Overseas Chinese not to participate in boycotts of Japanese goods, and not to remit money to the nationalist or com munist leadership in China, Japan resorted to bribery, intimidation, extortion, and secret deals with Overseas Chinese businessmen. Once in control of cities in Fukien and Kwangtung provinces, theJapanese were able to threaten reprisals on families in the ancestral villages.
Japanese agents infiltrated Overseas Chinese secret societies and triads.
They started duplicate societies with the same names and hand signs. The strike south was followed by gruesome mass killings of Chinese who had taken part in anti-Japanese boycotts. Tsuji's techniclue was terror, mass rapes of the wives and daughters of middle-class Chinese and Westerners, mass beheadings, and vivisection on fully conscious Chinese prisoners. To make certain that new Japanese officers did not hesitate to carry out atrocities, they were obliged to undergo brutal exercises to dehumanize all contact with Chinese. Japanese seldom misbehave individually; they tend to do it collectively. The training worked so well that, as one Kempeitai officer boasted, "If more than two weeks went by without my taking a head, I didn't feel fit. Physically, I needed to be refreshed." pp141-142
Despite the immediate military success of the strike south, the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia was a disaster. The main pur pose had been to rescue Japan from economic collapse by seizing control of Southeast Asia's oil and other raw materials. This was a complete failure. First, the Japanese discovered that the region's resources were controlled by the Overseas Chinese or could only be obtained with their cooperation. Most Overseas Chinese had been alienated by Tsuji's Sook Ching and similar terror campaigns in Mainland China or in other conquered countries. To rectify the situation, cleverness was needed, not terror. Japan's best brains, technicians, and financial managers were busy in North Asia and the Home Islands. Little talent could be spared for SoutEleast Asia.
With centuries of experience in undermining and corrupting bureaucrats
and conquerors, the Overseas Chinese helped make South east Asia and the China coast a terrible drain on the Japanese war machine, weakening Tokyo as the Allied counterattack gathered momentum. No development capital could be provided by Tokyo. It had to be raised in Southeast Asia from loot, extortion, or the hijacked bank deposits of local populations. The occupied countries also were to be self-sufficient in consumer goods. Accordingly, the zaibatsuââ¬âMitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Nomura, and Hitachiââ¬âtook over Chinese, Dutch, British, and American firrns, tried to exploit strategic resources, and set up monopolies in commodities. Mitsui's monopoly of salt and sugar, and Mitsubishi's monopoly of rice, drove long-established Chinese merchants out of business. Prices shot up. Japanese sale of operating licenses to Chinese and native entrepreneurs led to universal corruption. Malayan tin production nearly collapsed. Indonesian tea cultivation fell by half. The result was unemployment, inflation, hunger, and hoarding. Japanese banks moved in to rescue (or exploit) the situation. Lotteries and gambling firms were started in an effort to lure black money out of Overseas Chinese hiding places.
Japanese officials became involved with local underworld figures and war
profiteers. A former Kempeitai agent explained after the war that "in big cities or large villages, there were always pariahs. We'd find them and train them, threaten them, cajole them We'd tell them, 'If you take the wrong course, we'll killl you, but if you do what you're told, you'll have to build warehouses to hold your fortune.' We'd then bring out the opium. 'Iââ¬â¢ll do it! ' they'd say in a minute. Every day we received large amounts of the drug . . The opium came down from staff level at division headquarters The better we did, the more opium came." pp145-146
. . . the situation now between the people of Thailand and theTeochiu. Although most Overseas Chinese around the Pacific Rim are Hokkien, in Thailand the majority are Teochiu. There are more Teochiu in Bangkok than any other city on earth, including Hong Kong and Swatow, where they all came from. They control the Thai econamy and its biggest banks and enterprises, as the fig depends on the durian. Over hundreds of years, the Thai government, the aristocracy, and the armed forces have depended upon Teochiu patronage, as the durian depends upon the fig Teochiu secret armies control most of the international heroin trade flowing out of the Golden Triangle. This probably makes the Teochiu the world's richest tribe in terms of black money They have been in business a lot longer than the Colombian cocaine cartel, and they have been rolling over vast sums since the boys in Medellin and Cali were going to mass on their mother's hips. Nobody knows how much the Teochiu have salted away in offshore accounts the world over: they have their own banks, which rank among the world's most prosperous. Hong Kong police files describe the brotherhood as the most clannish, secretive, and powerful of all Chinese secret societies. It is the ultimate Chinese tontine.
