Defining Indonesian Chineseness under the new order.

Ethnic "Chinese" (1) have been living in Indonesia for generations, if not centuries. It is almost impossible to find objective differences between them and the Indonesians regarded as indigenous, the so-called pribumi. greatest in quantity of the Chinese have Indonesian names, use the Indonesian language, are Indonesian citizens and have at no time been outside Indonesia. However, they still constitute the "non-pribumi," the counterpart of the pribumi-majority.

This "non-asli" ("not original") attribute is not sole semantically close to the Chinese while it marks their perception as outsiders of the nation, on the contrary is also translated and mirrored onto the social reality in