A future video on Lippo Group would be interesting to see. I went to a university ran by the Riady family and I heard stories about how the University paid rent to the Lippo Group. Basically the allegations were that the Riady family was paying themselves rent as a tax loophole.
Lippo is a craddle to grave company, you born in their hospital, you live in their properties, you shop in their malls, you graduated in their schools, you work in their business complex and you die buried in their cemetery.
This video reminds me of one incident in Germany with Salim family. In the beginning of 2004 I was working at a hospital in Münster in Germany and the hospital head introduced me to a patient, which was being treated in the most expensive room. I was not aware who they were and the patient, Salim's wife, was a very nice lady. And in my stupidity I recommended to her to not stay long there as it was very expensive. However she reacted to me graceful (feel ashame until today when I think of it). To my surprise a few days later the room, the lounge and the hall to the her room were full of flowers, which had never happened in that hospital. To add to my injury I asked her daugther who the patient was. She just replied to me, "You don't know her?" Despite this they invited me to the birthday party for her, which was celebrated in an Indonesian restaurant called Bali in the city. Both Salim and his wife were very kind and humble. However the daugther always looked at me with dislike.
The daughter probably just wanted an attention. By the way, I have no idea who this Salim family is until I watched the video. Most sensible rich people know how easy it is for them to lose all their wealth. If you look into the history of Asia, it only takes the wrong dictator to assume power and pull the rug on anyone he doesn't like. This is why most sensible rich people don't push their luck by acting a fool, and they try to keep a low profile most of the time.
Thanks for this, no local/ Indonesian journalist would be brave enough to make something like this. There is a other,often we called, 9 dragons that occupying large portion of Indonesian Business/money until nowadays, I wish you call talk more about them.
@@bambangtheo5640 yep, but sadly nowadays there is no investigative books or report about current government bussiness practice being released yet. Only Social Media post that will quickly subset by the toxic fandom...
1965-1966 massacre was really terrifying, my grandfather from my father's side was accused of feeding the communist because "his homes have a lot of dish & ware", then he was sent to prison without trial and was beaten to almost dead. Most of my father's family escaped the 1998-1999 riot to Taiwan including my grandfather, he passed away last year cursing the Indonesian government.
What bothers me is that Indonesia has hardly dealt with its darker past. I am Dutch and the Dutch try to deal with its darker past including slavery and economic exploitation of the Dutch East Indies. Why can Indonesia not do the same regarding the 1965-1966 mass killings? why doesn't it apologize? Why is this not treated in schools? Why do victims not get compensated?
@@andrieskrugersdagneaux5185 You are unfortunately extremely naive about the world and racial reality. You will find that Whites are the only ones who are guilted into apologizing for past crimes while overlooking what others (like the Ottoman and Moor slavers) did to them. If the Turks do not apologize for the devşirme system and their harem of enslaved European women that lasted for hundreds of years, why would a country like Indonesia even bother to apologize for short-lived events that did not last a decade?
As an Indonesian, we know the name of Sudono Salim he is one of the richest man in Indonesia, but we only know a little information about who he is, because there is no bombastic news about him. People like him are very low profile and immersed in Indonesian publicity, but actually they are who are very influential in Indonesian government when the government issues policies especially the economy policies most of it is the order of these people, they are very quiet playing behind the scenes of political economy and dramas stage but they are actually who own Indonesia.
I would add another interesting note: Lim Siew Liong a.k.a. Sudono Salim (founder of Salim group) and Bob Hasan were revealed to had been already in *shady business deals* with Suharto in 1950s. Suharto misused his authority when he became the army commander of a division in Central Java. Because of this corruption case, Suharto was then reprimanded by his superiors: General Ahmad Yani & A.H. Nasution. They were so angry on Suharto and his business cronies. This was in 1950s. Fast forward when Suharto came into full power as president in 1970s, curiously, Sudono Salim was allowed by Suharto and he became business conglomerate in Indonesia. And Bob Hasan was picked as Suharto's Minister of Trade in 1998. Bob Hasan later was jailed for his compromised corruption case in February 2001. So these men are not truly "honest" or hardworking. Quite controversial, instead.
But still the hegemony of suharto’s chinese still prevails and the chinese and non chinese communities still worship them and fear them as they can monopolise industries and strangle naysayers to death or scavenge for measly scraps.
All the big rich bussines people is never been honest, like every single one of them. When it comes to bussines, there is no such things as honest trade out there (Even if have one or two, they will never survive in long runs).but never doubt the hardwork, Is always there. Chinese people is famous of their hardwork. Something that the "real" Indonesian people most of them dont have this trait. Nowdays even worse, the young generations tend to blame people, goverment or whatever they think is good for their cause. But they lack of hardwork mindset. Which is why even we have lot of nature resources, we will always fall behind.
@@moh6410 we knew that there was a particular Chinese ethnic group who greatly benefited from the war and orde baru. They were very much pro-assimilation yet had strong links to China. They never belonged to the Peranakan and old migrant communities and frankly with all due respect, with the so many of their cultural appropriations and the things they did to the old migrants, I do not see them as a part of us. They pretend they are but they are not. Not all of them but quite a few of them.
@@glowinz you certainly do not know Indonesia and oblivious of the difference between us voluntary migrants and people whose traditional ways of life are disrupted and experiencing cross-generational trauma from forced modernised capitalism.
Another interesting note: Soeharto favoritism over his cronies like Robby Tjahjadi (chinese descent - car smugglers) was also the factor of why the honest, discipline Police General *Hoegeng Iman Santoso* was put out from his duty, after he tried to track the car smuggling activities in the 1970s.
Your doing great analysis as always, either it was your video about Soviet venus program, tmsc plan in the us, or our country's new orders history. Again, thank you for doing all of that. I've seen some of your videos about economics of asian countries, and i see the similarities between Suharto's regime and the south korean ones. I see the need of stability to push forward of economical growth and by relying with cronyism was seemed as the quickest route. But as someone was said, corruption do more damage to the system rather than it's monetary value. As a person who born after the chaos at the end of Suharto's fall, we were the ones who handle the mess after that regime's mess. While suharto and salim wasn't the one who hold the monopoly of our economy anymore (still noticeable player though) their practice of cronyism is already deep rooted and while it seems gradually faded away, it's still there and affecting our way of doing business. Most of business magnates (or corrupt politicians) still handles their business and contracts to closest relations rather than doing it in competitive manner. While suharto and salim was long dead, we had many mini suhartos and salims doing the same thing for themselves in many aspects either in economy or politics. Far away of sukarno's and majority of Indonesians traditional values. If those 7% of GDP growth average in 3 decades was spread more fairly to the people our GDP per Capita maybe comparable to Malaysia today, but it isn't. Our GDP per Capita now isn't even half of Malaysia's and don't even a third of the south korean one's. This leave the wealth being stuck by the rich and with cronyism still intact, a harder start for us average indonesians even compared to after independence. While it's not easy for them to got away with the wealth from benefits of Suharto's legacy, but i would say what they were doing is still much more easier than many people who live in rural areas who surviving from working as contract farmer, working hard to get paid almost nothing by the corporates only to get by, and live with poverty until in the old years as i see them myself.
FINALLY an Asianometry video about Indonesia! Thanks so much for providing an objective narration of not only about the Salim Group, but also some of Indonesia's most controversial past. Many of the crucial historical events mentioned in the video (especially ones regarding how Suharto came into and lost from power) were sadly never taught to us in school, so I believe most Indonesians never knew the truth about our country. If you don't mind, would you please share the information sources (especially books) you used for creating this video? As an Indonesian myself, I would love to get a deep dive on Indonesia's history.
100% agree with you! as an Indonesians viewer, I always interested to our Asia brothers topics. But when he talking about our own country, it hit us in different ways :D
Crony capitalism is breaking up in Indonesia and being replaced by landlordism as the latest generation of congolomerate kids lack their parents' ability to work the bureaucracy to their favor; this is highlighted in how many plantations have returned to their rightful owners/tribal groups with congolomates like Astra and Salim now renting most of their palm oil/forest concession land. The Meikarta case is the tipping point of this; the likely outcome is that Lippo might get bankrupt sooner or later and the government no longer has laws forcing foreign corporations to give away shares to local crony capitalists for no good reason
True but this is also because of democracy. Last time when you want something done you go to Suharto and no one dares to oppose you. Nowadays when you want to get something done, you have to work with a lot of different factions and even then some will still want a piece of the pie. It is much harder to coordinate nowadays.
First Pacific invested in the Philippines for the Telecommunication business. SMART telecom became one of the biggest duopoly along with Globe Telecoms. Its chairman used to work in Hong Kong's First Pacific before investing in the Philippines.
Liem once called Manny V. Pangilinan, Managing Director of First Pacific, his savior because MVP saved the Liem family from bankruptcy. If First Pacific had not wisely invested in companies that grew---Smart, PLDT, Lazada---Liem would have been totally bankrupted.
The reason you don't hear about it is because in the 60's the West (USA & Mi5) orchestrated the biggest political genocide in history. Every member or affiliate of the Indonesian Communist party was tracked down and hacked to death. Most were buried in the beaches of Bali.. Now it's a surf spot for rich tourists. *This video completely omits the Western involvement and tells the story from the perspective of the dictatorship* " But after seven years of close cooperation with Washington, the military was already well equipped. You also don’t need advanced weaponry to arrest civilians who provide almost no resistance. What officials in the embassy and the CIA decided the Army really did need, however, was information. Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and “checked off” the list. Another million people were rounded up into concentration camps for detention, where they were subjected to starvation, forced labor, torture, and ideological re-education. It was an infamous “victory” that no one wanted to remember." Source: "The Jakarta Method: How the U.S. Used Mass Murder To Beat Communism" Estimates range from 1-3 million killed. It was so successful that Indonesia turned from a major 'threat' to an uninteresting backwater (to the West) run by a military dictatorship. The technique of mass disappearances was named "The Jakarta method" and used again in Chile by Pinochet. They were an electoral party and completely unarmed.
@@yohaneschristianp religion mixed communist ideology? 1. Its not religion that unites us indonesians, if anything its the one tearing us apart. The government i think planted a very strong identity in all of indonesia to the point that its very taboo to even think of seperating (yes, more taboo than religion). And now people for the most part are already complacent with being indonesians, like would any indonesian (except for papuans) think of even seperating from indonesia when it will only fuck them over. We dont care about difference in ethnicity. 2. How the fuck did communism even come into this. If theres 2 things that a lot of indonesians hate, its the west and communism because we have a history of being fucked over by those two.
@@yohaneschristianp bro communism died in 1966. now we're full capitalism where you have to pay to go to toilet. Religius conservatism is correct tho Edit: I just realized that most toilets are free after a local governor did some inspections. But still money is crucial when talking about serving justice.
We have a Salim group in India Kerala, in Kollam. They are a speciality hotel which serves mutton curry in fact the best mutton curry and Kerala Parotta in the local.
I met someone who married one of the Liem's daughters. The marriage was strongly opposed by the Liem family because he was not Indonesian and was pretty much a poor, average guy with no connections. They opposed it to such an extent that he was offered a blank cheque just to leave her. He rejected that cheque and that daughter left the family. I thought he was joking only to find out his wife's surname. I suppose when your family runs a multi-billion dollar business underpinned by corruption, you would be worried about the intents of an outsider marrying into the family.
