11

The rise and fall of Glodok

Abidin Kusno

Introduction

This chapter discusses issues of space, politics and identity formation among ethnic Chinese from a historical perspective. In so doing, it speaks to a key theme of this volume, which is understanding how colonial categories were constructed, the extent to which these were repurposed in the organisation of urban space over time and how colonial categories persist into the present. This chapter consists of two parts. The first part explores the ways in which Glodok, an area in present-day Jakarta known as a Pecinan (or ‘Chinatown’) since the Dutch colonial era, was historically constructed and subsequently transformed in relation to ethnic Chinese identities. The aim of this part is to dislodge stereotypes assigned to ethnic Chinese and Glodok in the mainstream history of Jakarta.

The second part considers the voices of pedagang (‘merchants’ or ‘traders’) in Glodok as represented by the daily newspaper Sinar Glodok (‘Light of Glodok’), which emerged in 1998 during the political turmoil of the early post-Suharto era. Through an analysis of reporting in Sinar Glodok, I tease out pedagang’s sense of time in relation to politics and to Glodok and ask how Chinese Indonesian identity was produced in the aftermath of anti-Chinese violence in 1998. Overall, this chapter seeks to problematise some dominant misconceptions about ethnic Chinese, by considering the spatial effects of colonial and postcolonial production of identity.

By reflecting on issues of space and identity, this chapter seeks to contribute to discussions of decolonising the history of Chinese Indonesians (see Chapter 1 of this volume), focusing on urban space in Batavia/Jakarta. The chapter complements other contributions to this volume, by Abdul Wahid on ethnic Chinese and the colonial tax regimes in Java in the 1910s to 1940s (Chapter 2), and Ravando and F.X. Harsono on the massacre of ethnic Chinese during the Indonesian revolutionary period, 1945–49 (Chapter 8).

Part I: History matters

How Dutch was the colonial city?

The dominant history of Jakarta gives little or no reference to the role of ethnic Chinese in building the city.¹ Historian Leonard Blussé was among the first to write about the Chinese legacy of building what was then called Batavia under the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC). He uses ‘Chinese Batavia’ to refer to Batavia as essentially a ‘Chinese colonial town under Dutch protection’ that was shaped by the Chinese presence and influence.² Instead of seeing Batavia as a seventeenth-century European castle town, Blussé describes the city as a node in a Chinese maritime network that facilitated Chinese settlers and contractors, who constructed canals, walls and houses.³ Therefore, the designs of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch Batavian townhouses ‘clearly point to Chinese influence’.⁴ In terms of expenditure, the Chinese ‘paid five times as much as the other town people did for Batavia’s fortifications. For the construction of the town hall, they paid three times as much as all other groups did together.’⁵ And, in little more than a decade after the city’s founding (in 1619), taxes collected from the Chinese amounted to more than half the VOC’s total income.⁶

The Chinese were just too important, so the Dutch chose to live with them inside the walled city. Such a dependency produced a ‘rather unique kind of cooperation’, which Blusse aptly calls ‘strange company’. ‘Strange’ in the eyes of the Dutch, as, while the Chinese in Batavia were crucial in many respects to the VOC, the Dutch continued to warn one another that ‘the Chinese are so full of deceit that we cannot trust them at all’.⁷

Yet, there was much for the Dutch to learn from the Chinese. First, not all the Chinese who came to live in Batavia were merchants. Many were farmers or land cultivators and many had various other occupations. François Valentijn, a religious minister whom the VOC employed to serve in Java, recorded (in his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën [Old and New East Indies]) the activities of the ethnic Chinese in the 1720s, which covered everything from trade and crafts to restaurants and transportation. He wrote: ‘[T]he entire agriculture of Batavia also depends on them, because they are extraordinarily ingenious and diligent … There is nothing that one can imagine that they do not undertake and in which they do not practice.’⁸

Indonesian historian Mona Lohanda similarly points out that ‘all agriculture around Batavia depended upon the Chinese’ and the VOC relied on ethnic Chinese market-gardeners, labourers and artisans.⁹ Jan Hooyman’s account in Bataviaasch Genootschap (Batavian Society) even pondered whether the Dutch could ever manage the colony without the Chinese:

The Jung from China that arrived every year for trading brought about 1,200 to 1,300 people … It is hard to understand how they could work with such diligence and eagerness. Without them it would be difficult if not impossible for us to have all the farms in the Ommelanden [‘hinterland’].¹⁰

Apparently, the Chinese were everywhere, inside and outside the walled city.

Who were the Chinese?

Race and space are contextually constructed and racial segregation has often been the basis of colonial organisation of space. Yet, in contrast to the Dutch citizenry, the Chinese, once they rendered themselves financially independent, had no hesitation in staying and marrying—in many cases, Balinese women who had been brought to the city as slaves.¹¹ It is not surprising then that, unlike the Dutch who lived inside the walls of Batavia, ‘the houses of the Chinese were scattered throughout the city’.¹² This shows that the history of the ethnic Chinese in the city is marked by a long integration into Indonesian society, yet no matter their origins, they were recognised in VOC records only under a single category: Chinees or Chinezen.

Benedict Anderson offers the following explanation for the VOC’s classification:

Oblivious of the heterogenous populations of the Middle Kingdom; of the mutual incomprehensibility of many of their spoken languages; and of the peculiar social and geographic origins of their diaspora across coastal Southeast Asia, the company imagined, with its trans-oceanic eye, an endless series of Chinezen … And on the basis of this inventive census it began to insist that those under its control whom it categorised as Chinezen dress, reside, marry, be buried, and bequeath property according to that census.¹³

The stereotype that the Chinese were a community of merchants whose identity was organised around profit generation from overseas trade indicates the construction of the pedagang or Chinese trading class as a category, but such a construct has concealed the fact that many came to the colony alone as labourers and remained poor for most of their lives. Their lengthy stay created bonds with local women with whom they produced children, most of whom grew up to marry other ‘mixed’ or local people, thus producing more and more ‘mixed people’. Within an environment surrounded by one’s local wife and relatives, it was extremely hard for the ‘Chinese’ fathers to keep their children ‘Chinese’. Instead, distinctive subcultures emerged, which came to be termed peranakan. Peranakan Chinese cultures were heavily influenced by Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese and even various Muslim cultures. Left alone, such peranakan and their complex cultural practices would have gradually disappeared into the general population to the point where people who thought of themselves as ‘Chinese’ would have been mixed race.