The Teochiu saga reveals much about the dark side of the Overseas Chinese
syndicates. lt is both illustrative and cautionary to observe how they gained oblique but profound control of Thailand, sustauined that control over centuries, and in recent decades have found new ways to maintain their grip.
From their primary bases in Thailand and Hong Kong, the Teochiu ran a truly vast international smuggling network in the old days, dealing chiefly in rice and drugs, but today also dealing in a broad range of commodities, electronics, and weaponsââ¬âhelped by the fact that Teochiu are the second-largest Chinese group in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. They are not the only smugglers, to be sure. What is true of the Teochiu and their methods is also true in varying degrees of the Hokkien, Hakka, and other Overseas Chinese, wherever they operate as traditional syndicatesââ¬âwhich is just about everywhere, including New York City, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Vancouver. The fact that there are thousands of innocent Teochiu all over the world who do not participate in these tribal operations does nothing to diminish the manipulative and malignant role of the mainstream.
They owe their rise in Siam to a half-Chinese general named Taksin, who
reunited Siam after Burmese invaders sacked the capital in 1767. Taksin had become a general the easy way. His father was a Teochiu businessman who grew rich because he outbid Chinese rivals to get a royal tax-farming monopo]y, which licensed him to collect taxes for the king (the successful bidder agrees in advance to pay the king a certain amount for the year; whatever more he can squeeze out of the popula tion, he gets to keep). Thanks to his father's connections, young Taksin rose rapidly to the top. Making himself king, Taksin surrounded himself with Teochiu advisers who received noble titles. They in turn saw to it that their Teochiu cronies were given royal monopolies over trade and rackets. In this manner, the Teochiu long ago gained high positions in Siam's aristocracy, government, commerce, and industry. In the 20th century, the Teochiu stayed in control, despite the arrival of large numbers of Chinese migrants speaking other dialects.
While Thailand prides itself on never having been under the direct rule
of a European colonial power, its people have lived under indirect rule by Overseas Chinese for centuries, however well-disguised. Compared with the rest of Southeast Asia, the Thais have coexisted with the Overseas Chinese in remarkable harmony. However, it has only been possible with a lot of money changing hands under the table. Crucial to this arrangement is the fact that the Chinese in Thailand are different psychologically fiom those who run Mainland China itself. As coastal hybrids, the Teochiu, outcasts in their own homeland, never wanted direct rule in their adopted home. They were content to control the economy. 149-151
Preparing for its conquest of Southeast Asia, Tokyo held out the prospect that Bangkok could regain control of the entire Tai linguistic area, including Laos, parts of southern China, and the Shan States of British Burma. In expectation of that great day, and to emphasize its traditional claim, the country's name was changed to Thaiiand.
Fear of Japan caused many Overseas Chinese to seek Thai citizen ship, but
they found themselves blocked by new requirements of military or government service and fluency in colloquial Siamese. Chinese schools and newspapers were closed. Police raided triad headquarters and private homes. Community leaders were jailed, deported, or assassinated, and just before Pearl Harbor, three defiant Teochiu leaders were arrested. When the Japanese army arrived, prominent Chinese fled upcountry, many of them joining the underground Free Thai movement started by Pridi, who was working with Allied intelligence. Others collaborated with the Japanese.