LOL only if the groom has no money. They were not corrupt, the goverment were the one who asked for the kickbacks. You wouldnt get the deal without giving them.
unfortunately, this thing very common in chinesee families back then; including mine. My mom & dad considered as "biasa a.k.a commoners" level, and turn out I do had families at "Jendral a.k.a General" level (the naming taken from Suharto military background who prefer share his wealth to his generals). They do had wealth , not as rich as Salim, but they do had huge wealth... I mean they always schools their child to overseas. One example, one of my uncles is actually a board of director on Indonesia largest tire manufacture (and quite linked to Indomobil actually as I know). He know my mom, but I never know him until mum mom introduce me to him at my grandma funeral. Not proud to be, but my mom always teach me to never ask for a job to him or to other "generals", as she able standing by her self without any help form them. and now, I know why my mom teach me & my brother that.... Just few weeks ago, my other realtive died (never know him), so my mom decided to pay him visit for last time (called malam kembang in Indonesia, the last night before the person burried/cremated). On one of the lunch, turn out my other cousin who know him & other "generals" often ask for new job because they not capable their old job... which also given from them. Then suddenly they ask my mom why me & my brother never ask for a job from them. My mom simply said: They simply never ask me for it, and they search the job by themself. Because of that, I never ask you Qiu (is mean uncle)... why you ask about them suddenly? My uncle the ask my brother & my education, where we work now, and what we do and etc... At the end, they feel weird and stop asking. But after that, one of my aunt (close relative to her, and I know her) said: well, they think you same as your brother (who ask job for her son & daughter), but they never know how succesfull you are... Well, they think to step into your house; as they see you as "poor" and never own house. And that why I never know them until now, and she can stand proud in front of them, never fuss with them for any reason.
Anyone interested in the political context of "The Act of Killing" should read "The Jakarta Method", written after it came out about the international political context.
Really appreciate video about indonesia man, some suggestion for next topic such as "Why Indonesia National Car don't succed" or "state owned company in Indonesia" or "Why Indonesia didn"t even try with Semiconductor Manufacturing"
Admiral Sudomo, then the Man-Power Minister, forbade modernizing National Semiconductor and Fairchild back in the 1980s because it would reduce human resources. They quit.
@@kevinwijaya9613 It seems that corruption was not the cause. For this issue, I believe more in "Consiparation Theory." As early as the 1970s, General Suharto realizes that the country needs a strong "military industry." As a first step, he hoped that by the end of the 1970s, a motor vehicle industry would be formed. But, "the Old Brothers from that Far East Country" actively spread public opinion that Indonesia is not ready for that, and there is no need to (rebuild) the train infrastructure. Their intentions were obvious, to sell their vehicle's product through Liem (Indomobil) and William (ASTRA).
National car? They are just Korean parts reassembled and the Japanese was pissed. Its cheaper just to buy them directly from Korea. Semiconductor? Pretty much lack of vision among its elite. Same with nuclear power. Retards who cant think long term plan always get into power.
@Johnnie Walker are you even indonesian? Lol You have no idea how much native indonesians hate those oligarchs from the far east. There is no way they can influence public opinion like that. Sure, they have motive to sell cars, but politically, they're soeharto's hostages. If anything, the only force capable of swaying public opinions in indonesia is the religious group like oelamas. No matter how honest a living we make, us chinks are always treated with suspicion. You think chinks can sway public opinion? Preposterous lol
Really appreciate the multi perspectivae views of things happening in Indonesia's history. As any other country's history and politics, it's grey. I see that many non Indonesians would criticise so much, but some Indonesians would also hide from it's dark past.
Chinese Indonesians being simultaneously viewed as communist proxies and also beneficiaries of crony capitalism is one of those little bitter ironies in life. I also like how the separation of political and economic/financial power is made explicit in the video -- in the West/developed world, economic power is often conflated with political power, but that's only because of strong legal codes and property rights. In Suharto-era Indonesia, as in many countries with authoritarian tendencies and weak legal systems, political power is derived from force/threat of force (the army). It's been said that Suharto losing the support of the Indonesian Army (and specifically, the general in charge of the Army Strategic Reserve, which would have been the most potent military unit near Jakarta on the eve of Suharto's resignation) was the final nail in the coffin of his rule.
i remember at that time wiranto as Indonesian armed forces commander literally ordered troops from much stable and far region like like East Java to come to secure Jakarta, because the army commander in Jakarta and West Java are deem not trusted enough since they're being considered as reformist and are not loyal with Suharto. which is why its widely believe that the chaos in Jakarta as part of negliance by anti-suharto general so suharto will step down as president but unfortunately the chinese-indonesian in Jakarta have to suffer from that act.
This would be Chinese minorities all over South East Asia. Like the Jews, they're both viewed as greedy capitalist out to exploit the natives and staunch communist simultaneously.
@@MrGreghome You’ve hit it on the nail, i believe there was also a past Thai king that explicitly called overseas Chinese the Jews of SE Asia. The other minority group that could maybe relate to this is Indians in East and South Africa.
Salim family controls one of the biggest conglomerates (MVP group) in the Philippines. The MVP group controls PLDT-Smart , Meralco, NLEX among others. These are top companies in the country. The MVP group has three teams in the Philippine Basketball Association. It funds and operates the Gilas program and some other sports program. Suharto and Marcos are listed as the biggest thieves in the world. The main difference is that bulk of the funds were invested by Suharto cronies in the Indonesian and ASEAN economy while Marcos hid Philippine money in Swiss banks and real estate abroad.
Crony capitalism "might" be necessary for countries that got their independence after WWII and wanted to build their industry fast. For example, country A just got independence in 1950 and were left without any strong local industry player. So, to build industry with national players. It might be necessary to "breast feed" some companies aka cronies to enable them to grow in a short amount of time. As I live in south east asia, this is a common formula not only in Indonesia but also Malaysia & Singapore. However, crony capitalism should be dismantle after some time as cronyism is very detrimental to competition and efficiency.
@Lord Vader Exactly, at this point Samsung and other Chaebols should be segmented for the good of the country but I don't think they will... Ironically because these conglomerates are powerful enough to stop said segmentation... It's a complex situation for sure
Crony capitalism is a bit tautological because capitalism will devolve to cronyism regardless. There’s better ways to bring up the economy and enrich people without using cronyism.
No actually the first reason why Lim Siou Liong was successful because he got lucky married into a rich girl, his father in law was the richest Chinese merchant in the town, after marriage he got funded by his father in law to establish his first bussiness venture, and all this happened way before Japanese occupation and WW II
when japan attacked china he fled to indonesia leaving his mother but before he fled he got married so that his wife could takecare his mother in china. after he stayed in indonesia he married again with rich educated chinese girl that is his true love. when he was successful he returned to china to pick up his mother and first wife to stay in singapore, his first wife faithfully accompanied his mother inlaw as a good daughter inlaw, never treated as a wife from the beginning until the end.
highly recommend "The Jakarta Method" if youre more interested to learn about the killings in 65-66 and how involved the west truly was in exploting that time and manipulating the whole situation. interesting time in their history and precursor to similar methodologies in other countries later on
I dont recommend it. It romanticizes the dictatorship overthrown by the next dictator The Indonesian Communist Party doesnt have any intention to keep the democratic system before 1959 should they gain majority, even among leftist partied. They butt heads with the Social Democratic party of "Indonesian Socialist Party" They knowingly cooperated with the Army and Islamist to uphold the Old Order(the dictatorship that dictator Soeharto overturned) The west exploited 1965, but they dont manipulated it. As the increasingly sick Soekarno endangers the communist's survival, with him dead. They too will be destroyed by the Army and Islamist. With it, the 30th September coup is a do it or never situation for them
I used to work in a hotel in Singapore owned by one of these rich Chinese Indonesian family empire by PT Nippon Indosari (run by Wendy Sui Cheng Yap dan Emily Yap Lan Cheng sisters), the company that sell Sari Roti bread. And like many of the rich Chinese crony, many of them fled to Singapore and parked their money in Singapore banks when the Suharto regime fell. And being Chinese ethnic with total billions dollars worth of cash and business opportunities in their briefcase, they are at advantage of getting Permanent Resident status and later offered Singapore citizenship by Singapore government. Many of them are Singaporean citizens now and still operating business in Indonesia using their Indonesian partners as proxy. About the hotel i used to work at, they didn't really intend the hotel to make it as a profit-running hospitality business. But rather the Yap sisters wanted to have an easily access meeting rooms and auditorium ballroom space for their church and other church groups retreats. So I could see how rich these people were that they didnt really care about the hotel is making profits or not. The hotel name is Changi Cove is you guys are wondering.
@@gungcandra3133 How was she when interacting with the staff? for us, she was rather quite be in cold tone most of the time. Her sister Emily was more friendly to us. And Whats the hotel name?
I still remember when this channel barely had 10k subscribers and that wasn’t long ago, well done and keep up the good job! You bring up so many interesting financial happenings.
You should make a documentary about the Freeport Grasberg mine next. The world's largest gold and copper reserves. Is worth documenting because the amount of money circulating in this Salim video is small in comparison to the money made from Freeport.
@@agape.ahimsa That is quite unusual. I heard of this from another Indonesian many years ago but I do not believe this. If true someone more powerful than Jokowi was untouchable and collude with US elite. The worst is US Congress never wanted to help Indonesia by giving Indonesia to export to US tariff free. If US give such export privileges to Indonesia, many MNC will invest FDI build factories in Indonesia providing millions of good paying jobs. Indonesia economy will also grow strong and stable. FYI, China have tremendous growth from 2000-2018 because China given the privilege to export to US tariff free. Majority poor Indonesians are sadly unaware they have been conned by US elite. I try to explain to some Indonesian how they have been conned by US elite but they did not believe. I very much wanted to help Indonesia people wake up and getting a better shot in live. But nobody wanted to listen to me. ( mojosing@yahoo.com )
@@zenlei8258 The current president of Indonesia Jokowi is a conscientious and capable president. After being owned by the United States for 51 years, Jokowi recently acquired half of the Freeport share, bringing the total ownership to 51% as of today.
@@zenlei8258 I used to be completely clueless. But after watching The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins review by Chapo Trap House, I realized the bigger picture.
great analysis, these names are famous yet i never really know about them. You can't find anything also on the internet, usually just stories that you hear from the elders. Superb.
Great presentation. In general Salim group companies were competently run. The Indomaret chains rollout to 20000+ stores was nothing short of spectacular.They absolutely crushed 7-11 and everyone else. You did not mention the scale of thei agribusiness operation which is really huge, focused on palm oil and its downstream products.
9:50 Ah yes, kretek cigarettes, especially Gudang Garam, I remember them clearly from my visit in 1989. Good memories, but I was happy to get back to regular cigarettes.
My parents are born in Indonesia. I have scattered memories of Indonesia in the 80s and 90s. 1997 was a huge turning point. As an ethnic Chinese, it’s an event we will likely never forget. Despite that, I always wish Indonesia well. Half of my family still lives there.
The riots in May 1998, ethnic Chinese became an easy target even though they no longer use their real names and have changed their religion from Confucianism to Christianity
@@paulclement4860 my last name was different under the Suharto presidency. We were forced into cultural assimilation and political abstinence. The 1998 events were organized by covert government forces (Kopassus, amongst others). Political violence (“demo”) is very often organized there, and the Chinese middle class are indeed scapegoats. My family and friends have experienced everything first hand. But we still wish the country well.
From a country who sacrifice their life for their land against foreigner...what would u expect? As chinese brought by the european to work in indonesia there were only 2 choises, stay and become indonesian or leave and back to mainland simple as that...i don't understand why people call it "forced assimilation" while actually it's a fucking free green card from the goverment...the people just got their freedom against "foreigner" who took their land and then they have to accept the "other" foreigner who wanted to stay.. so assimilation is the answer to proof that they would stay for the country not for their own community
After WW2 much of the entire world experienced many decades of strong economic growth. It's not clear that Suharto deserves any credit for Indonesia's economic growth during the 70's, 80's, and 90's. After all, the countries of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore all did better economically during those decades.