But the colonial apparatus of power recognised no such category of peranakan. It gave no space for racial ambiguity as it looked only for idealised racial definition. Despite the profound mixture of ethnicities and cultures, the Arabs, the Chinese and the Indians were all framed under the category of Vreemde Oosterlingen—a term institutionalised by the colonial state in 1855.¹⁴ One could translate this term as either ‘Foreign Orientals’ or ‘Foreign Easterners’, which effectively distinguished Vreemde Oosterlingen from other Asians—most notably, ‘Indonesians’. It also seemed to give a context for the Europeans to be seen as non-foreigners while erasing the Asian history of precolonial migration, interaction and integration.

How was the ethnic Chinese community territorialised?

The stereotype that the ethnic Chinese formed an exclusive community of walls has underplayed the fact that they were at once scattered and localised. When the Dutch built Batavia Castle on the coast, ethnic Chinese had already spread to the interior. They worked land in the countryside with the locals and these relations, while discursive and multilayered, were deeper and more extensive than those of the Dutch. Over time, such practices served to facilitate trust and relations with locals that in turn smoothed the enterprises run by the ethnic Chinese. When the Dutch eventually acquired agricultural land in Batavia’s Ommelanden (‘hinterland’), they had to rely on the ethnic Chinese to work it with indigenous labourers.

More contrasts could be teased out between the ethnic Chinese and the Dutch. The latter occupied land through an administrative machine that was slow but territorially fixed and exclusive. The Chinese, by contrast, moved rapidly everywhere, neither attended by their officers nor accompanied by an administrative apparatus. They often did not bother to officially register the land on which they worked.¹⁵ They ran into trouble when signs of ‘economic depression and gross ineptitude’ among both the Dutch authorities and the Chinese kapitein¹⁶ (chiefs given power by the colonial state to take care of the Chinese community) began to be strongly felt in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

As many Chinese labourers continued to enter the Ommelanden without registering with the VOC or the Chinese kapitein, ‘the Ommelanden had grown into a kind of Wild West avant la lettre’.¹⁷ Uncounted (for tax purposes) and unemployed, the newly arrived Chinese, in the eyes of the Dutch, became a ‘dangerous class’ and rumours circulated about the threat posed by the ‘menacing Chinese’. Dutch authorities soon decided to use force to deal with what they considered to be a Chinese uprising in the Ommelanden. In 1740, this resulted in the massacre of 10,000 Chinese people in Batavia. The massacre, which clearly reflected the VOC’s fears of Chinese dominance in Batavia, changed the relationship between the Dutch and the Chinese, and the Dutch authorities banned the Chinese survivors from living within Batavia’s walls. On 3 March 1741, the VOC issued a new policy sanctioning the Chinese survivors to live in the Chineesche Kamp in an area called Diestpoort, south of Batavia—today’s Glodok.¹⁸

In this chapter, I suggest that fears of the Chinese intermingling with locals might have contributed to the VOC’s decision after the massacre to territorialise Chinese in Glodok and keep them under the eyes of Dutch-approved chiefdoms. To control and restrict movement, the colonial rulers implemented a residential system and its passenstelsel (‘pass system’).¹⁹ This set of restrictive and repressive policies was in place until 1916—long enough for Glodok to become recognised as the exclusive ‘ghetto’ of ethnic Chinese. The production of racialised city space was followed by sociocultural practices, all of which contributed to the formation of a signifier called ‘Chinese.’

How successful was the colonial racial ordering of space?

Through spatial containment, the Dutch sought to re-establish the previous Sino-European ‘strange company’ relations. The Dutch appointed a Chinese kapitein and restored the Chinese Council to organise Chinese communities. What was new was the Chineesche Kamp.

Yet, while this marking of space created a social category, the policy also encouraged the concentration of socioeconomic activities and, perhaps unintendedly, the formation of political identities. It brought rich and poor Chinese into close contact, enabling them to share experiences and work together. The Chineesche Kamp, including Glodok, ironically articulated stories not of isolation, but of connection and of ways of building a centre for activities that were at once social, economic and political. It was a place where modern political consciousness developed and traditions were debated; Glodok gave birth to Chinese political figures, activists, journalists and their social associations. It was always bound up with modern political development in faraway China, but such a connection need not be confined to identification with China alone. Instead, it led to various strands of globalised anticolonialism, including pan-Asianism and Indonesian nationalism.²⁰ Racialised spatial exclusion thus failed to marginalise Glodok.

From Glodok, the ethnic Chinese claimed their right to participate in city life, in association with broader political movements while producing ‘Chinese cultures’. In 1755 the Chinese Council set up a school called Beng Seng Sie Wan.²¹ This self-supporting education facility developed into the Sekolah Tjina²² Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan (THHK), which was opened in 1901. The THHK, formed in response to the rise of consciousness among ethnic Chinese of being part of a Chinese ‘modern’ nation (‘bangsa Tionghoa’),²³ played a pioneering role in education and became a model for modern sociopolitical movements like the Djamiat’ul Chair (1905) for the Arab community and, possibly, Budi Utomo (or Boedi Oetomo, ‘Noble Endeavour’; 1908).²⁴ By the time the government removed residential restrictions and the rigid travel pass system in 1911, Glodok was already a centre of Chinese cultural production. Pioneers of news media set up their offices in Glodok and publishing houses produced an enormous corpus of writing in Sino-Malay, which contributed to the formation of modern literature in the language now known as Bahasa Indonesia.

