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