@@jdcsiahaan Even considering how _"so dirt poor"_ Indonesia was, it did not perform that well compared to its neighbors. Pretty much any ruler could have done at least as well economically (as long as they didn't start a war).
@@DemPilafianwell, i think Suharto deserve the credit for political stability compare to Sukarno. Those political stability allow economic growth. Which like you say is not that hard for dirt poor country to do. Unless you are north korea
John mentioned a documentary The Art of Killing It is as John said well worth watching and it's a real shocker It can be found on CZcams. 从 m surrealistic in parts, not its' portrayal, but in the events themselves.
I didnt know what to expect when i clicked on this video but the hook to indomie which is popular here in Kenya got me going. Great video asian man/woman/they/it/ appache heli
The Salims were sound businessmen, anyone who likened them the Russian oligarchs clearly had no idea what theyre talking about. The Russian oligarchs were bunch of gvngsters who got rich during the twillight of Soviet era. They loaned money to Yeltsins gov in return for some rights to control Russias vast natural resources, these people were no businessmen as shown by the stagnation of their bussinesses while The Salim have expanded to many other territories, Patrick Boyle made a great video about Russian oligarchs and why theyre different to oligarchs in the US, UK, Japan, or S. Korea. Personally speaking as an Indonesia i dont have problem if our goverment provided some privileges to some talented individuals, i am mature enough to understand how things work in real life and the fact is the same similar thing happened in many countries, including rich developed democratic countries. Problem lies on how you filter the bad apples and take them away from the basket. Suhartos downfall started when he gave privileges to his children, Tommy was given privilege to monopolized cloves, he was given tax-em for his car business, Bambang was given privilege to monopolized oranges, sad thing is these policies hurt the business and people who worked in it, like my late grandfather who forced to chop all his cloves trees down because he was running on great loss. If only Suharto listened to Benny Moerdani eeh...
Agreed. The Salims and many of the other cukong dynasties are much more benign 'necessary evil' compared to the russian oligarchs; especially we have to consider the decades of oppression, handicap , and discrimination toward Chinese descent (generally speaking) in Indonesia. Some of them even came from very humble background such as Eka Tjipta Wijaya (the patriarch of Sinarmas) who started off as a street peddler who never had proper education. In all seriousness, you can't really hate guys like those who fought against all odds and still reached the summit. Sure these guys are not saints, but they have done major good deeds for Indonesian economy, especially considering the unfavorable circumstances post WW2. I completely agree with your thought on filtering out the bad apples. Regardless of the system, a reasonable degree of meritocracy has to be enforced. Otherwise, things will just degenerate into incompetent feudalism.
i would love a video on crony capitalism in Asia, it seems like a major issue in the "Sinosphere" countries like China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and others. Both today and in most of their history in the PRC you needed a "patron" to succeed in the CCP or military and even today its nearly impossible to get ahead without some patron in the CCP with bribes being pretty standard. I've worked with Chinese expats and people who've worked in the PRC and I hear much the same from Indonesians as well, you often need to pay someone off or have a friend or relative to move you ahead, I even had a doctor who left the PRC because someone from the CCP had demanded part of her profits to get all the permits and licenses pushed through. Knew some westerners who all had to give part ownership to a CCP offical or a friend/relative of theirs. It's not even the same kind of corruption you see in South and Central America, the crony capitalism of East Asia is orderly, systemic, and integrated to such a degree it's more like a parallel government with its own "fees" and "taxes" you have to pay or you're not really "licensed". 8:00 China even has it's own similar story with the military once being funded heavily by official and unofficial businesses owned by the military, often the military just demanded part of the profits or part ownership of a company in return for preferential treatment, sometimes even providing labor or equipment (that's where some of the slave laborers in sweat shops once came from, they were often rounded up by the military or CCP) and its been fairly recent that the military became mostly disentangled from that arrangement.
@@phoebetan7519 I've heard a variety of definitions for it and one includes cultural influence or migration and many Chinese have settled in Indonesia in addition to other definitions like linguistic or philosophical influence, so even enemies of China like Japan are included due to past influences. I've also seen past tributary states which included some of the antecedent states that form modern Indonesia. The variety of definitions can make the term "sinosphere'" pretty nebulous, my family is part thai and their family line is descended from some Chinese courtly official that settled in Thailand back in the late Ming or early Qing since the Thai nobles used to get Chinese baeurecrats to help them run their demesne, since at the time the Chinese were famed for their administrators and scholars In a similar way that Jews or Catholic priests were once popular foreign courtiers for western nobles to hire on back during the medieval age
@@phoebetan7519 Many of Indonesia biggest brands were founded by Chinese immigrants, that alone should be enough to assess that Indonesia is heavily influenced by Chinese society, no matter how much some of the locals seem to hate it and refuse to acknowledge it.
@@arthas640 Dude, patronage has been part of human history since the dawn of Civilization, it has been one of many crucial elements on how the economy works, it's foolish to downplay it.
@@Napoleonic_S I'm not downplaying it. OP is a channel devoted towards mainly east and southeast Asian governments and major industries so I figure he could shed some light on it. The crony capitalism and nepotism in some places like China is huge, there are still many leaders in the CCP that are the relatives or friends of some of Mao's underlings, including the infamous "princlings". Nepotism is huge in some areas with business leaders snd officials getting businesses or other officials to appoint a relative of theirs to some cushy job (just look at how a grandson of Mao's recently became a general despite only having experience as a historian and amateur poet). Nepotism and cronyism happens everywhere but in some places like the PRC it's heavily ingrained in society and government. I don't know nearly enough about Chinese history, east Asian history, Confucism, or other related fields to tell why (with any level of real detail anyways) its so common there compared to a place like Canada or Egypt though
Can you do a video on the economy of Thailand? I'm interested in learning about the future direction of the economy. It should make an interesting video
Nice to have somebody outside Indonesia tell the country's situation. I used to pass Mr Lim's burnt old house which was never repaired. As if a monument to remind of his raise and his stop.
My mother actually had to use her mother's surname because her father's surname is Chinese and during that dark time you can't have Chinese surname, born in Indonesia but viewed as outsiders or even traitors, hated for being ethnic Chinese, stereotyped as being rich, corrupt and evil. But that was back then
same here, my grandma still has her name change certificate from back when she was forced to change her name to something that sounds more indigenous or risk being sent to china despite being born in the country
Nowhere as bad as Uighurs or Tibetans where the natives were displaced by Han Chinese and they are now largely sinicized. Chinese in Indonesia still can celebrate their cultural heritages.
Also the "using local name policy" is not just in Indonesia or in P.R.China only. For example during Ottoman times many Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, and Bosnians were Turkicized. Or like Thailand where it was obligated for non-ethnic Thai (including ethnic Chinese in Thailand) to use Thai names.
@@Etendard1708 intersting that you'd bring up other country's atrocities. why are you defending what happened in Indonesia? it sure seems like it. 2 things can be be bad at the same time it's not a competition. I can very easily deflect and say "well did you know how the Japanese treated Chinese citizens during their Meiji era?" Or "did you know how Na*I jermany treated Je*s during their regime" clearly that's got nothing on what china is doing. so does that make it okay in your eyes if I'm able to mention even worse atrocities? (censoring BC yt). Again, suffering is not a competition. What you're doing is minimizing what people in Indonesia went through just so that you can succeed in your agenda of making some other country look bad.
@@Etendard1708 does it look like I'm comparing it to what happened with Tibetans and Uighurs? Why do you even bring that up? During the riots people we're raped and killed how dare you use "nowhere as bad". If you hate CCP then hate it, but don't bring that topic here because I didn't mention anything about it nor did I compare it
hey please create a playlist for Successful and unsuccessful business biographies/stories from Asia.(e.g on how the richedt person in China last year was a man who sold water for a living etc, You'll definitely find more interesting stories around Asia! Another one can even be about how the Chinese Farmers literally took control of the Chinese Parliament!) 1:22
1998 riot injuring many man and woman? I think this is just part of it. Hundred chinese-Indonesian is injured, raped and killed. Thousand is moving abroad afraid of their safety. I know this video is about Salim Group, but I just want to give this small information.
the 1998 riots were not only ethnic Chinese who became victims, but there were also indigenous ethnicities who took part in fighting one against the other, such as riots between Muslims and Christians in Ambon, tribal wars in Kalimantan, So there is no need to dramatize as if only one party is the victim
It's going to be interesting if they make a movie/original limited series based off Indonesia conglomerates (including, the rise of new order era in Indonesia where all political nepo babies born, Cendana clans and the financial crisis of 1998) but yes, it will be hard to make in Indonesia since the capitalist clan still running the media corporation :/
Very interesting. Having lived in Jakarta from 1986 => 1989, and also done a number of contract jobs in Jakarta / Bali / Lombok I knew (and saw) some of the issues you mention, but did not know the full story. I worked all across SE Asia up through 2012 and enjoyed those days (and the people) so much, but of all the places I worked I always felt that there was an strong undercurrent of discontent in Indonesia, and that flashfire took place in 1998: 20 Years Later, Victims of Indonesia’s May 1998 Riots Are Still Waiting for Justice The victims of sexual violence, in particular, have been sidelined. By Jack Britton May 18, 2018.
Probably because all the wealth was centered around Java island or Jakarta more precisely. Jakarta was a giant city full of blips while the rest were still swampy underdeveloped regions. I am lucky enough to grow up during the final years of Suhartos New Order. My parents came to Jakarta from Bogor,the outskirt of Jakarta. Back in our village most people still had no access to electricity, i still remember we had one black and white television for whole village 😂 now that was Bogor imagine the situation in far outer regions? No wonder there was disgruntled among the people...
@@harukrentz435 that's not entirely true, suharto spent tons of money to develop all island, java is strip bare by the dutch colony so he had to think how to effectively manage the resource where all the concession of mining is signed on sukarno era and he can't do anything about it, at 1950 the western power back to indonesia with new form the multi national big company such as freeport and newmount..suharto had to deal with all of those and stay in power.
@@devatsdb7 are you trying to distort the fact here? LAUHABLE. Developing all islands when some Indonesians only had access for electricity in 2019. How old are you? Till 2003 my mom was still using oil stove (do you know what that is?) while my grandma was still cooking using firewood. Does it look developed to you? Also Sukarno was busy NATIONALIZING foreign companies in the 50's lol it was only in 1967 the liberation of economy started, under Suharto.
@@harukrentz435 Nationalising by soekarno was done because of Irian conflict as mentioned. Also a precondition of Soeharto receiving foreign aids through CGI and IGGI was that Soeharto reverse Soekarno nationalisation in addition to continue repaying Independence debt to the Netherlands as agreed in RTC (stopped by Soekarno around the same time). Indonesia seeing nothing of use IGGI disbanded, why would Dutch that decide where the development in Indonesia especially since it was not their money like from donor countries like Japan etc. Later changed to CGI headed by world bank though seeing also no use SBY disbanded them prefering bilateral relation with donor.
A good summary of Indonesia history. However, it come across as a negative portrail of Indonesia trying to establish its independence and self sufficiency. The crony capitalism that you described is no different that that happened in US and other so called democracies. Especially in a small nation and economy, you need one strong company to lead and grow internationally. Having many small companies fighting each other will result in disaster and foreign companies talking control. Being critical of IMF's control to open up to foreign corporation should be applauded as it just opens to nations who were involved in destroying the currency and economy to come in and buy up cheaply and control its economy. Any mention of student demonstrating for "democracy" just reeks of US CIA subversion.
