More than 80 per cent of the Chinese outside China live in Southeast Asia and many of them have been integrated into the local societies. However, the resurgence of China and ethnic Chinese investment in their ancestral land have caused concern among some non-Chinese Southeast Asian elites. They have begun to question the position and identity of the Chinese population in their countries. Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians addresses these ethnic Chinese issues, as well as ethnic Chinese relations with China and with indigenous groups in the region. Written by leading scholars in Southeast...

Most of the earlier studies on the Indonesian political party, Golkar, tend to view the organization solely as an electoral machine used by the military to legitimize its power. However, this study is different in that it considers Golkar less an electoral machine and more as a political organization which inherited the political traditions of the nominal Muslim parties and the Javanese governing elite pre-1965, before the inauguration of Indonesia s New Order. Golkar, then, is seen in this book as nominal Islam with a military element that tends to differentiate it from previous political...

Language policies in Southeast Asia have been shaped by the process of nation-building on the one hand and by political and economic considerations on the other. The early years of nation-building in Southeast Asia generated intensive language conflicts precisely because state policies privileged the idea of a monolingual nation and thus endeavoured to co-opt or even do away with troublesome ethnic identities. In recent years, language policies are increasingly influenced by pragmatic considerations, especially globalization and the awareness of a linkage between language and economic...

The Chinese in Indonesia have played an important role in Indonesian society before and after the fall of Soeharto. This book provides comprehensive and up-to-date information by examining them in detail during that era with special reference to the post-Soeharto period. The contributors to this volume consist of both older- and younger-generation scholars writing on Indonesian Chinese. They offer new information and fresh perspectives on the issues of government policies, legal position, ethnic politics, race relations, religion, education and prospects of the Chinese Indonesians.

The twelve chapters included in this book address various issues related to Chinese migration, indigenization and exchange with special reference to the era of globalization. As the waves of Chinese migration started in the last century, the emphasis, not surprisingly, is placed on the "migrant states" rather than "indigenous states." Nevertheless, many chapters are also concerned with issues of "settling down" and "becoming part of the local scenes." However, the settling/integrating process has been interrupted by a globalizing world, new Chinese migration and the rise of China at the end...