Southeast Asia and the Rise of China

The Search for Security

Ian Storey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136722967
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Chine

Since the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, the implications of China's rising power have come to dominate the security agenda of the Asia-Pacific region. This book is the first to comprehensively chart the development of Southeast Asia's relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 to 2010, detailing each of the eleven countries' ties to the PRC and showing how strategic concerns associated with China's regional posture have been a significant factor in shaping their foreign and defence policies. In addition to assessing bilateral ties, the book also examines the institutionalization of relations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China.

The first part of the book covers the period 1949-2010: it examines Southeast Asian responses to the PRC in the context of the ideological and geopolitical rivalry of the Cold War; Southeast Asian countries' policies towards the PRC in first decade of the post-Cold War era; and deepening ties between the ASEAN states and the PRC in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Part Two analyses the evolving relationships between the countries of mainland Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia - and China. Part Three reviews ties between the states of maritime Southeast Asia - Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei and East Timor - and the PRC. Whilst the primary focus of the book is the security dimension of Southeast Asia-China relations, it also takes full account of political relations and the burgeoning economic ties between the two sides. This book is a timely contribution to the literature on the fast changing geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Part I

The Evolution of Southeast Asia-China Relations, 1949–2010

1 Southeast Asia and China during the Cold War era

Aversion, alliance, accommodation

When Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), proclaimed the establishment of the PRC in Tiananmen Square on 1 October 1949, it not only marked China’s re-emergence on the world stage after a prolonged period of weakness, foreign intervention and civil war, but also the beginning of its re-entry into the ranks of the Great Powers. For the countries of Southeast Asia – less than half of which had achieved full independence from Western colonial powers by October 1949, bar Thailand that had never been colonized – Mao’s proclamation was an event of singular geopolitical importance. As the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union unfolded in Europe, and the Cold War contagion spread to Asia, regional elites were faced with the additional challenge of reacquainting themselves with their giant northern neighbour, a country which centuries earlier had been an important trade partner but which had viewed itself as the centre of world power and treated the kingdoms of Southeast Asia as mere vassal states. Would this new People’s Republic seek to restore China to its historic position of regional dominance? How would the new communist behemoth behave towards the newly emerging states of Southeast Asia? And what would its relationship be with regional communist movements, most of which sought to overthrow existing governments?

The aim of this chapter is to explore, in broad brushstrokes, the development of Southeast Asia-China relations during the Cold War, from Mao’s 1949 asseveration that the Chinese people had finally stood up, to the disbanding of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) in December 1989. From the perspective of Southeast Asian countries, the Cold War can be conveniently divided into three main periods. The first period spans from 1949 to 1959. This section identifies the PRC’s primary political, ideological and geostrategic interests in Southeast Asia. From the outset of the Cold War, Beijing had vital interests in the region, namely to secure its vulnerable southern flank from hostile Western powers who, it was feared, might try to undermine the fledgling regime, and to support regional communist movements, many of which already looked to Mao for ideological inspiration and used the victorious CCP as a model.

This section also examines Southeast Asian responses to the birth of the PRC, which covered the full spectrum from alliance, to accommodation and, in the case of pro-Western elites, antipathy. It moves on to assess the efficacy of Beijing’s ‘charm offensive’ in the mid-1950s, a diplomatic campaign aimed at reassuring Southeast Asian governments that China was a benign force and not a security threat.

The second period covers the 1960s and focuses on the impact of the Sino-Soviet rupture on Southeast Asia-China relations. The fracturing of the USSR-PRC alliance was the single most important development of the decade, for it conditioned Moscow’s and Beijing’s responses to the escalating conflict in Indochina, created the conditions for the mayhem of China’s Cultural Revolution which upended Beijing’s relations with regional governments, and contributed to the birth of ASEAN in 1967, a community of five anti-communist and generally pro-Western countries perturbed by Hanoi’s military gains, the impending drawdown of British and American forces in the region and the disturbingly radical turn in Chinese foreign policy.

The third period, from the early 1970s through to the closing stages of the Cold War, witnessed significant readjustments in Southeast Asia-China relations brought about by the shifting balance of forces in the international system, precipitated by the Sino-Soviet break and brought to fruition by the Sino-US rapprochement of 1971–2. It was during this period that several ASEAN states and the PRC inched closer together, while relations between erstwhile allies Vietnam and China degenerated into conflict. By the late 1970s, ASEAN members and China had found a common purpose – to evict Hanoi from Cambodia – although suspicions remained and shared goals did not mask deep misgivings in several ASEAN capitals concerning Beijing’s long-term intentions towards Southeast Asia. Simultaneously, however, the Chinese government’s embrace of economic reform laid the groundwork for a new era in Southeast Asia-China relations, one in which commerce, not politics, assumed centre stage.

