Flag Poll

Once each year, in October, overseas Chinese wear their hearts on their sleeves, or, more specifically, on their flagpoles. On Oct. 1, the anniversary of the Red conquest, Mao partisans wave the five-starred Communist flag. On Oct. 10, the Nationalist anniversary (called "Double-Ten" because the Chinese Republic was proclaimed in 1911 on the tenth day of the tenth month), the followers of Chiang Kai-shek wave their flags.

Last week in British Hong Kong, which lies within uneasy reach of Communist China, an estimated 150,000 Nationalist flags were courageously displayed on Double-Ten by taxi drivers, shopkeepers, peddlers and other Chinese, putting to shame a spindly showing of some 2,500 Mao flags on the Communists' fourth anniversary ten days earlier. Chinese in nearby Portuguese Macao put out 5,000 Nationalist flags where only 67 Communist flags had flown. In Siam, many Chinese leaders who had been conspicuous fence-sitters attended a holiday reception at the Nationalist embassy, and from Singapore, 128 Chinese associations sent pledges of support to Chiang. "It isn't because the past was memorable," commented Hong Kong's Truth Daily. "It's just because the present is so hateful."

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