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This chapter focuses on the involvement of Chinese Indonesians in electoral politics in post-Suharto Medan and Surabaya and how this intersects with their stereotypical position as businesspeople. The opening up of a democratic environment in post-Suharto Indonesia has prompted many Chinese Indonesians to get involved in electoral politics. Some of them become electoral candidates in order to push for reform and positive changes in Indonesia and reject approaches of support for their campaigns in return for political and business favours. But there are also those who become actively involved in politics with the aim of gaining political protection for their business instead of fighting for the interests of the general public. Ironically, the latter often have a higher chance of getting elected, because of the increased cost of campaigning in direct elections introduced during the democratisation process. Their own wealth, or the willingness to accept support from corrupt businesspeople, often Chinese, ensures enough funds to obtain party support and to bribe voters. In this way, Chinese businesspeople continue to establish corrupt and patrimonial relationships with aspiring politicians in exchange for political favours for their business.

This chapter explains the objectives, theoretical framework, literature review, scope of research, methods of research, and chapterisation of this study. This study adopts a combination of Anthony Giddens’s structure-agency theory as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and field as a framework for examining the strategies and tactics that Chinese Indonesians adopt to safeguard their business and personal interests as well as their ethnic and cultural identities in the post-Suharto era. Medan and Surabaya were selected as field sites for this study because both cities are economically and politically significant. Moreover, there are certain interesting contrasts in regard to their Chinese populations. The methods used in this research are library research, individual interviews, and participant observation.

This chapter explores the origins of the ambivalent position of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Historically, the Chinese have their ancestral roots in China and do not have particular regions in Indonesia to identify with. During the Dutch period, the colonial regime’s divide-and-rule policy, the granting of economic privileges to the Chinese, and subsequently the emergence of nationalist sentiments oriented towards China in early twentieth-century Dutch East Indies effectively prevented the Chinese from integrating into the wider indigenous population. The Chinese therefore began to be perceived as an alien minority associated with various negative attributes, occupying an ambivalent position in Indonesian society.

This chapter provides an analysis and summary of the active role of ethnic Chinese in reproducing and perpetuating their ambivalent position as well as in shaping Indonesia’s political, business, and socio-cultural environment in the post-Suharto era. The chapter also suggests that studying the Chinese in Indonesia may direct us to rethink the effect of democratisation on ethnic minorities and the role that those minorities may have in how transformative democratisation can be both for their situation and the betterment of the wider society. Effective enforcement of the rule of law as well as an education system that promotes inter-ethnic understanding and solidarity could promote more open- and reform-minded people, including those from resented, economically dominant minorities, such as the Chinese in Indonesia.

This chapter focuses on the performing arts of four main musico-lingual groups in Bangka, South Sumatra: the Malays, the Suku Lom forest-dwellers, the Suku Sekak sea-boat-dwellers, and the Chinese Indonesians. According to some performing artists and community elders, today's Malay people are descendants of former Bangka Malay chiefdoms, while the Suku Mapur or Suku Lom people are animists who prefer to live in relative isolation in the forests. The Suku Sekak people are also animists who prefer to live in boats at sea when the weather permits. The Bangka Malays, the Suku Lom, and the Suku Sekak speak varieties of Malay, while the Chinese Indonesians normally speak varieties of Hakka or Hokkien in addition to Malay. To understand how Bangka's four musico-lingual subgroups came into being as well as their musical arts, the chapter examines the history of foreign exploitation of their tin and cash crops by the sultans of Palembang (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries), Britain (1812–1816), Holland (ca. 1817–World War II), and Indonesia (1949 to present).

With Indonesia, the Chinese are doubly vulnerable. Racial and religious prejudice against Indonesians of Chinese descent threatens both government and private business deals. At the same time, Jakarta is determined to project maritime power and to lead the creation of a broader Pacific community—ambitions that openly contradict China’s desire for preeminence in East Asia. Indonesian politicians can use the threat of Islamic militancy to great advantage, seeming to restrain it when Beijing is pliable and quietly encouraging it when China becomes overbearing. President Joko Widodo skillfully challenges China on maritime disputes while enlisting its economic support to fend off hard-line Muslims and nationalists. But in the capital city of Jakarta, the incumbent governor—a Chinese Indonesian—was ousted by an openly racist campaign that many mainstream Muslim leaders failed to denounce.