In Malaya, the Japanese Occupation also marked the beginning of the collapse of British colonial rule in the territory. — The National Archives of Malaysia 1999/00004
THE relationship between China and Japan has grown so tense that even Singapore’s prime minister Lawrence Wong was pulled into the fray after he urged the two East Asian powers to de-escalate their dispute recently.
Noting the “overhang of the history of World War II, which still remains between the two countries”, Wong said South-East Asia generally welcomes an expanded Japanese role – not as a counterweight to China, but as a trusted and stabilising presence.
His observation during the recent Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore
highlights a deeper historical puzzle: why do China and Japan, two major neighbouring powers deeply woven into the making of the Nusantara world, leave such divergent political and social impressions in Singapore and, by extension, in Malaysia and Indonesia – today? The answer lies not only in contemporary geopolitics but also in the profoundly different ways each entered, and was absorbed into, the maritime ecology of South-East Asia.
The Nusantara world developed as a maritime and pluralistic zone.
Often described as existing “under the monsoon cloud,” it was shaped by transportation hubs, port-entrepôts, commercial guilds, religious fraternities and extensive diasporic networks of Chinese, Indian, Arab, Persian, and Bugis traders and missionaries.
Even powerful states like the Majapahit empire remained ethnically diverse, commercially oriented, and culturally inclusive, enabling the formation of coastal (pasisir) communities and even autonomous polities along Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and Java.
The rise of Muslim sultanates and the expansion of sizable Chinese communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reflected not only long-standing regional traditions but also the Nusantara’s remarkable capacity to absorb foreign influences on its own terms.
This distinctive maritime ecology shaped how later neighbours – including Ming China, Ashikaga and Tokugawa Japan, and the Ryukyu Kingdom – entered the region and interacted with its societies.
Different modes of interaction
China’s early encounters with the region took shape through state-directed expeditions.
The first major Chinese intervention – the failed Mongol-Yuan invasion of Java in 1293 – ironically facilitated the rise of the Majapahit power.
Under the Ming, however, China shifted from military projection to state navigation, diplomacy and regulated official trade.
Zheng He’s voyages across the Nanhai and the wider Nusantara forged dense networks of ritual, commercial, and political ties that left lasting imprints on ethnic Chinese temples, genealogies, and associations throughout the archipelago.
One of the most intriguing institutions from this period was the Old Harbor Superintendency associated with the Shi family, established in 1407 to support Zheng He’s maritime expeditions.
Although traditionally linked to Palembang in Sumatra, new scholarship suggests that the polity known as Bolinbang or the Baolin polity may have been situated closer to the Siam–Malay Peninsula borderlands.
Ming records describe Shi Jingqing’s son-in-law, Haji Muhammad (“Hajj the Honest”), known in Chinese as Qiu Yancheng (“Kyai the Honest”), as a Muslim leader. His career illustrates early patterns of Sino-Muslim integration on the peninsula – and later in Java – within the broader maritime networks of the fifteenth century.
Through Baolinbang, political and commercial networks connected the Malay Peninsula to Ming China, Japan, Ryukyu, Siam, and Java.
Japanese sources record what is likely the earliest tribute mission from “Ayra Jingqing” to Japan in 1408.
Satsuma documents describe the shipwreck of Shi Jingqing’s son (Zhi Sun) near Hakata in 1419 and Ryukyu’s subsequent attempt to repatriate him via Siam, suggesting that Baolinbang was located near the modern Thai–Malay border.
By the 1430s to 1440s, Ryukyuan correspondence referred to the “Great Madam of the Shi family” or “the madam Pinatah,” indications of succession disputes unfolding amid Siam’s southward expansion.
These pressures contributed to the Shi family’s relocation to East Java, where their presence later became entangled with early Javanese Sufi networks associated with the Walisongo. In Javanese Walisongo literature, the Great Lady of the Shi lineage subsequently appears under the name Nyai Gede Pinatih.
The rise of Siam, the termination of Zheng He’s voyages, the Ming maritime ban, and later European expansion collectively brought an end to China’s statist mode of engagement in the region.
For the next several centuries, Chinese influence circulated primarily through diasporic communities rather than through the Chinese state or transregional religious and political institutions – an important historical reality that continues to shape regional perceptions to this day.
