The idea that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) attempted to export communist revolution to Indonesia has been around since late 1965, reinforced with widespread Indonesian and Western propaganda in the Cold War. During its three-decade reign, the Suharto regime institutionalized discrimination against Chinese Indonesians—an ethnic minority who allegedly played an important economic role but with dubious national allegiance—based on the charge that they were used by Beijing for its “yellow imperialist” project to encroach Indonesia. Was China the “puppet master” that instigated its Indonesian comrades to seize state power by force? Were the Chinese in Indonesia used by Beijing as a resource for the advancement of its interests abroad? With a rare access to materials at the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives and the Communist Party Central Archives, this talk examines the role of the PRC and investigates the experiences of the ethnic Chinese in the political turmoil in Indonesia in 1965-1966.

Taomo Zhou is an Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, specializing in modern Chinese and Southeast Asian history. Taomo received her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her writings have appeared in publications such as The China Quarterly, The Critical Asian Studies, the journal Indonesia, and The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China. Taomo’s first book, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019), examines how two of the world's most populous countries interacted between 1945 and 1967, when the concept of citizenship was contested, and the boundaries of political mobilization were blurred. She is starting a new project on the historical transformation of Shenzhen, the first special economic zone of China.

This event is hosted by NYSEAN.

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