Discrimination Against Indonesian Chinese
In Indonesia in April, 1994, what began as a labor protest in Medan quickly escalated into riots against the businesses of ethnic Chinese Indonesians (Hicks & Mackie, 1994, p. 46). Hicks and Mackie argue that this protest and the recent surge of ethnic Chinese capital investment have raised serious questions about the future of the Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. These questions are not new ones, however; they have been asked ever since the Chinese first began immigrating to Indonesia in the seventeenth century.
The questions raised by the recent events in Indonesia revolve around the level of assimilation and integration of the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Generally, two responses are common. First, the more extreme elements in Indonesian society accuse the Chinese of an unwillingness to assimilate (Hicks & Mackie, 1994, p. 46). However, the other side, which includes the ethnic Chinese themselves, regard the ethnic Chinese as willing and loyal citizens of their countries of residence, not China.
Suspicion and hostility toward Chinese settlers in Southeast Asia is an age-old tradition (Hicks & Mackie, 1994, p. 50). During the region's colonial rule, the Dutch and other Europeans sat atop the social scale, native Indonesians stood at the bottom, and "foreign Orientals" such as Chinese, Indians, and Arabs were in the middle (Ching, 1993, p. 33). History documents occasional massacres of whole communities of ethnic Chinese as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries, and resentment festered against Chinese economic dominance. Thus, in an effort to break such economic dominance, most Southeast Asian countries implemented discriminatory policies against the Chinese in the 1950s and 1960s, some of which have continued, though usually much diminished, to the present (Hicks & Mackie, 1994, p. 50).
Forms and Policies of Discrimination to 1980
Throughout its history i...