Bandung Conference

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bandung Conference opened in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, on the 18th of April 1955, and it ran for six days, closing on the 24th. Twenty-nine Asian and African nations sent delegates, together representing 1.5 billion people, 54 percent of the population of the entire planet. Most of the countries at the table had only recently become independent, and many were assembling their first diplomatic corps. Indonesia, Burma, India, Ceylon and Pakistan organized the conference, coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  What could bind together newly independent states with different religions, economies and systems of government? And how would two superpowers, neither of them invited, respond to being shut out of the room? That story starts with two men who wanted very different things from the same six days.

• 2. Rival Architects

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  In March 1947, on the eve of India's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru attended the Asian Relations Conference in India. There he first floated the idea for a gathering like Bandung. A second meeting followed in New Delhi in January 1949, when nineteen nations gathered to discuss the status of Indonesia. Nehru initially attached relatively little importance to Indonesia's own calls for a full conference. His interest grew late in 1954. Three things drove the change: concern over American foreign policy in Asia, and a belief he could secure a guarantee of peaceful coexistence with China. He also wanted to avoid embarrassing Indonesia.

  Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party pursued a different goal, backed by his Premier and Foreign Minister, Zhou Enlai. Mao believed an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movement was already rising across Africa and Asia, and he wanted China to lead it. He publicly kept a friendly, conciliatory tone toward the newly independent Asian nations. At the same time, he denounced the Western colonial empires.

  At the Colombo Powers conference in April 1954, Indonesia formally proposed a global gathering of Asian and African states. Leaders from Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon met in Bogor, West Java, in late December 1954 to plan it. There they settled on April 1955 for the conference dates. Their goals ranged widely: building goodwill among the new nations, advancing shared interests, and examining social, economic and cultural problems. They also wanted to spotlight racism and colonialism, and to raise Asia and Africa's visibility in world affairs. With both the United States and the Soviet Union eager to win their allegiance, the participating countries sought a unified, non-aligned identity of their own.

  On the 4th of December 1954, the United Nations announced that Indonesia had placed the issue of West New Guinea onto the agenda of its 1955 General Assembly. Sukarno's own priority at Bandung was to build support for Indonesia's claim to West Papua. He also wanted to stop the Netherlands from transferring sovereignty there to indigenous Papuans. He cast himself as the leader of this bloc of nations, a group he later called 'NEFOS,' the Newly Emerging Forces. Plans for the conference were formally announced that same December.

  Not every delegation Sukarno welcomed to Bandung would arrive as a fully independent state.

• 3. An Unfinished Roster

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  The Republic of China arrived at Bandung as a partially recognized state. Even so, at the time most of the world's governments still recognized it, not the mainland, as China's rightful government.

  Sudan had not yet become independent either. Anglo-Egyptian Sudan sent its Chief Minister, Ismail al-Azhari, who represented the territory under a provisional flag.

  Cyprus was still a British colony that April. It nonetheless held a seat, represented by Makarios III, who would later become the island's first president.

  Brazil did not send a full delegation. It held observer status instead, represented by Ambassador Bezerra de Menezes.

  Full delegate or observer, every representative in that room was about to help draft a joint declaration of principles.

• 4. Ten Principles

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  Delegates spent part of the conference locked in disagreement over whether Soviet policy in Eastern Europe and Central Asia deserved the same condemnation as Western colonialism.

  A memo titled 'The Moslem Nations under Soviet Imperialism' accused Soviet authorities of massacres and mass deportations in Muslim regions. Delegates never debated it on the floor.

  The compromise that emerged condemned "colonialism in all of its manifestations," wording broad enough to implicitly censure both the Soviet Union and the West.

  That compromise took shape as Dasasila Bandung, a ten-point declaration on world peace and cooperation adopted unanimously as item G of the conference's final communique. Styled after Indonesia's own Pancasila, it incorporated the United Nations Charter's principles alongside the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Among its ten points was respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every nation. A second point called for equality of all races and of all nations, large and small. A third barred interference in another country's internal affairs. A fourth called for peaceful settlement of disputes, through negotiation, arbitration or another method the parties chose for themselves.

  The final communique also pushed developing nations to loosen their dependence on industrialized economies. It called for exchanging experts and technical know-how, and for building new regional training and research institutes.

  Adopted at Bandung, these ten principles went on to shape the Non-Aligned Movement's approach to diplomacy. They guided how developing nations dealt with each other for the rest of the Cold War.

• 5. Zhou's Charm Offensive

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  Zhou Enlai survived an assassination attempt on his way to the conference, arriving in Bandung as China's premier and its most closely watched delegate. His moderate, conciliatory manner calmed anticommunist delegates who had feared a hardline agenda from Beijing.

  Later in the conference, Zhou signed an agreement on dual nationality with Indonesian Foreign Minister Sunario. World observers watched him closely throughout. He downplayed revolutionary communism and endorsed every nation's right to choose its own economic and political system, capitalism included. His moderation strengthened both his own diplomatic reputation and China's.

