Necessary Enemy: Sukarno Era Of Chinese Problems And Indonesian Nation Building

Indonesia is a developing country with multi-ethnic, multi-language andmulti-religion. As other third-world countries, Indonesia has suffered the colonialrule from foreign settlers for more than three centuries. It didn’t win independenceuntil1945. Indonesia’s economic development performance is remarkable since itsindependence. But the ethnic problem and political reform problem in Indonesia arealso very outstanding. There had been countless anti-Chinese violence inIndonesia which damaged the life and property of Chinese in Indonesia seriously.The lives and property of the overseas Chinese not being guaranteed, this isnot only harmful to the development of the Chinese but also to Indonesia’seconomic and social development. What’s worse is that may damage therelationship between Indonesia and China, even damage the World peace.Anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia is very complex. In addition to the inherentcontradiction inside Indonesian society, Suharto authority who got the politicalpower by military coupon tried to make use of the Chinese problem to construct thelegitimate foundation maybe also a very important factor.However, the anti-Chinese problem is also quite outstanding even when therelationship between Indonesia and China is fairly friendly in Sukarno period. Thisthesis’s range is from1945when Indonesia won the independence to September30,1965when9.30Event’s outbreaking and Sukarno was disentitled actually. Thispaper try to analyze the anti-Chinese problem in Indonesia in Sukarno period fromthe following perspectives: the political elites in the third-world countries always tryto create a ‘necessary enemy’ to establish their national identity. Sukarno’s politicaltendency is very delicate, but we can say that he is friendly to the communists andthe Soviet Union, compared with other authorities in Indonesia. However, theanti-Chinese violence always happened even in the Sukarno period when therelationship between Indonesia and China was friendly. There are three kinds ofpolitical powers in Sukarno period in Indonesia, they are: the president Sukarno, Indonesia army and Indonesia communist party. Sukarno tried to find the best profitpoint where he could benefit the most from the other two political powers. All of thethree political powers wanted to improve their political weight and prestige from theChinese problem. Although there were bigger political interest groups behind theIndonesia army and Indonesia communist party, all of the three powers wanted torealize the national construction by their own methods. The three political groupsfought with each other for the highest political seat in Indonesia.The base of the national state is the modern nationalism which is based on thecitizen’s identification to the state’s basic value and political system.For the third-world countries who have no shared political ideology, thecitizens’ national consciousness is very weak, there are many different claims inconstructing the country in the future, the government’s management ability isseriously defective, the nationalist movement is the necessary way to cultivate thenational consciousness and political integration, it is also the regular method for thepolitical elites to construct the legitimate political baseDuring this process, the political elites always consciously create a ‘necessaryenemy’. On the one hand, the political elites always try to construct the nationalconsciousness and national identification by defaming and criticizing the‘necessary enemy’, on the other hand, they always attempt to make the politicalpower spread to every corner of the social life by rejecting, educating, mobilizingand organizing the populace.However, this kind of man-made ‘necessary enemy’ has strong politicalmanipulation color in the beginning, and departure from the basic idea of thedemocratic politics. It is the violation to the human rights and the distortedinterpretation to the history and reality which not only hit the pathological mark onthe nationalism movement, but also damage the national image of Indonesia, andfinally interferes the Indonesian’s identity to their own nation. All of these had leadto Indonesia’s split which made the Indonesian nationalism deviation from thenormal track, and Indonesia paid a heavy price for the ethnic state construction.The Indonesia’s experience of ethic state construction can enlighten the thirdworld countries. National identification must go beyond the initial stage, ethic state construction and modernization must be synchronous, if not, it will fall into themalignant vortex of blind exclusion.