of his forces during the latter part of the Emergency due to pressure from the Malayan security forces, which by 1952 totalled over 32,000 regular troops in Malaya, about three-fifths of whom were Europeans from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The Second Insurgency (1968-1989) In 1961, members of the CPM central committee such as Chin Peng, Chen Tien, and Lee An Tung moved to Beijing to seek political advice and guidance from the more experienced Chinese Communist Party. Chin would, however, remain in Beijing for the next 29 years and the party would not lay down its arms until 1989. The reasons for this reversal of the party's decision to disband, according to Chin, was the advice given to him by the Vietnamese communist leaders in Hanoi, the opening of the second ‘Vietnam War’, which was followed by China's Cultural Revolution, all of which stressed a strong militant line to be taken by Asian communist parties. While in Beijing, Chin Peng was also advised by Deng Xiaoping, to continue the armed struggle in Malaya as Deng felt the time was ripe for revolutions to take place in Southeast Asia. Deng insisted that the military struggle should not only be maintained but stepped up. Deng even promised financial support to the CPM if they should take up arms once again. Deng offered for this to remain a secret as the CCP did not wish to let it be known that they had been actively supporting Southeast Asia's communist movements. Chin reluctantly decided to acquiesce to Deng's suggestion. This was also the first time that the CPM had accepted foreign assistance in its struggle and it was with this financial backing that the second armed struggle in Malaya would be launched in 1968. Meanwhile, back in Malaya, the Malayan government had declared the Emergency over on 31 July 1960 once they became confident the MNLA had ceased to be a credible threat, with the surviving guerrillas retreating to their sanctuary in southern Thailand. However, the insurgency continued with the insurgents increasing their attacks, ambushing military convoys, bombing national monuments, and assassinations of marked police officers and political ‘enemy targets’. The insurgency, which began as a war against the British colonialists, was now transformed into a war against ‘federalists, compressors capitalists and lackeys of British imperialism’. The Malayan government maintained a high-security alert by devoting one-third of its national budget to