Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any nation on earth; over 200 million of its total 240 million plus population practices Islam. Ethnic Chinese, representing less than 4% of the total population, have always held an uneasy place in Indonesian society, increasingly “losing” their Chinese names, taking on local ones instead, because of their rather consistent unpopularity – based primarily on their disproportionate wealth and mostly non-Muslim practices. The “unpopularity” has often resulted in strong governmental restrictions, the use of ethnic Chinese as political scapegoats for failed policies and outright persecution and murder. Their preeminence in ownership of corporate shares also led to past laws that restricted the percentage of companies they were permitted to own.
Wikipedia: “Political pressures in the 1970s and 1980s restricted the role of the Chinese Indonesian in politics, academics, and the military. As a result, they were thereafter constrained professionally to becoming entrepreneurs and professional managers in trade, manufacturing, and banking. In the 1970s, following the failed alleged Communist coup attempt in 1965, there was a strong sentiment against the Chinese Indonesians, who were accused of being Communist collaborators… Various government policies banned Chinese language teaching, speaking, and publication. Established schools and colleges run by Chinese Indonesian foundations were nationalized and their facilities seized without compensation…
“In 1998, preceding the fall of Suharto's 32-year presidency, large riots targeted the Chinese Indonesians in another series of pogroms. Chinese homes were looted and burned, and many Chinese people were raped or killed [around 1,000 such murders are reported]. The events in 1998 were significant because unlike earlier pogroms against Chinese Indonesians, due to the Internet, this incident spread worldwide in real-time, and aroused the interest and feelings of the ethnic Chinese around the world, leading to demonstrations against Indonesia in many countries with significant Chinese populations and protests to the government of Indonesia. After the tragedy, a large number of Chinese Indonesians fled to other countries, such as the USA, Australia, Singapore, and the Netherlands.” While most of these laws were repealed at the end of the Suharto regime in 1998 and ethnic Chinese are now active in Indonesian life at the highest political and economic circles again, anti-Chinese sentiments seemed to have been deeply embedded in the Indonesian psyche.
On the other side of this equation, Communist China has been a particularly inhospitable place for organized religion since Chairman Mao Zedong founded the nation in 1949. Churches and temples have been demolished, religious practices banned, priests and religious leaders imprisoned and believers persecuted. The plight of Muslims within China has been particularly harsh, whether they faced a temporary travel ban following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States (the Chinese too feared terrorism) or faced violent police action like the Uyghurs in China’s Western Xinjiang Province after civil disturbances in the city of Ürümqi in the summer of 2009, leading to the death of 197 people and the injury of s cores of others. Many Muslim leaders have decried the “Godless” Peoples Republic of China, but that was before China became the new big kid on the block, the one with all the money and the best long-term growth prospects.
When the regent (like a governor of a smaller geographical area) of Lamongan, a “sub-region” (kabupaten) on the south-eastern part of the large island of Java in Indonesia, took a trip to China as a part of an Indonesian delegation in 2005, he was blown away by the modernity, power and grandeur of the new Chinese state, the vast highways, the incredible factories as well as the shining skyscrapers and cutting-edge architecture. He saw the future. And if there were the slightest vestige of anti-Chinese sentiments to be found, the regent’s actions may have changed those for all time, starting with this policy, begun in 2007: “Now, the regent… has begun trying to move his Indonesian region toward that future: he has mandated that all the schools in Lamongan, population 1.5 million, teach Mandarin Chinese to prepare the youth for doing business with China… In classrooms here, girls in white head scarves and boys in button-down shirts are haltingly reciting from Chinese textbooks and scrawling characters on blackboards. The local government has held Mandarin speech contests the past two years… As China’s economic power grows, the study of Mandarin is surging around the world. Its rise in Indonesia may be one of the most telling examples of how China’s influence is overflowing even the steepest of barriers…
“Last December, the Chinese Ministry of Education opened a Confucius Institute to teach Chinese in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The ministry operates 554 Confucius programs — what it calls institutes and classrooms — in 90 countries and regions. The United States has the most, with 68… The ministry sent about 380 teachers to Indonesia between 2004 and 2009, most on three-year contracts. But perhaps because of the recent anti-Chinese history, China prefers to play down any soft-power influence. In Jakarta, the Confucius Institute has done little to advertise itself, and it refused to grant this [NY Times] reporter an interview.” New York Times, May 2nd. While Lamongan is the only Indonesian region mandating this educational direction, the handwriting is on the wall. There do not appear to be any parallel movements to mandate the teaching of English, by the way, although English has been a language option for many students along the way.
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