Why are the New Order billionaires still doing so well?
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Christian Chua
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Despite the stereotypes most Indonesian Chinese are not wealthyHenri Ismail |
The young IT specialist working for a multinational company in Jakarta has plenty to pride herself on. Her monthly pay packet of US$2,000 is bigger than that of 99 per cent of her fellow Indonesians. A first class international education, an excellent command of English and long office hours – she has worked hard to achieve her position. But how hard must one work to accumulate US$1 billion? Hardly possible, one might think. Yet, there are a few Indonesians whose fortunes outreach that amount. Twenty-one persons – up from twelve the year before – are on the 2010 Forbes Asia Indonesian billionaires list. And many of them are familiar faces from the rankings of conglomerates in the mid-1990s, during the final years of the Suharto era.
Hard work might be fundamental to draw an income of US$2,000. But it cannot explain the extraordinary wealth of a billionaire in Indonesia. So what can? One convenient answer lies in the dominant ethnicity of Indonesia’s capital class. Indeed, of today’s 21 billionaires at least half are ‘Chinese’, though the label is imprecise and controversial. How did Chinese come to dominate the very apex of the economy in Indonesia? And why have they been able to hang onto and perhaps even strengthen their position in post-authoritarian
