The Dutch presence in the Indonesian archipelago—first brought about by the decision of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century to establish a spice monopoly in the region—has now influenced many of the institutions, norms, and educational practices within the modern Republic of Indonesia.
The colony of the “Dutch East Indies” that makes up modern-day Indonesia was also marked by racial violence and discrimination that lasted even shortly after Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch.
In a few extreme cases, native Indonesians were brutally killed and had their villages destroyed by Dutch colonizers, such as in the 1621 Banda massacre. But more subtly, discrimination mainly came in the form of a system the Dutch had implemented: one of racial stratification that continues to shape Indonesian politics through present-day ethnic hostilities.
During Indonesia’s colonial period, which ended at the conclusion of World War II, the Dutch frequently employed the strategy of divide et impera (“divide-and-conquer”) in order to assert their dominance and prevent the possibility of organized resistance or joining of forces between ethnic groups against them.
The white Dutch settlers became the ruling class, while ethnic Chinese and Arab-Indonesian minorities were positioned above native Indonesians as “Foreign Orientals,” with native Indonesians, or the pribumi, occupying the lowest position.
The Dutch maintained that the Arab- and Chinese-Indonesians, who had descended from merchant classes, were more adept at trade and economic matters. While Arab-Indonesians were able to more easily assimilate with native Indonesians after the formation of an independent Indonesia, due to shared religious ties in Islam, Chinese-Indonesians remained more socially separated.
Furthermore, zoning and pass systems carried out by the Dutch in the mid-1800s prevented Chinese-Indonesians from living among the native population, as they were forced to live in restricted areas and were only allowed to leave with a pass, once again to prevent the two groups from uniting against the Dutch colonizers.
University of Malaya professor Chong Wu Ling writes that Chinese-Indonesians during the colonial period were “indispensable” to the functioning of the colonial economy. She asserts that the Chinese-Indonesian minority was favored by the colonial government in the distribution of licenses to all sorts of businesses like pawnshops and gambling establishments.
When Indonesia finally gained independence, “Ali Baba” policies (officially, the “Benteng program”) were introduced by the then-newly established Sukarno government. These affirmative-action policies, intended to encourage native Indonesians to participate in the economy, led native Indonesians, referred to as “Ali,” to serve as the “frontmen” for businesses, with Chinese-Indonesians, “Baba,” operating in the background.
The end result of these discriminatory “Ali Baba” policies, however, was not a post-colonial transformation; rather, it was the continuation and perpetuation of old colonial ethnic divisions. The Dutch succeeded in entrenching a heightened racial and ethnic consciousness between native Indonesians (“Ali”) and the Chinese minority (“Baba”) that persisted long after colonialism.
While Sukarno-era “Ali Baba” policies ended in the latter half of the 1950s, their legacy persists in present-day Indonesia, where native Indonesians continue to occupy more public-facing roles, and Chinese-Indonesian contributions tend to be more concentrated in commercial sectors.
This has thus formed a sharp divide in Indonesia between those who wield economic power and those who command political authority. While Chinese-Indonesians largely dominate the private economy—holding “70–75% of medium and large-scale private companies” in Indonesia, a figure that has unfortunately often been exploited for demagogic purposes, they continue to remain underrepresented in public-facing roles in politics and the civil service.
The underrepresentation of Chinese-Indonesians in contemporary Indonesian politics reflects the legacy of the Ali Baba policies from the Sukarno era, which were themselves influenced by the racial and ethnic divisions established during Dutch colonial rule—despite the strong anti-colonial sentiments of that time.
A 2017 study from the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute even reported that the majority of native Indonesians (from a sample taken from 34 provinces) were “uncomfortable” with the notion of a Chinese-Indonesian being in a position of political leadership.
However, Al Jazeera found that Chinese-Indonesians are participating in politics today at a higher rate than during Indonesia’s New Order era, with candidates emerging from various political parties.
Indonesia needs to rise above the ethnic divisions inherited from Dutch colonization. It is important to understand that many of the ethnic tensions seen today can be traced back to the divide et impera strategies employed by the Dutch to ensure control over what was then the Dutch East Indies.
The “othering” of Chinese-Indonesians is a product of this division, and it is hoped that a more united Indonesia will soon emerge once the colonial attitudes that were ingrained are finally overcome.
Rinzen Widjaja is an Australia-based Indonesian writer and cultural critic with bylines in the The Hill, Merion West, Modern Age periodical, and RealClearEducation.
This has nothing to do with the Dutch or an artificial racial hierarchy, it is a natural hierarchy – the pribumi are too stupid and corrupt to manage anything properly, so they will always need some Chinese to do it for them. But because of pride/gengsi, they would like to appear as frontmen in some businesses. For example the corrupt generals of TNI use Chinese businessmen to recycle their corruption money into hotels, etc. And it is the same in Malaysia, the Malays are too primitive to manage anything so they made racist laws to keep the Chinese down