How was postcolonial Glodok depoliticised?

The construct of the ethnic Chinese as the ‘middle’ subject served the function of the colonial apparatus. As the go-betweens for the colonial administration, the ethnic Chinese carried out the dirty work of extracting payments from people, which often involved coercion. This ‘privilege’ left an impression that the ethnic Chinese were close to the Dutch power elite even though they were not any higher in status than the natives.²⁵ This exceptional treatment was tied to the divide-and-rule strategy, but it did contribute to the strengthening of the economic position of ethnic Chinese. It also produced an identity and identification for the ethnic Chinese as the class of pedagang. Working for the colonial state, pedagang were not always confined by the boundary of Glodok. For instance, to increase state opium revenues in the nineteenth century, the ethnic Chinese who ran opium farms were not subject to Dutch-imposed travel and residential restrictions.²⁶ This helped the expansion of Chinese commercial activities in rural areas and strengthened further the image of Chinese as pedagang. The ethnic Chinese thus benefited from their ‘middle’ position even though it also left them vulnerable to victimhood.

The departure of the Dutch after independence generated profound uncertainty among ethnic Chinese, including those who had sided with the nationalists. Leaders such as Liem Koen Hian (1896–1952), who was formally involved in preparing for Indonesia’s independence through the Investigating Committee for Preparatory Work for Independence (Badan Penyelidikan Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia), requested his fellow Indonesian nationalists that all ethnic Chinese be automatically granted Indonesian citizenship without having to go through an application process.²⁷ His request indicated that welcoming the Indonesian nation and its struggle for independence did not guarantee acceptance by the new nation. Years of colonial divide and rule had produced a ‘general mental landscape’ of the non-Chinese community towards the ethnic Chinese, who were regarded as ‘disloyal and swaying where the wind (of power) blew’.²⁸ The ethnic Chinese knew perfectly well that they had to live under such a (mental) perception regardless of official policies, including that of assimilation. Many therefore found ‘Chinese ethnicity’ to be an identity or identifier that posed no contradiction with being Indonesian. Siaw Giok Tjhan, for instance, led the Consultative Council for Indonesian Citizenship (Badan Permusjawaratan Kewarganegaraan Indonesia) (from 1954 to 1965) to fight against racism by proposing a concept of ‘integration’ (rather than assimilation), which recognised Chinese ethnicity while accepting Indonesia as the homeland. In this case, ethnic Chinese would be considered one of the Indonesian suku (‘ethnic groups’).²⁹

The citizenship of most Chinese remained ambiguous until 1960 when the Citizenship Law was implemented. The law required ethnic Chinese to submit an official statement rejecting Chinese citizenship, before they could apply for Indonesian citizenship.³⁰ This process registered ethnic Chinese as outsiders who still needed to be incorporated into the nation, regardless of their deeply rooted historical experiences in Indonesia.³¹

The ethnic Chinese played a range of active roles in the sociopolitical life of the city and the nation under the Sukarno government,³² but the new nation-state was founded on claims over a territorially based identity. After eliminating the old colonial system of classification, all ‘Chinese’ had to decide on their citizenship: Indonesian or Chinese (the People’s Republic of China in Beijing or the Republic of China in Taipei). The territorial nation-state demanded the Chinese be either ‘foreign’ or ‘Indonesian’, regardless of the long history of peranakan Tionghoa (‘rooted Chinese’) that belies such a simple dichotomy. The state, in principle, demanded complete assimilation to ‘non-ethnic’, even though many ethnic Chinese saw no contradiction in deepening local ties and maintaining linkages to places of origin.³³

Yet, the idea of ‘assimilation’ into ‘non-ethnic’ Indonesian proved deceptive. The authorities were quick to learn that, once ‘nationalised’, ethnic Chinese could be used to manage economic enterprises and serve as the domestic motor for capitalist modernisation in the interests of the ruling elite. This scenario played out most perfectly under Suharto’s New Order (1966–98). Backed by the army, the Suharto regime used the Chinese minority to ensure personal control of the country’s domestic wealth. Ethnic Chinese were encouraged to focus on economic activities to the point that a select number (such as Liem Sioe Liong and Bob Hasan) became major cronies of the Suharto family. The state apparatus carried out its mission by narrowing the ‘public sphere’ of ethnic Chinese while enlarging the participation of Suharto’s cronies in the economic sphere. Under the pretext of speeding up assimilation, the state closed Chinese schools and newspapers, effectively erasing the memories of Chinese roles in city and nation-building. The Suharto clique, insisting that the People’s Republic of China had supported the ‘communist coup’ in 1965, prohibited Chinese language and culture and officially used the pejorative term ‘Cina’ (that is, ‘the Qing of China’) for ethnic Chinese. They could be recognised as Warga Negara Indonesia (‘citizens of Indonesia’), but not Indonesians. This policy can in some ways be understood as a return to the Vreemde Oosterlingen of colonial times. The assimilation policy of the Suharto era was essentially a restoration of the politics of ‘divide and rule’, with the Chinese separately integrated under ‘citizens of Indonesia’. The social and political implications of such policies were consequential as they left ethnic Chinese ‘alone’ as easy targets for any violence.³⁴

How about Glodok under the New Order? All Chinese signage was erased or Romanised under Indonesian terms. Temples were renamed with Hindu-Buddhist–sounding terms. The social organisation Sin Ming Hui was renamed Candra Naya and, since then, the memories of Glodok and Sin Ming Hui’s social activism have faded, replaced with images of heritage architecture. In the mid-1990s, the organisation’s headquarters was almost demolished when a developer targeted the location to build a new superblock, comprising shops, offices and apartments. What happened to Candra Naya was symptomatic of the transformation of Glodok under the New Order into a centre of commodity—a pusat perdagangan associated only with the economic activities of the ethnic Chinese community.

