492 { China’s Quest
the UN General Assembly. This China-supported development eliminated
major obstacles to China–South Korea relations. Shortly after the dual UN
entry, the Chinese and South Korean foreign ministers met for the first time
at an APEC ministerial session in Seoul. The two countries agreed in August
1992 to establish normal diplomatic ties.
Normalization of ties with South Korea, of course, had an economic logic.
Deng’s foreign policy line was premised on the expansion of economic co-
operation with virtually all countries, regardless of social system or ide-
ology, and over the next decade South Korea would emerge as one of China’s
most important economic partners. The changes in Sino-Korean relations in
1990–1992 also reflected the thawing wrought by Gorbachev’s policies. Beijing
no longer faced the risk that PRC ties with South Korea might push North
Korea into alignment with Moscow. But in the context of the immediate
post-6-4 period, Beijing wanted to lessen chances that South Korea, one of
China’s neighbors and an ally of the United States, might decide to participate
in “peaceful evolution” schemes that might be cooked up by Washington.
China also moved quickly to strengthen ties with neighbors Indonesia,
Singapore and India, plus regional powers like Saudi Arabia. Old grievances
were quickly shelved in an effort to court new friends that might otherwise
drift into alignment with Western anti-China forces. Regarding Indonesia,
that powerful country had broken relations with China in 1967 over China’s
role in the 1965 coup. Since that time, Jakarta had demanded an explicit
Chinese disavowal of support for insurgency in Southeast Asia as the sine
qua non for normalization of Indonesia-China ties. In February 1989, Qian
Qichen and Indonesian President Suharto had met at the funeral for Japan’s
Emperor Hirohito and decided to move toward normalization of ties. Talks
on the “technical issues” related to normalization took place in December
1989, and the two sides apparently found a way around the history issue re-
lated to the 1965 coup. Indonesia’s foreign minister visited China for further
talks in July 1990, which resulted in a joint communiqué on resuming dip-
lomatic relations. The communiqué declared the basis for relations to be the
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. One of those was noninterference in
each other’s internal affairs, and this may have been taken as a Chinese pledge
not to repeat things like China’s 1965 role. In any case, in August 1990 Li
Peng visited Jakarta to preside over the formal renormalization of ties. Three
months later, President Suharto’s visit to Beijing was the capstone of the nor-
malization process.
Two months after the Indonesia-China normalization communiqué,
Singapore followed suit. With its overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese population,
and confronting deep regional fears that it might become China’s Trojan
horse in Southeast Asia, Singapore had long held it would be the last of all the
Southeast Asian countries to normalize ties with the PRC. In August 1990, Li
Peng paid a formal friendship visit to Singapore. Two months later, Singapore