The outcome of Thailand's ongoing power struggle with the Chi nese begun
in 1910 by Rama VI ultimately depended on who won the war, but the actual victor was completely unexpected. As the Japanese army stormed from Thailand into Burma, its commanders invited their Thai counterparts to occupy the Shan States. The Shan city of Kengtung became headquarters for the Thai Northern Army under Major General Phin Choonhavan, military governor of what was to be called the United Thai State. For him it was the chance of a lifetime. Phin was one of the army junta that had seized power in Bangkok in 1932 and installed Marshal Phibun. His Chinese connections were so good, and he was so deft at manipulating people, that by the time the Japanese arrived in 1941, he was commander of the Northern Army, whose zone of responsibility included Chiengmai and the Thai sector of the Golden Triangle. Chiengmai is Thailand's G-spot, the center of all gratification in guns, drugs, girls, teak, gems, and jade. Whoever controls Chiengmai as governor, or as chief of the Northern Command, controls the cookie jar. Opium proceeds provided General Phin with limitless resources that were not subject to government oversight. Thanks to his excellent high-level connections in Thailand's Teochiu syndicates, the general was able to build a power base fueled by drugs and rackets that after the war ushered him and his subordinate officers into absolute power in Thailand at the head of military dictatorships for most of the next half century. As we will see, Phin's romance with the Teochiu mafia made a love baby of the drug trade, and led to its explosive growth to what is now over 2,600 tons of opium per year, which generate billions of dollars in black money worldwide.
It was no coincidence that Thailand's army occupied the Shan States and
gained access to the finest opium-growing area in the world. Colonel Tsuji and other planners of the strike south were intimately linked to the Japanese and Chinese underworlds. They had long been involved in marketing Manchurian opium throughout East Asia, and both the Japanese army and the Nationalist Chinese government actively engaged in opium and heroin traffic during the war. The KMT sold crudely processed brown heroin directly to the Japanese army of occupation.
For his part, General Phin contacted the Nationalist Chinese in Yunnan in
April 1944 and arranged to meet General Lu Wi-eng, commander of the KMT 93rd Division. In secret talks between the KMT and the Japanese, in which General Phin and Colonel Tsuji participated, it was arranged; for the KMT to smuggle American Lend-Lease supplies to the Japanese. Five years later, when Mao was victorious in China's civil war, remnants of this same 93rd Division escaped into Burma's Shan States. There they seized control of the best opium-growing areas in the Golden Triangle, and resumed a lasting military and commercial alliance with General Phin in Thailandââ¬âall made possible by Japan's wartime intercession.
But before looking at the consequences and leaving Colonel Tsuji behind,
we must allow him his last flourish. By then, Tsuji had shifted his attention to Burma. In 1944 he visited General Phin in Kengtung, then helped General Honda Masaki escape encirclement by Allied forces. To celebrate this and other feats of daring, Tsuji invited fellow Japanese officers to a banquet at which the main course was the liver of a captured American pilot. In the summer of 1945, he was arrested by the victorious Allies and charged with cannibalism, but he escaped and hid for months in Thailand posing as a Buddhist monk, protected by General Phin Choonhavan. Since the 1920s, Tsuji had been intimately acquainted with the KMT secret police boss, Tai Li, and making contact with KMT intelligence officers in Bangkok early in 1946, Tsuji arranged to be smuggled to Chungking. There, he personally gave Generalissimo Chiang the idea of using defeated Japanese soldiers against Mao's communists, to save China from being overrun by the Reds. The Generalissimo was greatly excited by the possibility of saving himself and his regime in this way, with Japanese military help. Working through Tai Li and the American naval intelligence officer in Chung king, Milton "Mary" Miles, Chiang Kai-shek secretly contacted General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's G-2 in Tokyo. Both MacArthur and Willoughby were lifelong ultraconservatives with a visceral loathing for Marxism and a deep-seated fear of the consequences of a communist victory on the Mainland. As part of the deal, Generalissimo Chiang persuaded General MacArthur to release a group of senior Japanese war criminalsââ¬âall friends of Tsujiââ¬âwho had been imprisoned by the Americans in Sugamo Prison. When these men were freed, they paid the KMT government a huge undisclosed sum from looted war booty, which was tantamount to Hermann Goering paying David Ben Gurion to get him off the hook at Nuremberg. These men then became leaders of postwar Japan and founders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. pps159-161
Credit for some of Phin's success in manipulating the Overseas Chinese must go to his "adopted son," Udane Techapaibul, a handsome, urbane Teochiu businessman who engineered many of these takeovers of Chinese businesses As a young man, Udane had been informally adopted by General Phin because of his uncanny grasp of the secret inner workings of Chinese community networks. Udane was the son of a pawnbroker who owned an opium den and shares in manufacturing rice whiskey. With Phin's backing, Udane started his own liquor busi ness and was phenomenally successful in cornering a large part of the market. He then went into lumber, importing, banking, and insurance, with similar success. After the war, with Phin's clique in power, Udane became managing director of the syndicate that oversaw the sending of remittances to China, head of the government sugar corporation and the government rice consortium, and an officer of the Teochiu Association and particularly of the Chao-yang Hsien Associationââ¬âone of the most powerful Teochiu native-place tontines. This had the salubrious result that Phin's ââ¬Åadopted son" headed the govemment rice consortium, while a son-in-law controlled all rice smuggling.
