ABSTRACT
Indonesia was in the vanguard of countries opposing colonialism, offering moral and diplomatic support to struggles for freedom in areas of remnant colonial rule in Asia and Africa. Such a policy also served the Indonesian national interest. Thus, in December 1954, Sukarno secured from the meeting of the Colombo Powers in Bogor, Indonesia, support for his claims to Dutch New Guinea, or, as the Indonesians called it, West Irian. Indonesia took tremendous pride in its selection to play host to the twenty-nine-nation Asian-African conference at Bandung, the first such bicontinental meeting of newly freed peoples. Indonesian leaders felt that physical distance from China ruled out a direct security threat from that direction. Taking advantage of China's new policy of peaceful coexistence beginning in 1954, Sukarno opened negotiations with China on a Dual Nationality Citizenship Treaty to resolve the status of more than 1.5 million economically dominant Chinese in Indonesia.
