Taomu Zhao: “Who Are the Chinese in the Book?” (2019)

Response

In the introduction to her book, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War, Taomo Zhou defines the concept of the “overseas Chinese” to which she will refer as she explores the Cold War-era politics of Chinese identity in Indonesia. Zhou’s account of this period focuses on the “China-oriented” ethnic Chinese population, or totok, and how it found itself entangled in the geopolitics of the day. Zhou argues that overseas Chinese in Indonesia experienced discrimination and othering from the outset but the Cold War period brought greater politicization to the Chinese identity. The political polarization surrounding the Chinese minority in Indonesia, Zhou claims, resulted in a deterioration of ethnic relations and corresponded with a collapse in relations between Jakarta and Beijing. Although Zhou draws interesting connections between overseas Chinese populations, domestic Indonesian affairs, and Indonesia-China relations during the Cold War, not all of her conclusions seem obvious given the evidence presented. Because this reading is taken from the book’s introduction, I suspect many of the questions I came away with would find answers later in the text. Nonetheless, I will use this opportunity to address some of the points I thought would benefit from more detailed discussion.

Defining “the Chinese”

Zhou begins by defining “overseas Chinese” as people of Chinese birth or descent living outside the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macao. Because concepts of nationality and citizenship were unstable and new at the time, Zhou includes both Chinese nationals and foreigners of Chinese ethnic backgrounds in this grouping. Within the Chinese diasporic community in Indonesia, Zhou identifies two subgroups: the peranakan and the totok. By Zhou, the peranakan are Indonesian-born, locally rooted people who are ethnically Chinese, while the totok are foreign-born immigrants and their descendents who continue to speak Chinese. Her book focuses on the totok, which made up over 60 percent of the Chinese population in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s (Zhou 6).

According to Zhou, the identity label “Chinese” has a complex and often contested history in Indonesia. She explains that despite Indonesia’s ethnolinguistic diversity, the Chinese are often considered a “foreign” group lacking roots in the country and separate from the pribumi (“indigenous” Indonesians). Regardless of how well overseas Chinese assimilated into local society, right-wing pribumi perpetuated the view that they remained the same morally and religiously. Zhou likens this way of thinking to the anti-Semitic saying “once a Jew, always a Jew” (Zhou 7). I found this comparison between the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and Jewish people in, e.g., Western Europe, to be useful and thought-provoking. Already seen as an alien group, ethnic Chinese were also imagined to dominate the Indonesian economy through their business network. This belief seems to have fueled a rise in anti-Chinese violence during the Indonesian National Revolution (1945-1949) where ethnic Chinese people were victimized by the pribumi militia. 

Internal Division and External Discrimination

Against this backdrop of pre-existing animosity toward Chinese by the pribumi, developments during the Cold War period made Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese population increasingly vulnerable. Zhou details how the communist revolution in mainland China and the retreat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist coalition to Taiwan led to divisions within the ethnic Chinese community overseas. Overseas Chinese communities were permeated by the rivalry between the pro-Beijing bloc and the pro-Taipei bloc. Zhou implies this lack of internal cohesion among members of the Chinese diaspora made them particularly vulnerable to political (and physical) attacks. For those Chinese who supported Mao and the People’s Republic of China, their visible participation in new PRC holidays and rituals only served to alienate them in the eyes of anti-communist Indonesian pribumi. After 1958, the pro-Beijing faction was increasingly dominant among ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. This alarmed the Indonesian government, as pro-Beijing activism by the ethnic Chinese appeared to undermine Indonesian sovereignty within its borders.

Cold War Geopolitics

While the Chinese diasporic community suffered from internal political divisions and external discrimination, Jakarta and Beijing initially maintained a productive relationship. After Beijing and Moscow’s relationship degraded in the late 1950s, by the 1960s Zhou says the PRC began to see Indonesia as a possible ally against the existing international order. The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) rose to prominence and worked closely with the Sukarto administration during that period. But in 1965 all of this collapsed in the aftermath of the September Thirtieth Movement, where PKI actors abducted and killed six anti-communist generals. Suharto responded by attempting to purge communism from Indonesia, beginning a massacre that would claim the lives of over 500,000 people. Propaganda from the Suharto regime associated ethnic Chinese with communism and made the group especially susceptible to violence during the campaign’s most murderous period (1965-66). Suharto’s government also enacted discriminatory laws which banned Chinese-language education and gave Chinese people special designations on their citizenship cards. 

Through her retelling of the events of the Cold War period, Zhou demonstrates the relevance of Indonesia-China relations to the conditions facing ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. She makes clear that there is a link between Beijing’s supposed involvement in the PKI’s attack to the Suharto government’s hostility toward China and by association the ethnic Chinese community in Indonesia. In this way, the Cold War period saw attitudes and behaviors toward the Chinese diaspora reflect changing relations between Jakarta and Beijing, with the identifier “Chinese” taking on an ever more political significance.