On the surface it was one big, successful family. However, a bitter
struggle was developing between Phao and Sarit over the drug trade It was largely a difference in style Phao was supremely vulgar. Sarit was a self-made patrician. They kept separate camps. Phao was based on Field Marshal Phin's mansion on Soi Rachakrul, while Sarit maintained his following at a Villa on Soi Si Sao Theves.
The "Rachakrul Ratpack," as it was discreetly known among the embassies,
included Field Marshal Phin and his family and followers, many of them Chinese. The Si Sao Theves Group (''Seesaw Thieves'' in the embassies) had Sarit as leader, backed by a circle of formidable senior officers.
Between them, these two groups now had control of the world's wealthiest
Overseas Chinese community, not to mention navies, tourism, temples, brothels, palaces (and one of the world's great cuisines). But they chose to quarrel over drugs.
The Golden Triangle was about to become the world's largest source of
heroin The big change began in 1949, when the civil war in China ended with Generalissimo Chiang fleeing to Taiwan. KMT army remnants bottled up by communist forces in Yunnan escaped into Burma, where they seized ,control of the best high-altitude poppy growing areas in the Shan States. This was the same KMT 93rd Division that had sold American Lend-Lease supplies to the Japanese. It was now under the command of General Li Mi. Since Generalissimo Chiang labored under the delusion that he couLd recover the Mainland, General Li Mi was ordered to stay in the Shan States and to sustain his army by taking over all opium-tar marketing, and to escort each year's bounty to Thailand, where it could be processed into morphine base or various grades of heroin and brokered by the KMT to Teochiu syndicates for export.
Senior members of General LI Mi's staff have each said on separate
occasions that Li Mi received this instruction directly from the Generalissimo, and that it was reaffirmed by his son, General Chiang Ching-kuo, when he became overseer of Taiwan's intelligence services and eventually president of Taiwan. The Chiang's high-level involvement in the drug trade was no great surprise, because the Generalissimo had kept his government afloat in Nanking during the 1930s by sharing Green Gang earnings from drug trafficking, while serving personally as chief of China's opium-suppression campaign. This meant he suppressed everyone else's drug profits. True, after decacdes of effort, the KMT had little believability, but it was the world's richest political party, and is to this day. It had a substantial economic presence in Bangkok in the form of wealthy individuals, powerful community associations, industrial groups, and the underworld syndicates of each dialect group, which shared Taiwan's anticommunist mind-set and were encouraged to move drugs through Taiwan. Thus they had parallel financial interest. Although Hong Kong was unmatched as an offshore conduit for heroin, Taiwan provided sanctuary for drug-runners and corrupt Hong Kong police officers on the run, and offered money laundering facilities that were incomparable because they were impenetrable. When opium-growing in Mainland China was ended by the communists, the Shan States became the leading Asian drug source. The CIA was backing General Li Mi's KMT remnants in military operations to harass the communists along Chinats back border. Materiel provided by a CIA subsidiary called Sea Supply was airlifted to General Li Mi's troops by Air America and other CIA contract airlines.
Because he portrayed himself as a great enemy- of communisrn, Police
General Phao was fully backed and supplied by the CIA. This gave him an additional way to exert pressure on the Overseas Chinese community by threatening to denounce as a communist sympathizer any businessman who refused to meet his extortionate demands. (It is now generally accepted that no serious communist threat to Thailand ever existed, but was exaggerated to justify the agendas of Phao and the CIA.)
