‘We are people of the Islands’: translocal belonging among the ethnic Chinese of the Riau Islands

ABSTRACT

The Riau Islands Chinese are an anomaly in the study of Chinese Indonesians. For one, while many of their ethnic Chinese counterparts in other parts of Indonesia can no longer speak Chinese due to the New Order regime’s assimilation policy, Chinese languages are alive and well in the Riau Islands. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017–2018, this paper seeks to understand the Riau Islands Chinese’s cultural resilience and sense of belonging as a borderland ethnic minority. I argue that long-standing inter-Island and cross-border mobilities and cultural flows with Singapore have been central to the maintenance of Riau Islands Chinese identity. Utilising translocality as a theoretical framework to understand the processes of identity formation and place-making that transcend national borders, I contend that the case study of the Riau Islands Chinese challenges the conventional state-centric modes of analyses prevalent in the study of ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese indonesians
• Riau Islands
• ethnic Chinese
• identity
• local politics
• Singapore

Acknowledgments

Initial fieldwork for this study was conducted in January 2017 under the auspices of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute as part of the Institute’s larger project on contemporary Riau Islands. The University of Sydney’s Sydney Southeast Asia Centre also generously provided funding support through their 2019 Workshop Grant. Additionally, this study received financial assistance from Singapore Management University’s School of Social Sciences. The author would like to thank Dr Josh Stenberg, Dr Chien-Wen Kung, Dr Andree Hartanto, and the two anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive comments in the writing and editing of this paper. Most importantly, the author also expresses gratitude to the many research participants in the Riau Islands that made this paper possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this article, I use the term ‘Riau Archipelago’ to refer to the group of Islands that historically included maritime regions now part of the contemporary Riau Islands Province in Indonesia, Singapore, the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula, and Islands and river deltas on the east coast of mainland Sumatra’s Riau province. I use the term ‘Riau Islands’ when I refer specifically to the group of Islands that are now part of Indonesia’s Riau Islands province.

2. This is the figure from the 2010 National Census. A more recent national population census was conducted in 2020, but the results have yet to be published at the time of writing. See Badan Pusat Statistik, “The 2010 Indonesia Population Census.”

3. Lyons and Ford, “The Chinese of Karimun.”

4. Similar to Riau Islands towns like Batam and Tanjung Pinang, the towns of Bagansiapiapi in mainland Riau and Pontianak and Singkawang in West Kalimantan all have thriving ethnic Chinese communities thatretained their Chinese culture and language abilities throughout the New Order. Scholars have attributed this cultural maintenance to factors such as population concentration, their relatively isolated locations away from Java, and their long history of local integration in the area. However, I argue that the case of the Riau Islands Chinese is unique due to their strategic maritime borderland location near Singapore. For more on the Chinese communities in West Kalimantan, see Hui, Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia; Heidhues, Golddiggers, Farmers, and Traders in the ‘Chinese Districts’ of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. For a broader analysis of the population spread of ethnic Chinese in contemporary Indonesia, see Arifin, Hasbullah, and Pramono, “Chinese Indonesians.”

5. See for example Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis; Suryadinata, Pribumi Indonesians, the Chinese Minority, and China; Turner, “Speaking Out”; Hoon, “Assimilation, Multiculturalism, Hybridity.” In recent studies however, some studies on Chinese Indonesians have attempted to break away from this state-centric approach; for example, see Hoon, “Between Hybridity and Identity.”

6. Ng, The Chinese in Riau.

7. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 178.

8. Ibid., 180.

9. Smith and Guarnizo, “The Locations of Transnationalism,”; Velayutham and Wise, “Moral Economies of a Translocal Village”; Greiner and Sakdapolrak, “Translocality.”

10. Appadurai, “The Production of Locality.”

11. Greiner and Sakdapolrak, “Translocality,” 373.

12. Appadurai, The Production of Locality; Vertovec, Transnationalism.

13. For more on the discussion on the difference between transnationalism and translocality as concepts, see Conradson and McKay, “Translocal Subjectivities.”

14. For instance, in her study of the Akha people in the Thai, Chinese, and Burmese borderlands who are frequently identified as Chinese, Mika Toyota argues that Akha Chinese identity is rooted in their experiences of mobility across borderlands. Toyota terms this simultaneous local/transnational belonging ‘trans-localized Chinese identity.’ See Toyota, “Contested Chinese Identities.’

15. Andaya, “Seas, Oceans and Cosmologies in Southeast Asia.”

16. Long, Being Malay in Indonesia.

17. Trocki, Prince of the Pirates, 1784–1885, 33–34.

18. Vos, Gentle Janus, Merchant Prince, 157, 149.

19. van der Putten, “A Malay of Bugis Ancestry.”

20. Tagliacozzo, “Tropical Spaces, Frozen Frontiers.”

21. Ng, The Chinese in Riau: A Community on an Unstable and Restrictive Frontier, 51.

22. Ibid.; Tagliacozzo, “Tropical Spaces, Frozen Frontiers.”

23. Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915; Thung and Masnun, “Melayu-Riau: Dari Isu ‘Riau Merdeka’ Sampai Persoalan Riau Kepulauan,”; Wee, “Ethno-Nationalism in Process.”

24. See note 6 above.

25. “Major Wee Boon Teng & Mme. Soh Gim Neo Golden Wedding.” See also Goh “Majoor” Wee Boon Teng (Bukit Brown).”

26. “Death – Wee Boon Teng.”

27. Historian Sai Siew-Min’s work on Nanyang Chinese diasporic imaginary discusses the early 20th century circulations of Chinese teachers (both from China and from Southeast Asian Chinese settlements) among Chinese schools in the Strait of Malacca and the Dutch East Indies. See Sai, “The Nanyang Diasporic Imaginary.” See also Sai, “Pugilists from the Mountains.”