Student were already demonstrating in the years prior to 1997. However, they were all silenced. No need for US CIA intervention. They took too many credits already 😂
In most third world countries…..crony capitalism is the order of the day. In India , the top twenty families own the bulk of all corporate wealth in India.
thank you for covering the origins of some of the biggest companies we have in Indonesia right now. but i wouldnt call Mochtar Riady a wunderkind, he was only the right person at the right time, just like Liem and Suharto. we have too much celebrity worship of them already.
@@HellCatLeMaudit Not only Chinese massacred dude. You oversimplified the history. Basically people who opposed Soeharto were massacred/suppressed.. like the local Indonesians who protested during Malari Incident 1974 or during Tanjung Priok incident 1984. You also don't know the history of Indonesia like when Suharto favored Robby Tjahjadi more (car smugglers - chinese descent) over the honest, discipline Police General Hoegeng Iman Santoso who tried to solve the car smuggling business in Indonesia. Hoegeng was later put out from duty. Prior to this problem, Hoegeng appeared in Canadian documentary "Wet Earth, Warm People" (1971)
@Wdasgo And you are the type who look down at native Indonesians, calling them "Low IQ".. "fan kui".. "huan-a / ang mo" etc.. and doesn't care about what Suharto did to honest people like Hoegeng Iman Santoso
Instead of building them, there are ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Indonesia, they are also destroying the economic order, dominating small markets and destroying natural ecosystems. The average Chinese company in Indonesia dumps waste indiscriminately and the access roads to companies, factories, their factories are bad and destroyed, local people complain but they don't care, even those who are more impudent when unemployment is rampant they still dare to bring in workers from China and discriminate against natives.
@@nyongsako07 not just Suharto destroyed the domestic economic order where the small & medium entreprises couldn't grow thanks to Suharto's favoritism of those conglomerates (his cronies), he also destroyed the law order by putting out honest men (Chief Police General Hoegeng Iman Santoso being the prime example) from law enforcement position.. and instilled the corruption habit in Indonesia for 32 years.
Thank you for making a well balance and research video. I thought the video will be all about trashing the Liem, Suharto, or the Natives; but the video explained everything so clearly everything becomes grey as it probably should be.
I loved this because I am writing a cyberpunk themed world and this dissection really helped explain economic power dynamics and how these sort of partnerships form and work to create essentially corporate feudalism.
I haven’t watched “The Act of Killing”, but I have heard that estimates of the number killed ran to over a million people. Most of the killing was done by Islamic hardliners, which in those days were considered to be right-wingers, and aligned with the (anti-communist) west. The victims were communists and Chinese; the two were synonymous. This should have been considered an act of genocide, but there has been no reckoning to this day. In the west, there is little sympathy for Chinese, who are deeply despised as sub-humans; to many in the west, killing of Chinese is considered a noble act.
Nowadays you have mass graves in Bali used as large parking spaces ! There was some book fair or something with "65 as an topic in Ubud (Bali) few years back ... Newer happened .. It was banned... And this guy Oppenheim who made the documentary (2 of them) is banned to enter Indonesia.
Maybe with lessons learned (Asian Crisis and other high inflation times) during this current worldwide (USA, Europe, China…..) economic slowdown many emerging markets countries like Indonesia, Brazil,…. In Latin America and Asia seems to be holding up quite well.
Asian financial crisis 1997-98 was caused by China predatory currency policy and joining WTO. All these planned by Wall Street elite globalisation plans to destroy American middle class.
Through First Pacific they also owned or still owns a lot of large companies in the Philippines from Telco(PLDT) TV5(a TV network), Metro Pacific Investments(Infrastructure, Hospitals) etc. The Managing Director of First Pacific is in fact a Filipino.
Wow... as 90s indonesian kids. I had corious about soeharto relation with lim. And how come 97 crisis happen. And this video really give well information to me what happen.
Indonesian here, and I really wish more youtubers talk about Indonesia's conglomerates. Aside of Salim family we also have Bakrie, Hartono Brothers (Djarum), Riady, and Ciputra families to name a few. It's such refreshing and insightful to see this kind of videos, and I really appreciate your work. Oh btw you just gained a new subscriber :)
Glad how well Asianometry explains the relationship between Soeharto and its business crony. Somehow there's anomaly in Soeharto-Chinese ethnic relations. In one way, Soeharto needed Chinese ethnic businesses for Indonesian economic and personal interests. On the other hand, New Order regime repressed the Chinese culture, even encouraged then to change their Chinese name into 'more Indonesian name' (that's why 'Lim' family name became 'Salim'). Regarding Indonesian sweatshop economy, IMF, and and 1965 turbulence, there is another documentary by John Pilger in 2002 "The New Ruler of the World". I always show this documentary to my students in Sociology class.
The policy of making ethnic Chinese to change their name with local name actually make them easier to blend to local population (benefitting them). Remember, Thailand already had the same policy: urging non Thai (including the ethnic chinese) to use Thai names.
@@Etendard1708 it's a forced assimilation for chinese Indonesian even till this day many natives indonesian still had a mindset that a Chinese indonesian did not fully blend until they choose to abandon their traditional culture, religion and customary and adopt local culture.. thats why till this very day many chinese parents ban their kids marrying/mingling with natives in fear their spouse will force them to adopt their culture and convert em to islam it's a total failure
@@hcdtrs9684 Nowhere as worse as when Americans forced Italian and German immigrants to anglicized their name & and abandoned their culture. Or when Han Chinese sinicized Uighurs, Manchurians, Inner Mongolians, and Tibetans.. while prevented them from dominating important aspects of their life whether it is central government politics or economy.
@@hcdtrs9684 So before you criticize Indonesia.. ask China about the forced sinicization toward non Han Chinese, ask why Thai forced non-Thai to use Thai name, ask Americans why they urged Italian and Hispanic immigrants to abandon their culture and anglicized their name.
thanks for the great insight of one of indonesia's conglomerate cronyism during the "new order" era under Suharto and the army, I'm a 3rd generation indonesian chinese born in the 70s and naturally I don't have chinese name nor ability to speak mandarin nor hokkian, I think Indonesia today is not much different than before there are still huge conglomerations here probably not so ethnic based anymore but these groups are everywhere manufacturing all the daily need consumer products, insurance, multimedia, etc, but at least there are some balance shared between several groups rather than one huge company like Samsung in South korea.
Very common story. Most big family business empires in South East Asia are built by Chinese diaspora, who came as merchants / immigrants that had little initial political power or connection to local nobility. It's their hard working and thrifty values that endure.
Did you dont watch the video? Lim came from China not penniless, He had well connected families and clan members that had settled and work with colonial goverment for centuries on the other hand most of Native Indonesian were illiterate and uneducated peasants from rural area that discouraged by dutch to move into the city let alone get an education.
@@TheMasterofComment tell me what that hard work is why they thrived?? I call bullshit there something else to it, because their close to china they used connections and other advantages to their leverage. I dont beleive you guys South East Asisan have a knack to lie to save face, and dont lie to me i know all about saving face.
Bullshit. Chinese also gain advantage due to the colonial policy divide and rule. They let the economy to the immigrants not to let the native empowered and kick the colonial powers out of the country.
Indonesians are brainwashed to be patriotic/nationalist rather than being pragmatic about their history. Any talk about communism or racism against the chinese is taboo.
A future video on Lippo Group would be interesting to see. I went to a university ran by the Riady family and I heard stories about how the University paid rent to the Lippo Group. Basically the allegations were that the Riady family was paying themselves rent as a tax loophole.
Quite a timing since Meikarta dispute is now on the rise.
Don't all Indonesian confglomerates do this ? Every big group has a university and a school run by them.
@@risannd njir ada risa
Lippo is a craddle to grave company, you born in their hospital, you live in their properties, you shop in their malls, you graduated in their schools, you work in their business complex and you die buried in their cemetery.
@@archingelus you're paid using their banks only to spend it on subscription to their internet service and watch their channels.
This video reminds me of one incident in Germany with Salim family. In the beginning of 2004 I was working at a hospital in Münster in Germany and the hospital head introduced me to a patient, which was being treated in the most expensive room. I was not aware who they were and the patient, Salim's wife, was a very nice lady. And in my stupidity I recommended to her to not stay long there as it was very expensive. However she reacted to me graceful (feel ashame until today when I think of it). To my surprise a few days later the room, the lounge and the hall to the her room were full of flowers, which had never happened in that hospital. To add to my injury I asked her daugther who the patient was. She just replied to me, "You don't know her?" Despite this they invited me to the birthday party for her, which was celebrated in an Indonesian restaurant called Bali in the city. Both Salim and his wife were very kind and humble. However the daugther always looked at me with dislike.
Haha this sounds straight out of Crazy Rich Asian film. Glad you got a long with the Salim.
They're rich and powerful, it is essential that everyone know who they are. Meh.
The daughter probably just wanted an attention. By the way, I have no idea who this Salim family is until I watched the video. Most sensible rich people know how easy it is for them to lose all their wealth. If you look into the history of Asia, it only takes the wrong dictator to assume power and pull the rug on anyone he doesn't like. This is why most sensible rich people don't push their luck by acting a fool, and they try to keep a low profile most of the time.
@@thepunisher2988 yup, the classic old asian businessman are just so quiet, they usually don't flaunt their wealth and stay lowkey.
Why would you feel ashamed? There is no reason why you should have known that that patient was wealthy, and you were acting with good intentions.
Thanks for this, no local/ Indonesian journalist would be brave enough to make something like this. There is a other,often we called, 9 dragons that occupying large portion of Indonesian Business/money until nowadays, I wish you call talk more about them.
Similar to Malaysia, the nine dragons
Ciu long... finally someone did know about this.. hahahaha...
@@bambangtheo5640 yep, but sadly nowadays there is no investigative books or report about current government bussiness practice being released yet. Only Social Media post that will quickly subset by the toxic fandom...
@@izzattaz6290 in Malaysia also have 9 dragons? Share the story please? They must be in business and underworld also?
@@charliechan8541 I don't want to comment further
1965-1966 massacre was really terrifying, my grandfather from my father's side was accused of feeding the communist because "his homes have a lot of dish & ware", then he was sent to prison without trial and was beaten to almost dead.
Most of my father's family escaped the 1998-1999 riot to Taiwan including my grandfather, he passed away last year cursing the Indonesian government.
Let's chat Whatsapp ☝️☝️
What bothers me is that Indonesia has hardly dealt with its darker past. I am Dutch and the Dutch try to deal with its darker past including slavery and economic exploitation of the Dutch East Indies. Why can Indonesia not do the same regarding the 1965-1966 mass killings? why doesn't it apologize? Why is this not treated in schools? Why do victims not get compensated?
@@andrieskrugersdagneaux5185 Muslims don't apologise.
@@andrieskrugersdagneaux5185 You are unfortunately extremely naive about the world and racial reality.
You will find that Whites are the only ones who are guilted into apologizing for past crimes while overlooking what others (like the Ottoman and Moor slavers) did to them. If the Turks do not apologize for the devşirme system and their harem of enslaved European women that lasted for hundreds of years, why would a country like Indonesia even bother to apologize for short-lived events that did not last a decade?
@@andrieskrugersdagneaux5185 It is likely because those that were involved in it are still alive to this day.
As an Indonesian, we know the name of Sudono Salim he is one of the richest man in Indonesia, but we only know a little information about who he is, because there is no bombastic news about him.
People like him are very low profile and immersed in Indonesian publicity, but actually they are who are very influential in Indonesian government when the government issues policies especially the economy policies most of it is the order of these people, they are very quiet playing behind the scenes of political economy and dramas stage but they are actually who own Indonesia.
Or all media don't have enough brave to reveal because he probably own most share in many media company.
