Political Institutions and Ethnic Chinese Identity in Indonesia

Under Suharto, Indonesian politics and institutions attempted to force ethnic Chinese to assimilate, while continuing to identify them as 'different' from indigenous Indonesian groups. Yet Suharto's downfall brought with it a myriad of political changes. New political parties quickly formed, some of which were ethnically based or were pointedly created to promote ethnic cooperation. New laws were enacted to allow Chinese to revert to Chinese family names, publish Chinese-language books and periodicals, and to put an end to coded identification cards that marked one as 'Chinese'. This paper looks specifically at how these legal and institutional changes have shaped Chinese ethnic identity. The focus here is on political changes within and outside government, while the essay also examines the new political bodies being established by Chinese groups, and what this may mean for the future of Chinese Indonesians.