The MNLA commonly employsguerrilla tactics, sabotaging installations, attacking rubber plantations and destroying transportation and infrastructure.
Support for the MNLA is mainly based on around 500,000 of the 3.12 million ethnic Chinese living in Malaya at this time.
These 500,000 have been referred to as 'squatters' and the majority of them were farmers living on the edge of the jungles where the MLNA is based.
This allows the MLNA to supply themselves with food, in particular, as well as providing a source of new recruits.
The ethnic Malay population supports them in smaller numbers.
The MNLA gains the support of the Chinese because they are denied the equal right to vote in elections, have no land rights to speak of, and are usually very poor.
The MNLA's supply organization is called "Min Yuen."
It has a network of contacts within the general population.
Besides supplying materiel, especially food, it is also important to the MNLA as an information gatherer.
The MNLA's camps and hideouts are in the rather inaccessible tropical jungle with limited infrastructure.
Most MNLA guerrillas are ethnic Chinese, though there are some Malays, Indonesians and Indians among its members.
The MNLA is organized into regiments, although these have no fixed establishments and each encompasses all forces operating in a particular region.
The regiments have political sections, commissars, instructors and secret service.
In the camps, the soldiers attend lectures on Marxism–Leninism, and produce political newsletters to be distributed to the locals.
The MNLA also stipulates that their soldiers need official permission for any romantic involvement with local women.
In the early stages of the conflict, the guerrillas envisage establishing "liberated areas" from which the government forces have been driven, with MNLA control being established, but does not succeed at this.
