Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese

In a recent speech to the National Unity Realization Forum (Bakom PKB), the Indonesian Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Yogie S. Memed, reaffirmed that Indonesia does not recognize the concept of Cina perantauan, or overseas Chinese (Republika, Dec. 13, 1995). He added that Indonesia recognizes only the idea of Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent, and hence expected no one from the Indonesian Chinese community to be interested in an insidious international movement which is currently trying to unite and harness overseas Chinese from all over the world. The reason is that the term "overseas Chinese" often connotes a mutually-loyal relationship (including politically) between China and ethnic Chinese overseas, the sort of relationship which should be severed.

On the following day, Dec. 14, 1995, I read in The Jakarta Post (page 4) that a diplomat from the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh had noted with satisfaction that the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia have succeeded in buying a lot of land around Phnom Penh and have managed to re-establish Chinese schools and temples. He expressed his sympathy for the 300,000 Cambodian Chinese who suffered tremendously during the 1975-1979 Pol Pot regime, but said that, happily, they have now gradually restored their businesses. Naturally, the question that struck me was this: What business is it of the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh to be so intensely interested in the affairs of the Cambodian citizens of Chinese descent?

China's official involvement with the overseas Chinese can be traced back to 1928 when the Kuomintang government in Nanking set up the Ministry of Overseas Chinese in an attempt to integrate all overseas Chinese into the body of the Chinese nation. This step was specially taken in recognition of the considerable financial and patriotic support given by the Southeast Asian Chinese in the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 and in the subsequent rise of the Kuomintang to power in 1928. However, the communist regime, following its establishment in 1949, changed the above policy somewhat and explicitly renounced the concept of double citizenship.

Yet China, perhaps in keeping with the often-fluctuating pattern of its foreign policy in the 1960's and 1970's, not only re-established the office dealing with the overseas Chinese in 1977, but started to look to the latter for support in the economic reconstruction of the country. It also sought to emphasize its kinship with the overseas Chinese, and, indeed, in a demonstrative display of this kinship China invaded Vietnam at great losses in February 1979 following the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Chinese to China and elsewhere (as a result of a series of economic measures introduced earlier by the Vietnamese government).

In Indonesia, the Chinese government's repeated call to the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia to support development on the mainland have drawn strong reactions from many quarters. For instance, the Kompas daily strongly warned China in 1985 not to undermine the loyalties of the Indonesian Chinese to their adopted country, while others feared that a possible involvement of Indonesian Chinese in the reconstruction of China would only rekindle any lingering loyalty of the latter to their ancestral homeland. It is therefore most regrettable, I am sure, that in spite of the expressions of public concern a number of Indonesian Chinese conglomerates, who after all have been nurtured to great riches by the wealth of this country, should decide to help in the building up of China.

Finally, I would like to suggest that if China wants to earn the goodwill and friendship of ASEAN and the other three Southeast Asian countries, it should, among other things, close down its obnoxious Office of Overseas Chinese and stop meddling in the affairs of Southeast Asian citizens of Chinese descent.

MASLI ARMAN

Jakarta