I would add another interesting note: Lim Siew Liong a.k.a. Sudono Salim (founder of Salim group) and Bob Hasan were revealed to had been already in *shady business deals* with Suharto in 1950s. Suharto misused his authority when he became the army commander of a division in Central Java. Because of this corruption case, Suharto was then reprimanded by his superiors: General Ahmad Yani & A.H. Nasution. They were so angry on Suharto and his business cronies. This was in 1950s.
Fast forward when Suharto came into full power as president in 1970s, curiously, Sudono Salim was allowed by Suharto and he became business conglomerate in Indonesia. And Bob Hasan was picked as Suharto's Minister of Trade in 1998. Bob Hasan later was jailed for his compromised corruption case in February 2001.
So these men are not truly "honest" or hardworking. Quite controversial, instead.
But still the hegemony of suharto’s chinese still prevails and the chinese and non chinese communities still worship them and fear them as they can monopolise industries and strangle naysayers to death or scavenge for measly scraps.
All the big rich bussines people is never been honest, like every single one of them. When it comes to bussines, there is no such things as honest trade out there (Even if have one or two, they will never survive in long runs).but never doubt the hardwork, Is always there. Chinese people is famous of their hardwork. Something that the "real" Indonesian people most of them dont have this trait. Nowdays even worse, the young generations tend to blame people, goverment or whatever they think is good for their cause. But they lack of hardwork mindset. Which is why even we have lot of nature resources, we will always fall behind.
@@moh6410 we knew that there was a particular Chinese ethnic group who greatly benefited from the war and orde baru. They were very much pro-assimilation yet had strong links to China. They never belonged to the Peranakan and old migrant communities and frankly with all due respect, with the so many of their cultural appropriations and the things they did to the old migrants, I do not see them as a part of us. They pretend they are but they are not. Not all of them but quite a few of them.
@@glowinz you certainly do not know Indonesia and oblivious of the difference between us voluntary migrants and people whose traditional ways of life are disrupted and experiencing cross-generational trauma from forced modernised capitalism.
Another interesting note: Soeharto favoritism over his cronies like Robby Tjahjadi (chinese descent - car smugglers) was also the factor of why the honest, discipline Police General *Hoegeng Iman Santoso* was put out from his duty, after he tried to track the car smuggling activities in the 1970s.
Your doing great analysis as always, either it was your video about Soviet venus program, tmsc plan in the us, or our country's new orders history. Again, thank you for doing all of that.
I've seen some of your videos about economics of asian countries, and i see the similarities between Suharto's regime and the south korean ones. I see the need of stability to push forward of economical growth and by relying with cronyism was seemed as the quickest route. But as someone was said, corruption do more damage to the system rather than it's monetary value.
As a person who born after the chaos at the end of Suharto's fall, we were the ones who handle the mess after that regime's mess. While suharto and salim wasn't the one who hold the monopoly of our economy anymore (still noticeable player though) their practice of cronyism is already deep rooted and while it seems gradually faded away, it's still there and affecting our way of doing business. Most of business magnates (or corrupt politicians) still handles their business and contracts to closest relations rather than doing it in competitive manner. While suharto and salim was long dead, we had many mini suhartos and salims doing the same thing for themselves in many aspects either in economy or politics. Far away of sukarno's and majority of Indonesians traditional values.
If those 7% of GDP growth average in 3 decades was spread more fairly to the people our GDP per Capita maybe comparable to Malaysia today, but it isn't. Our GDP per Capita now isn't even half of Malaysia's and don't even a third of the south korean one's. This leave the wealth being stuck by the rich and with cronyism still intact, a harder start for us average indonesians even compared to after independence.
While it's not easy for them to got away with the wealth from benefits of Suharto's legacy, but i would say what they were doing is still much more easier than many people who live in rural areas who surviving from working as contract farmer, working hard to get paid almost nothing by the corporates only to get by, and live with poverty until in the old years as i see them myself.
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FINALLY an Asianometry video about Indonesia!
Thanks so much for providing an objective narration of not only about the Salim Group, but also some of Indonesia's most controversial past. Many of the crucial historical events mentioned in the video (especially ones regarding how Suharto came into and lost from power) were sadly never taught to us in school, so I believe most Indonesians never knew the truth about our country.
If you don't mind, would you please share the information sources (especially books) you used for creating this video? As an Indonesian myself, I would love to get a deep dive on Indonesia's history.
letsgooo
I recommend "Liem Sioe Liong's Salim Group: The Business Pillar of Suharto's Indonesia". Worth to read.
Iam indonesian viewer.. love about chip
100% agree with you! as an Indonesians viewer, I always interested to our Asia brothers topics. But when he talking about our own country, it hit us in different ways :D
I was just about to comment about the lack of focus in this channel on the 4th largest country in the world.
Crony capitalism is breaking up in Indonesia and being replaced by landlordism as the latest generation of congolomerate kids lack their parents' ability to work the bureaucracy to their favor; this is highlighted in how many plantations have returned to their rightful owners/tribal groups with congolomates like Astra and Salim now renting most of their palm oil/forest concession land. The Meikarta case is the tipping point of this; the likely outcome is that Lippo might get bankrupt sooner or later and the government no longer has laws forcing foreign corporations to give away shares to local crony capitalists for no good reason
True but this is also because of democracy. Last time when you want something done you go to Suharto and no one dares to oppose you. Nowadays when you want to get something done, you have to work with a lot of different factions and even then some will still want a piece of the pie. It is much harder to coordinate nowadays.
Let us see the demises of Salim Group, Lippo Group and other conglomerate Groups during Jokowi era’s …..Mayapada Group, Jarum Group.
@@normans2792 why Jarum group why not Agung Sedayu group? Have i missed anything?
Which is great and in favour to the local
First Pacific invested in the Philippines for the Telecommunication business. SMART telecom became one of the biggest duopoly along with Globe Telecoms. Its chairman used to work in Hong Kong's First Pacific before investing in the Philippines.
Liem once called Manny V. Pangilinan, Managing Director of First Pacific, his savior because MVP saved the Liem family from bankruptcy. If First Pacific had not wisely invested in companies that grew---Smart, PLDT, Lazada---Liem would have been totally bankrupted.
I See now how!
@@HellCatLeMauditManny V. Pangilinan is an ethnic Chinese himself. The overseas chinese business group really take care of each other.
Salim has a proxy in the Philippines holding large shares in utilities and telecoms - Manny Pangilinan/First Pacific
Finally someone makes a story about Indonesia. It's such a populous country and yet we barely know anything about it
Indonesia is more like a bunch of small countries that are still somehow one nation...
Religion mixed communist based ideology. That's about it.
The reason you don't hear about it is because in the 60's the West (USA & Mi5) orchestrated the biggest political genocide in history. Every member or affiliate of the Indonesian Communist party was tracked down and hacked to death. Most were buried in the beaches of Bali.. Now it's a surf spot for rich tourists.
*This video completely omits the Western involvement and tells the story from the perspective of the dictatorship*
" But after seven years of close cooperation with Washington, the military was already well equipped. You also don’t need advanced weaponry to arrest civilians who provide almost no resistance. What officials in the embassy and the CIA decided the Army really did need, however, was information. Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and “checked off” the list.
Another million people were rounded up into concentration camps for detention, where they were subjected to starvation, forced labor, torture, and ideological re-education. It was an infamous “victory” that no one wanted to remember."
Source: "The Jakarta Method: How the U.S. Used Mass Murder To Beat Communism"
Estimates range from 1-3 million killed. It was so successful that Indonesia turned from a major 'threat' to an uninteresting backwater (to the West) run by a military dictatorship. The technique of mass disappearances was named "The Jakarta method" and used again in Chile by Pinochet.
They were an electoral party and completely unarmed.
@@yohaneschristianp religion mixed communist ideology?
1. Its not religion that unites us indonesians, if anything its the one tearing us apart. The government i think planted a very strong identity in all of indonesia to the point that its very taboo to even think of seperating (yes, more taboo than religion). And now people for the most part are already complacent with being indonesians, like would any indonesian (except for papuans) think of even seperating from indonesia when it will only fuck them over. We dont care about difference in ethnicity.
2. How the fuck did communism even come into this. If theres 2 things that a lot of indonesians hate, its the west and communism because we have a history of being fucked over by those two.
@@yohaneschristianp bro communism died in 1966. now we're full capitalism where you have to pay to go to toilet. Religius conservatism is correct tho
Edit: I just realized that most toilets are free after a local governor did some inspections. But still money is crucial when talking about serving justice.
We have a Salim group in India Kerala, in Kollam. They are a speciality hotel which serves mutton curry in fact the best mutton curry and Kerala Parotta in the local.
Is there anything here to boast about?
Kerala destroyed by muslims
that's different
I met someone who married one of the Liem's daughters. The marriage was strongly opposed by the Liem family because he was not Indonesian and was pretty much a poor, average guy with no connections. They opposed it to such an extent that he was offered a blank cheque just to leave her. He rejected that cheque and that daughter left the family. I thought he was joking only to find out his wife's surname. I suppose when your family runs a multi-billion dollar business underpinned by corruption, you would be worried about the intents of an outsider marrying into the family.
Liem only has 1 daughter, doesnt he? Mira salim and she is married to an indonesian
Dato Tahir?
LOL only if the groom has no money. They were not corrupt, the goverment were the one who asked for the kickbacks. You wouldnt get the deal without giving them.
unfortunately, this thing very common in chinesee families back then; including mine. My mom & dad considered as "biasa a.k.a commoners" level, and turn out I do had families at "Jendral a.k.a General" level (the naming taken from Suharto military background who prefer share his wealth to his generals). They do had wealth , not as rich as Salim, but they do had huge wealth... I mean they always schools their child to overseas.
One example, one of my uncles is actually a board of director on Indonesia largest tire manufacture (and quite linked to Indomobil actually as I know). He know my mom, but I never know him until mum mom introduce me to him at my grandma funeral. Not proud to be, but my mom always teach me to never ask for a job to him or to other "generals", as she able standing by her self without any help form them.
and now, I know why my mom teach me & my brother that.... Just few weeks ago, my other realtive died (never know him), so my mom decided to pay him visit for last time (called malam kembang in Indonesia, the last night before the person burried/cremated). On one of the lunch, turn out my other cousin who know him & other "generals" often ask for new job because they not capable their old job... which also given from them. Then suddenly they ask my mom why me & my brother never ask for a job from them. My mom simply said: They simply never ask me for it, and they search the job by themself. Because of that, I never ask you Qiu (is mean uncle)... why you ask about them suddenly?
My uncle the ask my brother & my education, where we work now, and what we do and etc... At the end, they feel weird and stop asking. But after that, one of my aunt (close relative to her, and I know her) said: well, they think you same as your brother (who ask job for her son & daughter), but they never know how succesfull you are... Well, they think to step into your house; as they see you as "poor" and never own house. And that why I never know them until now, and she can stand proud in front of them, never fuss with them for any reason.
Liem only has 1 daughter and 3 sons
you met someone else
The Act of Killing is one of my favorite documentaries. I am glad you recommended it.
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Anyone interested in the political context of "The Act of Killing" should read "The Jakarta Method", written after it came out about the international political context.
@@jasonmunderloh2557 thanks! I've just got myself a copy
@@jasonmunderloh2557 the cat of killing.. what was it about?
Surprisingly you've done a great work presenting the history of Salim group with such a depth.
