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Indonesia Chinese
Identifying someone in Indonesia as a member of the
Chinese
(orang Tionghoa) ethnic group is not an easy
matter, because
physical characteristics, language, name, geographical
location,
and life-style of Chinese Indonesians are not always
distinct from
those of the rest of the population. Census figures do not
record
Chinese as a special group, and there are no simple racial
criteria
for membership in this group. There are some people who
are
considered Chinese by themselves and others, despite
generations of
intermarriage with the local population, resulting in
offspring who
are less than one-quarter Chinese in ancestry. On the
other hand,
there are some people who by ancestry could be considered
halfChinese or more, but who regard themselves as fully
Indonesian.
Furthermore, many people who identify themselves as
Chinese
Indonesians cannot read or write the Chinese language.
Although the policy of the Indonesian government in the
early
1990s favored the assimilation of the Chinese population
into the
local communities in which they lived, Chinese had a long
history
of enforced separation from their non-Chinese neighbors.
For nearly
a century prior to 1919, Chinese were forced to live in
separate
urban neighborhoods and could travel out of them only with
government permits. Most Chinese continued to settle in
urban areas
of Indonesia even after this "quarter system" was
discontinued in
1919. In some areas, such as Pontianak in Kalimantan Barat
Province, Chinese even came to form a majority of the
population.
Although they had settled in rural areas of Java in the
1920s and
1930s, in the 1960s the government again prohibited the
Chinese
from exercising free choice of residence, requiring them
to live in
cities.
Nearly all Chinese who immigrated to Indonesia came
from either
Fujian or Guangdong provinces in southern China. The
dominant
languages among these immigrants were Hokkien, Hakka, and
Cantonese. Although there was great occupational diversity
among
contemporary Indonesia's Chinese, most were either engaged
in
trade, mining, or skilled artisanry. In the early 1990s,
Chinese
continued to dominate Indonesia's private sector, despite
policies
designed to promote indigenous entrepreneurs. Nonetheless,
Chinese
were not a monolithic group. Each immigrant group had its
own
distinctive characteristics--some of which were
accentuated
overseas. One of the main contrasts among Indonesian
Chinese in the
1990s was seen in the differences between the
peranakan
(native-born Chinese with some Indonesian ancestry) and
totok (full-blooded Chinese, usually foreign born).
Although
the distinctiveness and social significance of this
division varied
considerably in different parts of the archipelago, among
the
peranakan community, ties to the Chinese homeland
were more
distant, and there was stronger evidence of Indonesian
influence.
Unlike the more strictly male-dominated totok
Chinese,
peranakan families recognized descent based on both
female
and male lines. Peranakan were more likely to have
converted
to Christianity and to have assimilated in other ways to
the norms
of Indonesian culture. They often spoke Bahasa Indonesia
as their
first language. Some even converted to Islam.
In the early 1990s, totok considered themselves
as
keepers of Chinese cultural ideals and maintained their
traditions
through household shrines, reverence for ancestors, and
private
language instruction in Chinese schools. Highly oriented
toward
success, they saw themselves as more dedicated to hard
work,
individual social mobility through the acquisition of
wealth, and
self-reliance than the peranakan. Whereas
peranakan
were more likely to have settled on Java, totok
were better
represented in the other islands.
The government program of assimilation for the Chinese
was
carried out in several ways. Symbols of Chinese identity
had long
been discouraged and even occasionally prohibited:
Chinese-language
newspapers, schools, and public ritual use of Chinese
names were
all subject to strong governmental disapproval. In the
years
following independence, nearly 50 percent of Chinese
Indonesians
failed to seek Indonesian citizenship, however, either
because of
continuing loyalty to the People's Republic of China or
the
Republic of China on Taiwan, or because of the prohibitive
costs of
gaining citizenship papers. To carry out its stated policy
of
assimilation in a period of rapprochement with China,
however, the
Suharto government enacted new regulations in the 1980s
designed to
expedite the naturalization of persons with Chinese
citizenship.
The assimilation policy was successful. By 1992 only about
6
percent, or 300,000 out of approximately 5 million Chinese
Indonesians were acknowledged by the People's Republic of
China as
being Chinese citizens. Regulations announced in June 1992
by the
director general of immigration allowed immigrants from
China who
had lived illegally in Indonesia for decades to receive
entry
permits and to reside legally in Indonesia once they
obtained a
Chinese passport.
Data as of November 1992
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