Bandung Conference

Bandung Conference, a meeting of Asian and African states—organized by Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan—which took place April 18–24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia. In all, 29 countries representing more than half the world’s population sent delegates.

The conference reflected the five sponsors’ dissatisfaction with what they regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia; their concern over tension between the People’s Republic of China and the United States; their desire to lay firmer foundations for China’s peaceful relations with themselves and the West; their opposition to colonialism, especially French influence in North Africa; and Indonesia’s desire to promote its case in the dispute with the Netherlands over western New Guinea (Irian Jaya).

Major debate centred upon the question of whether Soviet policies in eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. The Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai, displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China’s intentions. A 10-point “declaration on the promotion of world peace and cooperation,” incorporating the principles of the United Nations charter and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Five Principles (“mutual respect” for other nations’ “territorial integrity and sovereignty,” nonaggression, noninterference in “internal affairs,” equality and mutual benefit, and “peaceful coexistence”), was adopted unanimously.

During the following decade, as decolonization progressed and friction among the conference’s members increased, the concept of Asian-African solidarity became less and less meaningful. Major schisms among the sponsors of the original conference emerged in 1961 and again in 1964–65, when China and Indonesia pressed for a second Asian-African conference. In both instances India, together with Yugoslavia and the United Arab Republic (Egypt), succeeded in organizing rival conferences of nonaligned states that refused to take the strong anti-Western positions urged by China and, in 1964–65, by Indonesia. In November 1965 the second Asian-African conference (to have been held in Algiers, Algeria) was indefinitely postponed, and it appeared unlikely that the Bandung Conference would ever have a successor.

In 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the original conference, leaders from Asian and African countries met in Jakarta and Bandung to launch the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP). They pledged to promote political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the two continents.