worked out smoothly until December 1960.32 Still, five years later, in
September 1965, when a coup initiated by the Communist Party of
failed, hundreds of thousands of pro-Peking ethnic Chinese
China expressed concern and sent
Indonesia
fled to China to escape prosecution.
two ships to rescue over 300,000 ethnic Chinese under the policy of
protecting overseas Chinese. Among those rescued, many were naturalized
Indonesians.
33
34
The same thing happened in Vietnam in 1979. Many naturalized
Vietnamese of Chinese origin escaped to China and were accepted in China
as non-naturalized Chinese. However, a visa was required after China
had received over 100,000 of this category. The point reflected in
these two cases is that the PRC is not yet ready to give up her
nationals, whether denaturalized or not, during critical situations,
such as the prosecution of Chinese in 1965 in Indonesia, and in 1979 in
Vietnam. No doubt many technical problems would make it difficult for
the PRC to separate naturalized from non-naturalized Chinese,
emergency rescue operation is carried out to protect her nationals.
Yet, it is also very hard for PRC to refuse denaturalized Chinese who
come to seek for protection.
deep-rooted social-cultural
while an
This reflection of moral affection has a
heritage.
Socially, many of those
denaturalized are close relatives of non-naturalized
citizens or have
Culturally,
practice a
close family members in China. The sense of relative intimacy is too
strong for Chinese leaders to disregard the fate of those of Chinese
origin, especially when they are in a perilous situation.
whether naturalized or not, Chinese still living together
cultural life which has constantly re-inforced their sense of belonging
to an ethnic group. Also, the sense of civil consciousness is new to
most of the newly independent countries in Southeast Asia, the ethnic
feeling cannot be expected to be vanished soon, because of its long
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