224 { China’s Quest
formation of military organs of the NKLL in 1964 and early 1965. Indonesia
also provided military training to NKLL fighters. China and North Korea
provided weapons to the NKLL by way of Indonesia.
A North Kalimantan government in exile was established in Jakarta in
early 1965, but once Sukarno was overthrown in September, China quickly
emerged as the main refuge for North Kalimantan insurgents. In September
1965, only about two weeks before the Indonesian coup, a North Kalimantan
Communist Party (NKCP) was formed to provide leadership to the pro-
tracted armed struggle that was being planned. Shortly after the NKCP
was founded, the paramount leader of that party, Wen Ming Chyuan, left
for China, where he would reside for the next twenty years. Wen had aban-
doned his Sarawakian citizenship in 1962 and demanded and received
deportation to China. Thereafter he traveled occasionally between China
and Kalimantan, something that required, according to scholar Fujio Hara,
“appropriate arrangements both by the Chinese and Indonesian [Sukarno]
governments.”^81 After the founding of the NKCP, Wen remained in Beijing,
with Renmin ribao reporting eighteen times on his activities between June
1966 and March 1978. Figure 8-2 shows the frequency of reports by Renmin
ribao on the North Kalimantan armed struggle in the 1960s and 1970s.ThailandThe Communist Party of Siam (which became the Communist Party
of Thailand, or CPT, in 1948) was formed in 1930 under the tutelage of
Comintern agent Ho Chi Minh. Members were then mostly ethnic ChineseYea r # Reports
1962 4
1962 26
1964 20
1965 13
1966 3
1967 2
1968 6
1969 14
1970 13
1971 5
1972 2
1973 0
19 74 1FIGU R E 8-2 Renmin ribao Reports on Armed
Struggle in North Kalimantan
Source: Fujio Hara, “The North Kalimantan Communist
Party and the People’s Republic of China,” The Developing
Economies, vol. X LIII, issue 4 (December 2005), p. 508.