China's alliance with Indonesia in the mid-sixties appeared to be a spectacular achievement of diplomatic strategy, yet it became a major foreign policy disaster for China. To explore this turn-about, Professor Mozingo offers a persuasive analysis of the competing forces that shaped Beijing's policy towards Jakarta and the factors that ultimately led to its downfall. He explains how and why Chinese policy in Indonesia shifted dramatically from hostility to peaceful coexistence and back again to hostility. "Although considerations of global strategy predominantly influenced the design and execution of that policy," he writes, "the decisive factor affecting the outcome of the Sino-Indonesian relationship consistently proved to be the domestic political processes in Indonesia, over which Beijing had little or no control." In the end, China was unable to resolve the contradiction between considerations of realpolitik and of its own revolutionary ethos. He argues that this same contradiction is responsible for the highly ambivalent attitude that Beijing has displayed in its relations with other non-communist Arfo-Asian countries since 1949. Through this informed analysis of the Sino-Indonesian relationship, now brought back to life as a member of Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, Professor Mozingo has clarified the larger pattern of China's evolving diplomatic strategy in the Third World before the Cultural Revolution. DAVID MOZINGO is Professor of Government and Director, International Relations of East Asia Project, at Cornell University. A graduate of the University of California, Loa Angeles, he received his MA and PhD degrees there. He was formerly a staff member of the Rand Corporation, and Director, China-Japan Program, at Cornell University.

Migration in the Time of Revolution explores the complex relationship between China and Indonesia from 1945 to 1967, during a period when citizenship, identity, and political loyalty were in flux. Taomo Zhou examines the experiences of migrants, including youths seeking an ancestral homeland they had never seen and economic refugees whose skills were unwelcome in a socialist state. Zhou argues that these migrants played an active role in shaping the diplomatic relations between Beijing and Jakarta, rather than being passive subjects of historical forces. By using newly declassified documents and oral history interviews, Migration in the Time of Revolution demonstrates how the actions and decisions of ethnic Chinese migrants were crucial in the development of post-war relations between China and Indonesia. By integrating diplomatic history with migration studies, Taomo Zhou provides a nuanced understanding of how ordinary people's lives intersected with broader political processes in Asia, offering a fresh perspective on the Cold War's social dynamics.

The book, which was first published in 1996, examines Indonesia’s foreign policy under Suharto. It not only details Indonesia’s foreign policy behaviour vis-à-vis Indonesia’s neighbours and major powers, but also places it in the context of foreign policy analysis. Today, the book remains as the only full-length study on Indonesia’s foreign policy under Suharto. It is now reprinted with a new postscript which discusses the post-Suharto era from B.J. Habibie to Joko Widodo. Indonesia under Suharto had attempted to become a regional power to lead Southeast Asian states and beyond. As the largest country and also the richest in terms of natural resources, Suharto’s Indonesia was held in deference by the ASEAN states. However, due to its limited capabilities, its lack of military strength, advanced technology and economic strength, the political influence of Jakarta was in fact quite limited. During the economic crisis, Suharto was forced to step down. He was succeeded by B.J. Habibie who was largely preoccupied with domestic issues, who in turn was followed by weak presidencies such as Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) and Megawati. Only after the ex-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono assumed presidency did he manage to stabilize the situation and attained economic growth. He even became known as the “Foreign Policy President”. Nevertheless, he was constrained by the harsh Indonesian reality: limited resources, a weak military and absence of political influence. His successor Joko Widodo has been more concerned with economic matters and domestic politics; Indonesian regional leadership declines further.

The bibliographical essays on the studies of the ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN states will be extremely useful as it is the first monograph of its kind and also up-to-date. It begins with a general overview on the studies of the ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN states, and is followed by five country studies and two essays on specific topics. All essays in this volume were written by specialists.