Literature Review and Methodology

Although more than half a century has passed since these events, our understanding of Chinese foreign policy towards Indonesia between 1960 and 1965 remains incomplete. From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the lack of sources meant that research on this topic was limited to the analysis of news releases.Footnote ⁷ In the past decade, although the opening of Chinese archives has made it possible for historians to gain a better understanding of the formation of Chinese foreign policy during the Cold War, Chinese policy towards Indonesia has fallen by the wayside.Footnote ⁸ Hong Liu's recently published China and the Shaping of Indonesia is the only piece of scholarship that has made use of the newly available Chinese sources.Footnote ⁹ The book offers an inspiring account of Indonesian intellectual history as well as a detailed examination of cultural diplomacy between China and Indonesia during the years between 1949 and 1965. However, because Liu relies heavily on sources from the early to mid-1950s, his work ignores the eventful and important years from 1960 to 1965.

This article aims to fill the gap in the existing scholarship through a critical reading of documents recently declassified by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives in Beijing. In November 2008, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives declassified for the first time Chinese diplomatic documents produced during the years between 1961 and 1965.Footnote ¹⁰ The collection comprises documents generated by different levels of government, ranging from minutes of meetings between top-level Chinese leaders and foreign visitors, to lower-level communications between Chinese embassies and consulates abroad and in Beijing. This immense body of fresh historical material is complemented by other Chinese language documents available on the topic, including memoirs, newspapers and periodicals. In addition to these textual sources, I have also conducted interviews with retired Chinese diplomats who were eyewitnesses to these five turbulent years in Sino-Indonesian relations. Unfortunately, owing to the scarcity of materials from the Indonesian side, I am limited to Chinese-language sources in this article.Footnote ¹¹

In addition to introducing new sources, this article aims to engage with the burgeoning field of Cold War international history.Footnote ¹² The international approach to the Cold War emphasizes not only great power politics but also the internal dynamics within the Third World – the “the former colonial or semi-colonial countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that were subject to European (or rather pan-European, including American and Russian) economic or political domination.”Footnote ¹³ The PRC's policy towards Third World countries during the Cold War is an important but generally understudied area in both history and political science. By looking at Beijing's policy towards Indonesia, I will explore a major relationship in the developing world during the Cold War.

Last but not least, this article aims to bridge the gap between scholarly works on the PRC's diplomatic history and overseas Chinese history. Although the scholarship on Chinese foreign policy during the Cold War has undergone major developments, the core endeavour of the existing body of literature remains the study of the highly centralized state under Mao Zedong. Meanwhile, the study of the Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia has been a long-established field and, in recent years, a new trend towards transnational studies has begun to show the importance of transnational networks in Chinese communities in South-East Asia and beyond. Footnote ¹⁴ This new approach calls for students of “transnational China” to step out of the analytical frameworks that are centred on nation states or some other territorially based social, political, economic or cultural grouping.Footnote ¹⁵ By highlighting how the flow of Chinese migrants overlapped with the PRC's state-to-state relations, I seek to bring the studies of international politics and transnational movements together.Footnote ¹⁶

Background: The PRC's Domestic Politics and International Strategy

The period from the early to mid-1960s was a time of domestic tumult and international challenges for the PRC. In the spring of 1957, Mao, who was convinced that the CCP cadres had grown attached to their privileges, launched the “democratic consolidation of spirits” (minzhu zhengfeng 民主整风) campaign. This campaign against bureaucratism, subjectivism and factionalism was soon followed by the Anti-Rightist Movement (fan youpai yundong 反右派运动), resulting in a tense domestic political atmosphere. Subsequently, the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), the original aim of which was to accelerate the pace of the modernization of China's economy, resulted in three years of catastrophic economic recession. These domestic political movements had a profound impact on China's foreign relations. The pragmatic and moderate policy line defined by the Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence (heping gongchu wu xiang yuanze 和平共处五项原则) in 1954 was interrupted. In the immediate aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, as part of a critical reflection on domestic and international policies, the Chinese leadership established the principle of “actively opening up a new horizon in foreign relations” (nuli zhudong de zaiwaijiaoshang kaichuang xin de jumian 努力主动地在外交上开创新的局面) in January 1961.Footnote ¹⁷ However, this policy adjustment was short lived. In 1962, Wang Jiaxiang 王稼祥, the CCP International Bureau chief who proposed that Beijing should endeavour to search for stability with major power players, was fiercely attacked by Mao.Footnote ¹⁸ With Mao denouncing any attempt to ease international tensions as “rightist,” an international outlook that denied any possibility for détente or long-term peace emerged as the cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy.

