Leaders of more than 70 countries, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping, gather in Jakarta on Wednesday and Thursday this week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, the first meeting of leaders of Asian and African countries that won independence after World War II, liberating themselves from Western colonialism. The spirit of the 10-point declaration adopted by the leaders who met in the highland city in Java in 1955 is still relevant today. The participants in the commemorative event should uphold the spirit and discuss in earnest how to achieve peace, coexistence and prosperity in Asia and Africa.
At the conference 60 years ago, Indonesian President Sukarno, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser played key roles in raising the voices of newly independent countries to achieve solidarity among themselves and ease the East-West confrontation at a time when the world was in the grip of the Cold War being waged between East and West blocs led by the Soviet Union and the United States.
Japan and China were among the participants in the Bandung Conference, which took place not long after both countries began their postwar diplomacy — just three years after the Allied occupation of Japan ended and six years after the People's Republic of China was established.