Chinese, Go Home

Red China's Chou En-lai and Indonesia's President Sukarno basked in each other's compliments at the 1955 Bandung Conference, found common cause in anticolonialism. But last year, looking for a scapegoat for his crumbling economy, Sukarno cast his restless eye on the Chinese who run the stores and make the most money in nearly every village and town in Indonesia. He decided to transfer this lucrative business to deserving Indonesians, lightly overlooked the fact that few Indonesians have the know-how or energy to replace the industrious Chinese. He offered the Chinese a harsh alternative: retire to the cities or leave the country. Since the beginning of the year, more than 40,000 Chinese have been shipped off to the Chinese mainland.

Three weeks ago, Sukarno, refreshed from his tour of Asia, the satellites, Africa, South America and the U.S.. ordered a final drive to clear the Chinese from the countryside. At the mountain town of Tjimahi, police looking for Chinese holdouts got into a scuffle with broom-wielding housewives, shot and killed two of them. Leaping to denounce this "shocking atrocity," Peking organized mass protest meetings all over China, recited a list of other atrocities against the Chinese, blamed the police, the "reactionaries," and even the U.S. Continued persecution, it solemnly declared, would "poison the friendly relations between China and Indonesia."

Retorted Chief of Staff Army General Abdul Haris Nasution, who is directing the Chinese evacuation: "The trade ban on foreign nationals is an internal affair, and outsiders should not interfere with it." To underline his point, he ordered a Communist daily banned, rounded up Communist Party leaders for prolonged questioning.

The spirit of Bandung has plainly soured. But Sukarno made plain that his quarrel was only with Red China; he had nothing against Communists generally. He recently accepted a $10 million loan from Russia to build an iron and steel works, a $12 million loan from Czechoslovakia to build a dozen chemical plants. This week, with due fanfare, he will be presented with the Lenin peace prize. "You may call my theories red," he told a gathering of teachers last week. "Red is the color of the rising sun, which will bring bright weather in the morning."

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