The PRC's policy towards Indonesia between 1960 and 1965 was a reflection of the general radicalization of its domestic and foreign policies. As the Sino-Soviet alliance was coming to an end, Beijing began to shift its attention to the post-colonial nation states that could be potential new partners in an international front against both superpowers. China's perception of former colonial countries, such as Indonesia under President Sukarno's rule, had its origins in Mao's conceptualization of the “intermediate zone” (zhongjian didai 中间地带), a perceived buffer between the two superpowers, which included many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.Footnote ¹⁹ In the 1950s and 1960s, the concept of the “intermediate zone” gradually evolved into a line of strategic thinking that aimed to contest the Cold War bipolar international structure and to reorganize the existing pattern of alignments. In 1964, Mao began to believe that a global war was imminent and a Third World alignment would bring about a decisive shift in world politics. He told a group of Indonesian visitors that “the Soviet Union emerged from the First World War; China and many other socialist countries came out of the Second World War; and imperialism will perish in a Third World War.”Footnote ²⁰

Beijing's honeymoon with Jakarta also coincided with increasing US involvement in South-East Asia. The PRC's expansion of its influence in Indonesia was partly intended to counterbalance the American military presence across China's southern border in Vietnam and Laos. In the eyes of the Chinese leadership, the anti-imperialist movements in South-East Asia were closely connected. In September 1963, at a four-party conference of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Indonesian communist leaders, Zhou Enlai 周恩来 proclaimed that South-East Asia had become the key arena for international anti-imperialist struggle. “As the reliable home front of South-East Asian revolutions,” Zhou said, “China had the responsibility to fully support anti-imperialist struggles in the region.”Footnote ²¹ During 1963 and 1964, Jakarta was engaged in an undeclared insurgent war with Malaysia (known as the Konfrontasi) aimed at blocking British plans to merge the remains of its former South-East Asian colonies into the Federation of Malaysia. From Beijing's perspective, with Indonesia opposing Malaysia, North Vietnam struggling to overthrow the Diem regime in the South, and Thailand and the Philippines fighting to break away from imperialist control, the United States would soon be expelled from the region by “a magnificent wave of anti-imperialist struggles.”Footnote ²²

Indonesia was categorized as a “bourgeois nationalist” country in the standard Marxist analytical lenses commonly adopted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Yet, during the early 1960s, the archipelago was increasingly recognized by the top leaders in Beijing as a crucial ally in the intermediate zone. There was a greater convergence of interests and objectives between the two countries, with Indonesia also starting to pursue an actively anti-imperialist foreign policy in the early 1960s. The Chinese leadership was particularly attracted by President Sukarno's formulation that the world struggle was between the “old dying forces” (capitalism and imperialism) and the “new emerging forces” (nationalism and communism), a slogan that echoed Beijing's strategic thinking. Whether a regime was prepared to challenge the existing international order vigorously had become the most important criteria for China to judge whether a state was “socialist” or not. This underlying logic was reflected in the Chinese foreign minister, Chen Yi's 陈毅 conversation with his Indonesian counterpart, Subandrio:

An Uncertain Partnership: The PRC and Sukarno

On the macro level, Indonesia played an important role in the PRC's strategy in the Third World. Beijing had invested greatly in cultivating its relationship with President Sukarno, most prominently exemplified by, as shown in the paragraphs below, its support for his West Irian campaign in 1961 and Konfrontasi in 1963. Footnote ²⁴ However, on the micro level, even during the years when bilateral relations were most cordial, Sukarno remained an uncertain partner in the eyes of the Chinese diplomats on the ground. He had been savvy, or even manipulative, in his dealings with the Americans, the Soviets and the Chinese. The “dark side and the double-dealings of the bourgeois nationalists”Footnote ²⁵ were frequently exposed and Chinese foreign policy practitioners and decision makers regarded Sukarno with suspicion.