For much of its life under the New Order, Glodok was promoted as a ‘Chinatown’ where ‘Chinese cultures’ were represented largely by Chinese medicine, food and shops. It was portrayed as a space of consumption. Meanwhile, the political Glodok disappeared from public consciousness. What was left in Glodok was not only the representation of a pusat pedagangan (‘trading centre’), but also a reduction of Tionghoa (‘Chinese’) into Homo economicus and, not less, a perfect ground for racist scapegoating in a time of political and economic crises.

For instance, when the economic crisis hit in 1998, orchestrated racial violence against ethnic Chinese, including sexual violence against women, broke out in several cities throughout Indonesia—most notably, Medan, Jakarta and Solo.³⁵ Glodok was shattered and torched. While casualties included both Chinese and non-Chinese, the violence pointed to deep discrimination and cultural suppression of ethnic Chinese under the Suharto regime.

On 26 May 1998, two weeks after the orchestrated riots that destroyed more than 4,500 shops in the Glodok area, Suharto’s successor, president B.J. Habibie, visited Glodok and met with victims. He said: ‘I suggest that we all work together to uphold peace, unity and work together to restore and upgrade the order of the economy that we had enjoyed before.’ A Glodok resident responded:

[B]ut how are we going to deal with trauma, Mr President? I don’t understand how the looting could take place for two days in the daylight. We cried. But what we cried for was not even clear to us. The military commander and the head of the police had repeatedly said that they would guarantee security, but the looting still took place. How can we build up a new image, a new economy in Glodok with an Indonesian spirit?³⁶

This response referred to the shocking scale of destruction and the truth about gang rapes (expressed in the language of ‘trauma’), the sense that the state apparatus was unreliable and that fellow Indonesians were unpredictable. In this context, how could one trust the proposal to reconstruct the previous economy-centred order that had subjected the Chinese to attack and racial prejudice?

Part II. The restless pusat pedagangan: Critical reflexivity in ‘Sinar Glodok’

In the early 2000s, I collected some bundles of Sinar Glodok, a daily newspaper for readers interested in the Chinese business areas of Glodok. I was intrigued by the newspaper’s geographical focus on Glodok, the various locales identified as pusat perdagangan Tionghoa (‘Chinese trading centre’) in the Kota (‘old town’) area of Jakarta. Is Sinar Glodok just a medium for the revitalisation of the ‘previous economic order’, for ‘peace and unity’, as president Habibie suggested? How might it be involved in transmitting the dagang (‘trade’) tradition, which might in turn reproduce the stereotype of Chinese people? Could we look at Sinar Glodok as a voice of the pedagang in the post-riot, post-Suharto era? Could it be a medium for social change and hence an apolitical political struggle to redefine Chinese identity in this period?

Figure 11.1 Sinar Glodok advertisement at Jakarta Fair

Source: Sinar Glodok, 2001.

With the fall of Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998, Indonesia entered a period of political transition (known as the Reformasi era) that was marked by a more open political and social environment. In contrast to the pervasive censorship under the New Order, the process of reformasi resulted in a higher degree of freedom of speech, of which Sinar Glodok was essentially a product. The newspaper circulated at the time when no government permit was required to publish newspapers (under president Habibie). It was a division of Jawa Pos’s newspapers after its mid-1990s restructuring by the journalism entrepreneur Dahlan Iskan, who considered Sinar Glodok a medium for voicing the interests of ethnic Chinese communities in Jakarta. Sinar Glodok was the only daily newspaper of the five Indonesian-language ‘Chinese’ publications that emerged in post-1998 Jakarta. For reasons that are not yet clear, it existed only for six (or seven) years, which still gives it one of the longest lifespans of a newspaper of this kind. As suggested by the name, Sinar Glodok (‘Light of Glodok’) offered information about businesses in Glodok, where it claimed 70 per cent of Indonesia’s money circulated.

Figure 11.2 Graphic slogan in Sinar Glodok

Source: Sinar Glodok, 2001.

Yet, while commercially motivated, Sinar Glodok headlined national news and consistently published commentaries about the changing social and political climate at the time. In a study of the Chinese press in the post-Suharto era, media scholar Chang-Yau Hoon argues that Sinar Glodok contributed to perpetuating the idea that ‘all Chinese people are traders’.³⁷ Indeed, about one-quarter of Sinar Glodok’s content was ads for sales of electronic goods, mobile phones and services in the areas of Glodok, Mangga Dua and Roxy. The press was also seen as carrying out a cultural mission to re-Sinicise Chinese Indonesians. Hoon observed that there were special sections on Chinese-language lessons, medicine, cultural values and work ethics. Indeed, the front page of one issue features a graphic image of a giant snake chasing a man. The caption reads: ‘The Year of Snake 2001: Stay away from Politics: Follow Sinar Glodok: work … work … work’ (Figure 11.2).

Perhaps because of such representations, Hoon considered Sinar Glodok as reproducing the stereotypes of ethnic Chinese as ‘disloyal, exclusive and economic animals’.³⁸ Hoon concluded that Sinar Glodok reinforced the image of Chinese Indonesians as ‘once a Chinese, always a Chinese’,³⁹ and that the newspaper ‘is the product of 32 years of internalising the stereotypes and essentialist views that have been held by mainstream society’,⁴⁰ with little or no attention given to ‘hybridisation and localisation of Chinese-Indonesians’.⁴¹

Pedagang’s perspectives on politics

Hoon’s valuable study encourages us to consider Sinar Glodok more deeply. In this section, I read Sinar Glodok as attempting to combine the economistic concerns of pedagang with a campaign to promote political consciousness. The term pedagang (‘trader’) has been associated with the ethnic Chinese,⁴² but, as discussed earlier, this association should be understood as a socio-historical construction rooted in the colonial social structure. In the colonial economy, the ethnic Chinese functioned as a commercial middle class, situated between the Dutch ruling class and the local population. This notion of ‘pedagang’ continued in the postcolonial era. At the same time, it has also become a term used to blame the ethnic Chinese for any economic downturn, harbouring foreign allegiances and refusing to assimilate. The term could also be associated with discrimination against the ethnic Chinese as being a pedagang is due to the limited opportunities to develop other skills. In any case, pedagang is a problematic term, but it is used by Sinar Glodok to refer to shop-owners in Glodok.

