By 1961, the pendulum of Southeast Asia appeared to be swinging slowly but surely back to syndicalism. While Washington’s burgeoning system of subsidies and military support in Indochina had managed to temporarily quiet the syndicalist insurrection in South Vietnam, outside of Emperor Bao’s regime the strategic picture was looking increasingly bleak. India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, variously independent yet allegiant to syndicalism, remained receptive to instructions and pressure from the Marxist bloc. This allegiance was given its most public expression at the Putrajaya Conference in 1960, when Lim Yew Hock, the leader of the Malaysian Confederation and its governing party, the pro-British Labour Front, joined Indian President Saumyendranath Tagore and Indonesian President Sukarno in denouncing the American presence on the continent upon European encouragement. The two other former French colonies of Indochina—Laos and Cambodia—remained under the more direct guidance of their pro-European syndicalist governments. Despite providing nearly $2 billion in U.S aid for the anti-imperialist, anti-syndicalist movements in Laos and Cambodia, the United States faced the frightening prospect of a consolidated syndicalist presence enveloping South Vietnam from all sides.