In the summer of 1960, Sukarno's campaign to reclaim West Irian as Indonesian territory reached a climax and received staunch encouragement from Beijing. By portraying Sukarno as a nationalist hero who safeguarded Indonesia's territorial integrity in its propaganda, the PRC was attempting to rally support from Afro-Asian countries in order to offset the increasing animosity between China and India. China's relations with this important neighbour and former crucial ally in Asia deteriorated sharply after the Tibetan uprising in 1959, the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama to India, and the subsequent serious border conflicts.Footnote ²⁶ When Mao met Sukarno in June 1961, the chairman even tried to provoke antagonism between Indonesia and India by insinuating that the prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted to snatch the leadership of the anti-imperialist movement from Sukarno.Footnote ²⁷ During a meeting with Subandrio in 1963, Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 openly dismissed India as a “chauvinist country” and Nehru as “no longer representative of Afro-Asian countries.” Liu suggested that Sukarno should assume the leading role in Afro-Asian unity instead.Footnote ²⁸

While the top leaders in Beijing were singing Sukarno's praises as the pioneer of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle, the Chinese diplomats in Indonesia depicted Sukarno as a shrewd politician who pitted the great powers against each other in their reports to Beijing. The Chinese diplomatic mission's first major disappointment with Sukarno occurred when Moscow began to bid for influence in Indonesia. In February 1960, the Soviet Union strengthened its ties with Indonesia through Khrushchev's visit to the country and the offer of a US$250 million concessionary loan. Against the background of the widening rift between Beijing and Moscow, the Chinese embassy in Jakarta downplayed the actual impact of Khrushchev's visit. It reported back to Beijing that “the flamboyant welcoming ceremonies were superficial,” and that “Sukarno accompanied Khrushchev only to raise his own political status in international affairs.”Footnote ²⁹ Another memo concluded that Jakarta did not sincerely aspire to a genuine friendship with Moscow as “the ruling class in Indonesia wanted Khrushchev's money but not his influence.”Footnote ³⁰

Eventually, Sukarno won the West Irian campaign as the United States exerted diplomatic pressure on the Netherlands to transfer the sovereignty of the region to Indonesia. However, Sukarno soon redirected the nation's political interests to another crisis – the confrontation with Malaysia. Beijing strongly endorsed Sukarno by condemning Malaysia as a “neocolonialist scheme … produced by Britain, and masterminded by the US.”Footnote ³¹ The Chinese diplomatic mission in Indonesia observed how Sukarno vacillated between escalation and de-escalation in the Konfrontasi and how he based his policy choices upon opportunistic calculations. For example, in early 1964, Sukarno declared a ceasefire and resumed tripartite talks between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. In an intelligence briefing sent back to Beijing, the Chinese embassy in Indonesia suggested that Sukarno would “seek for common interests with the reactionaries in Malaysia and the Philippines.”Footnote ³²

The convoluted negotiation process between China and Indonesia over the Second Afro-Asian Conference (or the Second Bandung Conference) increased the Chinese embassy's ambivalence towards Sukarno. The Second Bandung Conference was part of Beijing's effort to compete with the perceived imperialists and revisionists for influence in formal colonial countries.Footnote ³³ However, despite the persistent urging from Beijing, Sukarno seemed less enthusiastic about the Second Bandung Conference than about the conference of non-aligned countries, which Beijing regarded as its major rival. Sukarno co-founded the conference of non-aligned countries with the PRC's three major nemeses in the Third World: Nehru of India, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Until 1964, Sukarno preferred to join India and Egypt in manoeuvring between the two camps rather than to ally with China in confronting both superpowers. To China's relief, Sukarno was rejected at the conference of non-aligned countries in October 1964 owing to his policy of confrontation with Malaysia. In January 1965, Sukarno withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations in response to the United States' endorsement of Malaysia's entry to the UN Security Council. Increasing international isolation compelled Sukarno to move another step closer towards the PRC. In 1965, at his last Independence Day ceremony before the 30 September Movement, Sukarno declared: “We are now fostering an anti-imperialist axis – the Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Hanoi-Peking-Pyongyang axis.”Footnote ³⁴