Rather than largely apolitical, Sinar Glodok occasionally featured interviews with researchers to tease out issues of minorities, discrimination and nation-building. It also featured a regular social commentary column called ‘Corong’ (‘funnel to amplify the voice’), which encouraged readers to speak up:

Today is the era of reformasi and transparency. So as citizens of a sovereign country, we are free to speak up. Come on … pour your complaints and praise on anything including public services such as those of telephone, electricity, land certificate, water, bazaar, traffic, roads, etc.; even topics on political issues are welcome.⁴³

This statement indicates that pedagang in Glodok had issues with the quality of public services. Glodok falls under the jurisdiction of the local municipality. As an area that is not in any exclusive, privatised or gated neighbourhood or town, its fate depends on city government–provided services, including public security, which is tied to state politics. Pedagang in Glodok had to confront the situation in the streets since they shared space with street vendors, who dominated their storefronts, parking lots and the streets themselves. They had to deal with the effects of political instability, which manifested in various forms—from street demonstrations to potential riots. Pedagang thus had to turn their attention to politics as much as to the quality of public security and services. Their political consciousness is tied not only to their interests as pedagang, but also, more importantly, to their identity as traders and the spatiality of Glodok as a pusat pedagangan Tionghoa (‘Chinese trading centre’). Glodok is accessible to everyone, which is good for business, yet this also makes it politically vulnerable as a pusat pedagangan Tionghoa.

‘Corong’, however, was quite reflective in its observations of pedagang and their sense of vulnerability:

As a place associated with trading [aktivitas niaga], people have in mind only the volume of transactions and flow of money. This has led to potential crime in the area. So, if Mangga Dua [one of the trading centres] is known as a crime-prone area, it is due to us representing the area as a centre of business. In this sense, we are partly responsible for our vulnerability to crime.⁴⁴

Such a reflection locates pedagang within, rather than outside, the space of ‘crime’ (kejahatan). ‘Corong’ suggests that the line that divides pusat pedagangan and pusat kejahatan is not clear, as one serves to reinforce the other. But one cannot blame pedagang for kejahatan and vice versa, as such a formulation leaves out the government’s responsibility. From the perspective of ‘Corong’, it is poverty that causes crime. And poverty is due in large measure to the government’s failure to take care of the city’s poor (rakyat).

‘Corong’ occasionally launched critiques of government officers (pejabat) for incompetency, mishandling cases and ignoring the needs of the rakyat. For instance, during the fuel hike in the early 2000s, a letter from a reader stated that ‘the government lives on exploitation of its own rakyat, rather than supporting them’.⁴⁵ ‘Corong’ explained that ‘the fuel hike is squeezing the economic life of the middle lower income population. Under such circumstances, theoretically, crime rates will move up as people will do anything to survive.’⁴⁶ Responding to the police department’s intention to mobilise snipers in places considered to be crime prone,⁴⁷ ‘Corong’ said that such a tough measure was not at all a solution to crime. Instead, Sinar Glodok proposed economic adjustment. To the bus drivers going on strike against a hike in oil prices, a pedagang wrote, ‘Please don’t go on strike! The government should adjust bus fares to match the hike in oil prices, but buses must offer a better service and perform safer rides.’⁴⁸

Sinar Glodok was quite upfront in voicing its critical perspectives on politics. For instance, in the early 2000s, during the presidencies of Abdurrahman Wahid (also known as Gus Dur) (1999–2001) and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–04), many headlines were about issues of political instability. For the ethnic Chinese, Abdurrahman Wahid was recognised as the defender of various marginalised groups. When he served as president, he revoked the discriminatory laws against the ethnic Chinese and issued a presidential decree in 2001 that made Chinese New Year (Imlek) a holiday for those who celebrate it.⁴⁹ Wahid’s successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, then declared Imlek a national holiday, in 2003. The pedagang at Glodok appreciated Abdurrahman Wahid and sought to help in the economic recovery effort by working and working (‘kerja … kerja … kerja’), but they also knew perfectly well that the president continued to be challenged by other politicians. Sinar Glodok suggested that pedagang were aware that politicians who were only interested in gaining power or advancing their careers caused political instability. Political elites often mobilised these interests through street demonstrations. The political dramas involving presidents Gus Dur and Megawati were routinely covered. In ‘Amien [Rais] is Not Ethical’, the editorial page took aim at the then speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat) and chairperson of the National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional), who orchestrated the downfall of Gus Dur, even though pedagang had doubts about his ability to serve as president.⁵⁰ The political instability that elite manoeuvres caused made pedagang in Glodok ‘very annoyed by the behaviour of the political elites’.⁵¹

Figure 11.3 Reporting politics in Sinar Glodok

Source: Sinar Glodok, 14 July 2001.

