Towkays and Tycoons

The Chinese in Indonesian Economic Life in the 1920s and 1980s

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7296586
AutoresJ A C Mackie (autor correspondente), Jamie Mackie
Ano1991
Volume51
Páginas83-83
Data de publicação1991-01-01
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoIndonesia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0019-7289 • E-ISSN: 2164-8654
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3351256
OpenAlexW2328323138
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10

Since the nationalization in 1957-1958 of the Dutch business enterprises that had dominated the economy, including most of the country's largest plantations, mines, banks, and business houses, many Chinese firms previously confined to an intermediate position in the colonial caste structure, as Wertheim has called it,1 have been able to advance to the topmost ranks in the present economic structure of Indonesia. Collectively, they now overshadow the previously dominant state sector made up largely of those nationalized enterprises. The two largest Chinese firms, Liem Sioe Liong's vast conglomerate and William Soeryadjaya's Astra Corporation, hold assets that were estimated to be worth Rp. 6.4 trillion and Rp. 2 trillion respectively (US$3.5 billion and $1.2 billion) in 1988, whereas ten others are in the $400-$700 million range and another one hundred or so exceed the $100 million mark.2 By any measure, international as well as local, the foremost of these men can aptly be called tycoons, businessmen of extraordinary wealth and power, in the dictionary definition, whose wealth far exceeds that of their predecessors earlier in the century, Dutch as well as Chinese. In contrast, none of the wealthiest Chinese towkay of the 1920s (a word that refers rather indeterminately to a Chinese big businessman, although not always an especially rich one) could have been compared with the big Dutch capitalists of the era, apart from the almost legendary Oei Tiong Ham, to whom I will return shortly.3

Indonesian · Linguistics · Asian Studies and History · Philosophy · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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