The Chinese evaluation of Sukarno's position in Indonesian domestic politics was also ambivalent. In 1959, Sukarno replaced constitutional democracy, a system which had suffered from inefficiency, political instability and waning public support during the early years of Indonesia's independence, with “guided democracy.”Footnote ³⁵ This new institutional framework was a more authoritarian system largely defined by the delicate power dynamics between Sukarno and the Indonesian army.Footnote ³⁶ As a result, Sukarno relied heavily on the army's arch-enemy in domestic politics, the PKI, for organized public support. During the later period of “guided democracy” and up until the 30 September Movement, the president's relations with the Indonesian communists became increasingly close, angering the Indonesian army. China became concerned about the possibility of internal unrest in Indonesia owing to the rising tension between the PKI and the Indonesian army and the country's rapidly deteriorating economic situation. In August 1964, the Chinese embassy reported to Beijing that “the right-wing elements and the imperialists were infuriated by Sukarno's turn to the left. They will attempt to topple Sukarno. The conflict between subversion and counter-subversion will become more acute.”Footnote ³⁷ An analytical report written at the end of 1964 suggested that: “Indonesia's national economy has been deteriorating dramatically … Sukarno is distracting people from the grim economic conditions with the policy of confrontation [with Malaysia].”Footnote ³⁸ From late October to December 1964, Chinese intelligence agencies in Hong Kong reported on rumours surrounding plots and coups against the government in Indonesia. One intelligence report sent back to Beijing in December 1964 noted that, according to information from the US consulate in Hong Kong, Sukarno's health was in critical condition and that the anti-communist army generals might make a move to seize power.Footnote ³⁹

Unwanted Embroilment: The PRC and the Overseas Chinese in Indonesia

Aside from its cordial relations with Sukarno, another key to Beijing's honeymoon period with Indonesia was the Chinese central leadership's handling of issues concerning the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Scholars who study the Chinese in South-East Asia usually acknowledge the existence of two distinct, but not mutually exclusive, sub-groups within the Chinese community in Indonesia: the Peranakan (Chinese already partially assimilated into Indonesian society) and Totok (descendants of comparatively recent immigrants who remain primarily oriented towards their country of origin, China). The PRC dealt mainly, but not exclusively, with the Totok groups that maintained strong cultural, linguistic and familial ties with China. The following paragraphs discuss how Beijing's policy towards the Chinese in Indonesia was torn between two conflicting goals: first, the PRC had to vie with the Republic of China (ROC) regime in Taiwan for the loyalty of overseas Chinese; and second, it had to assure Jakarta that the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia were not a “fifth column” for Communist China. When faced with the episodic anti-Chinese riots which had the potential to disrupt PRC–Indonesian relations, Beijing chose to sacrifice the Chinese in Indonesia in order to maintain its alliance with Sukarno.

Given the precarious status of the Chinese in Indonesia, Beijing found managing ties with its diaspora an added diplomatic complication. Despite Indonesia's pronounced ethnic diversity, the Chinese minority were singled out as a distinctive “foreign” (asing) ethnic group which had no territorial roots in the country. In other words, the Chinese were not regarded as “indigenous” (pribumi) and so did not automatically form part of the post-colonial Indonesian nation, although many of the Peranakan Chinese were virtually indistinguishable from the pribumi in linguistic or cultural terms. Many Chinese Indonesians found this distinction to be discriminatory and disrespectful. Admittedly, a considerable portion of the Chinese in Indonesia, especially those living in the most densely populated island of Java, achieved business success. However, Chinese throughout the archipelago were engaged in a broad range of occupations and in varied economic conditions. Nevertheless, the Chinese in Indonesia were stereotypically portrayed as a wealthy trading community, rendering this ethnic minority vulnerable to economy envy.Footnote ⁴⁰