  Jawaharlal Nehru left Bandung bitterly disappointed by his reception. He had mainly argued for non-alignment, cautioning delegates against military alliances with either side of the Cold War. Senior diplomats called him arrogant. Zhou said privately, "I have never met a more arrogant man than Mr. Nehru."

  China also began voicing support for Palestine at Bandung. Zhou stated that there was a parallel between the problems of Palestine and Formosa; neither could be solved peacefully unless intervention by outside forces was excluded, and that China was suffering from the same problem as the Arab countries.

  That reputation for restraint would follow Zhou into the region's next crisis over arms and alliances.

• 6. Washington's Absence

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  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles urged Washington to shun the conference entirely, and the United States sent no official delegation. The choice reflected a genuine dilemma. Courting Third World nations by claiming to oppose colonialism risked alienating Washington's colonialist European allies. The US security establishment also feared the conference would expand China's regional power.

  In January 1955, the US formed a Working Group on the Afro-Asian Conference. It drew in the Operations Coordinating Board, the Office of Intelligence Research, the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA and the United States Information Agency. The Office of Intelligence Research and the USIA ran a program they called "Image Management." It combined open and covert propaganda, meant to present the US as friendly while warning delegates about "Communist intentions." The administration also issued statements ahead of the conference promising economic aid, and recasting colonialism as a threat posed by China and the Eastern Bloc.

  Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a Democrat from New York, attended anyway, sponsored not by the US government but by Ebony and Jet magazines. He spoke favorably of American foreign policy there, helping the US's standing among the non-aligned states. Back home, he urged President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Congress to oppose colonialism and attend to the priorities of the emerging Third World.

  African American author Richard Wright also made the trip, funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He spent about three weeks in Indonesia, devoting one week to the conference itself. The rest of his time went to Indonesian artists and intellectuals, including Mochtar Lubis, Asrul Sani, Sitor Situmorang and Beb Vuyk. Wright's essays on the trip ran in several Congress for Cultural Freedom magazines. His book on the journey was published as The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. The artists he met kept discussing his visit long after he left Indonesia. Wright, for his part, praised the conference extensively.

  Wright's account remained one of the only outside records of a meeting that would soon spawn a Cold War sequel of its own.

• 7. After Bandung

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  A second Asian-African gathering convened two years later, at the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference in Cairo in September 1957. The Belgrade Summit followed in 1961, resulting in the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

  Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement did not simply merge into one another. The two initiatives ran in parallel through the 1960s, even coming into confrontation with each other before the second Cairo NAM conference in 1964.

  In the early 1960s, China tried to rally Arab support for a second Bandung Conference, proposed for Algiers. Four events doomed it: the 1965 Algerian coup d'état, Sukarno's ouster in Indonesia, the 1966 Ghanaian coup d'état, and Egypt's shift toward the Soviet Union.

  During the conference, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser met with Zhou Enlai about Egypt obtaining arms from the Soviet Union. Zhou said China would intercede with Moscow on the issue. Later that year, Egypt obtained Soviet arms through Czechoslovakia, an early sign of the Soviet Union's growing diplomatic presence in the Middle East.

  The alliances forged at Bandung would keep reshaping regional politics for decades, long after the delegates had gone home.

• 8. Decades of Anniversaries

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  Fifty years after the original meeting, a new Asian-African Summit convened in Bandung and Jakarta from the 20th to the 24th of April 2005. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono hosted it. Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, China's President Hu Jintao and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan all attended. So did Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki rounded out the guest list. Some sessions were held in Gedung Merdeka, the Independence Building, the original conference's venue.

  Of the 106 nations invited to the 2005 summit, 89 sent heads of state, government or ministers. In total, 54 Asian countries and 52 African countries took part. The summit produced the Declaration of the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership, known as NAASP. It issued a Joint Ministerial Statement on the NAASP Plan of Action. It also produced a Joint Asian African Leaders' Statement on Tsunami, Earthquake and other Natural Disasters. Its concluding document, the Nawasila, set out nine principles for political, economic and socio-cultural cooperation.

  A third summit followed in Bandung and Jakarta from the 21st to the 25th of April 2015, marking the conference's 60th anniversary and NAASP's 10th. Indonesian President Joko Widodo hosted it under the theme 'Strengthening South-South Cooperation to Promote World Peace and Prosperity.' Delegates came from 109 Asian and African countries, plus 16 observer countries and 25 international organizations. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China's President Xi Jinping attended, alongside Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, Myanmar's President Thein Sein, King Mswati III of Swaziland and Nepal's Prime Minister Sushil Koirala also took part.

  On the 70th anniversary, the state government of Telangana organized the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad, India. It ran from the 24th to the 26th of April 2025, under the theme 'Delivering Global Justice.'

  The theme chosen for Hyderabad, 'Delivering Global Justice,' echoed an old ambition. Seventy years earlier, Dasasila Bandung's ten points had tried to do the same: draw one line around what a room of unequal nations could accept.