Really appreciate video about indonesia man, some suggestion for next topic such as "Why Indonesia National Car don't succed" or "state owned company in Indonesia" or "Why Indonesia didn"t even try with Semiconductor Manufacturing"
Admiral Sudomo, then the Man-Power Minister, forbade modernizing National Semiconductor and Fairchild back in the 1980s because it would reduce human resources. They quit.
one word, corruption
@@kevinwijaya9613 It seems that corruption was not the cause. For this issue, I believe more in "Consiparation Theory." As early as the 1970s, General Suharto realizes that the country needs a strong "military industry." As a first step, he hoped that by the end of the 1970s, a motor vehicle industry would be formed. But, "the Old Brothers from that Far East Country" actively spread public opinion that Indonesia is not ready for that, and there is no need to (rebuild) the train infrastructure. Their intentions were obvious, to sell their vehicle's product through Liem (Indomobil) and William (ASTRA).
National car? They are just Korean parts reassembled and the Japanese was pissed. Its cheaper just to buy them directly from Korea.
Semiconductor? Pretty much lack of vision among its elite. Same with nuclear power. Retards who cant think long term plan always get into power.
@Johnnie Walker are you even indonesian? Lol
You have no idea how much native indonesians hate those oligarchs from the far east. There is no way they can influence public opinion like that. Sure, they have motive to sell cars, but politically, they're soeharto's hostages.
If anything, the only force capable of swaying public opinions in indonesia is the religious group like oelamas. No matter how honest a living we make, us chinks are always treated with suspicion. You think chinks can sway public opinion? Preposterous lol
Great video. Been really wanting to understand Indonesian history a bit better and you did a ripper job
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Really appreciate the multi perspectivae views of things happening in Indonesia's history. As any other country's history and politics, it's grey. I see that many non Indonesians would criticise so much, but some Indonesians would also hide from it's dark past.
Chips - The ones that you can eat 😂
Lol to be fair, i think it's appropriate
Made me LOL… since the channel usually covers the other kind of chips…. 😀
Chinese Indonesians being simultaneously viewed as communist proxies and also beneficiaries of crony capitalism is one of those little bitter ironies in life.
I also like how the separation of political and economic/financial power is made explicit in the video -- in the West/developed world, economic power is often conflated with political power, but that's only because of strong legal codes and property rights. In Suharto-era Indonesia, as in many countries with authoritarian tendencies and weak legal systems, political power is derived from force/threat of force (the army).
It's been said that Suharto losing the support of the Indonesian Army (and specifically, the general in charge of the Army Strategic Reserve, which would have been the most potent military unit near Jakarta on the eve of Suharto's resignation) was the final nail in the coffin of his rule.
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i remember at that time wiranto as Indonesian armed forces commander literally ordered troops from much stable and far region like like East Java to come to secure Jakarta, because the army commander in Jakarta and West Java are deem not trusted enough since they're being considered as reformist and are not loyal with Suharto.
which is why its widely believe that the chaos in Jakarta as part of negliance by anti-suharto general so suharto will step down as president but unfortunately the chinese-indonesian in Jakarta have to suffer from that act.
This would be Chinese minorities all over South East Asia.
Like the Jews, they're both viewed as greedy capitalist out to exploit the natives and staunch communist simultaneously.
@@MrGreghome You’ve hit it on the nail, i believe there was also a past Thai king that explicitly called overseas Chinese the Jews of SE Asia.
The other minority group that could maybe relate to this is Indians in East and South Africa.
@@awijaya2116 everyone's just looking for a scapegoat.
Indians in Uganda and Kenya get expulsed, but no one cared because they're not Jewish.
Salim family controls one of the biggest conglomerates (MVP group) in the Philippines. The MVP group controls PLDT-Smart , Meralco, NLEX among others. These are top companies in the country. The MVP group has three teams in the Philippine Basketball Association. It funds and operates the Gilas program and some other sports program. Suharto and Marcos are listed as the biggest thieves in the world. The main difference is that bulk of the funds were invested by Suharto cronies in the Indonesian and ASEAN economy while Marcos hid Philippine money in Swiss banks and real estate abroad.
Suharto has more sense then. not discounting his past actions though
Crony capitalism "might" be necessary for countries that got their independence after WWII and wanted to build their industry fast. For example, country A just got independence in 1950 and were left without any strong local industry player. So, to build industry with national players. It might be necessary to "breast feed" some companies aka cronies to enable them to grow in a short amount of time. As I live in south east asia, this is a common formula not only in Indonesia but also Malaysia & Singapore. However, crony capitalism should be dismantle after some time as cronyism is very detrimental to competition and efficiency.
Yeah, almost every asian countries rose under a shady authoritarian dictators.
@Lord Vader Exactly, at this point Samsung and other Chaebols should be segmented for the good of the country but I don't think they will... Ironically because these conglomerates are powerful enough to stop said segmentation... It's a complex situation for sure
Crony capitalism is a bit tautological because capitalism will devolve to cronyism regardless. There’s better ways to bring up the economy and enrich people without using cronyism.
@@kiuk_kiks The issue is no country in history has figured out how to so maybe it's not that simple.
@@j4genius961 Well the Chaebols are overworking their employees to the extent Koreans are refusing to have children. Thats not sustainable.
"despite this he married and survived"
sounds like marriage is somewhat dangerous over there :D
well it's wartimes the tension is still high, so yeah.
You have no clue lol
Anywhere, anytime, any country
No actually the first reason why Lim Siou Liong was successful because he got lucky married into a rich girl, his father in law was the richest Chinese merchant in the town, after marriage he got funded by his father in law to establish his first bussiness venture, and all this happened way before Japanese occupation and WW II
when japan attacked china he fled to indonesia leaving his mother but before he fled he got married so that his wife could takecare his mother in china. after he stayed in indonesia he married again with rich educated chinese girl that is his true love. when he was successful he returned to china to pick up his mother and first wife to stay in singapore, his first wife faithfully accompanied his mother inlaw as a good daughter inlaw, never treated as a wife from the beginning until the end.
It's pronounced "Leem", not "Lee-AM". The "ie" was the Dutch way of differentating the [i] ("ee" as in tree) sound to [ɛ] (ea as in "bear")
Looks like he realized his mistake halfway through, and switched to "Leem" from around 12:13
The fact he tried to pronounce it as correctly as possible despite he does not speak indonesian at all kinda appreciated already
@@archingelus I realise that. Just pointing out if he wants to cover Indonesians with such similarity.
Is it true that suharto is actually chinese ? And his mum was actually a maid
@@charliechan8541 AFAIK his parents are javanese not chinese, they separate and he has foster family
11:25 I love how you take the time to sprinkle some funny bits in your videos.
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highly recommend "The Jakarta Method" if youre more interested to learn about the killings in 65-66 and how involved the west truly was in exploting that time and manipulating the whole situation. interesting time in their history and precursor to similar methodologies in other countries later on
I dont recommend it. It romanticizes the dictatorship overthrown by the next dictator
The Indonesian Communist Party doesnt have any intention to keep the democratic system before 1959 should they gain majority, even among leftist partied. They butt heads with the Social Democratic party of "Indonesian Socialist Party"
They knowingly cooperated with the Army and Islamist to uphold the Old Order(the dictatorship that dictator Soeharto overturned)
The west exploited 1965, but they dont manipulated it. As the increasingly sick Soekarno endangers the communist's survival, with him dead. They too will be destroyed by the Army and Islamist. With it, the 30th September coup is a do it or never situation for them
I used to work in a hotel in Singapore owned by one of these rich Chinese Indonesian family empire by PT Nippon Indosari (run by Wendy Sui Cheng Yap dan Emily Yap Lan Cheng sisters), the company that sell Sari Roti bread. And like many of the rich Chinese crony, many of them fled to Singapore and parked their money in Singapore banks when the Suharto regime fell.
And being Chinese ethnic with total billions dollars worth of cash and business opportunities in their briefcase, they are at advantage of getting Permanent Resident status and later offered Singapore citizenship by Singapore government. Many of them are Singaporean citizens now and still operating business in Indonesia using their Indonesian partners as proxy.
About the hotel i used to work at, they didn't really intend the hotel to make it as a profit-running hospitality business. But rather the Yap sisters wanted to have an easily access meeting rooms and auditorium ballroom space for their church and other church groups retreats. So I could see how rich these people were that they didnt really care about the hotel is making profits or not. The hotel name is Changi Cove is you guys are wondering.
When i was working at a hotel in Bali i met Wendy Yap nearly every week
@@gungcandra3133 How was she when interacting with the staff? for us, she was rather quite be in cold tone most of the time. Her sister Emily was more friendly to us. And Whats the hotel name?
I still remember when this channel barely had 10k subscribers and that wasn’t long ago, well done and keep up the good job!
You bring up so many interesting financial happenings.
You should make a documentary about the Freeport Grasberg mine next. The world's largest gold and copper reserves. Is worth documenting because the amount of money circulating in this Salim video is small in comparison to the money made from Freeport.
So did deep state from Congress taken most of the Freeport mineral wealth ?
@@zenlei8258 Yes, they did.
@@agape.ahimsa
That is quite unusual. I heard of this from another Indonesian many years ago but I do not believe this.
If true someone more powerful than Jokowi was untouchable and collude with US elite.
The worst is US Congress never wanted to help Indonesia by giving Indonesia to export to US tariff free. If US give such export privileges to Indonesia, many MNC will invest FDI build factories in Indonesia providing millions of good paying jobs. Indonesia economy will also grow strong and stable.
FYI, China have tremendous growth from 2000-2018 because China given the privilege to export to US tariff free.
Majority poor Indonesians are sadly unaware they have been conned by US elite.
I try to explain to some Indonesian how they have been conned by US elite but they did not believe.
I very much wanted to help Indonesia people wake up and getting a better shot in live. But nobody wanted to listen to me.
( mojosing@yahoo.com )
@@zenlei8258 The current president of Indonesia Jokowi is a conscientious and capable president. After being owned by the United States for 51 years, Jokowi recently acquired half of the Freeport share, bringing the total ownership to 51% as of today.
@@zenlei8258 I used to be completely clueless. But after watching The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins review by Chapo Trap House, I realized the bigger picture.
bro I've been waiting for this, thank you.
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great analysis, these names are famous yet i never really know about them. You can't find anything also on the internet, usually just stories that you hear from the elders. Superb.
Great presentation. In general Salim group companies were competently run. The Indomaret chains rollout to 20000+ stores was nothing short of spectacular.They absolutely crushed 7-11 and everyone else. You did not mention the scale of thei agribusiness operation which is really huge, focused on palm oil and its downstream products.
czcams.com/video/wFGHpPC906c/video.html
Indomaret competes with Alfamart. Not exactly crushed.
9:50 Ah yes, kretek cigarettes, especially Gudang Garam, I remember them clearly from my visit in 1989. Good memories, but I was happy to get back to regular cigarettes.
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My parents are born in Indonesia. I have scattered memories of Indonesia in the 80s and 90s. 1997 was a huge turning point. As an ethnic Chinese, it’s an event we will likely never forget. Despite that, I always wish Indonesia well. Half of my family still lives there.
The riots in May 1998, ethnic Chinese became an easy target even though they no longer use their real names and have changed their religion from Confucianism to Christianity
During the May 1998 incident, Chinese people were made scapegoats and shop houses were looted and burned by perpetrators of political violence
@@paulclement4860 is confucianism the same as buddhism? cause all chinese people that i've met here are either buddhist or christian
@@paulclement4860 my last name was different under the Suharto presidency. We were forced into cultural assimilation and political abstinence. The 1998 events were organized by covert government forces (Kopassus, amongst others). Political violence (“demo”) is very often organized there, and the Chinese middle class are indeed scapegoats. My family and friends have experienced everything first hand. But we still wish the country well.