The almost parallel processes of national independence in Indonesia, the establishment of a communist regime in mainland China and the subsequent Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan in 1949 gave rise to the issue of the nationality of Chinese in Indonesia. Under the provisions of the Round Table Agreement of 1949, practically all Indonesian-born Chinese could automatically obtain Indonesian citizenship, or they could establish their status as citizens only of China by formally rejecting Indonesian citizenship within a two-year period. In the early 1950s, around one-third of the total ethnic Chinese population possessed dual nationality.Footnote ⁴¹ Immediately after the Bandung conference in 1955, China and Indonesia signed the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, which required both countries to cease recognition of dual nationality. Under the terms of this treaty, all Chinese Indonesians aged 18 years and older were forced to choose between either Indonesian or Chinese citizenship.Footnote ⁴² By 1963, almost all Chinese Indonesians had been sorted into two citizen groups: “WNI” (Warga Negara Indonesia) or aliens.Footnote ⁴³ The latter group consisted almost entirely of PRC citizens, with the exception of a few Kuomintang loyalists who were registered as “stateless” by the Indonesian immigration authorities.Footnote ⁴⁴

The implementation of the dual nationality treaty was a tortuous process, which was further obstructed by Beijing's campaign to gain greater influence than Taipei over the Chinese community in Indonesia. Throughout the 1950s, the PRC used all kinds of resources, including media, government-organized tourist groups and Chinese language education to promote its image as the only legitimate government of China.Footnote ⁴⁵ After conducting in-depth fieldwork among the Chinese community in Indonesia in the 1950s, William Skinner concluded that the struggle between “Communist and Kuomintang partisans has permeated all levels of Chinese-speaking society and in consequence the China-oriented portion of Chinese society in Indonesia is very highly politicized.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The heated competition between the two sides came to a temporary halt with the deterioration of Taipei's relations with Jakarta owing to the former's support of rebellions in Sulawesi. In 1958, the Indonesian government launched a campaign against Kuomintang organizations in the archipelago, which led to the closure of all schools affiliated with Taipei.Footnote ⁴⁷

For the PRC, the mobilization of the Chinese in Indonesia was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, beyond expanding political influence, by mobilizing the Chinese community the PRC was able to obtain valuable human resources and information in Indonesia. It is noteworthy that the pro-PRC Chinese language schools were often the cradles for future CCP cadres and PRC diplomats. Many outstanding students found their way into the Chinese civil service and served the PRC with their local knowledge and language skills. For instance, Chen Lishui 陈丽水, Wen Liu 温流 and Huang Shuhai 黄书海 were all Indonesian-born ethnic Chinese who later became the first generation of Indonesian interpreters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.Footnote ⁴⁸ On the other hand, many Totok Chinese, heavily influenced by Beijing's propaganda, were reluctant to opt for Indonesian citizenship and to integrate into Indonesian society. In effect, the decade-long spillover of the Chinese civil war in Indonesia made it very difficult for the PRC to implement the policy line of encouraging the Chinese to “settle and plant their roots” (luodi sheng gen 落地生根) in Indonesia.

The consequences of contradictory policy lines became most pronounced when a wave of economic nationalism rolled over Indonesia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In May 1959, two Indonesian government decrees precipitated a turbulent time for the Chinese minority. The first was a Ministry of Trade regulation revoking the trading licences of aliens in rural areas by December 1959, and the second was a decree empowering regional military commanders to remove aliens from their places of residence for “security reasons.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Six months later, Sukarno promulgated Presidential Decree No. 10 which demanded the suspension of Chinese retailers' business activities in rural areas by 1 January 1960 and legitimized the takeover of foreign enterprises by indigenous merchants.Footnote ⁵⁰

