In the 1950s and 1960s, conferences were essential in creating notions of solidarity and collective purpose among Asians and Africans, none more so than the high-profile 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung. The Asian Socialist Conference (ASC) met two years prior, in Rangoon in 1953, and a second time in Bombay in 1956. It was the brainchild of socialist leaders from Burma, India, Indonesia, and Japan. Kyaw Zaw Win has argued that the 1953 ASC served as a ‘precursor’ to Bandung, highlighting parallel issues of human rights, anti-colonialism, and Asian–African solidarity that appeared on the agenda of both events.2 Yet there were also key differences in the resolutions of both conferences, primarily in the ASC’s vision of an Asian welfare state and the promotion of equal rights for both women and men. While Bandung adopted some of the most high-profile internationalist resolutions of the ASC, it was also both a break and a parallel project. While the ASC created a forum for transnational democratic socialism in Asia and a neutralist ‘third force’, Bandung took a nationalist trajectory, visibly centred around charismatic male political leaders with populist appeal, including the PRC’s Chou En Lai.