The St. Vincent-Chinese connection

The views expressed herein are those of the writer and do not represent the opinions or editorial position of I-Witness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].

Happy “Double Tenth” to the Government and People of The Republic of China (Taiwan) — the National Day, Oct. 10, 2014.

As a patriotic Vincentian national, I wish to add my appreciation and thanks to the Nationalists State of of Free China, Formosa-China for all the gracious help and assistance that they have so generously rendered to the Government and people of my beloved homeland, the independent State of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

SVG’s difficult journey since National Independence on October 27, 1979 would have been made much more bearable by the regular and ready multi-faceted assistance given to us by Taiwan. The Robert Milton Cato SVLP administration was very far-sighted in its fervent, passionate decision to gladly establish full diplomatic relations with Nationalist China or Taiwan. Despite the vociferous, strident criticisms, opposition and political calumny of the local communist party Youlimo and its ‘successor’ United People’s Movement (UPM).

Our first Prime Minister R. Milton CATO was absolutely convinced and persuaded of the rightness and justness of his decision to fully recognise and develop friendly relations with the Government and people of Taiwan. His St. Vincent Labour Party colleagues in Cabinet, then, were also four-square with him in this. Despite the rabid castigations of the then Marxist-Leninist doctrinaire ideologues and subversive communistic advocates, the Cato SVLP Administration was totalled undeterred and firmly resolute. That foresight and loyalty has paid off in the three decades since.

Historical LINKS

There were some early Vincentian links with the Chinese peoples. Besides the obvious travelling and immigration contacts with many Chinese in Trinidad, England, Jamaica and Guyana, some groups of so-called “Portuguese” families arriving to settle in St. Vincent had had previous close contacts for some considerable time with essentially southern Chinese nationals (Cantonese, Hakka Hans…) in Panama, some of whom had even had short experiences living in North America, Guyana and Brazil.

Some stereotyped “East Indians” coming to the British West Indies, Demerara, Essequibo, or Suriname, had had some yet earlier contact with at least one of the so-called Hue Chi “Chinese” tribal groupings. (A similarly deja vu occurrence was the not-so-ancient links between the would-be Indonesian/Javanese peoples who later migrated to the Guinanas and the “East Indians” who had already migrated there.

Later, nearer our times, a paltry few SVG persons had intermarried with the Chinese race, in the Caribbean. I cite the Fords, Huggins, and Cordices …

Then, with the advent of political-constitutional independence whereby we were enabled to establish our own responsible foreign relations, the Cato SVLP chose wisely.

Ironically though, today, the undercurrent diplomatic issue may eventually become moot.

Free Market Success

About early 1970s, it was shockingly noticed that the Nationalist Chinese-Taiwanese economy was nine times that of the whole of communist China ensconced on the mainland since around 1949. Maoist ‘Chinese” Communism had failed abysmally. There were considerable rumblings in the CHINESE MILITARY as a result of this continued impoverishment, resulting from the Communist Party

OF China’s ‘purer’ communist policies and practices. The publicly obvious ideological insanity of Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Zedong) was further complicating the situation even more. The constant Communist party purges, murderous “scientific socialist” collectivisations, genocidal “Great Leap Forward”, indoctrinated Red Guard “cleansings”, and the holocaust of the mad “Great Cultural Revolution” had near-totally destroyed the country.

With its then approximate BILLION population, Communist China was being out-produced, out-manufactured, and out-traded by comparatively little Taiwan.

Taiwan’s economy was now nine times the size of mainland China under the economically challenged communist/Maoist regime, a great lesson in the utter failure of the demonic communist ideology.

Private entrepreneurship, private enterprise, Free Markets trump “Marxism-Leninism” any day.

So, deputy leader Chou En-Lai, at great risk to his own head, sought to gradually, strategically rehabilitate Deng Tsao Ping from the jail and “house arrest” to which Mao tse Tung and the communist-indoctrinated Red Guards had consigned him. The situation had become so precarious that Mao had to allow Chou eventually bring Deng to the fore, again. With the active approval of the increasingly restive military. The hold of the Communist party was now precarious. Would the military seize all power?

Deng Tsao Ping gradually introduced freer policies, “capitalistic” measures, and tentatively encouraged free enterprise. Some lands were returned to a few regime-dispossessed peasants in an experimental area. Production dramatically increased there. This was repeated, and still greater positive results resulted.

More lands were apportioned out to even more farmers, and an even more pronounced improvement was noticeable. From there, the Communist regime of China has increasingly sought to private much of agriculture and the rest of the economy. Today’s burgeoning economy is the practical, obvious result.

Free enterprises pays. Private entrepreneurship works. Capitalist policies trump communist, “socialist orientation”, Marxist-Leninist, scientific socialist, international (read Russian “soviet”) socialist policies.

