Defining Indonesian Chineseness under the New Order

Abstract

Abstract The idea that “the Chinese constitute only 3% of the population but control more than 70% of the Indonesian economy,” is a widely spread and accepted prejudice against Indonesians labelled as Chinese. This 70%-myth, which effectively combined Chinese tycoons and the rest of the “Chinese” minority, was an integral part of the New Order rule (1966–1998). It provided the politico-bureaucratic powerholders with the possibility to depict the constantly intensifying economic conflict in Indonesia as an ethnic one between the “indigenous” and the Chinese. To ethnicise the economic discourse, coherent and purposive minority policies towards the ethnic Chinese were needed. This article argues that the New Order redefined, perpetuated, and instrumentalised the “Chinese problem” by depicting the entire Chinese minority as an economically rich group. It achieved this by taking three essential steps: 1) the Chinese were marginalised by the so-called assimilation programme that, indeed, was not meant to assimilate them; 2) they were kept visible by discriminating against them; 3) they were finally stigmatised as wealthy expropriators. An analysis of these three folded policies of the state towards the Chinese will shed light on how ethnicity can be redefined and used by and for the state. By revealing the constructedness of Indonesian Chineseness and the active role of the state therein, this perspective challenges traditional, culturalist concepts of Chinese ethnicity in Indonesia and offers an interpretation of seemingly incoherent and at first sight contradictory minority politics of the New Order.