Revolution and Recognition in Post-War Asia: Restoring Missing Links in the Establishment of Indonesia–People’s Republic of China Relations, 1949–1950

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article sheds important new light on the early trajectory of contemporary Indonesia–People’s Republic of China (PRC) ties. Drawing on an extensive range of hitherto unexplored archives, it unpacks the processes and policies that prompted the newly independent Indonesian state in the spring of 1950 to recognise and establish direct relations with the PRC, thereby supplanting the former link between the Dutch colonial government and the Chinese Nationalist regime at Taiwan. It is argued that, contrary to prevailing understandings and Cold War logic, the Netherlands played a pivotal role in pushing Indonesia–PRC ties forward, while both Jakarta and Beijing temporised. In setting out this claim, the article contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it offers a significant corrective to established and recent scholarship on the foreign policy of early post-revolutionary Indonesia. Second, it provides fresh insights into the effects of the Cold War on Western imperialism in Asia and into the contested historical legacies that inform contemporary relations within the region to this day.