Backgrounder:Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

The Bandung Conference in 1955, which saw non-aligned and newly-emergent nations gather to agree on a set of core principles in international relations, is celebrated with a new conference being convened in Bandung, Indonesia.

The Bandung Spirit, containing the Ten Principles of Bandung on handling state-to-state relations and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, became a widely recognized set of norms for international relations.

The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

The Five Principles were first set forth by China's late Premier Zhou Enlai in his talks in Beijing with the Indian delegation at the start of the negotiations that took place from December 1953 to April 1954 between representatives of the Chinese and Indian governments.

Later, the Five Principles were formally written into the preface to the "Agreement Between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India on Trade and Intercourse Between the Tibet Region of China and India."

Since June 1954, when the Five Principles were included in the joint communique issued by Zhou Enlai and late Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, they have been adopted in many other international documents and have been widely accepted as norms for relations between countries.

The contents of the Five Principles were further extended in the Ten Principles of Bandung, adopted at the 1955 Asian-African Conference. Endi