00074910012331337763

(1)

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cbie20

Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji], [UNIVERSITAS MARITIM RAJA ALI HAJI

TANJUNGPINANG, KEPULAUAN RIAU] Date: 19 January 2016, At: 22:03

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Special Issue in Honour of Thee Kian Wie

Introduction

Hal Hill , H. W. Arndt & Moh. Sadli

To cite this article:

Hal Hill , H. W. Arndt & Moh. Sadli (2000) Special Issue in Honour of

Thee Kian Wie Introduction, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 36:1, 5-11, DOI:

10.1080/00074910012331337763

To link to this article:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074910012331337763

Published online: 21 Aug 2006.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 65

(2)

S

p

ec

ia

l I

ss

u

e

in

ho

n

ou

r o

f

T

h

ee

K

ia

n

W

ie

Gu

es

t E

d

ito

r

: Hal Hill

(3)

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies Vol 36 No 1, April 2000, pp. 5–11

Special Issue in Honour of

Thee Kian Wie

INTRODUCTION

Hal Hill

Australian National University

This special issue of the BIES is in honour of Dr Thee Kian Wie, one of Indonesia’s foremost social scientists for more than three decades, generous colleague and friend, and tireless supporter of the Bulletin and its objectives.

It is hard to think of anyone in Indonesia who has had such a deep commitment to scholarly ideals and values for so long, certainly in the Economics profession. While most of his fellow economists have opted for more lucrative careers in business, or sought power and influence in the government, or become public commentators, Thee Kian Wie has dedicated himself to a life of (in Professor Sadli’s words) ‘relative poverty’ as a full-time academic researcher.

Several features of Thee Kian Wie’s professional and personal life, some alluded to in the following pages by Professors Arndt and Sadli, deserve mention in this introduction.

The first is his academic productivity. Since graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969, he has produced a continuous stream of high quality academic output: at latest count, he is author and/ or editor of 14 books and more in the pipeline, and author of about 60 journal articles and book chapters, and countless reports and shorter notes. His publications have appeared in Indonesia and all over the world (the latter feature, sadly, somewhat unusual for Indonesian scholars). About half of his output has appeared in English, which it might be noted is really his third language (behind Dutch and Indonesian).

A second feature is the breadth of his scholarly interests. These include economic history, industrialisation, foreign investment, technology, small

(4)

6 Introduction and Foreword

enterprise, and regional development. In all these fields, he would be regarded as Indonesia’s foremost scholar, or at least one of its leading authorities. Particular mention should be made of economic history, which he has almost single-handedly kept alive in recent decades. Of course, Thee Kian Wie is an intellectual-at-large, in the best of traditions, with amazingly wide reading and research interests. Anybody who has been fortunate to share a dinner table or a plane trip with him will attest to this!

Third, there is his mix of academic and public policy/commentary interests. From his far-from-salubrious LIPI office, Kian Wie has always been remarkably public-spirited, acceding to a seemingly endless round of public speaking commitments, seminars, interviews and commentaries in the quality media. Indonesia apparently has an unlimited supply of public commentators, especially during zaman reformasi, but few if any have been able to achieve Thee Kian Wie’s mix of public commentary and academic endeavour.

A fourth feature that deserves comment is his commitment to high principles. This has many manifestations, but one obvious one was his evaluation of the Soeharto regime. Here he managed to be balanced, in an environment in which it was not always easy to achieve balance: he recognised the regime’s development achievements, but also grew increasingly critical of its greed and arrogance in later years. He thus chided—always politely and gently—both those who dismissed the regime’s economic and social progress, and those (this writer included!) whose assessments he considered too favourable.

Fifth, there is his diligence and generosity. From helping to start the careers of junior researchers, to responding to requests for assistance and advice from all quarters, and to commenting on the work of colleagues, Kian Wie is one of the most unselfish individuals I have ever encountered. We at BIES have benefited from his selfless devotion to scholarly causes in so many ways—the long-running and highly successful ‘Recollections’ series (in which he has always been the key organiser and one of the interviewers), advice on manuscripts, pointing us towards promising new scholars, general moral support and encouragement, and much else.

(5)

7 Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt and Moh. Sadli

officials, and professors to junior researchers embarking on field work, hundreds of foreigners have benefited from Kian Wie’s wise counsel, in the process developing a much deeper appreciation of Indonesia’s economy and its always complex political economy equations.

Finally, no introduction would be complete without reference to Thee Kian Wie the human being: his warmth, humility, personal generosity, and self-deprecating sense of humour. He is one of those rare individuals who combines an admirable mix of nationalism and internationalism. He has never lived abroad for any length of time, apart from his graduate education and shorter stints in Australia and The Netherlands. No doubt he could have done if he so wished. But even during hard times, his sense of national commitment bound him to Jakarta. ‘I’ve been well treated’, he is fond of saying (a reference to the opportunity he received for graduate education abroad), and that experience has ever since predisposed him to a life of public service at home.

Equally, as one of those rare universal citisens, he is just as comfortable with on-site expositions of Dutch and South African histories (to mention just two examples from this writer’s first-hand experience) as with gossiping about Jakarta politics (Kian Wie loves to gossip, but never maliciously), and talking about friends and family.

