ABSTRACT
The economic and political crisis in Indonesia ended the New Order regime,
leaving one of its main pillars, the Chinese conglomerates, damaged but not
destroyed. I have demonstrated how and why Chinese business groups
emerged and flourished (Chapter 3) and how the end of the New Order
disrupted the predatory arrangements and endangered the continuing exis-
tence of big business (Chapter 4). However, I have also shown how the new
regime turned out to be less inhibiting for the tycoons than widely expected
(Chapter 5). Indeed, they managed to survive the crisis. But where did they go from there? In what ways did they cope with the dismantling of the old
patronage networks? How did they attempt to thrive in a democratised,
decentralised, and deregulated post-1998 Indonesia?
