Taomo Zhou, an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University and author of "Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War," shares intriguing insights into the lives of overseas Chinese in Indonesia. He explores the intricate ties between migration patterns and Cold War geopolitics, revealing how the Chinese diaspora navigated their identities amidst political upheaval. Zhou also discusses the historical discrimination faced by ethnic Chinese and examines shifting public perceptions of their community, painting a rich picture of resilience and complexity within this cultural landscape.
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insights INSIGHT
Complex Chinese Identity in Indonesia
The Chinese identity in Indonesia is diverse and fluid, shaped by assimilation and social context.
Perceptions of Chinese Indonesians blend ethnicity, language, and class distinctions, often manipulated politically.
insights INSIGHT
Indonesia’s Nation-Building Key Moments
Indonesia's post-colonial period was marked by defining national identity amid intense internal diversity.
Major events in 1945, 1955, and 1965 deeply shaped Indonesian nationhood and its complex relations with the Chinese community.
insights INSIGHT
Discrimination Under Suharto's Regime
Under Suharto, systemic discrimination targeted ethnic Chinese, banning language and cultural expressions.
Chinese Indonesians were unfairly implicated in communist plots, exacerbating societal marginalization and suspicion.
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Taomo Zhou's "Migration in the Time of Revolution" offers a nuanced exploration of the Indonesian-Chinese population's experiences during the Cold War. The book delves into the complexities of their involvement in regional and global affairs, highlighting their entanglement in events such as the Chinese Civil War and Indonesian independence. Zhou masterfully weaves together archival research and fieldwork, providing rich accounts of individual lives and their impact on broader historical narratives. The work challenges simplistic notions of national identity and reveals the human cost of geopolitical conflicts. It ultimately contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between macro-level events and the lived realities of ordinary people.
If tales of China’s radical ‘opening up’ to the world over the last 30 years imply that the country was somehow ‘closed’ before this, then one need only think of Beijing’s dalliances with various potential socialist allies during the Cold War to dispel this impression. There is, moreover, another equally important case in which people linked to ‘China’ were involved in transnational affairs at this time – namely that of overseas Chinese populations throughout the world. And, as Taomo Zhou’s fascinating Indonesia-centred account shows, in Southeast Asia the Chinese outside China were intimately entangled in a vast among of what was going on at this time on the diplomatic and political level.
Drawing on a trove of archival and fieldwork-derived material from multiple locations, Zhou’s Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019) presents a rich account of the Indonesian-Chinese population’s involvement in regional and global affairs, mainly between the 1940s and the 1960s but also either side of this tumultuous window of time. As entertaining as it is rich in new insights, the book nimbly moves between China and different parts of Indonesia’s vast archipelago, in doing so painting a picture of the limitless diversity to migrant and diasporic experience and, in the process, helping us see apparently monolithic events like the Cold War in very human terms.
Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.
New Books in East Asian Studies