Name: Bruce Jacobs Memorial Lecture: Towards the South
Start: 2026-02-05T17:00:00+11:00
End: 2026-02-05T18:15:00+11:00
Location: City Library

Bruce Jacobs Memorial Lecture: Towards the South

This talk focuses on the Taiwan and Indonesia Relationship in the Cold War, displaying the diplomatic ability of small to medium countries.
About this Event

Host:

Associate Professor Craig Smith (University of Melbourne)

Speakers:

Professor Ping Lin (National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan)

Conventional studies on the Cold War concentrate on the competition between leading countries. They argue that small to medium countries had no role other than to choose which countries to take side with. This speech displays the diplomatic ability of small to medium countries (Taiwan and Indonesia) in the Cold War.

The pre-1965 Taiwan-Indonesia relationship basically concurs with the arguments of conventional studies. Both Taiwan and Indonesia associated little with each other because they allied with the US and PRC respectively. However, the G930 incident in 1965 provided Taiwan and Indonesia an opportunity to build up their relationship. Through negotiating a rice deal and UN membership in 1966-1967, Taiwan and Indonesia reached a certain level of mutual trust. Eventually, Taiwan exported rice to Indonesia in 1968 and Indonesia was absent or abstained in the four pro-PRC UN membership resolutions (2389, 2500, 2642, and 2758) in 1968-1971. Both countries also agreed to establish trade offices in in Jakarta (1970) and Taipei (1971). The transformation of the Taiwan-Indonesia relationship after 1965 shows that small to medium countries had their own roles even in the period of the Cold War.

Dr Ping LIN is Professor at Dept of Political Science, National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. His interest and research focus on international migration of the middle class (Taiwanese entrepreneurs in Dongguan and Jakarta), the autobiographies of Chinese elites in the Dutch East Indies (Oei Hui Lan and Anny Tan), and Taiwan-Indonesia relationship in the cold war (1966-1971). His recent works have been published in Journal of Chinese Overseas, Asia and Pacific Migration Journal, Translocal Chinese: East Asian Perspectives, Asia Pacific Research Forum (亞太研究論壇), The Journal of International Relations (國際關係學報), and Journal of Democracy and Governance (民主與治理).