Pedagang’s apolitical stance and the decline of Glodok

Not all pedagang, however, were interested in party politics. Some ignored politics all together and were mainly concerned with how to safely open their businesses. They welcomed the government to mobilise police or snipers around crime-prone areas. These are the pedagang who were tired of politics:

We are tired of political issues as they tend to lead to riots [kerusuhan] … [W]e are actually immune to such a situation … [W]e no longer need to fear as we are sure that nothing could be worse than the past May 98. Moreover, snipers are around riot-prone areas.⁵²

They asked their pedagang peers to stay focused on their dagang: ‘Let the politicians be noisy, but business should go as usual.’⁵³

These pedagang were no longer alarmed, even when rumours of mass rallies and demonstrations spread in the city after president Wahid’s resignation in July 2001. They secured their business interests by ignoring the threats of political instability. ‘They were no longer affected by such issues,’ ‘Corong’ recorded: ‘Demo? People are tired of this old call which has brought no change.’⁵⁴ For ‘Corong’, the indifferent attitude of pedagang to political matters stemmed not so much from ignorance, as from fatigue of fear about riots. They had lived in and through repeated fear and trauma to the point where they had become numb to street demonstrations. These pedagang generally were no longer affected. ‘What does this indicate?’ asked the reflective ‘Corong’: ‘Does this mean that the world of commerce has transcended the effects of political turmoil thanks to pedagang’s own capacity?’⁵⁵ ‘Corong’ concluded:

What is clear is that in the world of commerce, a strong sense of pride as pedagang has finally been attained—so strong that it can’t be played [dipermainkan] … The pedagang have developed their consciousness through their experiences and determination to not … be bullied. They no longer wish to be puppets. Who they are is simple. Their mind is focus[ed] and their program is clear: dagang for profit to raise their family with dignity. Such a consciousness has been formed. Unaffected by political turmoil, it brings calmness to society. I think they are right. Through commerce we restore [a] relaxed atmosphere, conducive environment, and promises of a better tomorrow. This is a mission we give to pedagang today.⁵⁶

In the view of ‘Corong’, in the aftermath of May 1998, these pedagang assumed their pedagang subjectivity, not by the power of the state, but by their own agency. After years of experiencing subjection to power, pedagang had gained their autonomous agency in and through their experiences of anti-Chinese riots. Instead of leaving their profession for fear of another riot, they embraced it as the core of their identity and even saw redemption in dagang. These pedagang believed that their devotion to business and family would ultimately restore order and create a better future for a nation shaken by political strife.

Yet, it is worth noting that while Sinar Glodok found in pedagang a strong confidence in their identity as pedagang, and while they were largely ignorant (cuek) of the impacts of street demonstrations, traders in fact suffered from economic decline due to the vulnerability of Glodok’s location. In other words, the space of Glodok is not autonomous. No matter how much agency pedagang invest in themselves, they cannot ignore, or control, the space within which they are embedded. They saw reduced numbers of customers and declining sales levels. They could ignore politics and disregard security, but they could not ignore the diminishing profits and dwindling number of customers visiting their stores. Visitors declined by about 30 to 40 per cent in 2000, Sinar Glodok reported.⁵⁷

Soon, pedagang also realised that Glodok was not the only place on which to rely. In Sinar Glodok, they saw reports about and advertisements for new towns—most notably, Kelapa Gading, which by then was aggressively promoting a new shopping mall and other real estate in the northeast of Jakarta. There was the option for pedagang in Glodok to consider a new kind of pusat perdagangan safely contained in a new town, managed not by the city government, but by a private real estate company that oversaw not only the streets, but the whole built environment.

The new enclosure: The rise of Kelapa Gading

It turns out that at the end of [the] Monetary Crisis, capital gains earned from the rent were very good and there were a lot of requests for space. Potential store tenants instantly offered [a] down payment because they knew that there will be a lot of shoppers coming to the mall.⁵⁸

The statement above was recorded in the memoir of Soetjipto Nagaria, the founder of Kelapa Gading new town, most of whose residents are ethnic Chinese. Nagaria recalls that in 2001, many pedagang showed interest in the new town and he decided to extend the square footage of his Kelapa Gading Mall. Sinar Glodok indeed often featured Kelapa Gading in its pages as an exceptionally safe area. Commentaries such as the one below consistently appeared on the page dedicated to the town: ‘I am sure that this area is out of reach by rioters who seek to disrupt the social and economic life of pedagang … Even though crime rates have surged in Jakarta, none of the pedagang in Kelapa Gading are worried.’⁵⁹Sinar Glodok compared different locations and asked pedagang in Kelapa Gading what they thought about the security situation:

Why should I use firearms? It is safe here. Since I opened my store here, there has not been a single incident that harms my business. At any rate, it is always safe here, because authorities are consistently on standby. And, we always pray.⁶⁰

Furthermore: ‘Kelapa Gading offers complete facilities, from residential, business centres to shopping mall, and it is free from flooding and crime.’⁶¹

Be that as it may, what we know is that, in October 2001, Nagaria decided to expand his Kelapa Gading Mall with the aim of creating the largest shopping mall in Jakarta. The rise of Kelapa Gading in the post-Suharto era was due in no small measure to the decline of Glodok as a pusat perdagangan, due to the political anxieties recorded in Sinar Glodok. It also reflected a paradigm shift: the pusat perdagangan had increasingly come to be understood as a ‘shopping mall’, contained safely in a new town managed by a real estate company.

The shift from public city to private town is underscored by the creation of spaces for ‘ABG’ (Anak Baru Gede)—a slang term for teenagers, literally translating to ‘new grown-ups’. This new young consumer class looked for a ‘European lifestyle’, including a ‘bowling alley of 24 lanes, Time Zone and Cineplex’.⁶² None of these facilities was part of the Glodok world. Kelapa Gading Mall is not the only shopping mall that transformed the pusat perdagangan of Glodok into a remnant of the past. It was just one among several new pusat perdagangan safely contained in new towns and airconditioned superblocks: self-contained multiplexes of office, residential and commercial space in Jakarta.

