Chinese-Indonesians not at home in China

Chinese-Indonesians not at home in China

By Justin Jin

BEIJING (Reuters): Every time Xu Baimin writes a letter home
to Indonesia, her sister there slips the postman a small tip when
he makes the delivery.

The money seals the postman's lips about Xu, an Indonesian
ethnic Chinese who returned to the motherland in 1958 and stayed
on, finding work as an engineer and settling in Beijing to marry
and raise a family.

"We don't write home frequently because if we did people would
think the family has close contacts with the Communist Party,"
she said.

Xu's fears have been heightened by a new outbreak of anti-
Chinese violence in Indonesia linked to the country's economic
crisis.

Now, as Chinese shopkeepers are targeted again by Indonesian
mobs, there has been speculation that large numbers of Chinese
may pack up and leave.

But Xu is not encouraging her relatives to follow her to
China. Her experience in the country, like that of thousands of
other Indonesian Chinese, has been bittersweet.

And the feelings of young Chinese from Indonesia now studying
in China appear to be just as ambivalent.

"I cannot advise my family to come," said Xu, whose patriotic
zeal brought her to China to help build the country after the
1949 Communist revolution, but who immediately found herself
caught up in political upheavals that brought economic disaster.

"After all, one can still conduct business in Indonesia, and
the anti-Chinese sentiment is only temporary."

Xu was just 18 when she set sail for China on a Dutch steamer
to join the Communist Party, abandoning a comfortable life in a
family that prospered by selling foodstuff.

"When I left, imprints of all 10 of my fingers were taken, and
the Indonesian government said I could never return," said Xu, an
eighth-generation ethnic Chinese.

There was no turning back when the late Chairman Mao Zedong
launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966 that plunged China into
a decade of ultra-leftist chaos. Xu was sent to work in the rice
paddies of central Hebei province as a result of her overseas
connections.

"It was so tough that we might as well have stayed in
Indonesia," she said.

Xu now earns 1,300 yuan (US$157) each month as an oil
engineer. She has a mainland Chinese husband and two grown
children.

Ethnic Chinese make up about three percent of Indonesia's 200
million population but control more than 70 percent of the
country's private wealth.

Beijing has been keeping a wary eye on the latest Chinese-
bashing but has played down its concerns, partly to avoid fanning
the violence.

Several ethnic Chinese Indonesian students in Beijing said
they were not looking to China as a safe haven. They had come to
acquire language skills to do business in Chinese-speaking Asia,
and did not intend to stay long.

"I don't think I would stay," said 24-year-old Ade Saputra, a
student at the Beijing Languages and Culture University.

"I don't get the feeling that the Chinese government welcomes
us."

Analia Wirjadi, who recently returned to Indonesia after
studying for 18 months at the same university, said if she had to
flee she would go to the West.

"The older generations still think of China as their country,
but for us, we are born in Indonesia, and we don't think about
moving to China," she said, speaking from her home in Jakarta.
"Maybe I would emigrate to America or Australia."