Ethnic Chinese helped develop Indonesia's business sector. Chinese, a small group community, was given a niche in Indonesian society by the Dutch, especially in revenue farming activities. They could not be involved in agriculture, land, by the Dutch Agrarian Law. They owned land, however, in 1860. Chinese were the middle level, but the indigenous Indonesians were the bottom level. (Terence, 127) Mister Setiono, a chairman of the Jakarta chapter of the Tionghoa Indonesia Association said, "The fact is, conglomerates (the Chinese-Indonesians) constitute only a small part of the community while most of us are in the low to middle classes of society." (Debbie, National News).
III The Chinese-Indonesians and politics.
Throughout Indonesian history, the Chinese-Indonesians had not been interested in politics. They did not care about politics but tried to make money in businesses. For centuries, the Chinese-Indonesians had been labeled as a community that had economic power but had made no contributions to Indonesia's history. (Debbie, National News) There is a historical reason why Chinese control business in Indonesia. In 1860, during Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, ethnic Chinese was officially differentiated from the indigenous people. From the historical facts proved that Dutch colonialist sacrificed ethnic Chinese to turn away people's attention and anger that should have been directed towards the government. Actually, the Chinese-Indonesians were restricted and barred in their many aspects of life. Instead, they were left with businesses. The Indonesian government, both the Old and New Order, also reaffirmed the practice of Dutch. .
While Indonesia was under Dutch rule, an agrarian law was passed. This law barred Chinese from owning land. This basically meant that they could not participate in farming. Also, they were barred from being government servants. Because of this, the Chinese-Indonesians had no choice but to go into businesses.