CIA support gave Phao the upper hand over his rival Sarit. Between 1950
and 1953, Sea Supply gave Phao $35 million worth of weapons, cornmunications, and transport. The Agency helped Phao create his own armored division, air force, pocket navy, and border police, whose reciprocal responsibilities were to see that Sea Supply shipments reached the KMT opium armies, while nobody interfered with the drug trade. By 1954 Bangkok had become the main source of hard drugs in the Far East, and most of the flow came via General Phao.
Drug profits increased so fast that General Sarit's "clean" group could
not resist scooping up some, which nearly led to civil war. Near Lampang in 1950, a drug shipment traveling south by army convoy ran into a roadblock set up by the police. When the army threatened to shoot, the police pointed out their heavy machine guns. The standoff lasted two days, until Sarit and Phao arrived to escort the drugs personally to Bangkok, where they split the proceeds.
Phao's greed was growing out of control. He bullied wealthy Chinese
businessmen into appointing him or one of his associates to the boards of more than twenty corporations. He helped himself to their treasuries and moved huge sums of gold through Overseas Chinese channels to offshore accounts, including major gold bullion deposits in Swiss banks. To terrorize his enemies, he arrested scores of student leaders and dissident intellectuals, many of whom never reappeared and were rumored to have been cremated alive. At long last, in a eomedy of errors, Phao was finally brought down by Sarit, through his own Chinese banker. Everybody has a soft spot.
That rather unusual banker was the Horatio Alger of the Overseas Chinese f
inancial worlid, a grade-school dropout wha became one of the world's richest amd most powerful tycoons; while the Thai military dictatorship, thought it was taking advantage of his financial wizardry, he was turning his local bank into a world-class multinational ;and setting himself and other Chinese like him as free as the birds on Buddha's birthday. pps170-173
HE LIVED IN A BIG MANSION ON WIRELESS ROAD IN BANGKOK, next door-to the residence of the American ambassador and just across the street from the United States embassy, which was devilishly awkward. That made it difficult for Washington to come right out and accuse him of being "the financial kingpin of the heroin trade."
They had other reasons to be careful of how they handled him. He was
among the world's richest Overseas Chinese, one of the top five most powerful leaders of the global Teochiu community. He had built the biggest private bank in Southeast Asia, one of the most profitable on the planet, and he was the personal banker for everybody who was any body in the Bangkok military regime. In those days of General Phao, the drug trade was high-level government business, so no Thai banker could avoid all contact or contamination. The people involved were generals and field marshals, after all, not Sicilian thugs in black shirts with mustard-colored neckties. In Asia, the underworld is just the underwear of the overworld. Why get excited? Anyway, Washington was picking up the tab.
His name was Chin Sophonpanich, the eldest (and only male) of five
children born in Bangkok to a Teochiu father and a Thai mother. His official biography dodges around his place of birth, implying that he was born in China. This subterfuge was necessary because Chin's mother was his father's secondary wife, and not pure Teochiu, which would have diluted Chin's ranking in Teochiu circles. More important, as a young man Chin dodged military service by forfeiting Thai citizen ship, claiming to have been born in China, in Chao-yang Hsienââ¬âone of the seven hsien around Swatow. His father, who worked in Bangkok as a clerk, took him to Swatow for several years as a child. Chin claimed he attended prirnary school there, then dropped out of secondary school due to poverty. When he became rich, Thai citizenship again became desirable, so he went to great expense to acquire it, with the help of powerful friends.