Japan’s early engagements with the Nusantara unfolded through very different channels.
Long before modern state expansion, Ashikaga and Tokugawa Japan entered the region via trade, mobility, and religious networks, rather than through imperial or state-sponsored expeditions.
After the Portuguese captured Melaka in 1511, Japan became integrated into the Nanban (“Southern Barbarian”) maritime world. Japanese silver, swords, and sulphur circulated widely in regional markets, while rōnin, merchants, and Catholic converts moved regularly through Melaka, Siam, Luzon, and Java.
A pivotal moment came in the 1540s when Anjirō, a fugitive samurai, sought refuge in Portuguese Melaka and later guided Francis Xavier to Japan, thereby linking Japan to Iberian missionary and trade networks.
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) employed Japanese samurai mercenaries in the Moluccas, where their military effectiveness and brutality advanced VOC interests and contributed to a durable regional perception of Japanese discipline and technical competence.
These early patterns of mobility and service fostered an image of the Japanese as pragmatic, private, mobile, and highly skilled – an impression that continues to resonate in South-East Asia today.
In contemporary Nusantara
The most consequential transformations occurred during the Second World War and the Cold War, when both China and Japan projected state power into the region.
Under Japanese occupation, Indonesia witnessed the dismantling of Dutch colonial authority, the mobilisation of youth, and administrative restructuring – developments that enabled the rise of Sukarno and Hatta and shaped the formation of the early Indonesian National Army.
Although Japan’s wartime violence left deep and lasting scars, its role in accelerating decolonisation is widely acknowledged, producing a complex memory – negative yet not uniformly so, particularly among later Indonesian and Malay elites.
China’s modern image, by contrast, became deeply entangled with the conflicts of the Cold War.
In Malaya, Indonesia, Burma, and other South-East Asian countries, the Communist insurgency – widely associated with ethnic Chinese communities – triggered a protracted civil conflict.
In Indonesia, fears of Beijing-backed communism contributed to the mass killings of 1965–1966, reshaping national politics, eliminating the left, and placing Chinese identity under tight restriction for decades.
These traumas also informed the creation of Asean in 1967, which sought to contain ideological spillover and regional instability.
In sum, Japan’s wartime memory became political and national, whereas China’s Cold War legacy became ethnic and communal – a distinction that continues to shape regional attitudes today.
By the late twentieth century, Japan had become one of the region’s most trusted development partners.
Malaysia’s Look East Policy institutionalised Japanese technical training, managerial culture, and industrial practices.
Indonesia depended heavily on Japanese investment in the automotive and electronics sectors, producing generations of engineers and managers shaped by Japanese corporate models.
Japan’s presence became woven into everyday life – from consumer goods and anime to workplace norms – without triggering ethnic anxieties or ideological sensitivities.
China’s twenty-first-century resurgence has unfolded largely through state-driven mega-infrastructure under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi Jinping’s 2013 Jakarta speech positioned Indonesia as a cornerstone of the BRI, and projects such as the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail and Malaysia’s East Coast Rail Link stand as its most prominent regional examples.
China’s broader foreign initiatives – including the Global Civilisational Initiative – remain similarly state-centred, leaving limited space for genuine intercultural or interfaith dialogue with community leaders or through community-based channels.
These projects are highly statist and strategic, reinforcing perceptions of top-down influence; problems in any single project quickly become criticisms of China itself.
Japan’s presence, by contrast, remains less statist, more private-sector–driven, quieter and more socially embedded.
Prime Minister Wong’s remarks capture the deeper logic of the archipelago: in the Nusantara world, enduring influence does not accrue to the strongest, loudest or largest power, but to those able to operate quietly, flexibly, and respectfully within a plural, maritime and socially grounded environment. Japan’s widespread acceptance and China’s more ambivalent reception today are not accidental; they reflect how each country’s long historical entanglements do – or do not – resonate with the rhythms, ecology, and traditions of this oceanic world, where non-state actors have long played a crucial role in shaping societies.
Dr Haiyun Ma is an associate professor of history at Frostburg State University. His work focuses on the history of Islam in China.