The discriminatory economic measures against the Chinese severely disrupted relations between Indonesia and China. In response to Jakarta's anti-Chinese actions, Beijing chose to adopt a constrained and cautious attitude. The central leadership in Beijing was unwilling to sacrifice stable relations with Sukarno in order to protect the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. During a meeting with the Indonesian ambassador in December 1959, the Chinese foreign minister, Chen Yi, asked the ambassador to pass on the following words to Sukarno: “Vigilance against the imperialists' conspiracy to impair Afro-Asian unity is very important.”Footnote ⁵¹ Chen Yi claimed that the rising antagonism towards the PRC in Indonesia was a “cover” (huangzi 幌子) for the American plot to overthrow the communist regime in China.Footnote ⁵² According to Chinese policy makers, the most powerful weapon for crushing the American imperialists' virulent scheme would be to strengthen Third World unity further.

However, Chinese diplomats on the ground in Indonesia were torn between their duty to serve the PRC's overall strategic needs and their responsibilities to protect Chinese citizens in Indonesia who relied on the Chinese diplomatic mission for their personal safety and national pride. The Chinese diplomats faced a huge dilemma when Beijing decided to suspend its repatriation programme. Beijing, out of frustration over its inability to resolve the anti-Chinese movements in Indonesia through diplomatic means, began to call back overseas Chinese in December 1959. By the summer of 1960, some 60,000 Chinese had left the country. Beijing had spent approximately US$40 million on bringing the Chinese home.Footnote ⁵³ The repatriation programme was prohibitively expensive for China. Around August 1960, the PRC stopped calling back ethnic Chinese from Indonesia and urged potential repatriates to stay in the country. In order to avoid an outburst of anti-PRC feeling evoked by a sense of betrayal, Beijing instructed its diplomats in Indonesia to “direct the contradictions towards the Indonesian government” through careful “persuasion by cadres.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Between July and October 1960, the Chinese embassy cancelled 11 merchant fleets booked by Chinese societies in Indonesia for repatriation. The embassy reported that, after repeated instances of “moral education,” the vast majority of the Chinese gathered in Indonesian ports waiting for passage to China had arranged for resettlement in Indonesia. However, by the end of September 1960, over 100,000 Chinese insisted on returning to the PRC even though they were no longer welcome. The Chinese embassy was confronted with emotional protests when Beijing renounced its previous stance on the repatriation campaign. There were large demonstrations against the PRC, and some ethnic Chinese even used threats of collective suicide to intimidate the Chinese diplomats.Footnote ⁵⁵

The ethnic Chinese issue also served to reinforce Beijing's already ambivalent attitude towards Sukarno. Sukarno initiated the anti-Chinese campaigns between 1959 and 1960 in a bid to win support from certain indigenous groups that had lost out in business to the ethnic Chinese. Yet, during his meeting with Mao Zedong in 1961, Sukarno declared that he personally thought “there is no ‘ethnic minority’ per se in Indonesia.” He was opposed to “the view that considers ethnic Chinese as minority, but also to the so-called conceptual distinction between ‘aboriginal’ and ‘alien’.” Sukarno took off his hat and pointed out his black hair to Mao: “It is hard to tell whether I am an ‘aboriginal’ or not, perhaps I have Chinese blood in me. Who can tell?”Footnote ⁵⁶ Despite these friendly gestures, Sukarno continued to use the ethnic Chinese issue as a pawn with which to manipulate Indonesia's domestic politics. In May 1963, another wave of anti-Chinese riots broke out in Indonesia. Beijing reacted in the same manner as before and adopted a very cautious position, preferring to prioritize its diplomatic relations with Indonesia over the protection of overseas Chinese.

Unlike-minded Comrades: CCP and PKI

The CCP's connections with the PKI also threatened to disrupt Beijing's honeymoon period with Jakarta. Owing to the PKI's initial ambiguous stance on the Sino-Soviet split, Beijing's attitude towards its Indonesian comrades remained lukewarm throughout the 1950s, and the CCP did not actively pursue any close collaboration with the PKI until the latter had shifted towards a stronger identification with Beijing in 1961. However, Beijing probably had less influence over the PKI than was claimed by the anti-communists in Indonesia after the abortive coup. The Chinese central leadership was informed of, and acquiescent with, the plans for the 30 September Movement. It is highly unlikely, however, that Beijing participated in the planning and subsequent execution of the movement. Nonetheless, by 1967, the People's Republic had become closely identified with the PKI in the eyes of the Suharto regime.