Communist policies have failed in Communist/Maoist China. They now have that which even they (and Communist advocate Ralph) would have called A DEFORMED CAPITALIST ECONOMY. It was utterly embarrassing to ideological observers in China and the rest of the world to notice the shocking materialism and conspicuous consumption of even myriad middle and top-level Central Committee of the communist Party of the People’s Republic of China at their recent party conventions. The “filthy rich” capitalist roaders had absolutely nothing on these supposed lowly communist leaders, and their spouses!

Communist policies failed in the Soviet Union (Communist Russia), and Russia had to go cap in hand to the Free Markets of Europe and Northern America for help and economic assistance to even survive.

Taiwan or RED China

While relatively “small”, Taiwan, the free-market/private enterprise Nationalist Government on the island of Formosa, Free China, prospered tremendously, unbelievably, moving out of the ranks of the Third World nations.

For decades now, my fellow Vincentians have been marvellously benefitting from Taiwan’s fabulous largesse in myriad areas. To my humble observation, we had managed to still keep our national integrity intact in these relations.

In the interest of transparency, I have been involved in the past of writing recommendations on behalf of my students, particularly at the secondary school level who were applying for and have since gratefully benefitted from “exhibitions”, scholarships, or economic assistance from the embassy of the Government of Taiwan in St. Vincent.

Again, I was an avid reader and subscriber for many years in St, Vincent to The FREE CHINA Review magazine. I was keenly interested in the freedom fighter Chinese nationals in table tennis who were brutalized and martyred by insane

Maoist regime, but which remnant group were opportunistically trotted out to welcome U.S. President Richard Nixon’s “Ping Pong” diplomacy initiative, circa 1971. I was still, regardless, years after, interested in learning or re-studying table tennis the modern Chinese way, and believe that I did early o’clock apply to understudy table tennis coaching on Formosa.

Interestingly, I wore a cue, “Chinese pigtail”, the first six or seven years of my life. My dearly beloved uncle, the then head of my extended family, was Chinese. I only cut my “locks”, for the very first time, when my maternal grand-father persuaded me that the guys at Georgetown Primary School would give me no end of horrors in teasing — if I continued with it for any longer. Indeed, one of my brothers was authoritatively pronounced a “China-man” on being first viewed while a new-born by yet another uncle. I dabbled a bit in Cantonese . . . and the dialects of the Hakka-Hans, though I have more recently relented to sample Mandarin as well.

The ancient Chinese records claim a famous black man as their very first King.

Chew pan dat. Thank you, Taiwan. May you still long enjoy your national freedom and independence. Even if your should temporarily lose such in the near to medium term future, I have absolutely no doubt that your full and complete freedom in a free country, in mainland and on the Chinese islands, would be soon enough restored and rehabilitated. Communism is a cancer that eats at the centre, then “travels” to the periphery — until the whole organism is finally dead and done with. Then, like lethal Ebola, it must seek and find another “live” body or it ends in utter, total ignominy.

Indeed, the seeds of destruction and integral to and intrinsic in the very ideology and inhumane practises of Communism itself. Yes, it does contain and incubates its own destruction. In time, every man will be able to sit under his own vine or fruit tree, with his own family, and enjoy the fruits and blessings of the work of his own hands without some parasitic communistic bureaucrat or pol despotically ordering him/them about as to what they must do please their twisted, dark political ideologies. We won’t swallow a foolish, atheistic, anti-intellectual ideology, wholesale, hook-line-and-sinker like Ralph Gonsalves did from those ignorant lecturers “working” up in Jamaica. One even went and stupidly blew himself up just outside the jail in Georgetown, Guyana — all for a fanatic “ideology”.

Further Ironies 

I won’t cover the irony of some of the more recent changes in “Nationalist China”. Nor the extent of Taiwan’s massive investments in Communist party-ruled mainland China, among other international locales. Nor the morphing military and diplomatic milieu. Nor Ralph Gonsalves’ early political melt-down in essentially “cussing” Dr. Neville Duncan for having gushing favourable things to say about his very first visit to the Marxist-Leninist nirvana of Communist

China some time back. Now Comrade finding it hard to break with Taiwan, or march lock-step into the CHI-COM camp with his erstwhile Russian-Sovietist rabid, fanatic haters of Chinese communism. The West Indian copycat finds himself between the devil and the deep blue sea, on this one. The Caribbean Basket-case of the racist slave state of Communist Party Cuba is having to ironically go cap in hand to the Communist Chinese to replace and/or supplement the beggarly hand-outs from “chavista” Venezuela.

Again, my appreciation to the people and Government of China on Taiwan. I think that things WILL change drastically, IN SVG, in Taiwan, in mainland/continental

China, in Asia, and in the presently most successful and laudable SVG-Taiwan diplomatic and other relations. The current dispensation, my Vincentian and Chinese brethren all, are but a brief era of success and peace in a rapidly re-aligning geo-political structure.

Come what may, Taiwan, we love you — and many thanks. Enjoy your Republic of China (Taiwan) National Day. May there be yet many such in the years to come.

Appropriate here is my mom’s favourite, among others: “Que sera, sera . . .

Whatever will be, will be …

“Que sera, sera . . .

Steve Huggins ([email protected])

The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].