In the Tortuous Shadows of Ethnic Policies: Two Case Studies of Chinese Cultural Heritage in Indonesia and Malaysia

Abstract

Concurrent with the inception of the nation states of Indonesia and Malaysia in the middle of the twentieth century, ethnic policies were put into practice to destroy the Chinese cultural heritage that had hitherto been regarded as a vital part of the region’s heterogeneous cultural landscapes. Chinese language, organisations, and religious practices were banned, and architecture and artefacts with Chinese symbols or insignia either looted or destroyed. To what extent have these discriminatory agendas further influenced and shaped contemporary Chinese cultural heritage discourse? To answer this question this article starts with an introduction to the anti-Chinese agenda from Independence onwards, which is followed by two case studies from the field of cultural heritage: the organisation Boen Hian Tong in Semarang on Java in Indonesia, and the NGO Penang Heritage Trust in Malaysia. The research is based on fieldwork carried out in Indonesia and Malaysia in 2014–2015.