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China, Thailand and the Spirit of Bandung (Part II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

David A. Wilson
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Extract

The Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung in April 1955 presented a rare occasion for diplomatic contact between the People's Republic of China and Thailand, and represents a milestone if not a watershed in China's Asian relations, including those with Thailand. According to one well-informed commentator on the conference, a mutual educative process for both communist and anti-communist participants lay behind the purposes set forth by the sponsoring Colombo Powers, a process which “would serve both to enlighten the Chinese as to the realities of their international environment and to educate leaders of those non-communist Asian and African states which had little or no contact with Communist China as to the actual attitudes of Peking's leaders towards both non-communist Asia and the West.” It was assumed that although China was genuinely devoted to a policy of peace for a number of years to come, a genuine and not entirely unfounded fear of China as a threat to national independence existed among certain Asian powers.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 31 , July 1967 , pp. 96 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1967

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References

46 Kahin, George McT., The Afro-Asian Conference (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Un. Press, 1956), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid. pp. 57–58.

49 This speech appears in Asian-African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, 18th–24th April, 1955: Speeches and Communiques (Jakarta: Ministry of Information, 05 1955, mimeo)Google Scholar.

50 Kahin, , Afro-Asian Conference, op. cit., p. 27Google Scholar.

51 Ibid. p. 15. For details of treaty, see Willmott, Donald E., The National Status of the Chinese in Indonesia (Interim Report Series, Modern Indonesia Project, Cornell University, 1956), pp. 32–46Google Scholar.

52 See Lu-San, , Programs of Communist China for Overseas Chinese (Hong Kong: Communist China Problems Research Series, EC 12, 1956)Google Scholar for an examination of some of the programmes.

53 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Article 98.

54 Skinner, , Chinese Society in Thailand, op. dt., an Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Un. Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

55 NCNA, January 17, 1953, in SCMP, No. 495, 01 20, 1953, pp. 3–5Google Scholar; NCNA, August 1, 1954, in SCMP, No. 980, 02 3, 1955, p. 1Google Scholar.

56 The following is based on a detailed study of the same period in Skinner, , Chinese Society in Thailand, op. cit., pp. 322–340Google Scholar.

57 Ibid. p. 340.

58 Apparently China did not feel the legal question of nationality sufficiently meaningful to make an issue of it itself. The cost in influence in th e host country an d with the government of the host country of pressing a claim of jurisdiction probably did not seem likely to be compensated for by such jurisdiction over large numbers of Chinese of dubious allegiance. This seems particularly likely in view of the other levels of operation—those of non-official organisations and movements, and of the Communist Party—which Peking no doubt finds more effective for its special purposes.

59 See Willmott, Donald E., The National Status of the Chinese in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Modem Indonesia Project, Cornell University, 1961), p. 34Google Scholar.

60 For an appeal to this kind of sentiment see “Yi Mee Hou on Sino-Thai Relations,” SCMP, No. 1076, 06 24, 1955, pp. 25–26Google Scholar.

61 See King, John Kerry, “Thailand's Bureaucracy and the Threat of Communist Subversion,” Far Eastern Survey, XXII, No. 11 (11 1954), pp. 169–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 NCNA, May 21, 1955, in SCMP, No. 1053, 05 21–23, 1955, pp. 28–30Google Scholar

63 Ibid. pp. 27–28.

64 People's China, August 16, 1955, pp. 3–8.

65 Ibid. pp. 4–5.

66 Ibid. p. 6.

67 The phrase in Thai is obscure, probably deliberately, but appears to mean the government will cease its suppression activities and the Communists will cease their revolutionary activities.

68 Bangkok Post, October 18, 1955.

69 See my discussion of Thep and the Economist Party in “Marxism and Thailand” in Trager, Frank N., Marxism in Southeast Asia (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford Un. Press, 1959), p. 95Google Scholar.

70 Skinner, , Chinese Society, op. cit., p. 343Google Scholar.

71 Norapat, Klaew, Yiam Pakking (Visiting Peking) (Bangkok, 1957)Google Scholar.

72 NCNA, January 24, 1956, in SCMP, No. 1217, 01 27, 1956, pp. 33–35Google Scholar.

73 Norapat, , Visiting Peking, op. cit., pp. 252–259Google Scholar.

74 Ibid. pp. 235–244.

75 Bangkok Post, April 13, 1956.

76 Bangkok Post, April 13, 1957.

77 NCNA, May 3, 1956.

78 Bangkok Post, August 25, 1958.

79 Bangkok Post, August 9, 1958.

80 Bangkok Post, June 21, 1956.

81 Bangkok Post, July 25, 26, 30, 31, August 4, 25, 29, 1958. Aside from the Chou-Sihanouk communiqué, however, the Chinese seem to have had nothing to say on China's action.

82 NCNA, October 31, 1958, in SCMP, No. 1889, pp. 35–36Google Scholar.

83 NCNA, November 3, 1958, in SCMP, No. 1890, 11 6, 1958, p. 48Google Scholar.

84 Bangkok Post, November 5, 1958.

85 Bangkok Post, December 29, 1958.

86 NCNA, March 6, 1959, in SCMP, No. 1972, 03 13, 1959, pp. 43–44Google Scholar.

87 NCNA, April 6, 1959, in SCMP, No. 1990, 04 10, 1959, pp. 38–39Google Scholar.

88 NCNA, April 22, 1959, in SCMP, No. 2000, 04 27, 1959, p. 57Google Scholar.

89 NCNA, May 30, 1959, in SCMP, No. 2026, 06 3, 1959, pp. 50–51Google Scholar.