Hidden Connections: Communist Parties and Capitalist Forces in China and Southeast Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel brings together exciting new research on the relationship between communist parties and Chinese capitalists in China and Southeast Asia. The four papers represent the best new interdisciplinary research by historians, political scientists, and economists exploring how communist parties related with capitalist forces during a period of stark ideological competition. The papers present new historical data on critical topics such communist party strategy in Malaya in the 1930s; relations between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese capitalists in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia during the 1950s; and the anti-communist killings in Indonesia in 1965-66. They also reinforce the need to reevaluate conceptually how the powerful Chinese Communist Party and other communist parties in Asia interacted with non-communist forces in the region. A common finding is that the seeds for Chinese economic reforms were sown far earlier than usually presumed. They were also sown by Chinese communists who were mindful of capitalist developments outside of mainland China.

Together, the papers cross disciplinary borders between social sciences and history, transcend regional boundaries between East and Southeast Asia, and explore new connections between competing global ideologies during the Cold War. The participants represent a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds, academic ranks, countries of employment, gender, and ethnicity.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Taomo Zhou, Nanyang Technological University

Chair

• Andrew Mertha, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• The Malayan Communist Party and the Chinese “Capitalists” in British Malaya, 1920s-1930s - Anna Belogurova, Freie Universität Berlin

• New Findings on the Indonesian Killings of 1965-66 - Siddharth Chandra, Michigan State University

• Hedged Bets: The Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong Business, 1950-1980 - Christopher Leighton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• The Southeast Asian Connections to China’s Economic Reform - Taomo Zhou, Nanyang Technological University

Discussant

• Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University