In Bangkok at age seventeen, Chin found work as a clerk in a shop. Then
the business burnt down in 1930, the result of arson, he sailed for China on a Teochiu rice-smuggling junk, and made a number of voyages with smugglers from Swatow to Bangkok. In China, he married Lau Kwei Ying. Each time he returned from a voyage, she became preg nant. Of their four children, only two boys survived, but they were to be his principal heirs. Chin had no stomach for ocean voyages, so when he reached Bangkok in 1936, he gave up the sea and moved in with a friend five years his junior, Udane, the ââ¬Åadopted son" of General Phin Choonhaven. Chin and Udane had the same ancestral home in China, Chao-yang Hsien, and members of the Chao-yang Hsien Association were the most influential Chinese in Thailand. pps174-175
As we've seen, Phao's police were Thailand's biggest domestic drug traffickers, moving major shipments of opium and heroin in collaboration with the Teochiu syndicates. The border police escorted KMT opium caravans from Burma tO police warehouses in Chiengmai, then by train or police aircraft to Bangkok. There it was loaded onto cargo vessels and escorted offshore by the marine police to freighters headed for Taiwan or Hong Kong.
If the opium was for domestic consumption, the border police "ambushedââ¬Â
the smugglers at the border and took the load to Bangkok, where they collected a government reward of one eighth of the retail value. The opium then vanished. Phao personally led some of these phony gun battles. After the "capture" of twenty tons of opium in July 1955, Phao authorized a reward of $1,200,000 and hurried to the Finance Ministry, where he signed the check. Next, he delivered the reward personally to the "informant." Phao then claimed that most of the twenty tons had been dumped at sea and that what remained would be sold to pharmaceutical companies to recover the reward money.*
{*Some time later, I was having lunch in Bangkok with Prince Jimmy Yang of Kokang State, which produces the world's finest opium. Kokang was just east of the Shweli Valley, where I spent my childhood. During the season, the hills were mauve with opium popples. Jimmy was an old friend. His family had ruled Kokang for generations. His sister Olive, known far and wide as "Miss Hairylegs," commanded the Kokang State army with a Magnum revolver strapped to her hip. She was also well known for her love affair with a chubby Burmese actress.
Since 1962, when Burma became a military dictatorship, many ethnic
leaders like Prince Jimmy had to go underground or into exile, and supported their rebel forces by collaborating with the KMT opium armies. Once, Jimmy had to flee for his life and ended up flat broke in Paris, living for a year in a tiny chambre de bonne in the Chinese quarter, nearly starving. Now he was prosperous again.
I asked Jimmy if any of General Phao's twenty tons had really been
dumped in the ocean.
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes! " Jimmy laughed, looking up moonfaced from a bowl of
rice noodles and chicken coconut curry. "All twenty tons were dumped into the oceanââ¬âbut luckily there was a ship in the way. Not an ounce got wet."}
Phao's greed now had become so public that even his father-in-law, Field Marshal Phin, finally turned on him. Phao was relieved of his post as deputy minister of finance. General Sarit's newspaper led the attack, accusing Phao of being a CIA puppet. Sea Supply Corporation was said to have participated actively in Phao's drug trafficking. Prime Minister Phibun also denounced Phao's close ties to Taiwan: "The Kuomintang causes too much trouble," Phibun said. "They trade in opium and cause Thailand to be blamed in the United Nations."
Early one morning in September 1957, tanks from Sarit's First Division
moved into traditional coup positions. Phao was allowed to leave for Switzerland, while Phibun fled to Japan. The operational independence of Phao's national police was ended, and hundreds of American CIA agents were thrown out of Thailand.
Sarit made himself a field marshal, appointed his crony General Thanom as
prime minister, and another crony, General Praphat, as minister of the interior.
At Bangkok Bank, Chin worried that Sarit might simply kill him, take over
his bank, and loot it. One of Sarit's followers, a member of the board of the bank, told Chin it might be simpler to resign immediately and name him chairman. After giving the matter some thought, Chin outsmarted them all.
He invited the new interior minister, General Praphat, over for a
conversation. His selection of Praphat was said to have been influenced by a Chinese fortune teller who told him "the chairman of the bank should be a short, fat person." Because he resembled the cartoon character, the CIA had given Praphat the code name ââ¬ÅPorky." He was tough and resourceful, with his own large following. Not even Sarit was likely to challenge anything Praphat did.