Beijing's evaluation of its Indonesian comrades in 1959 was mixed: “On the one hand, the PKI emphasized independence, autonomy, and equality among communist parties; on the other hand, it confirmed that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the vanguard of the international communist movement.”Footnote ⁵⁷ To Beijing, the Indonesian communists were by-and-large “unlike-minded comrades” up until 1961. The PKI had been an independent party which had treasured the autonomy it enjoyed in the international communist movement.Footnote ⁵⁸ Within the domestic arena, the PKI under Aidit's leadership had rejected the Maoist practice of seizing power by force and was committed to working within the existing political system. The PKI leadership was keenly aware that conditions in China and Indonesia were very different because Indonesia lacked China's great hinterland.Footnote ⁵⁹

In October 1961, Beijing finally won the PKI's support after years of frustration over the Indonesian communists' policy of remaining neutral in the Sino-Soviet split. At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev's keynote speech, which emphasized de-Stalinization and criticized Albania, was taken by Beijing as an oblique indictment of China.Footnote ⁶⁰ In Moscow, Aidit refrained from joining Khrushchev in the attack against the Albanian communists with whom the PKI had close contact.Footnote ⁶¹ Later, Aidit and other members of the Indonesian delegation travelled to Beijing where they held discussions with Mao and other CCP leaders. Mao told Aidit during their meeting: “Khrushchev is so reckless that he can do anything. His tricks change from year to year. There were so many tricks at the CPSU Twenty-second Congress. I think Khrushchev teaches by negative example (fanmian jiaoyuan 反面教员).”Footnote ⁶² Upon his return home, Aidit made a statement in defence of Albania, praising it as a country that was “genuinely building a socialist society.”Footnote ⁶³ At the same time, the PKI asserted that it had the right to evaluate Stalin's contributions according to its own judgment.Footnote ⁶⁴ In 1963, the PKI summed up its standpoint on inter-communist relations as aligning fully with the CCP “against the Soviet's ‘collaborationist’ relationship with the United States.” Footnote ⁶⁵ But, the PKI leadership also emphasized its determination to “pursue its own strategy of peaceful penetration and pressure without regard for Chinese denunciations of the peaceful road to power.”Footnote ⁶⁶

The PKI's attitude encouraged Beijing to take further steps towards forging an alliance with its Indonesian comrades. In September 1963, Aidit was invited to visit China and was hailed as “a brilliant Marxist-Leninist theoretician” and a “close friend and comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people.”Footnote ⁶⁷ Aidit also became the first non-Chinese honorary member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and was invited to give a lecture to the CCP Central Party School. In December 1963, in his political report to the second plenum of the seventh central committee of the PKI, Aidit proposed a theory that the world's countryside would encircle the world's cities. This theory would be incorporated into Lin Biao's 林彪 widely-circulated speech, “Long live the victory of the people's war,” two years later.Footnote ⁶⁸

All these feathers in Aidit's cap reflected both Beijing's recognition of Aidit and the radicalization of China's foreign policy. With its diplomacy irreversibly “turning left,” Beijing engaged with the perilous Indonesian political scene shortly before the 30 September Movement. In early 1965, China encouraged Sukarno to establish the Fifth Force, a militia group comprised of armed peasants and workers designed to augment the existing four branches of the Indonesian armed forces (army, navy, air force and police) in the event of an invasion by Malaysia and its British and American allies. Beijing also initiated a military aid programme in an effort to bolster the pro-Sukarno forces (the PKI and air force) against the right-wing elements in the Indonesian army.Footnote ⁶⁹