From a country who sacrifice their life for their land against foreigner...what would u expect? As chinese brought by the european to work in indonesia there were only 2 choises, stay and become indonesian or leave and back to mainland simple as that...i don't understand why people call it "forced assimilation" while actually it's a fucking free green card from the goverment...the people just got their freedom against "foreigner" who took their land and then they have to accept the "other" foreigner who wanted to stay.. so assimilation is the answer to proof that they would stay for the country not for their own community
After WW2 much of the entire world experienced many decades of strong economic growth. It's not clear that Suharto deserves any credit for Indonesia's economic growth during the 70's, 80's, and 90's. After all, the countries of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore all did better economically during those decades.
I would say he does deserve some credit. Indonesia in the late Sukarno era pas so dirt poor after all, with a 600% inflation rate
@@jdcsiahaan Even considering how _"so dirt poor"_ Indonesia was, it did not perform that well compared to its neighbors. Pretty much any ruler could have done at least as well economically (as long as they didn't start a war).
@@DemPilafianwell, i think Suharto deserve the credit for political stability compare to Sukarno. Those political stability allow economic growth. Which like you say is not that hard for dirt poor country to do. Unless you are north korea
Indo mie got me through uni. 38 aussie cents per meal. Hard to beat.
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11:32 : at last a mention of chips! Thanks, a very good history lesson on Indonesia.
I thought he is snacking on i7s
Love the old pictures of cities in Asia
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I can't believe you've done this video, such a great undercover stories
Consider me impressed thats one hell of a research you just did.
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John mentioned a documentary The Art of Killing It is as John said well worth watching and it's a real shocker
It can be found on CZcams. 从 m surrealistic in parts, not its' portrayal, but in the events themselves.
Cukong is pronounced like Chukong/Tsukong. the letter C in Indonesian was inherited from the Dutch. they use that letter for like CH sound
I didnt know what to expect when i clicked on this video but the hook to indomie which is popular here in Kenya got me going. Great video asian man/woman/they/it/ appache heli
Liem Sioe Liong name pronunciation for english speakers is : Lim Siew Leong
The Salims were sound businessmen, anyone who likened them the Russian oligarchs clearly had no idea what theyre talking about. The Russian oligarchs were bunch of gvngsters who got rich during the twillight of Soviet era. They loaned money to Yeltsins gov in return for some rights to control Russias vast natural resources, these people were no businessmen as shown by the stagnation of their bussinesses while The Salim have expanded to many other territories, Patrick Boyle made a great video about Russian oligarchs and why theyre different to oligarchs in the US, UK, Japan, or S. Korea.
Personally speaking as an Indonesia i dont have problem if our goverment provided some privileges to some talented individuals, i am mature enough to understand how things work in real life and the fact is the same similar thing happened in many countries, including rich developed democratic countries. Problem lies on how you filter the bad apples and take them away from the basket. Suhartos downfall started when he gave privileges to his children, Tommy was given privilege to monopolized cloves, he was given tax-em for his car business, Bambang was given privilege to monopolized oranges, sad thing is these policies hurt the business and people who worked in it, like my late grandfather who forced to chop all his cloves trees down because he was running on great loss. If only Suharto listened to Benny Moerdani eeh...
Agreed. The Salims and many of the other cukong dynasties are much more benign 'necessary evil' compared to the russian oligarchs; especially we have to consider the decades of oppression, handicap , and discrimination toward Chinese descent (generally speaking) in Indonesia. Some of them even came from very humble background such as Eka Tjipta Wijaya (the patriarch of Sinarmas) who started off as a street peddler who never had proper education. In all seriousness, you can't really hate guys like those who fought against all odds and still reached the summit. Sure these guys are not saints, but they have done major good deeds for Indonesian economy, especially considering the unfavorable circumstances post WW2.
I completely agree with your thought on filtering out the bad apples. Regardless of the system, a reasonable degree of meritocracy has to be enforced. Otherwise, things will just degenerate into incompetent feudalism.
i would love a video on crony capitalism in Asia, it seems like a major issue in the "Sinosphere" countries like China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and others. Both today and in most of their history in the PRC you needed a "patron" to succeed in the CCP or military and even today its nearly impossible to get ahead without some patron in the CCP with bribes being pretty standard. I've worked with Chinese expats and people who've worked in the PRC and I hear much the same from Indonesians as well, you often need to pay someone off or have a friend or relative to move you ahead, I even had a doctor who left the PRC because someone from the CCP had demanded part of her profits to get all the permits and licenses pushed through. Knew some westerners who all had to give part ownership to a CCP offical or a friend/relative of theirs. It's not even the same kind of corruption you see in South and Central America, the crony capitalism of East Asia is orderly, systemic, and integrated to such a degree it's more like a parallel government with its own "fees" and "taxes" you have to pay or you're not really "licensed". 8:00 China even has it's own similar story with the military once being funded heavily by official and unofficial businesses owned by the military, often the military just demanded part of the profits or part ownership of a company in return for preferential treatment, sometimes even providing labor or equipment (that's where some of the slave laborers in sweat shops once came from, they were often rounded up by the military or CCP) and its been fairly recent that the military became mostly disentangled from that arrangement.
Indonesia is part of the Sinosphere? That will be news to the Indonesians... :P
@@phoebetan7519 I've heard a variety of definitions for it and one includes cultural influence or migration and many Chinese have settled in Indonesia in addition to other definitions like linguistic or philosophical influence, so even enemies of China like Japan are included due to past influences. I've also seen past tributary states which included some of the antecedent states that form modern Indonesia. The variety of definitions can make the term "sinosphere'" pretty nebulous, my family is part thai and their family line is descended from some Chinese courtly official that settled in Thailand back in the late Ming or early Qing since the Thai nobles used to get Chinese baeurecrats to help them run their demesne, since at the time the Chinese were famed for their administrators and scholars In a similar way that Jews or Catholic priests were once popular foreign courtiers for western nobles to hire on back during the medieval age
@@phoebetan7519
Many of Indonesia biggest brands were founded by Chinese immigrants, that alone should be enough to assess that Indonesia is heavily influenced by Chinese society, no matter how much some of the locals seem to hate it and refuse to acknowledge it.
@@arthas640
Dude, patronage has been part of human history since the dawn of Civilization, it has been one of many crucial elements on how the economy works, it's foolish to downplay it.
@@Napoleonic_S I'm not downplaying it. OP is a channel devoted towards mainly east and southeast Asian governments and major industries so I figure he could shed some light on it. The crony capitalism and nepotism in some places like China is huge, there are still many leaders in the CCP that are the relatives or friends of some of Mao's underlings, including the infamous "princlings". Nepotism is huge in some areas with business leaders snd officials getting businesses or other officials to appoint a relative of theirs to some cushy job (just look at how a grandson of Mao's recently became a general despite only having experience as a historian and amateur poet).
Nepotism and cronyism happens everywhere but in some places like the PRC it's heavily ingrained in society and government. I don't know nearly enough about Chinese history, east Asian history, Confucism, or other related fields to tell why (with any level of real detail anyways) its so common there compared to a place like Canada or Egypt though
Well researched and presented, nice one
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Can you do a video on the economy of Thailand? I'm interested in learning about the future direction of the economy. It should make an interesting video
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Nice to have somebody outside Indonesia tell the country's situation.
I used to pass Mr Lim's burnt old house which was never repaired.
As if a monument to remind of his raise and his stop.
Until now anti-Chinese sentiment is still often heard in Indonesia, especially before a political year such as regional or presidential elections
Great informative video as always. 👍
@Asainometry go scam someone else SMH
What a superb video, I appreciate this Sir. Subscribed.
Even as Indonesian, I don't really know this deep. Thank you.
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My mother actually had to use her mother's surname because her father's surname is Chinese and during that dark time you can't have Chinese surname, born in Indonesia but viewed as outsiders or even traitors, hated for being ethnic Chinese, stereotyped as being rich, corrupt and evil. But that was back then
same here, my grandma still has her name change certificate from back when she was forced to change her name to something that sounds more indigenous or risk being sent to china despite being born in the country
Nowhere as bad as Uighurs or Tibetans where the natives were displaced by Han Chinese and they are now largely sinicized. Chinese in Indonesia still can celebrate their cultural heritages.
Also the "using local name policy" is not just in Indonesia or in P.R.China only. For example during Ottoman times many Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, and Bosnians were Turkicized. Or like Thailand where it was obligated for non-ethnic Thai (including ethnic Chinese in Thailand) to use Thai names.
@@Etendard1708 intersting that you'd bring up other country's atrocities. why are you defending what happened in Indonesia? it sure seems like it. 2 things can be be bad at the same time it's not a competition. I can very easily deflect and say "well did you know how the Japanese treated Chinese citizens during their Meiji era?" Or "did you know how Na*I jermany treated Je*s during their regime" clearly that's got nothing on what china is doing. so does that make it okay in your eyes if I'm able to mention even worse atrocities? (censoring BC yt).
Again, suffering is not a competition.
What you're doing is minimizing what people in Indonesia went through just so that you can succeed in your agenda of making some other country look bad.
@@Etendard1708 does it look like I'm comparing it to what happened with Tibetans and Uighurs? Why do you even bring that up? During the riots people we're raped and killed how dare you use "nowhere as bad". If you hate CCP then hate it, but don't bring that topic here because I didn't mention anything about it nor did I compare it
Excellent!! Quite informative and educational.
Indomi mi goreng is very popular in Australia. I think growing up all my friends would eat a bowl after school.
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hey please create a playlist for Successful and unsuccessful business biographies/stories from Asia.(e.g on how the richedt person in China last year was a man who sold water for a living etc, You'll definitely find more interesting stories around Asia! Another one can even be about how the Chinese Farmers literally took control of the Chinese Parliament!) 1:22
1998 riot injuring many man and woman? I think this is just part of it. Hundred chinese-Indonesian is injured, raped and killed. Thousand is moving abroad afraid of their safety.
I know this video is about Salim Group, but I just want to give this small information.
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the 1998 riots were not only ethnic Chinese who became victims, but there were also indigenous ethnicities who took part in fighting one against the other, such as riots between Muslims and Christians in Ambon, tribal wars in Kalimantan, So there is no need to dramatize as if only one party is the victim
@@eustasskidd5671 but he was right🤷♂️ ethinc chinese do actually suffer the most.
Very well presented video on the Salim Group. Good job.
I Just watch what ever u upload so good to watch
It's going to be interesting if they make a movie/original limited series based off Indonesia conglomerates (including, the rise of new order era in Indonesia where all political nepo babies born, Cendana clans and the financial crisis of 1998) but yes, it will be hard to make in Indonesia since the capitalist clan still running the media corporation :/
Very interesting. Having lived in Jakarta from 1986 => 1989, and also done a number of contract jobs in Jakarta / Bali / Lombok I knew (and saw) some of the issues you mention, but did not know the full story. I worked all across SE Asia up through 2012 and enjoyed those days (and the people) so much, but of all the places I worked I always felt that there was an strong undercurrent of discontent in Indonesia, and that flashfire took place in 1998: 20 Years Later, Victims of Indonesia’s May 1998 Riots Are Still Waiting for Justice The victims of sexual violence, in particular, have been sidelined. By Jack Britton May 18, 2018.
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Probably because all the wealth was centered around Java island or Jakarta more precisely. Jakarta was a giant city full of blips while the rest were still swampy underdeveloped regions. I am lucky enough to grow up during the final years of Suhartos New Order. My parents came to Jakarta from Bogor,the outskirt of Jakarta. Back in our village most people still had no access to electricity, i still remember we had one black and white television for whole village 😂 now that was Bogor imagine the situation in far outer regions? No wonder there was disgruntled among the people...
@@harukrentz435 that's not entirely true, suharto spent tons of money to develop all island, java is strip bare by the dutch colony so he had to think how to effectively manage the resource where all the concession of mining is signed on sukarno era and he can't do anything about it, at 1950 the western power back to indonesia with new form the multi national big company such as freeport and newmount..suharto had to deal with all of those and stay in power.