During their private conversation, the banker and the general reached an
accommodation, and the following day it was announced that General Praphat had been named the bank's new chairman. What ever it cost, Chin had a new protector. But this did not make him bulletproof. Sarit was furious. When Chin went to Sarit's mansion (without the usual basket of fruit) to explain Praphat's appointment, the field marshal would not receive him The message was painfillly clear. Prudently, Chin caught the next plane for Hong Kong and five years in self-exile. In Chin's absence, Sarit's government became just as deeply involved in drugs, although they went about it in a different way, letting others move the heroin while the army and police provided very expenslve milltary escort.
With Chin out of sight, but the interior minister in charge, Bangkok
Bank's fortunes continued to improve, with sixteen domestic branches, four overseas, and declared assets of nearly $50 million.
During his five years of exile, Chin was based in Kowloon, running his
Commercial Bank of Hong Kong. Since Mao's victory in 1949, the Teochiu Brotherhood had shifted its headquarters there from Swatow. In Kowloon, Chin groomed Robin Chan, his eldest son by his first marriage, to take over management of Commercial Bank, and his younger son, who used the Thai name Chatri Sophonpanich, to take over Bangkok Bank.
During his years in Hong Kong, Chin strengthened his Teochiu connections
at the source, rose high in the esteem of the Teochiu Brotherhood, and learned much about modern banking methods, computers, telecommunications, and offshore finance. After Marshal Sarit died of natural causes in 1963, Chin waited a few weeks for the body to get cold, then returned to Thailand. It was agreed that General Praphat would remain chairman of Bangkok Bank, but Chin would resurne his roIe as chief executive officer. They worked in harness for the next twenty years as power broker and moneyman.
To enhance the international leverage of Bangkok Bank and his
Commercial Bank of Hong Kong, Chin arranged to link them to all Teochiu banking nodes in Asia and the West, starting with Singapore and Taiwan As one of the new leaders of an increasingly high-tech global Teochiu community, he became a financial ambassador, travelling to the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, cultivating rich Overseas Chinese who were not Teochiu, such as Indonesian magnate Liem Sioe Liong, a Hokchia. To pursue his own ends, Liem had long collaborated with Teochiu smuggling syndicates throughout the archipelago. He and Chin had much in common. They were both bankers and dollar billionaires. With such vast sums of money, both had a need to keep their personal assets salted offshore. Chin was one of the first to bridge the ancient gap of enmity between dialect groups when he and Liem became friends and lent each other millions of dollars to cover occasional lapses in liquidity. This cross-tribal collabora tion had major significance for world banking by bringing about offshore financial linkages between big Overseas Chinese institutions such as Chin's Bangkok Bank and Liem's First Pacific.
The strategy of the Teochiu leadership was to create their own
multinational banking network around the world, with their own satellite communications. The financial conglomerate built around Bangkok Bank, Commercial Bank of Hong Kong, and other subsidiaries and components of the Sophonpanich clan became a giant Teochiu kongsi, tied together by interlocking directorships. Its patriarch was the chubby kid with the grade-school education who turned out to be a financial genius. Now that he was a banking mogul, honors poured in. In Thailand, Chin became chairman of the Chao-yang Hsien Association, the richest hsien association of the richest Overseas Chinese tribe. He also became president of the umbrella organization, the Teochiu Association of Thailand. In Kowloon, he was named permanent chairman of Hong Kongââ¬â¢s separate Teochiu Chamber of Commerce. All of this plainly identified him as one of the five most powerful Teochiu in the world, if not number one. After Chin's death in 1988, following a long illness, management of the bank was inherited by his son, Chatri. Despite ups and downs, in 1993 Bangkok Bank was named one of the world's five most profitable banks by a British credit rating agency. Its first branch in China was opened in Chin's hometown, as part of the billion-dollar developrnent of Shantou, the Mainland's Special Econornic Zone at Swatow. It was a fitting monument to an extraordinary career. An even greater monument was the fact that Washington never got up the courage to denounce Chin in public. Drug Enforcernent Agency staff working in the embassy across the street from Chinââ¬â¢s mansion complained bitterly, but spent their time chasing small fry.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Chin's banking friend, Liem Sioe Liong, was
doing very nicely for himself as well. .