新秩序下的混乱： 从印尼暴动看华人的政治社会关系 Chaos under the New Order: The Socio-Political Dimension of the Chinese in Indonesia as seen from the Riots of 1994–1998 (review)

This book is a collection of essays on violence and the Chinese in Indonesia by Yang Congrong published between 2001 and 2005. The ethnic Chinese had been the target of mass violence during several important periods of regime change in Indonesia, most recently and most notably being the attack on Chinese property and persons in the May 1998 riots. In these essays, the author attempts to transcend paradigms of victimization and anti-Chinese violence based on monolithic economic explanations during the late New Order period. He argues instead for the need to contextualize the different incidents of Indonesian violence, ascertaining the extent to which they were targeted at the Chinese, establishing the link between violence and the social, economic, and political positions of the Chinese, as well as determining the role of the state and other agencies in manipulating the representations of the Chinese as an ethnic minority. The task begins with contextualizing Indonesian violence locally and historically.

The last five years (1994–98) of the New Order form the focus of Yang’s study. While mass violence was not unique to this period, these few years saw the highest frequency of such incidents, and brought about the social and political shifts which ultimately led to the downfall of the late President Suharto and the end of the New Order. Yang divides the riots between 1994 and 1998 into four “phases.” The first two waves, from 1994 to the 27 July 1996 election, and from 1996 to the 1997 election, were either anti-state in character or the result of inter-ethnic rivalry and conflict. Both these waves were very much local in their orientation. The third wave took place between January and February 1998, after the Asian financial crisis had begun, when a series of riots targeting Chinese shops and businesses broke out in different localities in Indonesia. The fourth wave brought about the riots and violence in Jakarta that led to the downfall of Suharto, amidst reports of coordinated attacks on a national level on Chinese persons and property in the major cities in Indonesia. It was in the last two waves that the Chinese were specifically targeted as a group for attack in different parts of Indonesia, perpetrated in apparent collusion with the powers that be in Indonesia.

The strong economic position of the Chinese and the concomitant tensions with the indigenous communities, the collusion of prominent Chinese businessmen with the New Order regime, and the historical and ideological representations of the Chinese as a minority group whose stand on the issue of citizenship and belonging to the Indonesian nation being characterized by ambiguity and ambivalence, are often cited as causes of anti-Chinese violence. Yang argues that while these are very important background factors, they do not provide an adequate explanation for the scale and the systematic planning in which the Chinese were targeted in different phases of the 1998 riots, especially in May. He also argues that the New Order state played an important role. Anti-Chinese violence was not “inherent” or “inevitable”; it did not stem from the structural position of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesian society, or the perceptions of them in national ideologies, popular discourses and memories among the other ethnic communities. The May 1998 riots, as reports from newspapers and NGO research teams suggest, were part of a deliberate attempt by the New Order state to divert popular discontent and opposition to the ethnic Chinese.

Yang finds evidence for this pattern in earlier episodes of mass violence in the history of Indonesia, namely, during the Japanese Occupation, the war of independence, and the events of 1965–66. In each of these periods, violent attacks targeting the Chinese were either orchestrated by agents of the state or condoned by them in a bid to mobilize and unite local populations against an...