@@devatsdb7 are you trying to distort the fact here? LAUHABLE. Developing all islands when some Indonesians only had access for electricity in 2019. How old are you? Till 2003 my mom was still using oil stove (do you know what that is?) while my grandma was still cooking using firewood. Does it look developed to you? Also Sukarno was busy NATIONALIZING foreign companies in the 50's lol it was only in 1967 the liberation of economy started, under Suharto.
@@harukrentz435 Nationalising by soekarno was done because of Irian conflict as mentioned. Also a precondition of Soeharto receiving foreign aids through CGI and IGGI was that Soeharto reverse Soekarno nationalisation in addition to continue repaying Independence debt to the Netherlands as agreed in RTC (stopped by Soekarno around the same time). Indonesia seeing nothing of use IGGI disbanded, why would Dutch that decide where the development in Indonesia especially since it was not their money like from donor countries like Japan etc. Later changed to CGI headed by world bank though seeing also no use SBY disbanded them prefering bilateral relation with donor.
Love your videos; very informational.
Great content mate!
A good summary of Indonesia history. However, it come across as a negative portrail of Indonesia trying to establish its independence and self sufficiency. The crony capitalism that you described is no different that that happened in US and other so called democracies. Especially in a small nation and economy, you need one strong company to lead and grow internationally. Having many small companies fighting each other will result in disaster and foreign companies talking control. Being critical of IMF's control to open up to foreign corporation should be applauded as it just opens to nations who were involved in destroying the currency and economy to come in and buy up cheaply and control its economy. Any mention of student demonstrating for "democracy" just reeks of US CIA subversion.
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Student were already demonstrating in the years prior to 1997. However, they were all silenced.
No need for US CIA intervention. They took too many credits already 😂
In most third world countries…..crony capitalism is the order of the day.
In India , the top twenty families own the bulk of all corporate wealth in India.
This is problematic and cancerous in the long run.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Well done. Sharing this with everybody.
Thank you very much. Very informative
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As always enjoy your in-depth analysis of a country or product!
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thank you for covering the origins of some of the biggest companies we have in Indonesia right now.
but i wouldnt call Mochtar Riady a wunderkind, he was only the right person at the right time, just like Liem and Suharto. we have too much celebrity worship of them already.
Very true. Other chinese were massacred. Liem survived not because of his abilities but because of his luck in meeting and befriending Suharto.
@@HellCatLeMaudit Not only Chinese massacred dude. You oversimplified the history. Basically people who opposed Soeharto were massacred/suppressed.. like the local Indonesians who protested during Malari Incident 1974 or during Tanjung Priok incident 1984. You also don't know the history of Indonesia like when Suharto favored Robby Tjahjadi more (car smugglers - chinese descent) over the honest, discipline Police General Hoegeng Iman Santoso who tried to solve the car smuggling business in Indonesia. Hoegeng was later put out from duty. Prior to this problem, Hoegeng appeared in Canadian documentary "Wet Earth, Warm People" (1971)
@Wdasgo And you are the type who look down at native Indonesians, calling them "Low IQ".. "fan kui".. "huan-a / ang mo" etc.. and doesn't care about what Suharto did to honest people like Hoegeng Iman Santoso
Instead of building them, there are ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Indonesia, they are also destroying the economic order, dominating small markets and destroying natural ecosystems. The average Chinese company in Indonesia dumps waste indiscriminately and the access roads to companies, factories, their factories are bad and destroyed, local people complain but they don't care, even those who are more impudent when unemployment is rampant they still dare to bring in workers from China and discriminate against natives.
@@nyongsako07 not just Suharto destroyed the domestic economic order where the small & medium entreprises couldn't grow thanks to Suharto's favoritism of those conglomerates (his cronies), he also destroyed the law order by putting out honest men (Chief Police General Hoegeng Iman Santoso being the prime example) from law enforcement position.. and instilled the corruption habit in Indonesia for 32 years.
Interesting and worth watching as usual.
Great in depth video.. thanks
Never knew this neighbouring country has such an interesting history. Thank you for this informative video!
Are you from singapore ?
watching this while eating indomie that I bought with my bca debit card inside my house that was built with indocement 😂
Thank you for making a well balance and research video. I thought the video will be all about trashing the Liem, Suharto, or the Natives; but the video explained everything so clearly everything becomes grey as it probably should be.
I loved this because I am writing a cyberpunk themed world and this dissection really helped explain economic power dynamics and how these sort of partnerships form and work to create essentially corporate feudalism.
good luck with your writings, bro
Thanks for this history and analysis. Important to inform people about bad and criminal economic behaviours
Such an interesting topic for me as an indonesian. Please make more videos about indonesia
Excellent video 👍🏼
Thank you for this enlightening and extremely interesting documentary!
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I haven’t watched “The Act of Killing”, but I have heard that estimates of the number killed ran to over a million people. Most of the killing was done by Islamic hardliners, which in those days were considered to be right-wingers, and aligned with the (anti-communist) west. The victims were communists and Chinese; the two were synonymous. This should have been considered an act of genocide, but there has been no reckoning to this day. In the west, there is little sympathy for Chinese, who are deeply despised as sub-humans; to many in the west, killing of Chinese is considered a noble act.
My elders in Singapore did share with us about the killing of ethic Chinese in those dark times
In the West of Indonesia (Sunda)? Certainly not in Europe.
Nowadays you have mass graves in Bali used as large parking spaces ! There was some book fair or something with "65 as an topic in Ubud (Bali) few years back ... Newer happened .. It was banned... And this guy Oppenheim who made the documentary (2 of them) is banned to enter Indonesia.
The west and their hypocrisy...
bukan, dulu ada 3 kekuatan politik, yaitu Nasionalis, Agama dan Komunis.
jadi yang cenderung dengan agama itu bukan orang sayap kanan.
you are wrong
Another fantastic video. Thank you.
Great video as always!
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Maybe with lessons learned (Asian Crisis and other high inflation times) during this current worldwide (USA, Europe, China…..) economic slowdown many emerging markets countries like Indonesia, Brazil,…. In Latin America and Asia seems to be holding up quite well.
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Asian financial crisis 1997-98 was caused by China predatory currency policy and joining WTO. All these planned by Wall Street elite globalisation plans to destroy American middle class.
Through First Pacific they also owned or still owns a lot of large companies in the Philippines from Telco(PLDT) TV5(a TV network), Metro Pacific Investments(Infrastructure, Hospitals) etc.
The Managing Director of First Pacific is in fact a Filipino.
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MVP is a mere puppet of the Salim empire though. If anything, he’s a Filipino turncoat.
@@marion817 That's what I'm trying to say. lol
@@marion817 tama. Napanood ko interview nyan di naman sagutan ng totoong ceo hahaha
Do one for Taib Mahmud. Much appreciated. Excellent content.
Wow, great video Jon. Let me know if you ever drop by Singapore again, I can take you to Liem Sioe Liong's gravestone.
The solution to eradicating corruption is never easy and most often never achieved. Most politicians just follow the money. Thanks for sharing
Even common people are super corrupt in the third World. Always were, always will be.
A very objective documentation. The last sentence is absolutely correct. Hats off to Asianometry's journalists!
Wow thank you sir...i didnt know Singapore was also involved in some ways bcos money talks
Wow... as 90s indonesian kids. I had corious about soeharto relation with lim. And how come 97 crisis happen. And this video really give well information to me what happen.
Indonesian here, and I really wish more youtubers talk about Indonesia's conglomerates. Aside of Salim family we also have Bakrie, Hartono Brothers (Djarum), Riady, and Ciputra families to name a few. It's such refreshing and insightful to see this kind of videos, and I really appreciate your work. Oh btw you just gained a new subscriber :)
Did you forgot about Widjaja group (Sinarmas)? They also one of the Soeharto's best friend alongside Salim back in the glory days
As a half Indonesian, it's interesting to hear about stories like of my mother's country. 😃
I wish I know this channel earlier. I learned something new about history, economy and politics. Tqsm!
Glad how well Asianometry explains the relationship between Soeharto and its business crony. Somehow there's anomaly in Soeharto-Chinese ethnic relations. In one way, Soeharto needed Chinese ethnic businesses for Indonesian economic and personal interests. On the other hand, New Order regime repressed the Chinese culture, even encouraged then to change their Chinese name into 'more Indonesian name' (that's why 'Lim' family name became 'Salim').
Regarding Indonesian sweatshop economy, IMF, and and 1965 turbulence, there is another documentary by John Pilger in 2002 "The New Ruler of the World". I always show this documentary to my students in Sociology class.
The policy of making ethnic Chinese to change their name with local name actually make them easier to blend to local population (benefitting them). Remember, Thailand already had the same policy: urging non Thai (including the ethnic chinese) to use Thai names.
@@Etendard1708 it's a forced assimilation for chinese Indonesian even till this day many natives indonesian still had a mindset that a Chinese indonesian did not fully blend until they choose to abandon their traditional culture, religion and customary and adopt local culture.. thats why till this very day many chinese parents ban their kids marrying/mingling with natives in fear their spouse will force them to adopt their culture and convert em to islam it's a total failure
@@hcdtrs9684 Nowhere as worse as when Americans forced Italian and German immigrants to anglicized their name & and abandoned their culture. Or when Han Chinese sinicized Uighurs, Manchurians, Inner Mongolians, and Tibetans.. while prevented them from dominating important aspects of their life whether it is central government politics or economy.
@@hcdtrs9684 So before you criticize Indonesia.. ask China about the forced sinicization toward non Han Chinese, ask why Thai forced non-Thai to use Thai name, ask Americans why they urged Italian and Hispanic immigrants to abandon their culture and anglicized their name.
@@hcdtrs9684 that's just blatantly untrue, do you even live in Indonesia?
Hahaha as a frequent viewers of your channel. finally something from my country ( not the good one though )
amazing video!!
thanks for the great insight of one of indonesia's conglomerate cronyism during the "new order" era under Suharto and the army, I'm a 3rd generation indonesian chinese born in the 70s and naturally I don't have chinese name nor ability to speak mandarin nor hokkian, I think Indonesia today is not much different than before there are still huge conglomerations here probably not so ethnic based anymore but these groups are everywhere manufacturing all the daily need consumer products, insurance, multimedia, etc, but at least there are some balance shared between several groups rather than one huge company like Samsung in South korea.
Very common story. Most big family business empires in South East Asia are built by Chinese diaspora, who came as merchants / immigrants that had little initial political power or connection to local nobility. It's their hard working and thrifty values that endure.
Did you dont watch the video? Lim came from China not penniless, He had well connected families and clan members that had settled and work with colonial goverment for centuries on the other hand most of Native Indonesian were illiterate and uneducated peasants from rural area that discouraged by dutch to move into the city let alone get an education.
Sounds like a little bullshit can you link me a documentary?
@@komea12 umm, no need to. Most south east Asians can tell u that
@@TheMasterofComment tell me what that hard work is why they thrived?? I call bullshit there something else to it, because their close to china they used connections and other advantages to their leverage. I dont beleive you guys South East Asisan have a knack to lie to save face, and dont lie to me i know all about saving face.
Bullshit. Chinese also gain advantage due to the colonial policy divide and rule. They let the economy to the immigrants not to let the native empowered and kick the colonial powers out of the country.
as an indonesian, i dont know about this at all lol. this should be taught in history class
Indonesians are brainwashed to be patriotic/nationalist rather than being pragmatic about their history. Any talk about communism or racism against the chinese is taboo.
@@freemanol yeah. its very unfortunate :(
School cannot brave enough to Introducting their Boss, you go to school to be profesional worker slave