Criticism

The issues I have with Zhou’s approach in this text are likely resolved in later chapters of her book. Perhaps it is a sign this introduction is effective that I am left with so many questions upon reading it. In particular, I am left wondering how she applies the definitions of peranakan and totok to her analysis and why she does not include the peranakan in the scope of the book. I also wish Zhou provided more historical context to the relationship between the Dutch, ethnic Chinese, and indigenous people during the colonial era. 

First, Zhou’s definitions of peranakan and totok Chinese are such that there was likely frequent overlap between the two categories. As someone who is not from Indonesia and is lacking in local context to aid my understanding of these terms, these definitions are somewhat ambiguous. According to Zhou, peranakan are Indonesian-born Chinese people who speak Bahasa Indonesia or another local language; totok are foreign-born immigrants or their descendents who continue to speak Chinese. From these definitions, it is unclear to me how distinct these two types of ethnic Chinese people were in reality. Were these two entirely separate communities that would, for example, not live in the same neighborhoods? Or were most communities of ethnic Chinese filled with individuals who existed on different parts of the spectrum between these two social categories? If a person and their spouse were to immigrate to Indonesia from China and have children on Java who learned to speak both Bahasa Indonesia and Mandarin, would those children be considered peranakan or totok?

These questions are salient because Zhou admittedly focuses the whole of her book on the “China-oriented” diaspora, “the majority of whom can be considered as totoks” (Zhou 6). I was left wondering why Zhou chose to discount the population of Chinese who were not “China-oriented” by her definition. Perhaps in later chapters Zhou discusses in more detail what she means by this phrase, who belongs in this group, and why she chose to exclude peranakans from her analysis. 

Second, Zhou’s treatment of indigenous perceptions of ethnic Chinese as economically powerful does not sufficiently address the context of colonialism. While Zhou acknowledges that this perception “originated in the Dutch colonial era, when the Chinese worked as mediators between the Dutch and the indigenous people”, she does not go into further detail. 

My understanding is that the Dutch colonial strategy of placing ethnic Chinese above “natives” in their racial hierarchy, designating that ethnic Chinese business-people manage operations while indigenous people labored, etc., has had a lasting impact on ethnic relations in Indonesia. From my limited experience working and living in Jakarta, the perception of Chinese-Indonesians as economically dominant appears widespread to this day. This dynamic seems important in explaining how tensions escalated into violence and discriminatory legislation during the Cold War era(and continue to fuel resentment between communities in the present). I am curious to know whether Zhou goes into more detail about these issues in later parts of the book.

Quotes

• “Peranakan (tusheng huaren) refers to Indonesian-born, locally rooted ethnic Chinese who use bahasa Indonesia or a regional Indonesian language as their primary language. This group also includes the descendants of mixed-race unions. Totok (xinke huaren) refers to foreign-born immigrants and their descendants who continue to speak Chinese.” (Zhou 6)

• “In the Indonesian context, ‘Chinese’ has been a contested identity label: sometimes self-designated and sometimes prescribed or even imposed.” (Zhou 7)

• “Despite Indonesia’s pronounced ethnic diversity, the Chinese have frequently been referred to as a ‘foreign’ (asing) group without territorial roots in the country and distinct from the pribumi or the so-called indigenous Indonesians.” (Zhou 7)

• “The image of the Chinese as an alien minority went hand in hand with the popular belief that they dominated the Indonesian economy through an impenetrable business network.” (Zhou 7)

• “The rivalry between the Red, or the pro-Beijing bloc, and the Blue, or the pro-Taipei bloc, permeated what had long been regarded as ‘the three pillars’ of overseas Chinese societies: civic associations, Chinese-language newspapers, and Chinese-medium schools.” (Zhou 8)

• “The Suharto regime’s propaganda, which associated the ethnic Chinese with Communism, made this minority susceptible to violence during the mass killings of 1965-66.” (Zhou 10)

• “As the ancestral land of this presumably business-minded minority, the PRC was associated with both economic exploitation and political intervention.” (Zhou 11)

Questions

• What are the differences between the two groups of Chinese in Indonesia that Zhou references? Where are the concepts of peranakan and totok useful, and where do they fall short? (Is there a better way to categorize these subgroups?)

• How did the Indonesian government use legislation to discriminate against ethnic Chinese people from 1950-1970?

• Why was it problematic in the view of the Indonesian government that many totok Chinese took up PRC holidays and rituals?

• How and why did the September Thirtieth Movement attacks lead to the politicization of the Chinese ethnic identity under Suharto? Was this new, or was this identity already political?