Moreover, during a meeting with Chen Yi in Jakarta on 21 August 1965, Subandrio expressed Indonesia's wish to make its own nuclear weapon and requested China's help. A month later, an Indonesian atomic energy delegation went to China and visited research institutes, laboratories and a nuclear reactor.Footnote ⁷⁰ On 30 September, Mao invited the same Indonesian delegation to attend the PRC National Day celebration: “Now the world is not peaceful, so we need military forces, and moreover, the atomic bomb. Do you want to build an atomic bomb?”Footnote ⁷¹ After hearing an affirmative answer from the head of the delegation, Mao said: “Two big countries in the world want to monopolize nuclear power, but we won't listen to them. We still create our own.”Footnote ⁷² During that meeting, Mao emphasized to the Indonesian guests that China had only just started its own nuclear industry, and that Indonesia should, first and foremost, develop its agriculture and industries.Footnote ⁷³ It is probable that China was interested in the transfer of nuclear technology to Indonesia, but no substantial commitment was made before the 30 September Movement.

China's involvement in Indonesian domestic politics made its role in the coup highly suspicious. Evidence from the Chinese side suggests that the top Chinese leadership in Beijing was probably aware of the PKI's plan to thwart the anti-communist army generals from making the move to seize power. However, the PKI most probably made its plan independently of foreign influence. From November 1964 to September 1965, Sukarno's health, especially his kidney stones, became a highly politicized issue. Since the PKI relied heavily upon Sukarno's political support, the party was haunted by the scenario in which its long-time nemesis, the Indonesian army, would take the chance to seize power from Sukarno. On 5 August 1965, Aidit, who was visiting China at the time, brought forward his plans to return to Indonesia because Sukarno had suffered a severe cerebral vasospasm attack the day before. Before leaving Beijing, Aidit had his last meeting with Mao. When Mao asked what the PKI would do in the event of Sukarno's death and if the army would attempt to seize power, Aidit laid out a plan for a pre-emptive strike:

As described above, Aidit's plan was a fairly accurate prediction of what would actually happen in less than two months' time. Furthermore, the hypothesis that a clandestine bureau of the PKI was responsible for the movement is supported by arguments presented in John Roosa's research, which is built upon in-depth study of Indonesian and American materials.Footnote ⁷⁵

Despite its prior knowledge of the plans for the 30 September Movement, the Chinese central leadership seemed ill-prepared for the dramatic turn of events on 1 and 2 October. The CCP newspaper, People's Daily, did not report on the incident during the first two weeks after it happened. The silence was finally broken on 19 October when, owing to the Chinese embassy's refusal to lower its national flag to half-mast on the national memorial day to commemorate the army generals killed in the abortive coup, violent conflicts broke out in Jakarta between the embassy and the Indonesian army.Footnote ⁷⁶ From October to November 1965, the Chinese central leadership was still harbouring hopes that Aidit would carry out an armed insurgency and regain control over the situation. In talks with the North Korean premier in November 1965, Zhou Enlai claimed that Beijing received little information from its diplomatic mission in Jakarta, but that the Chinese leadership believed that “the PKI was most resolute in the battle against imperialists and revisionists. It would be able to survive this test … the situation would be clearer once the PKI begins its counter attack.”Footnote ⁷⁷ In December 1965, upon learning of the death of Aidit, who was gunned down in Central Java by Suharto's troops, Mao wrote a poem:

The poem shows Mao's confidence in a revival of the communist movement in Indonesia. Yet, with Mao relentlessly launching his “last revolution” at home while Suharto tightened his grip on political power through an equally relentless cleansing of communists in Indonesia, China's policy towards Indonesia turned to one of extreme hostility. On the ground in Indonesia, the radicalization of Chinese diplomacy was rapidly advanced by the chargé d'affaires, Yao Dengshan 姚登山, a fervent leftist who enjoyed short-lived fame as a “red fighter diplomat” during the Cultural Revolution.Footnote ⁷⁹ In the spring of 1966, Beijing started to oppose the Suharto regime openly after right-wing student groups and the Indonesian army attacked the Chinese embassy in April. In a Beijing hospital whilst visiting a diplomat who had been shot by the Indonesian army during a violent clash, Chen Yi said: “The imperialists and the reactionaries fired at our comrades … the blood debts need to be paid back with blood!”Footnote ⁸⁰ Bilateral relations were officially suspended in October 1967.