ABSTRACT
The student organization was confined to schools using the Chinese language as the medium of education with the exception of a short-lived but influential English-speaking branch in the University of Malaya, which was broken up in 1951. In 1953 Special Branch managed also to smash the entire District organization, but the Students' Committee and the Middle School branches kept alive, and they continued to survive right through the defeat of the armed revolt in the jungle and the smashing of the second attempt at an urban revolt in Singapore in 1956. The swing towards an urban strategy should be regarded as a reaction to events and an exploitation of opportunities. The massive reverses suffered by the Communists in the rural areas between 1951 and 1954, during which they lost two-thirds of their fighting strength, and support in the Chinese villages fell even more than that.