But Kelapa Gading did more than other shopping malls in its displacement of Glodok; in fact, it was meant to replace Glodok. Nagaria’s Summarecon team promoted Kelapa Gading, in the northeast of Jakarta, as the head of the dragon (whereas Glodok was the dragon’s tail). Temporally, its location signified the arrival of the dragon’s head, which would lead pedagang into the future. However, this brought a number of issues into focus, such as whether Kelapa Gading could be seen as a new Chinese habitus in which the memories of May 1998 served as an unspoken framework for the town’s securitisation.⁶³ Furthermore, in Kelapa Gading, we see the formation of class distinctions (in the ABG) as well as the promotion of the theme of Nusantara (the Indonesian archipelago) in various festivals to showcase the diversity of Indonesian culture, ranging from food to fashion. Yet, in as much as Kelapa Gading seeks to represent a variety of Nusantara cultures, it recalls the trope of ghettoisation, of the Chineesche Kamp that prevailed in colonial times or the gated communities of Suharto’s New Order when the Chinese were encouraged to reproduce only their economic identity. It remains to be seen whether Kelapa Gading will replicate old Glodok in producing a generation of human rights lawyers, activists and progressive intellectuals.

In our capacities as citizens and urban professionals, we owe a debt to Glodok and its histories. No text, however, can provide all the stories we need. We hope nevertheless that in debating the history of Glodok and orienting ourselves to the world of the present, we begin the work of refining the unresolved questions of decolonisation, discrimination and democracy—precisely what people of ethnic Chinese background ask of us. Responses to such questions are indeed our responsibility.

References

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1. 1 Leonard Blussé indicates that ‘some Indonesian historians write about the history of their capital with little or no reference to its important Chinese heritage’. See Leonard Blussé, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986), 8. Other major works on Batavia, however, include very little about ethnic Chinese—see, for instance: Jean Gelman Taylor, The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); and Susan Abeyasekere, Jakarta: A History (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987). Several works came out in the 1990s and 2000s with a particular focus on Chinese Batavia, such as Mona Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 1837–1942: History of Chinese Establishment in Colonial Society (Jakarta: Djambatan, 1996); Mona Lohanda, The Chinese and the Dutch in Colonial Java, 1890–1942 (Jakarta: Yayasan Cipta Loka Caraka, 2002); Monique Erkelens, ‘The Decline of the Chinese Council of Batavia’ (PhD diss., Leiden University, Netherlands, 2013).

2. 2 Blussé, Strange Company, 8.

3. 3 ibid., 79–80.

4. 4 ibid., 80.

5. 5 ibid., 80.

6. 6 ibid., 81.

7. 7 As stated by Governor-General Brouwer in 1633 (cited in ibid., 81).

8. 8 François Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien [Old and New East Indies]. Volume 3 (The Hague: H.C. Susan, 1856), archive.org/details/franoisvalentij00valegoog/page/n6, 533. Translated by and cited in Kimberly Wilhelmina Wells, ‘The Batavia Massacre: The Tragic End to a Century of Cooperation’ (Master’s thesis, Missouri State University, United States, 2019), 37–38.

9. 9 Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 12.

10. 10 As cited in Denys Lombard, Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya [Between Islands: Cultural Crossroads]. Volume II (Jakarta: Gramedia, 1990) [Originally published as Le Carrefour Javanais: Essai d’histoire globale, Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1990], 245.

11. 11 Largely Balinese women due to culinary habits, including eating pork. As cited in Blussé, Strange Company, 81.

12. 12 ibid., 84.

13. 13 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1990), 168.

14. 14 Rosy Antons-Sutanto and Christoph Antons, ‘The Construction of Ethnicity in Colonial Law and its Legacy: The Example of the Peranakan Chinese in Indonesia’, in Routledge Handbook of Asian Law, ed. Christoph Antons (London: Routledge, 2016), 398–420, doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3205090.

15. 15 Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 13.

16. 16 Blussé, Strange Company, 96.

17. 17 ibid., 88.

18. 18 ibid., 96; Wells, ‘The Batavia Massacre’, 93; Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 19.

19. 19 See Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 19.

20. 20 Rebecca Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw4rg; Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London: Verso, 2007): Su Lin Lewis, Cities in Motion: Urban Life and Cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia, 1920–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316257937.

21. 21 Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 114–15.

22. 22 Also known as Tiong Hoa Hak Tong; see also Ravando and Harsono’s Chapter 8 in this volume.

23. 23 Lea E. Williams, Overseas Chinese Nationalism: The Genesis of the Pan-Chinese Movement in Indonesia, 1900–1916 (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960). See also Leo Suryadinata, ‘Pre-War Indonesian Nationalism and the Peranakan Chinese’, Indonesia, no. 11 (1971): 83–94, doi.org/10.2307/3350745.

24. 24 Suggested by Benedict Anderson in a conversation in July 2000. See also Asvi Warman Adam, ‘The Chinese in the Collective Memory of the Indonesian Nation’, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia no. 3 (March 2003), kyotoreview.org/issue-3-nations-and-stories/the-chinese-in-the-collective-memory-of-the-indonesian-nation/.

25. 25 Dewi Anggraeni, ‘Does Multicultural Indonesia Include its Ethnic Chinese?’, Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia 13, no. 2 (2011): 256–78, doi.org/10.17510/wjhi.v13i2.23, at 266.

26. 26 James R. Rush, Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).

27. 27 Anggraeni, ‘Does Multicultural Indonesia Include its Ethnic Chinese?’, 270.

28. 28 ibid., 268.

29. 29 Siauw Giok Tjhan, G30S dan Kejahatan Negara [G30S and the Crimes of the State] (Bandung: Ultimus, 2015).

30. 30 Chong Wu Ling, ‘Rethinking the Position of Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia’, in Contesting Chineseness: Ethnicity, Identity, and Nation in China and Southeast Asia, eds Chang-Yau Hoon and Ying-kit Chan (Singapore: Springer, 2021), 125–47, doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6096-9_7.

