The Kwik Hoo Tong trading society of Semarang, Java: A Chinese business network in late colonial Asia

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 279-296

  Post, Peter ^a  

^a Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD)   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BUSINESS; COLONIAL LEGACY; PARADIGM SHIFT; WAR;

ASIA; CENTRAL JAVA; EURASIA; GREATER SUNDA ISLANDS; INDONESIA; JAVA; MALAY ARCHIPELAGO; SEMARANG; SOUTHEAST ASIA; SUNDA ISLES;

EID: 33751557619     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463402000140     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Michael Godley, CASA Staff Seminar Lecture, Amsterdam, 1996.
2. See, for example, John S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939);
3. George C. Allen and Audrey G. Donnithorne, Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962);
4. Wilhelm F. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition: A Study in Social Change (The Hague: W. ten Hoeve, 1964);
5. Wilhelm F. Wertheim, idem., 'Trading Minorities in Southeast Asia", in his East-West Parallels: Sociological Approaches to Modern Asia (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 39-82;
6. and Mary Somers-Heidhues, Southeast Asia's Chinese Minorities (Hawthorn, Victoria: Longman Australia, 1974).
7. Richard Robison's Indonesia. The Rise of Capital (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986)
8. and Twang Peck Yang's original Ph.D. thesis, 'The Transformation of Chinese Business Communities in Indonesia, 1940s-50s' (ANU, 1987), were pioneering studies in this respect.
9. This point is particularly stressed by Mely G. Tan in 'The Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: Issues and Implications', in Southeast Asian Chinese: The Socio-Cultural Dimension, ed. Leo Suryadinata (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1995), pp. 13-27. Based on my own intermittent research and observations in Indonesia during the period 1987-95, I can only agree with her conclusions.
10. See also Jamie Mackie 'Economic Systems of the Southeast Asian Chinese', in the same volume, pp. 33-65.
11. Handboek voor cultur- en handelsondernemingen in Nederlandsch-Indië, 44 (1932): 1065. In the late 1920s, KHT had agencies in Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Solo, Cilacap, Singapore, Xiamen (Amoy), Shanghai, Hankow, Tientsin, Chinkiang, Hong Kong and Taipei; it also had representative offices in Kobe and Osaka.
12. See Jaarverslag Handelvereniging Semarang, the annual report of the Trade Association of Semarang, for 1922-33;
13. and J. L. Vleming, Jr, Het Chineesche Znkenleven in Nederlandsch- Indië (Weltevreden: 's Landsdrukkerij, 1925).
14. The only pre-war Chinese multinational firm which so far has caught academic attention is Oei Tiong Ham's Kian Gwan conglomerate. See, for example, J. Panglaykim and Ingrid Palmer, 'A Study of Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries: The Development of One Chinese Concern in Indonesia', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (henceforth JSEAS), 1, 1 (1970): 85-95;
15. and Oei Tiong Ham Concern: The First, Business Empire in Southeast Asia, ed. Yoshihara Kunio (Kyoto: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, 1989).
16. On business networks, see Michael R. Godley, The Mandarin-Capitalists From Nanyang: Overseas Chinese Enterprise in the Modernization of China, 1893-1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
17. and Carl Trocki, Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800-1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990);
18. Dutch studies include Vleming, Chineesche Zakenleven;
19. Ong Eng Die, Chineezen in Nederlandsch-Indië, sociografie van een Indonesische bevolkingsgroep (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp., 1943);
20. and W. J. Cator, The Economic Position of the Chinese in the Netherlands-Indies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936).
21. Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown, Capital and Entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994);
22. a wealth of data on pre-war Chinese business in Southeast Asia can be found in Twang, 'Transformation of Chinese Business Communities';
23. Overseas Chinese Remittances from Southeast Asia, 1910-1940, ed. George Hicks (Singapore: Select Books, 1993);
24. and Fukuda Shozo, With Sweat & Abacus. Economic Roles of Southeast Asian Chinese on the Eve of World War II, ed. George Hicks (Singapore: Select Books, 1995). In these works, however, too little attention is paid to individual business strategies, people and personnel, and financial issues.
25. 'Concise History of the Relation between the Bank of Java and the NV Kwik Hoo Tong Handel Maatschappij', Archives of the Bank of Java, inventory number 2975.
26. Unless otherwise indicated, all information in this section comes from ibid., Concise History of the Relation between the Bank of Java and the NV Kwik Hoo Tong Handel Maatschappij
27. The Dutch guilder and the NIG had the same value; thus 'NIG' and 'guilders' are used interchangeably in this article.
28. Peter Post, 'Chinese Business Networks and Japanese Capital in Southeast Asia, 1880-1940: Some Preliminary Observations', in Chinese Business Enterprise in Asia, ed. Rajeswary Ampalvanar Brown (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 164.
29. In his letter to Yamamoto Hiroshi, liquidator of the Bank of Java, Kwik Siang Go would later complain that the bank's demand seriously damaged the development of KHT's business interests. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the bank's policy in this matter served wider Dutch political and economic interests in gaining part of the Indies' import of Japanese goods, which until that time was mainly carried by Japanese and Chinese traders; Peter Post, 'Japan and the Integration of the Netherlands East Indies into the World Economy, 1868-1942', Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 27, 1-2 (1993): 134-65.
