Since centuries ago, many people from around the world see Indonesia as a prospective country for business and trading. Chinese people also known as people that like to go anywhere to sell things. Indonesia was one of the countries that visited by many Chinese.
Chinese people have come and lived in Indonesia since 13th century. Many of them came as a temporary visitor. However some of them stay and become a permanent resident of Indonesia.
During the colonial era, their population grew because many of them were contracted as workers. Since then, discrimination against them already happen.
However, as the time goes by, nowadays more of Chinese people that were born in Indonesia or Chinese Indonesian live and interact with native Indonesian without much problem.
Here, we will explain about how do native Indonesian thinks of Chinese Indonesians based on many sources.
Discrimination Against Chinese Indonesian
Maybe we ever heard about Chinese Indonesian being hit or cursed by native Indonesian people. We also know that a great Jakarta Governor being cursed because he is a Chinese. One of biggest and scariest tragedy happened around 1998 when many of them were raped, tortured, and killed.
Discrimination and hatred against Chinese in Indonesian happened since long time ago. When many of them came to Indonesia during the colonial era, Indonesian people see them as a threat between sellers.
There were also assumption that Chinese people help Dutch and Japan people to torture Indonesian people. This burned more hatred towards them at that time.
Common Stereotypes About Chinese Indonesian
Naturally, people have assumption or common stereotypes about other races. If many foreigners have stereotypes about Indonesian, native Indonesian also has common stereotypes about Chinese Indonesian. These stereotypes didn’t come from nothing. They usually really possessed by Chinese Indonesian.
First of all, Indonesian people often think that Chinese Indonesians are smart, ambitious, and always strive for the highest grade in school, especially in mathematics and science study. They usually excel in school and can easily win a tight competition.
Secondly, Indonesian people also often think that Chinese Indonesians are rich and very capable of selling things. They also have good appearance compared to native Indonesian because of the fair skin and small eyes.
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Harmony Between Native Indonesian and Chinese Indonesian
Even though extreme discrimination in the past happened, nowadays we can see that there are so many harmony between native Indonesian and Chinese Indonesian. Native Indonesian nowadays have became more open minded to other cultures.
As they already lived together for a long time, Chinese Indonesian is not a weird thing anymore. They are also already become Indonesian people.
Several little discrimination may happen sometimes. However now many native Indonesian welcome and stand on the Chinese Indonesian side. In places such as big cities when most of the people are properly educated and exposed to other culture, we rarely see any discrimination against Chinese Indonesian. They now can interact harmoniously as human with human.
That’s all the complete explanation on the answer to the question how do native Indonesians think of Chinese Indonesians. I hope the information will be helpful for all the readers.