Chinese Big Business in Indonesia: The State of Capital

The disintegration of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998 and the fall of

Soeharto put an end to the crude forms of centralised authoritarianism and

economic protectionism that allowed large Chinese conglomerates to dom-

inate Indonesia's private sector. Contrary to all expectations, most of the

major capitalist groups, though damaged considerably by the Asian Crisis,

managed to cope with the ensuing monumental political and economic

changes, and now thrive again albeit within a new democratic environment.

In this book Christian Chua assesses the state of capital before, during,

and after the financial and political crisis of 1997/1998 and analyses the

changing relationships between business and the state in Indonesia. Using a

distinct perspective that combines cultural and structural approaches on

Chinese big business with exclusive material derived from interviews with

some of Indonesia’s major business leaders, Chua identifies the strategies

employed by tycoons to adapt their corporations to the post-authoritarian

regime and provides a unique insight into how state-business relationships

in Indonesia have evolved since the crisis.

Chinese Big Business in Indonesia is the first major analysis of capital in

Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto, and will be of interest to graduate

students and scholars of political economy, political sociology, economics

and business administration as well as to practitioners having to do with

Southeast Asian business and politics.