Abstract
In this study of Dutch—Chinese bilateral relations, I will first introduce my theoretical approach to the topic. My approach to the study of foreign policy interactions and its rationale is given in section 2. Section 3 summarises early contacts between Dutchmen and Chinese in East Asian waters. A description of early interaction between Chinese and Dutchmen gives, in my view, insights into behavioural continuities in Dutch—Chinese encounters. Section 4 focuses on diplomatic relations since World War II, encompassing the early recognition by the Dutch government of the communist regime in mainland China and the controversies about weapon deliveries to Taiwan in the 1980s. Section 5 gives an overview of economic relations between the Netherlands and the worlds of the Chinese at present times.
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Notes
Cf. H. W. Houweling, ‘Destabilizing consequences of sequential development’, in: Luc van de Goor, Kumar Rupesinghe and Paul Sciarone, eds, Between development and destruction. An inquiry into the causes of conflict in post-colonial states (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 143–69.
The classical text on the role of power in the international spread of development is Andrew Bard Schmookler, The parable of the tribe. The problem of power in social evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984); see also the author’s The illusion of choice. How the market economy shapes our destiny (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), and Dietrich Rueschemeyer Power and the division of labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), chapter 3.
Cf. for an effort to quantify victimization in twentieth century China, Rudolph Rummel, China’s bloody century. Genocide and mass murder since 1900 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991).
See for a powerful comparison of the reform process in the Soviet Union and the PRC, Suzan Shirk, The political logic of economic reform in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 29 ff.
Its potential is reflected by the fact that about 50 million Chinese living in offshore East and South-East Asia produce about the same aggregate wealth as the 1.13 billion Chinese living in mainland China. Cf. East Asia Analytic Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, Overseas Chinese business networks (Canberra: AGPS Press, 1995), p. 1.
Mid-nineteenth century Chinese are believed to have lived at about the same level of per capita wealth and well-being as their ancestors. Cf. Lloyd Reynolds, Economic growth in the third world. An introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 17 ff.
This section draws upon Leonard Blussé, Tribuut aan China. Vier eeuwen Nederlands-Chinese betrekkingen (Amsterdam: Otto Cramwinckel, 1989),
and relevant sections in Jonathan D. Spence, The search for modern China (New York: Norton. 1990).
Hundreds of Chinese were killed in the summer of 1946. Cf. Frank Dankers, Nederland en China, 1940–1950. De hoofdlijnen van het Nederlandse Chinabeleid in continwteit en verandering, Nijmegen, MA-thesis 1982, chapters II and III.
Following the British example of provisional recognition on 1 October, the Netherlands government ordered the secretary of the embassy on 14 October to present to the Chinese foreign minister a verbal declaration on its willingness to cooperate with local authorities in areas it controlled. See for the text, Caroline Smit en Martijn Schot, ‘Nederland en de erkenning van de Volksrepubliek China, 1949–1950’ in: Duco Hellema en Toby Witte eds. ‘Onmachtig om te helpen’. Nederlandse reacties op de socialistische dreiging (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis 1995), p. 43. Responding to US irritation about this declaration, the Dutch ambassador in Washington informed the State Department that, due to US restrictions on trade with the Western occupation zones in Germany, the Netherlands was compelled to conduct trade elsewhere, ‘even with the devil’, whether the Americans liked that or not.
Cf. Nota van Erkenning, in Jaarboek van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, 1949/1950 (Den Haag: Staatdrukkerij, 1950), App. 20A.
In early May 1949 the State Department instructed its ambassadors in Western capitals to contact foreign ministers in their host country to search for a coordinated policy of non-recognition. See sources quoted in George de Roos. De mars naar Peking. De vestiging van diplomatieke betrekkingen tussen Nederland en de Chinese Volksrepubliek, 1949–1972 (Amsterdam: MA Diss, 1987).
Pierre van der Eng, ‘Marshall aid as a catalyst in the decolonization of Indonesia, 1947–1949’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. XIX No. 2. (1988), pp. 335–52, on p. 335.
See for further details on the connection between both issues R. Soetendorp, Nederlands beleid ten aanzien van het Arabisch-Israelisch conflict, 1947–1977 (Groningen, Diss, 1982), chapter 2.
I rely in this section on Ko Colijn and Paul Rusman, Het Nederlandse wapen-exportbeleid, 1963–1988 PhD, Diss, Leiden University, 1989, chapter 7 ff.
Cf. ‘America’s dose of Sinophobia’, The Economist 29 March 1997, p. 67 ff. For systematic evidence of the ability of politicians in democracies that face a non-violent international crisis and domestic unrest at the same time to divert domestic unrest by initiating violence abroad, see Christopher Gelpi, ‘Democratic diversions. Governmental structures and the externalization of domestic conflict’, Journal Of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 41 No. 2, (April 1997), pp. 255–82.
Cf. Robert Wade, ‘What can economics learn from East Asian success’, Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 505, (September 1989), pp. 68–79.
Cf. Alice Amsden, ‘The ABC’s of Japanese and Korean accumulation’, being chapter 3 of her Asia’s next giant: South Korea and late industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 55–78.
Cf. Dic Lo. Market and institutional regulation in Chinese industrialization, 1978–1994 (London: Macmillan, 1997); The Economist of 7 June 1997, rings the alarm bell: ‘Something frightening is stirring in China…. The Chinese government… has started to breed a new and dangerous form of corporate monster…. the real role models are South Korea’s conglomerates, the mighty Chaebols. Chinese officials and businessmen have visited South Korea to see at first hand how firms as Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo work’.
For an evaluation of research on catching up and overtaking in dyads of major powers and its consequences, see Indra de Soysa, John R. Oneal and Yong-Hee Park, ‘Testing power-transition theory using alternative measures of national capabilities’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 41/4 August 1997, pp. 509–28
For an American appeal to politicians in Western Europe for a global partnership in a market-opening drive, see the essays in David C. Gomperts and F. Stephen Labarree, eds. America and Europe. A partnership for a new era. A RAND study in policy analysis (Harvard: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
The statistical rule is that democracies do not fight each other. However, democracies participate in inter-state wars and in militarized inter-state disputes in about the same rate as non-democracies. In the last two centuries, the probability of war in mixed democratic/non-democratic dyads was higher than in non-democratic dyads, for the incidence of war, for the onset of new dyadic inter-state wars and for measures of militarized interstate disputes below the intensity level of war. Therefore, the probability of violent conflict in mixed dyads in a region without, or with a small number of, democracies may be expected to increase initially as the relative number of democracies in that region begins to increase. In the recent past democracies were more frequently allied in war than non-democracies. Cf. Nils Petter Gleditsch and Havard Hegre, ‘Peace and democracy: three levels of analysis’, Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 41. No. 2, (April 1997), pp. 283–311.
For a quantitative assessment of the de-stabilizing consequences in the international realm of the European experience with the spread of industrial capitalism between 1870 and 1914, see Nazli Choucri and Robert C. North, Nations in conflict. Domestic growth and international violence (San Francisco: Freeman, 1975).
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Houweling, H. (2000). Dutch—Chinese Bilateral Relations: Constant Elements of a Bilateral Relationship in a Changing World System. In: Neves, M.S., Bridges, B. (eds) Europe, China and the Two SARs. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599314_6
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