28. For instance, citing contemporary news sources, Josh Stenberg notes how Chinese performance troupes from Singapore toured ethnic Chinese communities in Indonesia (including the Riau Islands) all the way up to the 1960s, representing an important source of income for Singaporean troupes. See Stenberg, Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display.

29. Andaya, “Recreating a Vision.”

30. Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution.

31. See above 21., 50.

32. All research participants’ names have been changed to pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

33. See above 24.

34. Boellstorff, “Ethnolocality.”

35. Guinness, Indonesia’s New Order, 271.

36. For instance, at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park), a New Order-era national open-air museum of ethnography that features replicas of each province’s vernacular architecture and cultural displays, the exhibit on Riau province features various styles of Riau Malay houses with limas and lipat kajang roofs, as well as displays of Malay traditional dress and replicas of texts such as Gurindam Dua Belas (The Twelve Aphorisms) by Riau Islands Malay poet Raja Ali Haji. Even today, there is no representation of Riau Chinese or other Riau migrant cultures in the exhibit.

37. Fee, “The Construction of Malay Identity.”

38. See note 3 above.

39. Lyons and Ford point out that the lack of schooling among poorer Chinese communities also affected their fluency in the Indonesian language. Lyons and Ford, “The Chinese of Karimun.”

40. Indonesia’s immigration regime for ASEAN passport holders means that Singaporeans can enter Indonesia without a visa and stay for up to 30 days on a tourist pass, and Singapore reciprocates. Passing through the immigration checkpoints on either side of the border is a matter of minutes.

41. Ford and Lyons, “The Illegal as Mundane.”

42. Putra, Patria, and Haris, The Tiger from Archipelago.

43. Ibid.

44. Ford and Lyons, “The Illegal as Mundane,” 31.

45. Ford and Lyons, “The Illegal as Mundane.” See also Ford and Lyons, “Smuggling Cultures in the Indonesia-Singapore Borderlands.”

46. See above 38.

47. Choi, “Local Elections and Democracy in Indonesia.”

48. Faucher, “Contesting Boundaries in the Riau Archipelago.” For an example of an advertorial focusing on a resort in Bintan (owned by Tanjung Pinang Chinese Bobby Jayanto, discussed earlier in the paper) in the 1980s, see Holmberg, “Winding Down in a Small Town.”

49. For instance, according to Freek Colombijn, by 2003, there were at least 5,000 prostitutes active in Batam at any given time, with many of them trafficked there from other parts of Indonesia against their will. Johan Lindquist notes that the average tourist stay on Batam is 1.3 days, which constitutes the typical length for a (often wild) weekend away from tightly policed Singapore. See Colombijn, “Singapore’s Expansion to Riau,”; Lindquist, The Anxieties of Mobility.

50. Lyons and Ford, “Love, Sex and the Spaces in-Between.”

51. See note 16 above.

52. The Karimun Chinese respondents in Lyons and Ford’s 2013 study had similar memories of the local situation during the May 1998 riots. See Lyons and Ford, “The Chinese of Karimun.” For an International Herald Tribune report on Chinese Indonesians from Jakarta that fled to places such as Batam during May 1998, see Fuller, “At Jakarta’s Airport, Planes Arrive Empty and Leave Packed.”

53. See note 13 above.

54. Conradson and McKay, “Translocal Subjectivities.”

55. Setijadi, “Ethnic Chinese in Contemporary Indonesia,”; Hoon, Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia.

56. Aspinall and Fealy, “Introduction: Decentralisation, Democratisation, and the Rise of the Local,”; Hadiz, “Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia,”; van Klinken, Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia.

57. Kleden, “Globalisation and the Nation-State.”

58. Malays, and particularly aristocrats, have enjoyed this privilege since the 1950s as an unofficial but socially coded tradition, except in cases when the higher posts are filled by Javanese bureaucrats appointed by Jakarta during the New Order. For more on this topic, see Wee, “Melayu: Hierarchies of Being in Riau.”

59. In Indonesia, there are two levels of Regional People’s Representative Council (DPRD): the provincial level (DPRD provinsi), and the district/town level (DPRD kabupaten/kota)

60. The ethnic composition of Representatives at both DPR and MPR levels reflects the ethnic composition of the Riau Islands, except for the Javanese. For instance, in the 2019-2024 term, Riau Islands’ four seats at the DPR are occupied by: an ethnic Batak (Sturman Panjaitan), an ethnic Chinese (Cen Sui Lan), a Malay (H. Nyat Kadir), and an ethnic Minang (H. Asman Abnur). Similarly, at the MPR level, the four seats are occupied by: two Malays (Ria Saptarika and H. Dharma Setiawan), an ethnic Chinese (Haripinto Tanuwidjaja), and an ethnic Batak (Richard Hamonangan Pasaribu). My informants considered that this ethnic composition did not happen accidentally, since each major ethnic group ensured that they ran candidates, and voters tended to vote for candidates from their ethnic group to ensure collective representation. Informants also reported uncertainty as to why there were no successful ethnic Javanese candidates in the 2019 elections despite the many Javanese voters in the province. It may be that big parties (e.g. PDI-P, Golkar, Demokrat, Gerinda) did not run Javanese candidates, fearing they would be unpopular with the rest of the electorate.

61. Setijadi, “Ahok’s Downfall and the Rise of Islamist Populism in Indonesia.”

62. Stenberg, Minority Stage.

63. Ibid., 44.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Sydney’s Sydney Southeast Asia Centre [2019 Workshop Grant], ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, and Singapore Management University’s School of Social Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Setijadi

Charlotte Setijadi is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University. She researches ethnic Chinese identity politics in Indonesia and Indonesian diaspora politics. Charlotte’s research has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Survey, and Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.