The Ambivalent Alliance between Beijing and Jakarta

This chapter explores Beijing's strategic collaborations with Jakarta through the second Afro-Asia Conference, the Game of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), and konfrontasi—Indonesia's campaign to block Britain's plan to merge the remains of its former Southeast Asian colonies into the Federation of Malaysia. However, closer bilateral relations failed to prevent anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia. In May 1963, shortly after Liu Shaoqi's historic visit to Indonesia, which was the first visit by a head of state of the People's Republic of China, a chain of anti-Chinese riots broke out in West Java. Unlike the government-led anti-Chinese acts in 1959–60, the attacks against ethnic Chinese in 1963 were eruptions of popular discontent sparked by economic conditions. Meanwhile, the two countries' common struggle against the Western imperialist presence in Southeast Asia led to new discord. Beijing and Jakarta clashed over policies toward the ethnic Chinese in Malaya, the Chinese-dominated Communist guerillas in Sarawak, and the Chinese-majority country of Singapore.

The Chinese Communist Party and the Overseas Chinese

This chapter examines the memoirs, diaries, poems, and theater scripts written by Ba Ren, an undercover member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a writer, and those who used to work with him in the 1940s. It contends that the CCP was better able than its Nationalist rival to capture the hearts and minds of young overseas Chinese by expanding its political networks and promoting cross-ethnic alliances among the working class. In the 1940s, the CCP built its support base among the overseas Chinese through the education and publishing efforts of left-wing intellectuals like Ba Ren who traveled from Mainland China to Southeast Asia and worked as teachers and journalists in overseas Chinese communities. The subsequent rise of literacy and increasing availability of left-wing publications created a generation of revolutionary-minded ethnic Chinese youth. Through supplies, information, and refuge provided by these young people during the Japanese occupation, the CCP established underground offices in Sumatra, which were hidden behind the counters of pastry shops, Chinese medicine companies, soap factories, and wineries. It was the enthusiasm of these left-leaning youth that allowed openly active pro-CCP civic associations and political organizations to blossom during the Indonesian National Revolution.