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Forging a Marriage of Convenience between ASEAN and China
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11295 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1986 |
3,453 Words |
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John Wong
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China's relations with those countries which now constitute the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are deeply rooted in the shared historical processes that are common to the region. Drastic change has marked those relationships in recent years, and there are numerous questions concerning what direction economic and political development will take in the years to come.
In any discussion on recent developments in the region it might prove useful to place the issues at hand in a historical perspective. In 1967, the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand formed ASEAN in Bangkok. In 1984, a small oil rich sultanate, Brunei, joined the ASEAN organization as its sixth member. China's relations with the countries in Southeast Asia, traditionally called Nanyang (or South Sea) by the Chinese, are extensive and deep-rooted on account of the history, geography, and migration in the area. After the Communist revolution in China in 1949, the traditional pattern of China's relations with Southeast Asia was radically transformed, with complex ideological and political forces coming into play, and this gave rise to two decades of cold war relations. It was not until the early 1970s with the advent of détente in the region, touched off by President Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972, that individual ASEAN countries started their long and often tortuous course of normalization with China.
Among the ASEAN countries, Indonesia has had unique experiences with China because of Indonesia's commitment to a nonalignment policy in the early years of its independence. Indonesia was in fact the first country in the region to extend diplomatic relations to the People's Republic of China right after the revolutionary government was proclaimed in October 1949. In particular, Sino-Indonesian relations during the Sukarno period were very intimate, reinforced politically by the "Bandung spirit" and at times economically by generous Chinese economic aid. China sided with Indonesia during its confrontation with Malaysia in the early 1960s; there was a point when the two countries came close to the formation of a "Beijing-Dakarta Axis." But their close relations were brought to an abrupt end in 1965 by the Gestapu, or the September 30th coup in Dakarta.
Today, almost two decades later, Indonesia has not reopened its severed diplomatic relations with China. In 1971, following the first signs of Sino-American rapprochement, Indonesia's then foreign minister Adam Malik declared that his country would also welcome restoration of relations with China and took certain initiatives towards that end. During the past decade and a half, there were a few occasions when Indonesia could have mended ties with Beijing, but each time the chance was lost. The latest such opportunity was in April 1985 when Chinese foreign minister Wu Xueqian went to Indonesia for the Bandung 30th anniversary commemorative meeting. In the event, Indonesia's President Suharto chose only to establish direct trade with Beijing, but not to resume direct diplomatic relations. This clearly reflects certain diplomatic inflexibility on the part of the current Indonesian leadership.
Impasse consequences
The continuing Sino-Indonesian diplomatic impasse holds serious consequences for both China and Indonesia. The absence of a diplomatic mission in Dakarta is a constant reminder of a primary diplomatic failure for
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