n Indonesia, the Chinese minority has played a major economic role in the archipelago as merchants, artisans, and indispensable middlemen in the collection of crops and taxes from native populations (Seekins, 1993, p. 30). As discussed above, they have also long encountered considerable hostility from both Indonesians and Europeans largely as a result of the economic threat they have appeared to pose. Furthermore, Chinese emigration from China's southern provinces to Indonesia in the late nineteenth century increased in correlation to the economic development of ethnic Chinese already in Indonesia (Seekins, 1993, p. 30). For example, between 1870 and 1930, the Chinese population in the archipelago increased from 250,000 to 1.25 million, the latter number representing about 2 percent of the archipelago's total population.
After 1900, the extension of the plantation system and the development of mining concerns where Chinese labor was widely used led to a further increase in the number of Chinese residents (Vlekke, 1945, p. 181). However, Vlekke (1960, p. 342) notes that these Chinese immigrants of the twentieth century represented a type of Chinese different from the earlier immigrants. Chinese immigrants before the turn of the century generally came from Fujian province in southern China and belonged to the mercantile class. The later immigrants, however, came primarily from Guandong province and represented a different class of people. They were largely illiterate and knew little of Chinese culture compared to the earlier immigrants. Nonetheless, they tended to cling to the ancient customs of their people, demonstrating a lack of interest in Indonesian affairs and always looking back to China, where they hoped to return as soon as they had saved enough money (Vlekke, 1960, p. 342). The memory of this variety of Chinese immigrants echoes today in arguments that ethnic Chinese remain emotionally tied to China, to whom they h...