Ba Ren’s name will likely puzzle Indonesians, yet his complex story is so extraordinary it warrants an arena of readers. 

Thanks to historian Taomo Zhou from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who accessed previously secret files in Beijing, now unfortunately closed, we have many details in her book Migration in the Time of Revolution, though gaps remain.

Ba Ren’s experiences were complicated by the equivocal way pribumi (native-born) Indonesians viewed the ethnic Chinese — even third generation or beyond who only spoke local languages and had never been to the mainland.

These are peranakan (descendent) as opposed to the China-born totok (recent immigrant).

To liberals, they were part of society’s rich mix. But for narrow nationalists seeking to split communities, the ethnic Chinese have been an ideal tool for the malevolent to create discord. 

Second president Soeharto exploited this dichotomy by persecuting lower- and middle-class Chinese and passing discriminatory laws while using the rich elite to make money.

Ba Ren was born Wang Renshu in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang but called himself Common Man, a clear misnomer for he was a gifted revolutionary.

A teacher, translator and Chinese Communist spy, he fled Singapore when the Japanese roared down the Malay Peninsula in February 1942. With 28 writers and journalists, he scrambled aboard a sampan, which landed in Riau Islands province.

When the Japanese arrived in the Dutch East Indies a month later, the group split, with some unsuccessfully trying to reach their homeland. Ba Ren, then in his early 40s, took refuge with a peasant family.

“In this village, isolated from politics and the ongoing war, Ba Ren observed the status of the ethnic Chinese with the eyes of an anthropologist and recorded them in the language of a poet,” writes Zhou. 

His encounters spurred him to help the working class. He moved to Medan, North Sumatra, and with others, toyed with capitalism. They started a brewery while supporting communist organizations like the People’s Antifascist Alliance.

He also wrote a long poem, The Song, about Indonesia and so loved the people and the country that gave him asylum that he wanted to “embrace Indonesia in my arms together with China”.  That emotion was rarely reciprocated, for the Chinese were often considered a threat — too smart commercially and too exclusive socially.

The pribumi also had mixed feelings about the East Asians who ousted the colonialists. The prophecies of Joyoboyo, the 12th-century Javanese King of Kediri in East Java, were popular. The most quoted is that after long subjugation by a white race, yellow men from the north would drive out oppressors and free the land.

When the Japanese arrived, it seemed the seer was right. But not all saw Nippon (Japan) as saviors.

Among the wary was Ba Ren, who knew of the Nanjing Massacre in late 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Through lectures and discussion groups, he warned Sumatrans not to trust that the invaders were liberators. 

The locals soon had good reason to fear, for the Japanese rapidly plundered the archipelago of its laborers and resources to keep the maw of their hungry war machine well stuffed.

The fugitive was able to escape detection because the region was heavily populated with lookalike coolie tin miners. Then the Alliance was betrayed and many members executed.

Ba Ren and his partner Lei Derong escaped by working in soap factories across North Sumatra. They eventually settled in Surabeia, a tiny settlement “where orangutans were a hundred times [more populous] than humans”. They stayed for two years.

This book should be just about Ba Ren, who eventually went back to his homeland and then returned as its first ambassador to Indonesia. His life ended in China as a destitute victim of the Cultural Revolution in 1972.

Unfortunately, Migration in the time of Revolution — which has grown out of a doctoral thesis — tries to do too much; it pulls together the twisted threads of Sino-Indonesian relations, including those with Taiwan, and tangles these with the Sept. 30, 1965 “coup”.

Zhou concludes that China had little to do with the killing of the six generals, Beijing had no control over then-Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) secretary-general Dipa Nusantara Aidit and arms imports had not arrived.

However, she found records of an August 1965 discussion in Beijing between the Dutch-educated Aidit and chairman Mao Zedong when president Sukarno was being treated by Chinese doctors:

Mao: “I think the Indonesian right-wing is determined to seize power. Are you determined, too?”

Aidit: “[Nods]. If Sukarno dies, it would be a question of who gains the upper hand.”

He then proposes a military committee, including some moderates, to placate the pro-Westerners. 

“After it has been established we need to arm the workers and peasants in a timely fashion.”

A committee was formed after the “coup” then rapidly destroyed by Soeharto. Aidit fled to Surakarta in Central Java but was caught seven weeks later and shot. He was 42.

Absent from this otherwise carefully researched and well-written book is any mention of the anti-communist roles played by prominent peranakan Catholic intellectuals like Jusuf Wanandi and his brother Sofjan. They skillfully avoided becoming victims of the bloodbath and for years were advisors to Soeharto.

Later, they helped establish the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), now a major social and political think tank.

Zhou wrote to this reviewer: “I have interviewed Pak Lim Bian Kie [Jusuf] and read his memoir. I think he and the Catholic Party played an important role. But […] their side of the story is a bit outside of my research focus.”

Which suggests that focus was too narrow. (ste)

__________

'Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War'

by Taomo Zhou ISEAS Publishing Singapore, 2019
301 pages

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia