Chin Peng
Chin Peng (born 21 October 1924) is the leader of the anti-Japanese guerrilla state United Malayan Anti-Japanese Front, an alliance of communist and non-communist opposition groups.
In-Game Description
A man shrouded in myth and lionisation, Chin Peng, born Ong Boon Hua, is the current public enemy number one for the Shonan-Marai Military Government - a hardened, relentless fighter in the thick jungles and hills of central and northern Malaya. Successfully leading the 1957 anti-Japanese revolt amidst the collapse of the Marai Hokokai, Chin Peng has led his Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army through success and failure - a campaign forged in blood with comrades born in fire, as well as comrades of convenience.
However, not all was bright for the hardened guerrilla. The desperate situation in the dark years of 1959-1961 has forced the already-stranded MPAJA to escalate violent raids on villages and settlements along the Thai-Malayan border simply to survive - placing the very settlements the MPAJA claims to protect at the firing line of Japan's ruthless counter-insurgency methods. It seems like time was running out, until Chin Peng received a telegram from fellow resistants within the Askar Wataniah. And thus, the United Malayan Anti-Japanese Front was forged in fire in early 1961.
The insurgency's fortunes quickly shifted, as the Front was able to secure vital ports along the Western Malayan coast - allowing further support from the Republic of India (and some say, a greater benefactor) to aid the Front. A normalisation of relations with anti-Japanese states is a compromise Chin Peng can get behind, though he is not entirely unaware that the non-Communist armed opposition to Japan is growing. Short of seizing power for himself and collapsing the Front, he is forced to scale back his political ambitions: allying with the comparatively moderate Ahmad Boestamam. Boestamam has his own ambitions, but the two are symbiotic for the time being, as Boestamam relies on the MPAJA for muscle, and the MPAJA relies on Boestamam for popular legitimacy.
In-Game Description (Post-War)
More than 20 years of struggle, two wars, a traitor's plot and the defeat of the UMAJF punches through the spirits inside the revolutionary fighters of Parti Komunis Malaya. The great gambit for independence, forged with the necessity to form an alliance with the reactionaries and nationalists alike had failed. The breakdown of the UMAJF had nearly sealed the fate of Chin Peng and his fighters to be pushed back into the forests, forced to fight from the shadows, broken in spirit and muscle. Not this time- Yasuda's collapse rocked the Rising Sun enough that the traitors cannot push forward into their revolutionary bastion. A naive man could assume Chin Peng's rump state cannot last with the Rising Sun's puppets surrounding them, but the man that was Ong Boon Hua says otherwise. Never had one thought the PKM would be able to spring out of the forests holding more than a few villages, let alone span several states. No, even if he was defeated in battle, the PKM's communist spirit has reached the top rungs of leadership. A promise to all of Malaya had been made: he would not stop fighting as long as Japanese lapdogs taint Malaya and bring their rightful riches away to enrich themselves. But could the war-torn lands of Malaya stomach another long struggle and war for freedom from the Japanese before the land is broken? Can Chin Peng's state survive their precarious position and bring the revolution to the south? Or is Malaya doomed to have each of its struggle beaten down, fated to be the subjects of a foreign power? Only time can tell.