Cold War beginnings, 1949–59

The challenges facing the leaders of the newly-established People’s Republic were daunting: regime survival depended on securing the country’s long, porous borders from external threats, consolidating control over strategically important but outlying areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang, and regaining the ‘lost territories’, primarily Taiwan which was home to the vanquished forces of Nationalist China (Kuomintang, KMT). Alliance with the Soviet Union in 1950 helped the CCP meet some of those challenges: Moscow’s recognition of the Beijing government bestowed a measure of international legitimacy on the regime and secured China’s northern borders; a defence guarantee afforded China partial shelter under the Soviet Union’s nuclear umbrella; and economic, military and technical aid set the civil-war ravaged country on the path to recovery.

While Northeast Asia was thus key to hardening the People’s Republic’s security at birth, Beijing’s goals and interests in Southeast Asia were hardly of secondary importance. The PRC was anxious to secure its land borders in mainland Southeast Asia: in the southwest with recently independent Burma and in the south with Vietnam and Laos, then part of French Indochina. Indochina was a particular source of anxiety for China’s leaders, because France had formalized its alliance with the United States in 1949 through membership of the anti-communist North Atlantic Treaty Organization. If China was to secure its borders in Southeast Asia, hostile Western forces had to be expelled and pro-PRC or at least neutral governments nurtured.

Ideology played an important role in China’s Southeast Asia policy. During its formative years, the PRC was the quintessential non-status quo power and challenged the legitimacy of the existing international system. Mao’s theory of the ‘Intermediate Zone’ – which held that the United States would attack the leader of the communist movement, the USSR, through smaller countries in Asia, Africa and Europe – meant it was China’s socialist duty to assist fraternal communist parties in Asia to advance the ideological cause.¹ The CCP already had ties with regional communist parties going back to the 1920s, and almost all had patterned their doctrine, organization and tactics on Mao’s teachings.² Next to communist regimes, neutral governments were the next best thing, as neutral countries would not only recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of China but would also abjure membership of anti-PRC alliances. In return, China would observe a policy of ‘non-interference’.³ That concept, however, could be interpreted in different ways, and the PRC never saw a contradiction between simultaneously carrying on state-to-state and party-to-party relations, a difference of interpretation that bedevilled China-Southeast Asia relations throughout the Cold War.

The foundation of the PRC in 1949 constituted another seismic event for a region already grappling with decolonization, nation-building and the Cold War. ‘Red China’ was welcomed in some quarters, but the overwhelming response from ruling elites, both colonial and indigenous, was one of considerable unease. Two major and interlinked issues bred regional anxiety.

First, throughout the region, ruling elites faced the problem of internal subversion from hostile communist movements. The CCP’s victory over the KMT was not only a fillip to the communist cause, but raised the unnerving prospect of a powerful Asian sponsor that would serve as both an ideological font for regional communist parties and a rear base for training and material support. China’s recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in January 1950, and its entry into the Korean War in October the same year, served as powerful demonstrations that Beijing intended to pursue its ideological and national interests in Asia with vigour and, if necessary, military force.

The second issue was the problematic status of ethnic Chinese – or overseas Chinese – residing in Southeast Asia. The overseas Chinese had aroused envy and suspicion among indigenous people across Southeast Asia for several reasons: the attainment of economic power by a small but visible minority of Chinese merchants in the region in the first half of the twentieth century; favourable treatment by colonial authorities which often led Chinese to act as middle-men; and the overseas Chinese’s perceived indifference to national liberation movements and presumed lack of ‘loyalty’ to the countries they resided in. The establishment of Communist China added a new and unsettling element to the mix: a commonly held perception was that the overseas Chinese had applauded Mao’s victory and stood ready as communist fifth columnists.⁴ ‘It was accepted as a matter of established fact’, wrote C.P. Fitzgerald, ‘that China would lead the Nanyang Chinese into a revolutionary conspiracy against the colonial empires that still remained, or against the anti-communist successor governments elsewhere.’⁵

In reality, the overseas Chinese posed a mixed blessing for the CCP. On the one hand they were an important source of remittance, and after 1950 their extensive trading networks helped China to circumvent US-imposed economic sanctions. On the other hand, Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese were also a political liability: the PRC may have felt an obligation to protect them, but it did not possess the resources to do so; the Chinese merchant class was ideologically opposed to communism and, while poorer Chinese might be more sympathetic to the socialist cause, they could never successfully lead revolutionary movements in countries in which they were viewed with suspicion by indigenous peoples, as the CPM – whose leaders were drawn mainly from the Chinese community – was to prove.⁶

Southeast Asian countries’ responses to the PRC

Perceptions of and policies towards the PRC in the early 1950s varied significantly among the states of Southeast Asia, but can be grouped into three main responses: alliance, accommodation and aversion.

