Doing business the Chinese way? On Manadonese Chinese entrepreneurship in North Sulawesi

Abstract

This article argues and documents that diasporic networking and guanxi relationships in North Sulawesi Province in East Indonesia are not essential for doing business within the Chinese business community. The main argument forwarded is that guanxi governed business networks are but one strategy among several other business strategies employed, when engaging in inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic business transactions. Furthermore, a discussion of the relationship between local Chinese and non-Chinese business envirorunent as well as of the inter-ethnic environment in general constitutes a framework for how to position the Chinese in an overall societal context. Of special interest in this connection are questions of inter-ethnic integration versus assimilation together with questions of descent and ethnic classification in the relation to the surrounding non-Chinese community.