Number of Chinese-Indonesians drop

SEMARANG, Central Java: A survey conducted in July indicates that the number of Indonesians of Chinese descent has undergone a 4.5 percent decrease since the same time last year.

The present number is 9,025 while last year's was 9,441.

Chief of the local immigration office Syaiful Rachman told Antara Saturday that the decrease was due to the fact that many Chinese obtained their Indonesian nationality status while the others returned to China.

He said that the Chinese constituted 95.9 percent of the foreigners doing business in the city. (par)