Author(s)

Enny Ingketria^1,2

¹School of Journalism and Information Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
²Sub Directorate of Oil and Gas Cooperation Affairs, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Jakarta, Indonesia.

From the Dutch colonial times until the end of Suharto era, Chinese Indonesians had gone through a series of institutional racism, as well as racial prejudice and discrimination, but Suharto’s New Order period was portrayed by some scholars as the toughest situation most Chinese Indonesians had to deal with at that time. If during the reign of Suharto, they found few accesses to express their Chinese identity, after the fall of Suharto, they were given more alternatives to articulate their Chinese-ness, either through media products or cultural activities. Nonetheless, in the first six years of post-Suharto era, the political and economic conditions were not yet stable, while the residual prejudice against Chinese Indonesians and the shadow of cultural trauma remained. Since previous studies have merely focused on the negative stereotypes towards ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, this research elaborates the identity formation of Chinese Indonesians during the administration of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), who is popularly known as pluralist figure. By using in-depth interview and participant observation to 30 participants who were mostly fourth generations of Chinese Indonesians, Chinese Indonesians today are still facing identity dilemma, in which they were predisposed to hide their ethnic identity, yet they were inclined to recover the image of Chinese identity in public. The cultural long-distance nationalism observed indicates that the younger generations of Chinese Indonesians nowadays have indeed strong emotional ties to their ancestral homeland.

Chinese Indonesians, Cultural Long-Distance Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, Identity Dilemma

Ingketria, E. (2018) Chinese Indonesians under Jokowi: Flourishing Yet Unsettling. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 84-121. doi: 10.4236/jss.2018.67009.