The entire embassy agreed to found a preparatory committee. “Celebrate China’s National Liberation Day by the standard method." “Nothing to it, entertain some company and there you have it.” “Make the guests in a limited amount of time feel deeply moved. At the least, we will impress upon them that the new China is full of newfound energy, that it is unlike the old China that has been trampled over by the reactionaries. To this end, through our movie party invitational, we will expand our government’s influence and achieve definite results in international communications.

National Day Celebration is actually a complicated and difficult united front task

Representative ethnic Chinese members participating in this National Day form six relatively comprehensive groups. 1- Businessmen, 2- Young students, 3- Educators, 4- Women, 5- Workers, 6- Other. The basic plan of action for inviting ethnic Chinese was, by way of this kind of National Day activity, to expand the Sino-Burmese Patriotic Democratic Movement faction, as well as expand the ethnic Chinese’s unified front. Therefore on top of inviting ethnic Chinese, we first pursued representatives from every level. We planned for 20% workers, 40% businessmen, 10% educators, 10% students, 6% women, and 14% ‘other’ (including lawyers, representatives from the suburbs, and old party representatives). Second, in our struggle for mid-level [attendees], those invited this time consisted of two-thirds middle class and one third working class. Of these, 20% of businessmen were working class, 80% were middle class; 45% of educators were working class, 55% were middle class; 50% of women were working class, 50% were middle class; 80% of students were progressing class,  20% were middle class. Third, we invited regional representatives according to the societal circumstances of Burma’s ethnic Chinese. Monitoring regionally specific attendance was also a major united front issue. However, since most of the democrats were from Fujian, people from Fujian were a bold 60%, Guangdong 20%, Hakka 10%, and others from Yunnan and the Wu region 10%. Altogether we posted 432 invitations, receiving 90% attendance.

This National Day Celebration in terms of united front operations achieved the majority of the goals for which it struggled while leaving only a few behind. For example among ethnic Chinese, with the exception of a few reactionaries, the vast majority were invited. Several ethnic Chinese community leaders who were backward perceived their being invited as an honor, demonstrating energetic initiative for improvement.

Problems:

1- The Burmese government was full of suspicion towards our country’s National Day celebrations. As such, they drew upon elaborate and obstructive methods, because they knew that we would seize on this opportunity to enormously expand our political influence. Even so, they could not fully obstruct us. When we were in the process of negotiating the guest list with them, we refused to reveal our guest list, which was very deliberate. We had difficulties as well with decorating the celebration’s location.

2- It is worth noting that Premier U Nu and other rightist Burmese officials like [illegible] etc. were at the party. Breaking with custom, they did not leave early, and instead stayed to watch the film. Those displeased with American imperialism pointed out that several in attendance were Burmese government appointees. “They hope to use this party to spy a bit on our attitudes,” they said.

3- Leaders from the Kachin regional department and their officers were the most well-mannered and best represented of the Burmese government bodies present at this gathering. This is worth ruminating upon. The Kachin race is near to our government’s Yunnan border, their leaders not long ago were repeatedly singing out the trope of Sino-Burmese brotherhood, hence for a great deal of them to be in attendance demonstrates that the Burmese government is basically in opposition to us, and yet they can appear to show concern in a display of two-facedness.