Response to Taomo Zhou: “Who Are the Chinese in the Book?”

In the introduction to Migration in the Time of Revolution, Taomo Zhou examines the political history and relationship between China and Indonesia and how the interactions between the two countries developed unique social positions for the many Chinese people residing in Indonesia. In particular, Zhou explores migration and political loyalty as means of developing an evolving national identity during times of war and chaos.

Given that citizenship for Chinese Indonesians was a fluid concept, Zhou makes sure to define the different categories of Chinese people living in Indonesia. One group is the totok, who are foreign-born immigrants and their descendants who continue to speak Chinese dialects. The other group is the peranakan, who are Indonesian-born and locally rooted ethnic Chinese who speak a regional Indonesian language as their primary language. According to Leo Suryadinata, during the 1950s and 1960s, more than 60 percent of the Chinese population in Indonesia were totok and less than 40 percent of them were peranakan. 

While the totok were extremely Chinese-oriented and even considered themselves to be a part of the Chinese nation, the peranakan rooted themselves in Indonesian communities by taking on local traditions and cultural behaviors. Despite their efforts to assimilate and incorporate themselves into the mainstream Indonesian culture, the peranakan were not accepted as a part of the country. Traditionally, ethnic Chinese folks in Indonesia were considered “foreign” or “asing” because of their lack of territorial roots in the country. Though the peranakan may speak the same language and share the same cultural values as indigenous populations, their inherent label as Chinese rendered them outsiders.

Zhou also argues that the political ties the Chinese in Indonesia had with their home country created further tension between them and Indonesians. The larger political events between the two countries deeply impacted the everyday lives of Chinese people living in Indonesia and how they were perceived by the local government — particularly for the totok who synced up their lives with the PRC. Indonesians believed that Chinese people were threatening their country’s sovereignty and economically encroaching on their territory. Although celebrating Chinese holidays and performing cultural rituals were considered ways of fostering a sense of solidarity with their home nation, Indonesians saw it as a dangerous political threat. As a result, the Chinese were made vulnerable to racial violence, discrimination, and unfair economic policies. 

One thing that really struck me as I was reading was the similarities between the treatment of the Indonesian government toward Chinese migrants and the treatment of the American government toward Chinese migrants during the early 19th and 20th century. It reminded me of Erika Lee’s At America’s Gates, which argued that America was a gatekeeping nation because of its many forces of exclusion toward Chinese folks simply because of their race. In many ways, Indonesians were also gatekeeping their nation from Chinese people. No matter how hard Chinese peranakan tried to assimilate themselves into Indonesia, their inherent Chinese-ness and characteristics that Indonesians perceived as “other” and “alien” made them ineligible for equal treatment. 

When talking about the perception of Chinese people in Indonesia, Zhou brings up the idea that Chinese people were viewed as “other” because of their religious status as non-Muslims. Given that a majority of residents in Indonesia identify as Muslim and religion is such a huge part of everyday life, I’m curious as to what Zhou thinks about the relationship between religion and politics in Indonesia during the 1950’s and 1960’s, and how these two forces contributed to the racialization of Chinese residents. A lot of what Zhou talks about in the introduction is exclusion and discrimination of Chinese people based on race and political beliefs. He briefly mentions the rituals that Chinese people performed on the ground as a means of resistance and political solidarity, but I’m interested to learn more about the structural openings that gave way for Chinese people to fight back against the racial violence and also what propelled these Chinese people to stay despite the violence they experienced. Lastly, I want to know more about the spatial relations between Indonesians and Chinese people and how the larger political landscape directly impacted their everyday reality. A lot of what Zhou discusses is larger-scale, theoretical happenings but he doesn’t hone in on the everyday happenings on the ground, which is what I’d like to know more about. I’d love to know how and why Chinese people stayed and persevered, specifically their forms of resistance and how they autonomously built an identity for themselves in Indonesian communities.

It’s also interesting the parallels that can be drawn between the treatment of the Chinese in Indonesia and the Chinese in America as a form of racemaking and a formation of a national identity that is built on the idea of exclusion. Indonesians felt threatened by Chinese “middle-class shopkeepers” who were infiltrating their economy through business networks while Americans were threatened by Chinese labor migrants who were supposedly stealing jobs from local residents in the mining fields. The violence the Chinese experienced could also be likened to the racially charged violence that many migrants in early America experienced. The policies that the Indonesian government implemented to force Chinese people out of certain industries is also what the American government did to push Chinese people out of the mining fields. In an oddly patriotic way, it seems that these forces of exclusion are what helped to solidify the Indonesian national identity, much like it did for the Americans in the early United States. These common themes of exclusion across the world make me wonder whether the political events between Indonesia and China really made a difference for the treatment of Chinese people in Indonesia, or if the forces of exclusion are just so deeply embedded in every political space that true integration of migrants into a country is just not possible on a national scale.
 

Questions

• How did political differences (specifically between communism and capitalism) in Indonesia create ideological and physical divisions between local residents and Chinese migrants? How did this political landscape contribute to an unequal class status for both the totok and the peranakan?

• Do you think it’s possible for a complete integration into a new society despite cultural, religious, and political differences? 

Quotes

• “In the Indonesian context, ‘Chinese’ has been a contested identity label: sometimes self-designated and sometimes prescribed or even imposed” (7)
• “Regardless of their degree of assimilation and citizenship status, all ethnic Chinese were the same in religious (non-Muslim) and moral terms (self-interested). Like the proclamation ‘once a Jew, always a Jew,’ this mode of thinking essentialized a Chinese identity and denied any possibility for the incorporation of ethnic Chinese into the Indonesian nation” (7)
• “The political polarization of the Chinese community in Indonesia rendered them even more vulnerable” (8)
• “These rituals created spaces where individual ethnic Chinese could foster a sense of solidarity with the PRC, even though they were in Indonesia. Although the majority of these celebrations were grassroots initiatives, they were construed by the pribumi elites as a Beijing-directed encroachment on Indonesian sovereignty” (9)
• “Sukarno’s theory that the ‘new emerging forces’ (nationalism and Communism) would decimate the ‘old established forces’ (capitalism and imperialism) through a relentless struggle echoed Beijing’s international outlook” (9)
• “Migration intricately complicated the diplomatic relations between two countries that were both pursuing a militantly anti-imperiality foreign policy” (10)
• “The continuous politicization of the Chinese minority contributed to the deterioration of ethnic relations and shook the Sino-Indonesian partnership to its foundations” (11)