Press Statement by DAP Secretary-General and Member of Parliament for Bandar Melaka, Mr. Lim Kit Siang on 28th October 1971.
DAP calls on Tun Razak to declare Malaysia’s readiness to establish diplomatic relations with China
The admission of the People’s Republic of China into the United Nations is the triumph of justice and truth over brute power and money.
All of United States of America’s gold and dollar could do was to keep out China from her rightful place in the United Nations and the Security Council for 21 years.
The American Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. George Bush, described the resolution admitting China and expelling Taiwan as “a day of infamy”.
He and his government did not feel ashamed, however when the United Nations lived through 21 years of infamy, when it illegally, unjustly and immorally excluded the Peking Government from the United Nations, and fathered the international fiction that Chiang Kai Shek is the ruler of China.
The triumphant admission of China into the United Nations has a lesson for us in Malaysia. We should chart our national destiny and policy according to our best national interest, and not at the behest of instruction of any other foreign power, however powerful or rich.
Malaysia should completely break from her past, when she was merely a pawn in American international power politics.
The Malaysian government must take concrete steps to stablish her independence in her foreign policy.
With the new international era opened up by China’s taking her rightful place in the United Nations, Malaysia should evaluate her relations with the People’s Republic of China, whether she wants to follow the United States vis-à-vis relations with Peking, or whether she is bold enough to strike out on her own in Malaysian interest.
The DAP calls on the Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, to declare that Malaysia is prepared to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, and is prepared to enter into discussions for such a diplomatic relationship.
A study of the speeches and statements by Tun Razak, and other government leaders, will show that they have deliberately refused to declare that Malaysia is prepared to establish diplomatic relations with China.
For Malaysia to keep abreast with fast-changing international developments, Malaysia should adopt a brave, imaginative and creative policy vis-à-vis China. I suggest that Malaysia should not only declare publicly the that she is prepared to establish diplomatic relations with China, but should immediately appoint a high-powered mission to visit China to discuss with Chinese officials the mechanics of bringing this about.