'China reasserting Third World leadership role'

Following the 1949 Communist takeover, China emerged from its diplomatic isolation in 1955 at the Asia-Africa Conference in Indonesia's West Java town of Bandung that marked a move by the Third World to assert itself.

Hu will attend the April 21-24 golden jubilee of the Bandung conference en route to the Philippines for an April 26-28 state visit, said two Asian diplomatic sources.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has yet to announce Hu's trip, which is also expected to take him to the tiny oil-rich sultanate of Brunei.

China has played down its role as the vanguard of the Third World, but analysts said Hu's presence would cement such a position for the world's most populous nation and an emerging economic power that has been careful in recent decades to be seen to be diplomatically neutral.

"The growth of its domestic economy and increased integration with the world will compel China to exert itself and take a larger role in regional security and economic issues," Drew Thompson, a China watcher at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Internatio-nal Studies, wrote.

The 1955 Bandung conference adopted the five principles of peaceful co-existence that have long been trumpeted by China's communist rulers as the foundation of their foreign policy.

The principles 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 co-existence.

"It reflects China's desire to be the carrier of the spirit of Bandung that focuses on decolonisation in all aspects especially now in economic, technology and culture," said Hong Kong-based commentator Josef Purnama Widyatmadja.