How to be Chinese: Ethnic Chinese Experience a 'Reawakening' of their Chinese Identity

• Main Author: HOON, Chang Yau
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2004
• Subjects: ethnic identity; Chinese; Indonesia; Asian Studies; Race and Ethnicity
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/834; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/1833/viewcontent/How_to_be_Chinese.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The post-Suharto era is an exciting period for Chinese Indonesians and other minority ethnic groups in Indonesia. After over three decades of cultural and political repression, Chinese Indonesians are now being given the opportunity to express their identity. The re-emergence of Chinese religion, language, and press in Indonesia since the end of the New Order, has had a significant impact on the development of ethnic Chinese identity. The strongly anti-Chinese sentiment expressed in the May 1998 riots in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia, including the looting of Chinese-owned shops and businesses and the racially-motivated rapes, drastically altered the position of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Psychologists from the University of Indonesia who studied the post-trauma experience of Indonesian Chinese have pointed to the identity crisis they experienced in the aftermath of the riots.