This paper attempts to analyse how and in what ways the Chinese diaspora interacts with Indonesian ethnic policies towards Chinese. It focuses on the commoditisation of Chineseness and explores the social networking of Chinese diaspora in order to underst

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Chinese Diaspora in Indonesia

1. Introduction

Today, overseas Chinese communities are found in literally most countries of the world, and they have made significant economic, social and political impact in many of these places. Western social scientists have long postulated that ethnic Chinese communities in Asia have assimilated with their host societies and slowly lost their Chinese identity. On the other hand, all this raises the question of where the loyalties of ethnic Chinese overseas lie. Chinese overseas may owed their loyalty to host governments. This position has modified somewhat with the growth of China's economy. Benedict Anderson has argued that the nation is an 'imagined political community'. Nationalism hence can be seen as a movement which includes the construction of the idea of the nation, and the identification of the communities which belong and don't belong to it.(Anderson,1983)

As Singapore's foreign minister, George Yeo said 'The idea and ideal of One China are deeply embedded in the Chinese mind'. This cultural identification that inspires pride in China's recent achievements it has increasingly made use of ethnic Chinese business and political contacts to further its influence in Southeast Asia. Did the links between ethnic