Special mention needs to be made of his ethnicity. As Professor Sadli mentions, he could not aspire to a ‘top government job’ throughout the Soeharto era. Perhaps, although given his scholarly disposition it is not obvious that he would have wanted one anyway. Unlike the majority of Sino-Indonesians, he never changed his name. ‘Why should I? I’m ethnic Chinese’, he would reply if asked. But, always a voice for ethnic tolerance, and ever alert to Indonesia’s delicate ethnic divide, he is frequently critical of his ethnic brethren. ‘Indonesian Chinese don’t realise how well off they are’, he has frequently lamented. He has been particularly critical of those in the Chinese business community who are not in his view cognisant of their broader societal responsibilities, especially including a sensitivity towards legitimate pribumi aspirations for socio-economic advancement.

Thee Kian Wie likes to refer to himself as a ‘marginal man’—not a reference to his general sympathy for neo-classical economics (albeit heavily qualified in important respects), but to his membership of an ethnic minority, numbering less than 4% of Indonesia’s population, and to his first language (Dutch), now probably spoken fluently by less than 1% of the population.

Yet any notion that he is on the margins is of course plainly ridiculous. Kian Wie is justly famous, both in Indonesia and abroad. As he approaches his 65th_{birthday, and formal retirement from LIPI (of which, incidentally,}

(6)

he is its longest-serving staff member), this volume celebrates his life and achievements to date. It is introduced by two of his closest friends— one might even say intellectual mentors—and it features contributions from his friends and admirers that reflect the diversity and depth of Thee Kian Wie’s intellectual interests and scholarly ties around the world. This is not of course the end of the story, but rather the opening of a new chapter in his life. Insyah Allah, Thee Kian Wie will be with us for many years to come, writing interesting papers, and enriching our lives with his friendship, enthusiasm, and infectious sense of humour.

On behalf of the Editor, Board members, everyone else associated with BIES past and present, the contributors, and Tjoe and Marcel, selamat membaca!

FOREWORD

H.W. Arndt

Australian National University

Thee Kian Wie, perhaps the most productive Indonesian academic economist of the past generation, has been and remains a close friend and collaborator of the ANU’s Indonesia Project and all its staff.

He tells me that in 1967 or 1968 he heard me lecture at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he was studying for his PhD (with Soedradjad as his room mate). But my first personal contact with him was in 1980 when he came to Canberra for a week to discuss a survey of joint ventures in Indonesia on which he was working. In the following years, he visited ANU quite often, in l983 for a year as Visiting Fellow, and on my many visits to Jakarta I invariably saw him (and his charming wife Tjoe), sometimes at their house, sometimes at LIPI for an arranged seminar. He has been head of PEP, the economic and development research centre of LIPI, since 1986, a post from which he will retire in May this year, at age 65.

(7)

name. He and his wife speak Dutch at home and have family connections in Holland, but both are equally fluent in Indonesian, English and Dutch. Thee’s scholarly work has been mainly on industrial development, transfer of technology and direct foreign investment in Indonesia, though much of it recently has also been on Indonesia’s economic history. His output has been phenomenal. His CV lists six books of his own, seven books edited by him, 30 chapters in books, and countless articles, working papers and memoranda. His letters—well over 100 in my correspondence file—report, year in year out, on travels, to conferences and for research, in Singapore, USA, Japan, Netherlands, Germany, India, Australia, and on incessant overwork. Since 1985 he has been on the Editorial Board of BIES and from its beginning in 1987 by far the most conscientious and helpful Corresponding Editor of my journal, Asian Pacific Economic Literature. For a great deal of business which could not easily be done from Canberra, such as the distribution of BIES in Indonesia, the production of the Indonesian edition of Sicat’s Economics and translations of my books, we relied on Thee. Special mention must be made of the role he played in interviewing the distinguished authors of the BIES ‘Recollections’ series and editing their contributions.

Much of my correspondence with Thee has in the last two years inevitably revolved around the terrible political and economic developments precipitated by the Asian financial crisis. One day during the May l998 riots, he did not dare go home and stayed overnight at his brother’s house. In the following days, he and others guarded the neighbourhood, ‘balding and potbellied, armed with all kinds of funny weapons’.

As the crisis deepened, Thee became increasingly pessimistic. ‘As an Indonesian working and living in Indonesia, I must admit that I am looking at a lot of things happening in our country through darker glasses than you, Hal and Ross do. Yes, maybe I and many of my colleagues here are cycnical or skeptical about our leaders as we have seen for too long too much corruption, too much hypocrisy, and too much double-speak’. I must admit, in retrospect, that Thee’s judgment was better than ours. But writing on his return to Indonesia from Haarlem last November, he commented on the new government with restrained optimism: ‘Let us wait and see how the new government performs in the next few years. Let us hope for the best and be prepared for the worst’.

That is Thee Kian Wie, the proud Indonesian and judicious scholar. We hope to continue to enjoy his company from time to time and benefit from his insight in the years to come.

(8)

FOREWORD

Moh. Sadli

Indonesia Forum Foundation

It is with great pleasure that I accede to the request to contribute to BIES’s commemoration of the work of our very good and dear friend, Thee Kian Wie, who will turn 65 and plans to retire from LIPI, the Centre for Economic and Development Studies of the Indonesian Institute for Sciences (PEP-LIPI), where he has worked for so many years as a very devoted and productive researcher.

Thee Kian Wie has earned our respect through his dedication as a research scholar. There are now many, many more PhDs in economics in Indonesia than in my time, 30 or 40 years ago. But because the demand for professional services is still great, from government departments, universities, and to function as public commentators, there are relatively few with the stamina to remain devoted academic researchers, dirtying their hands with fact finding at the grassroots level. Many just use the results of such work for their analysis, and to reinforce their conclusions. