More than three decades after the publication of David Mozingo's Chinese Policy toward Indonesia, 1949–1967 (Cornell University Press, 1976), Liu Hong's China and the Shaping of Indonesia is an important addition to the literature on the interactions between the two largest countries in East Asia and South-East Asia during the Cold War era. The book is an inspiring account of Indonesian intellectual history as well as a detailed examination of cultural diplomacy between China and Indonesia.
As a work on Indonesian intellectual history, the book enriches our understanding of the intellectual rubrics of Indonesia's post-independence development through a transnational and cross-regional perspective. Key to the author's analytical framework is his conceptualization of a “China metaphor” – “a variety of perceptions of China emerging in the political and cultural discourses in Sukarno's Indonesia” (p. 16). This metaphor not only mirrors Indonesia's political instabilities and challenges for its economic, social and cultural development, but also plays a significant role in Indonesia's post-colonial transformation (p. 23). As a work on cultural diplomacy, Liu treats China and Indonesia not as two rigidly defined nation-states but as two fluid cultural domains. The author thus brings into discussion a great variety of exchanges between the two countries in non-political realms such as literature and economic thought.
According to Liu, despite a small number of Indonesian intellectuals who had negative perceptions or mixed feelings concerning communist ideology and the highly centralized political system in China, the majority saw the PRC in very positive terms. Liu concludes that there were three sets of master narratives on China among Indonesia's cultural and political elites: China as 1) “a purposeful and harmonious society”; 2) “a participatory and populist polity”; and 3) “a vibrant culture imbued with great intellectual creativities” (pp. 267–68). He contends that “the increasing ascendancy” of these three narratives was an extremely important feature of Indonesia's search for alternative models of modernity during the Sukarno period (1945–66) (p. 269).
Contrary to previous discussions on Indonesian perceptions of China, Liu argues that China could not be simply equated with the homeland of an ethnic minority and a communist state in the minds of Indonesian political and cultural elites. Instead there was an “obvious inclination” (p. 77) among the China observers in Indonesia to distinguish the People's Republic of China (PRC) from ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and from communism. According to Liu, the indigenous people still viewed the PRC favourably at the time of anti-Chinese movements in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Indonesian elite perceptions showed “a pattern of envisioning China principally as a nationalistic state” (p. 124). Liu observed that by emphasizing the “Chinese character” – such as diligence, thriftiness and discipline – as the main engine for China's social and economic progress in the early 1950s, “Indonesians implicitly or explicitly delinked China from Communism” (p. 77). Liu asserts that in general, “Indonesian intellectuals tended to see Mao Zedong not principally as a Communist but as a nationalist” (p. 52). In particular, a non-Communist China was a “central feature” in Sukarno's construction of pre-1956 China (pp. 210–11).
Liu's argument, although highly original, leaves one wondering if it is some kind of overcorrection vis-à-vis histories that treat Indonesian perceptions of China as irrevocably connected to ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and communism. In his definition of Indonesia's “China observers,” Liu includes both the ethnic Chinese elites and the cadres of the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia, or PKI) without further discussion of the following questions: how did their special linkages to the PRC (either in reality or in public perception) influence the formation of their views on China? How were their views received by the indigenous, the non-communist and anti-communist groups? Whereas the issue of ethnic Chinese is briefly discussed in chapter six, Sino-Indonesian interactions in the international communist movement are neglected in this otherwise stimulating study. Understandably, the author might consider the international communist movement as an issue that is beyond the scope of a monograph on intellectual history and cultural diplomacy. However, since the book stands among the burgeoning scholarship on transnationalism and Cold War in Asia, the international communist movement probably deserves more attention as a transnational force that powerfully shaped the production and reception of a “China metaphor” in Indonesia.
There is also a need to further contextualize the shaping of the so-called “China metaphor” within the larger historical processes of domestic developments in China and Indonesia as well as within the bilateral relations between the two countries. If, as the author suggests, the affirmative master narratives on China were “increasing ascendant” during the Sukarno era, how can one explain the sudden collapse of the “China metaphor” after the 30 September Movement in 1965? It seems that the author relies more on sources from the early- to mid-1950s period, a time when more Indonesian intellectuals regarded China as a source of emulation. Although the close alignment between China and Indonesia and the subsequent dramatic break of bilateral relations after the 30 September Movement are mentioned, the book does not discuss any change in the Indonesian perceptions of China over the turbulent years from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. In addition, the book begins and concludes with news headlines about Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to Indonesia in 2001 and heated debates on the Beijing Consensus. Although Liu has thus successfully made his historical case relevant to widely-discussed contemporary issues, he does not seem to have fully addressed how dramatically different the models of modernity projected by China were in the early to mid-1950s and in the 21st century.
Liu has utilized an impressive range of sources on Indonesian perceptions of China. However, he could have furthered his argument by reconsidering many interesting materials that might have led him to discuss the formation of a “China metaphor” in a more complicated light. For instance, the Islamic political party Mayumi (Partai Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, or Council of Indonesian Muslim Association), army general Abdul Nasution, and politician Adam Malik were all staunchly anti-PKI and are all cited in the book for their very affirmative views of China (Masyumi Party p. 147; Abdul Nasution p. 56; and Malik p. 54). However, the author does not reveal to his readers their political backgrounds and explain why their perceptions of China contradicted their domestic political orientation.
On a technical note, the book lacks standardized spellings. Consequently, multiple spelling styles of Mandarin Chinese (Wade-Giles and pinyin), Chinese dialects (phonetic Romanization of Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka dialects) and Indonesian (in forms before and after the spelling reform in 1947) coexist in the text. It is also difficult for readers to look up the sources cited as the titles of Chinese sources have been translated into English whereas the Indonesian ones are not. These shortcomings aside, the author has made an admirable effort to frame a detailed historical case study into the contemporary academic and public discourse on the rise of China and the possibility of non-Western models of modernity. It is also an important contribution to the understudied field of perceptions of China in the developing world.
