ABSTRACT
Businesses owned and run by ethnic-Chinese families play an integral part in Indonesia's economy, responsible for perhaps as much as 70 per cent of all private economic activity. Economic success for the Chinese in Indonesia is not a new phenomenon. Prior to independence, the Dutch relied primarily on the Chinese to keep the colonial enterprise ticking over, a role which served the interests of both sides. Indonesia's struggle for independence did little to improve the stature of the Chinese in the eyes of indigenous Indonesians. When Indonesia froze diplomatic ties with China in 1967, the isolation of Indonesia's Chinese was complete. Chinese businessmen built up strong and mutually beneficial bonds with new powers: the military. Even before the mid-1980s, everyone knew that Liem Sioe Liong had built an extensive business empire, but the deregulation drive beginning in the late 1980s confirmed pribumi suspicions that dozens of Chinese-owned businesses had become giants under the New Order.
