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Indonesia Relations with East Asia
China
Indonesia's diplomatic relations with China were
suspended in
1967 in the aftermath of the 1965 attempted coup d'état.
Beijing
was suspected of complicity with the PKI in planning the
coup and
was viewed by the new ABRI-dominated government as a
threat
through its possible support of a resurgent underground
PKI, both
directly and through a "fifth column" of Chinese
Indonesians.
Jakarta repeatedly demanded an explicit disavowal by
Beijing of
support for communist insurgents in Southeast Asia as its
sine
qua non for a normalization process. Underlying the
Indonesian
policy was unease about China's long-range goals in
Southeast
Asia. The break in relations persisted until 1990, when,
in the
face of renewed mutual confidence, the two countries
resumed
their formal ties. The normalized relation boded well for
resolving the status of some 300,000 stateless
Chinese-descent
residents of Indonesia and improving political and
economic
relations between the two nations. An exchange of visits
by
Chinese premier Li Peng to Jakarta in August 1990 and by
Suharto
to Beijing in November 1990 symbolized the dramatic
alteration
that had taken place.
On the Indonesian domestic scene, there was growing
pressure
for normalization in order to fully exploit the developing
economic relationship with China. Even when relations were
totally frozen, two-way trade had taken place through
third
parties, especially Singapore and Hong Kong. Indonesian
businesses operating through the Chamber of Commerce and
Industry
in Indonesia (Kadin) were anxious to maximize the value of
the
trade by cutting out third parties.
At the international level, at least three factors had
intervened to change Indonesia's posture. First,
Indonesia, as a
vigorous diplomatic player in the Cambodian peace process,
had a
strong interest in a successful outcome. To achieve that
goal,
China, the Khmer Rouge's sponsor, had to be brought along,
and
Indonesia's mediating role was greatly enhanced by
normalization
of relations with China. Second, Indonesia's long-held
ambition
to become titular leader of the Nonaligned Movement was
furthered
by normalization of relations with China, the movement's
largest
member. Finally, Jakarta's claim to regional leadership
could not
be asserted confidently without normalized relations with
Beijing. For example, it would have been impossible for
Indonesia
in 1991 to have interjected itself into the South China
Sea
territorial disputes as an "honest broker" in the absence
of
relations with China, the most powerful nation involved in
the
South China Sea
(see
National Defense and Internal Security;
The Air Force
, ch. 5). All of these motives were at work at a
time
when the overarching structure of great power relations in
the
region was undergoing significant change. As the Soviet
Union
disintegrated and the United States presence diminished,
China's
relative power was increased, and Jakarta's need to deal
officially with Beijing overcame the worries of the last
die-hard
anticommunist and anti-China elements in ABRI.
Data as of November 1992
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