Seeing Red

Long before Portuguese sailors discovered Indonesia in the 16th century, Chinese traders were carrying cloves and nutmeg from the green islands to the Chinese mainland. By the time the first Dutch colonists arrived, the Chinese had built small sugar mills and had the rudimentary commerce of the archipelago well in hand. They stayed on and prospered under the Dutch, and sided with the Dutch against Indonesian independence. After the Dutch lost, the Chinese entrenched themselves better than ever in the first confused years of the new republic.

Today, the 2,500,000 Chinese who make up 3% of Indonesia's population are a prosperous minority, irksome to Indonesia's nationalists and as politically aloof as ever. In the euphoric aftermath of the 1955 Bandung Conference, Red Chinese Premier Chou En-lai negotiated with Indonesia a curious treaty giving the Chinese settlers the option of either citizenship; but, in fact, nearly 75% retain Red China passports. Last year President Sukarno closed down Nationalist Chinese schools and shops--to Peking's delight. But last May, Sukarno made it plain that all Chinese were eventually to be hobbled. He ordered some 80,000 rural "alien" businessmen, worth $65 million, to move into the cities or out of Indonesia by the end of the year.

Errant Schoolboy. As the deadline approached, Indonesia's Communist Party abandoned its pro-Sukarno stance for the first time. Party Secretary D. N. Aidit called the anti-Chinese law "shoddy chauvinism, inspired by racial hatred and a desire for personal gain." Peking sent what Indonesia's Foreign Minister Subandrio called "as peremptory a diplomatic note" as Indonesia had ever received. Alarmed, Subandrio hustled off to the Red mainland to talk things over. He got the cold shoulder. Roused from his bed in the middle of the night to see Mao, he was lectured like an errant schoolboy. Complaining to Foreign Minister Chen Yi, Subandrio was answered in "brutal and arrogant" language. Roused again on his last night in Peking, he was pressured into a joint communique promising respect for "proper rights and interests" of local Chinese, then bundled off home.

When the Indonesian army went right on supervising the removal of Chinese from villages, Communist Chinese Consul Ho An drove out to rural Tjibadak and made a speech comparing Indonesia's actions to Hitler's massacres. Ho then continued on tour through the countryside encouraging the Chinese to resist removal, reminding the Chinese what great support they had given "the thankless Indonesians" in their revolution, and promising Peking's support.

Who's a Spy? All this was a far cry from the days when Indonesia was one of the first countries in the world to recognize Red China. By last week the Times of Indonesia was demanding the expulsion of Red China's Ambassador Huang Chen. Radio Peking had its own pat explanation of what had gone wrong: "Some time ago, the U.S. sent a special agent pretending to be a scientist to Indonesia to fan up an anti-China campaign . . ." But the truth was that if Mao and Chen Yi and Ambassador Huang were themselves U.S. secret agents, they could hardly have done a better job of arousing neutralist Indonesia against Red China.

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