ABSTRACT
It has been argued in the previous chapter that Indonesia’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with China in 1950 arose primarily out of the Republic’s desire to maintain internal unity as well as to register its legal personality and legitimacy as a new state in the international society, Those relations, however, proved soon to be problematic because they were built on unstable foundations. Jakarta-Beijing relations entered a more cordial phase only during the final years of Guided Democracy during which a close diplomatic liaison between the two governments was undertaken primarily to serve the domestic political interests of both Sukarno and his communist supporters at the expense of the military and other anti-communist forces. Consequently, Indonesia-China diplomatic relations failed to escape their underlying vulnerability to the domestic pressures of anti-communist forces in Indonesia, especially from the army and the Muslim community. The suspension of diplomatic relations in October 1967 after the 1965 abortive coup reflected that underlying feature of the relationship between the two countries. It occurred as a significant consequence of the destruction of Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI), the collapse of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy in March 1966 and the rise of the army into power. China, once a close ally of Sukarno’s Indonesia in an attempt to build a ‘new’ international political system, was now portrayed by the New Order government as the main threat to the country’s security.