31. 31 Before the Citizenship Law, the postcolonial government had issued two economic policies that sought to dislodge the economic power of ethnic Chinese, the Benteng Program (1950) and the Presidential Decree No. 10/1959. These policies were based on the colonial assumption that ethnic Chinese were a separate category and not Indonesian enough to be treated equally. For the economic policy during this era, see: Thee Kian Wie, ‘The Indonesian Government’s Economic Policies Towards the Ethnic Chinese: Beyond Economic Nationalism?’, in Southeast Asia’s Chinese Businesses in an Era of Globalization: Coping with the Rise of China, ed. Leo Suryadinata (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006), 76–101, doi.org/10.1355/9789812306531-006, at 88.

32. 32 Leo Suryadinata, ‘The State and Chinese Minority in Indonesia’, in Chinese Adaptation and Diversity: Essays on Society and Literature in Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore, ed. Leo Suryadinata (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1993), 77–99, at 88.

33. 33 For a discussion of this aspect of Chinese migration, see Henry Yu, ‘Then and Now: Trans-Pacific Ethnic Migrants in Historical Context’, in The World of Transnational Asian Americans, ed. Daizaburō Yui (Tokyo: Centre for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, 2006), 53–64.

34. 34 For instance, the anticommunist military takeover on 1 October 1965 took a strong anti-Chinese turn. For violence against ethnic Chinese before the Suharto era, see Ravando and Harsono’s Chapter 8 in this volume; and J.A.C. Mackie, ‘Anti-Chinese Outbreaks in Indonesia, 1959–68’, in The Chinese in Indonesia: Five Essays, ed. J.A.C. Mackey (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1976), 77–138, at 95.

35. 35 See Jemma Purdey, Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996–1999 (Leiden: Asian Studies Association of Australia in Association with KITLV Press, 2006), doi.org/10.1163/9789004486560.

36. 36 ‘Habibie Temui Pedagang [Habibie Met Traders]’, Kompas, [Jakarta], 27 May 1998: 1 [emphasis added].

37. 37 Chang-Yau Hoon, Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Culture, Politics and Media (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008), 102.

38. 38 ibid., 108.

39. 39 ibid., 108.

40. 40 ibid., 109.

41. 41 ibid., 108.

42. 42 For instance, see: ‘Benarkah Orang Tionghoa Terlahir sebagai Pedagang/Pengusaha? [Is It True That Chinese Are Born as Traders?]’, Kompasiana.com: Beyond Blogging, 7 June 2017, www.kompasiana.com/bocah_ngapak/59381d86a223bd4e5ade2308/benarkah-orang-cina-terlahir-sebagai-pedagang-pengusaha.

43. 43 ‘Jangan Takut Bicara [Don’t Be Afraid to Speak Up]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [every issue]: 4.

44. 44 ‘Corong’, ‘M-2 Rawan Kriminalitas [Mangga Dua, Crime-Prone Area]?’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 22 June 2001: 4.

45. 45 Yohanes Leo, ‘Harga Jangan Naik, Dong [Don’t Raise the (Fuel) Price, Please]!’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 15 June 2001: 4.

46. 46 ‘Corong’, ‘Penundaan Kenaikan BBM dan Gangguan Kamtibnas [Delay the Fuel Hike and National Security]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 15 June 2001: 4.

47. 47 ‘Polda Tempatkan 100 Sniper di 17 Titik Rawan [Police Put 100 Snipers in 17 Crime-Prone Locations]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 15 June 2001: 8.

48. 48 ‘Aduh, Jangan Mogok Dong [Alas, Please Don’t Go on Strike]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 20 June 2001: 4.

49. 49 Leo Suryadinata, ‘Chinese Politics in Post-Suharto’s Indonesia: Beyond the Ethnic Approach?’, Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2005): 502–24, doi.org/10.1525/as.2001.41.3.502, at 521.

50. 50 ‘Amien Tak Beretika [Amien is Not Ethical]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 28 Maret 2000; 2.

51. 51 ‘Pedagang Mulai Gerah [Traders Are Getting Restless]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 14 July 2001: 1.

52. 52 ibid., 11.

53. 53 ibid.

54. 54 ‘Corong’, ‘Acuan Jempol pada Suasana Perniagaan [Thumbs Up for the Conducive Trading Environment]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 29 March 2001: 4.

55. 55 ibid.

56. 56 ibid.

57. 57 ‘Pedagang GMP Cuek [Traders in Gajah Mada Plaza Don’t Care]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 28 March 2001: 1.

58. 58 Soetjipto Nagaria, in Li Zhuo Hui, Pancaran Cahaya Tujuh Generasi: Kisah Perjalanan Keluarga Soetjipto Nagaria dalam Dunia Bisnis dan Social [The Radiance of Seven Generations: The Story of the Soetjipto Nagaria’s Family Journey in the Business and Social World] (Jakarta: PT Menaravisi Commerce, 2012), 268.

59. 59 ‘Pedagang Kelapa Gading Bebas Senpi [Traders in Kelapa Gading Free of Firearms]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 15 June 2001: 8.

60. 60 ibid. Sinar Glodok, however, reported that such security was due to the shopping mall’s manager mobilising 100 security guards (satpam) and 20 soldiers (from the TNI, or Indonesian National Armed Forces). In addition, ‘security personnel were privately hired by shop owners’. ‘Andalkan Satpam Swasta [Relying on Private Security]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 28 March 2001: 1.

61. 61 ‘Melongok Komunitas Kelapa Gading: Kawasan Terlengkap dan Nyaman [Observing Kelapa Gading’s Communities: A Complete and Comfortable Neighbourhood]’, Sinar Glodok [Light of Glodok], [Jakarta], 16 June 2001: 8.

62. 62 Li Zhou Hui, The Radiance of Seven Generations, 270.

63. 63 For an exploration of this theme in Kelapa Gading, see Charlotte Setijadi, Memories of Unbelonging: Ethnic Chinese Identity Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2023), doi.org/10.1515/9780824896058, 68–96.