The DRV was the only country in Southeast Asia to ally itself with the PRC. The Sino-Vietnamese alliance was predicated on shared ideological and strategic interests. Vietnamese revolutionaries – including Ho Chi Minh, who had declared Vietnam independent of France on 2 September 1945 – looked to the CCP as their ideological mentor, many having trained in China before the Second World War. Ideological affinities aside, with the USSR preoccupied with events in Eastern Europe, the PRC was the only country capable of providing the DRV with the material support necessary to wage war against France after Paris rejected Ho’s declaration and returned in late 1946 to reclaim its colonial possessions in Indochina. As noted, Beijing was keen to see France’s expulsion from Indochina to pre-empt a US military presence along its exposed southern flank. In January 1950, therefore, the PRC recognized the DRV as the legitimate government of the Vietnamese people, and shortly thereafter military supplies from China began flowing across the 800-mile border. The United States – soon to become the primary underwriter of France’s costly conflict – responded by recognizing the French-backed Bao Dai regime. In doing so, the colonial war of independence also became a proxy conflict of the Cold War: China’s support for the DRV, as well as its entry into the Korean War, made it the target of US containment for the next two decades.

Without the military equipment and advice China furnished during the First Indochina War (1946–54), and especially after the Korean armistice in July 1953, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam League for Independence (Vietminh) could not have prevailed against France – although subsequently Hanoi would invariably downplay China’s role. In the wake of France’s humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, foreign ministers from Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union met in Geneva to discuss peace in Indochina. Having not long emerged from the debilitating conflict on the Korean Peninsula, China was desirous of a more stable regional environment in which to pursue economic development and reconstruction. Further military action undertaken by the DRV risked bringing the United States into the conflict, raising the unwelcome prospect of another Sino-US confrontation. Moreover, it was not in Beijing’s interests for Hanoi to exercise hegemony over the whole of Indochina. In Geneva, therefore, Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai brought pressure to bear on the North Vietnamese delegation to accept partition of the country along the 17th parallel of latitude and withdraw its forces from newly independent Laos and Cambodia. Unwilling to continue the war without China’s support, the DRV delegation reluctantly acquiesced. However, Zhou’s intervention was interpreted by Hanoi as an act of betrayal, confirmation that Beijing would always place its national interests ahead of Vietnam’s and proof that it was resolved to keep its Southeast Asian neighbour weak and subordinate. The seeds of Sino-Vietnamese enmity were thus sown in Geneva.

Elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, Burma, Laos and Cambodia opted for neutrality and accommodation with the PRC. Burma, which gained independence from Britain in 1948, was the most important of the trio due to its 1,360-mile border with the PRC. At the time of independence, Prime Minister U Nu had declared a policy of neutrality in an attempt to inoculate the country against growing US-Soviet rivalry in Asia. After 1949, Rangoon also hoped that neutrality would pre-empt PRC intervention in the country’s internal affairs, specifically support for the Burmese Communist Party (BCP) and punitive military action against rump KMT forces which had fled into Burma in the closing stages of the Chinese civil war.⁷ Burma therefore adopted a friendly and accommodating stance towards the PRC from the outset, and in December 1949 became the first non-communist Asian country to recognize it. Neutrality was also the favoured foreign policy stance of Laos and Cambodia when they became independent from France in 1953. The Lao and Cambodian governments calculated that neutrality would not only quarantine them from the First Indochina War, but also that friendly relations with China might deter perceived predatory neighbours, the Thai and Vietnamese. Keen to see Laos and Cambodia remain outside the US camp, the PRC strongly supported their neutrality at the Geneva conference.

Southeast Asia’s largest country, Indonesia, classed itself as non-aligned rather than neutral. Yet strong domestic constituencies – the armed forces and Muslim groups – had expressed opposition to formal links with the PRC, fearing that a Chinese embassy in Jakarta might provide sustenance to the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Kommunis Indonesia, PKI). Notwithstanding these concerns, and in line with his country’s commitment to non-alignment, the government of President Soekarno opened diplomatic relations with the PRC in April 1950.

Thailand and the Philippines refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the PRC. Thailand’s anti-communist elite was deeply apprehensive that the PRC would attempt to subvert the Kingdom by rallying the overseas Chinese and the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), and use communist proxies in neighbouring Indochina to ferment instability in the country’s northeast provinces. Accordingly, and in time-honoured Thai diplomatic practice, Bangkok aligned itself with the regional hegemo...