New Chinese Migrants in Indonesia: An Emerging Community that Faces New Challenges

Abstract

This paper will focus on the xinyimin in Indonesia, an undertaking that forms part of my larger project on Chinese migration in Southeast Asia. There have been copious descriptions of the diverse nature of Chinese migration into the region, but statistics have been less forthcoming both as a result of the sensitive nature of the subject and the uneven data collection of country-level surveys. However, from scattered information that is available, it is still possible for us to gain a rough picture of the xinyimin in Southeast Asia and to understand their activities (see Table 1). To a limited extent, their impact on the local socioeconomic and political scene can also be assessed.