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 Chinese and their motherland be cut off? Did Chinese communities play any roles in internal and external relations respectively within both their host and homeland? If they do, how and what are the implications it brings to the inter-state relations, host-homeland and each other in the diasporic network?

        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 understand how a virtual nation is being constructed.

2. Literature review

2.1 The process of migration

Migration denotes any movement of human from one location to another and it  is usually being divided into international and internal ones. There are many extensive migrations throughout history, in both occasional or permanent manner, depending on historical setting, circumstance and perspective. Migration is an aggregation of individual behaviours into the social forms, usually not being explained by a single or constant theory as it is a combinated competing paradigm with trade-offs between differentiated pull and push factors in distinct circumstances involving some sort of empirical orientation. Ravenstein’s ‘Law of migration’, noticed some similarities of migration caused by economic development in the nintith centries, for examples, it stated that large towns were grow by migrantion more than natural increases, and the theory concluded that migration is always related to economic income maximization. Michael Todaro(1960, in Skeldon, 1997) correlated the concept to the income difference between rural and urban area and regard it as the main factor of migrational movement, in which people would migrant for better paid occupation or job opportunity. Everette Lee(1996 in Skeldon 1997). On the other hand, linked the initiatives of migration to the mutual concessions of pull and push factors, considering people desires with reference to different economic, cultural and political factors. Skeldon(1997) further explained that the migrants’ preference are not only regarding to profit-maximisation but also risk minimisation through family networks to perpetuating the migration flow, together with access to labour markets and claimed it as the ‘new economics of migration’. The risk minimization approach was built upon the segmented market theory which consists of varies sub-groups and hierachy of labours, with different remuneration or fringe benefits, and it is the decision of migrants to choose where to settle. Another strategy the writer gave is family network in which migrants were settled for generations and the risk of unintended consequences would be minimized. The world system theory, by Immanuel Wallerstein, suggested that migration is driven by the global economy through the expansion of Europe by setting up colonies from fifteen century, and resulting in the recent globalization of transnational corporations. There is a core and periphery relationship between European and other, where western countries are seen as leaders of urbanization, therefore this theory is being criticized as Euro-centric bias.

2.2 Problems caused by global migration

Associated with the increasing migrating populations, there leads a ‘Global migration crisis’, threatening the sovereignty and cultural integrity of the destination hosts. Migration is often associated with international movements, therefore there may be underlying problems of social or ethnical conflict along with national safety and identity crisis. Migrants, for instance, the politcal refugree of China may result in social unrest by either seeking institutional alternatives of their own motherlands or their hosts, leading to ethnical and political conflicts. Economic migrants who search for benefits from their host may alter the government decision in infrustrutures for the native residents, resulting in uequal distribution of social resources and social burdens. Immigrants, for example colonialists, usually imposed their own living styles to the migration destinations, therefore cultural hegemony will be formed as result. Diasporas may monopolized the economy of their hosts, broadening the rich-poor gap, causing lots of unintended social problems such as racial discrimination, slow down of economic growth, cultural imperialism or economic hegemony. And the problem of diasporas is a serious social issue many countries is facing.

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2.3 Definition of Diaspora

The term ‘Diaspora’, used to be refered specifically to the populations of Jews exiled from Judea by the Babylonians and Roman Empire, has primarily been associated to mass migration of an ethnic population being forced away from its native homelands, induced and dispersed to other corners of the globe usually by political forces(Cohen 1996). Unlike voluntary migrants, diasporas appear to emphasize a compulsory component and rootless identity, diasporas communities often being depicted as victims of involuntary migration by theorists. However, Cohen(1996) and Skeldon(1997) suggested that diasporas approach need to be modified because diasporas communities are not ...

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