30. The others were Suzuki & Co., Mitsui Bussan, Fraser & Co., Kian Gwan, Erdman & Sillecken, Wellenstein & Krause, Nichiran & Co. and Oei Tjoe.
31. Cf. Roger Knight, 'The Java Sugar Industry as a Capitalist Plantation', Journal of Peasant Studies, 9 (1992): 68-86;
32. Arthur van Schaik, Colonial Control and Peasant Resources in Java: Agricultural Involution Reconsidered (Amsterdam: Netherlands Geographical Studies 14, 1986);
33. R. E. Elson, Javanese Peasants and the Colonial Sugar Industry. Impact and Change in an East Java Residency', 1830-1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984);
34. and Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution. The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963).
35. Peter Boomgaard, 'Treacherous Cane. The Java Sugar Industry between 1914 and 1940', in The World Sugar Economy in War and Depression, ed. Bill Albert and Adrian Graves (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 157-69;
36. and Shinya Sugiyama, 'Marketing and Competition in China, 1895-1932: The Taikoo Sugar Refinery', in Commercial Networks in Modern Asia, ed. Shinya Sugiyama and Linda Grove (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001), pp. 140-58.
37. Tjiang Tio Poo, De suikerhandel van Java (Amsterdam: de Bussy, 1923), p. 37.
38. The concept of'trust' as a special feature of Chinese business networks has gained wide academic attention in the past decade. Like Kao Cheng-shu, I tend to see 'trust' not merely as a kind of sentimental tie, but rather as a rational instrument which makes Chinese (in his case, Taiwanese) capitalism (but particularly capital formation) work; see Kao Cheng-shu, '"Personal Trust" in the Large Businesses in Taiwan: A Traditional Foundation for Contemporary Economic Activities', in Asian Business Networks, ed. Gary Hamilton (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), p. 68. On the other hand, 'trust' was also important among Dutch businesses in pre-war Indonesia, and I doubt, as Wong Siu-Lun seems to indicate, whether 'personal trust' in the Chinese case functions differently from 'personal trust' in the pre-war Dutch business hierarchy (
39. Wong Siu-lun, 'Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Trust', in the same volume, pp. 13-26).
40. 20 Being an anthropologist and historian, and a layman in economics and banking, I was immensely impressed by these figures. Why would the four large Dutch credit institutions grant advances of up to NIG 30 million to KHT in 1916? These figures at current prices would come to 1.81 billion Netherlands guilders (USS 1.1 billion). What does this say about the extent of KHT's business? What does it say about the amount of capital available during the war?
41. Archives of the Bank of Java, inventory number 1860.
42. Archives of the Bank of Java, inv. no. 1859: 'Letter from the Semarang agent to the directors, 20 September 1924'.
43. Archives of the Bank of Java, inv. no. 1859:'Letter from the Semarang agent to the directors, 2 May 1925'.
44. The Semarang agent of the Bank of Java wrote the following on 4 December 1928: 'If I look at Kwik Hoo Tong's current position in the right perspective, then I come to the conclusion that the profits of the Solo, Yogyakarta and Cirebon offices are all being transferred to Hong Kong and China.'
45. This analysis is based upon a detailed financial report on the company as of 31 December 1928 and an extensive handwritten report on KHT's debtors in Central Java from early 1932.
46. KHT's stock list of tea in early 1932 reflected an enormous number of different blends and brand names coming from both Java and Taiwan, e.g. petroek
47. Tjo Sing, Ngo Ien, gangsa poetih.
48. Gin Ho To, oeler, cap 1926, Java, Kwa Hie, Ta Hoo, Sin Koei Kie, semar, boeroeng mas, kapal, and so on. Where once I tended to see tea imports from Taiwan in general terms, looking at them as one particular blend, it becomes obvious from the list that, like French wines or Japanese beers, Formosan tea had great diversity, coming from different estates with their own tastes. From the amount of tea sold by KHT, it is possible to get an idea of the four most popular blends in Java during the early 1930s, which were: Sin Koei Kie (two blends), Ngo Ien, and Oeler. KHT's profits in the tea business came largely from Sin Koei Kie, petroek and Ngo Ien.
49. On the concept of'credit standing', see Cheng Lim Keak, Social Change and the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1985).
50. Such a concept of Chinese business emerges from the 'middleman in a middlemen's economy' paradigm.
51. On Japanese shipping in pre-war Southeast Asia, see Post, 'Japan and the Integration'
52. and Hidemasa Kokaze,'Shipping Rivalry between Japan and the Netherlands in the 1930s: A Contemporary Japanese View', in International Commercial Rivalry in the Interwar Period, ed. Shinya Sugiyama and Milagros C. Guerrero (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1994), pp. 74-94.
53. On Nanyo Veem and Ishihara, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'The Southseas Empire of Ishihara Hiroichiro: A Case Study in Japan's Economic Relations with Southeast Asia, 1914-1941', in Japan's Impact on the World, ed. Allan Rix and Ross Mouer (Griffith University: The Japanese Studies Association of Australia, 1984), pp. 151-69.
54. See for example Yoji Akashi.'The Nanyang Chinese Anti-Japanese and Boycott Movement, 1908-1928', Journal of the South Seas Society, 23, 1-2 (1968): 69-96;
55. and Stephen Leong, 'The Malayan Overseas Chinese and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1941' JSEAS, 10, 2 (1979): 293-320.
56. Post, 'Chinese Business Networks'.
57. Wang Gungwu, 'The Study of Chinese Identities in Southeast Asia', in Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1992), pp. 198-221;
58. and Heather Sutherland, 'Believing is Seeing: Perspectives on Political Power and Economic Activity in the Malay World 1700-1940', JSEAS, 26, 1 (1995): 133-46.
59. I am grateful to Jamie Mackie for bringing this to my attention.
60. See Brown, Capital and Entrepreneurship.