The Authorization of Chinese-Assimilationism in Indonesia: Peranakan's Orientations and the Politics

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In the New Order Indonesia, state policies toward its citizens of Chinese descent (hereafter “Chinese”) have been marked by assimilationism, an ideology which urges them to abandon all their Chineseness and to assimilate into the indigenous society as their only way in the national integration of the country. The ideology has been realized in such policies as banning of Chinese-medium schools and press, restriction of “exclusive” social organizations, promotion of name changing into Indonesian-sounding ones.This paper examines historically how assimilationism toward Chinese has been authorized in the country. Admitting that the ideology was officialized by the very need of the regime, the author highlights the aspect of its justification by once asserted political orientations of Chinese themselves, especially the local-born “peranakan”. The divergence of their orientations were originally manifested in a debate, which took place in 1960 in an Indonesian Journal, Star Weekly.Among three main stands found in the debate, those who took the lead were the assimilationists. Their slogan, “voluntary, complete assimilation of Chinese” was another expression to denounce Chinese “exclusivism” which they regarded as the major obstacle for better relationship between Chinese and indigenous people. One of their opponents was Siauw Giok Thjan, the famous leader of Baperki, then the most influential organization among peranakan which originally was formed to advocate the equal rights for Chinese as Indonesian citizens. Proposing “integration” as the alternative slogan, Siauw maintained that Chinese as a group should be accepted as an ethnic group (suku) that forms one Indonesian nation with the hundreds of indigenous sukus. People of the third stand also stood in the “integration” line, but more individually. They advocated the dignity of “being Chinese” from the standpoints of human rights and/or religion. Criticizing the assimilationism that it would be compulsory, they also disapproved Siauw's political tendency.All the stands seemed to be much common in their motives to get rid of general antagonism and discrimination against Chinese and in their basic orientations toward Indonesian nation. But the gap in further political inclinations among them, soon escalated the opposition to a hostile struggle in the midst of social and political tension during the late Sukarno Era.What was critical was that the Baperki under the leadership of Siauw stepped in so close to the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party), one of the most upsurging political forces of the time, as both went along with the revolutionary line of Sukarno. The assimilationists, especially of its anti-communism strand rather than of mere anticommunalism one, organized counter-movement in 1962, in alliance with the Indonesian army, who not only was the major rival of the PKI, but also approved of the assimilationist idea from the anti-Chinese viewpoint. Now the integration/assimilation issue on Chinese was directly, or rather twistedly, combined with the course of the power struggle between the two wings, with the PKI and the army at each pole. Meanwhile the third stand, who had been actually formidable rivals for assimilationists in the debate, stood outside of the strife.Around 1967 the New Order government introduced a set of policies based on assimilationism, af if to counterbalance with another set of policies to utilize Chinese capitals and skills for the rehabilitation and development of the national economy. The peranakan assimilationists, who had been dormant since the formulation of the policies, were mobilized again in the mid-1970's and have been propagating their ideas. Asserting that the assimilationism actually originated from peranakan Chinese themselves, they can be seen as supporting the legitimacy of the ideology. The late Baperki, which was des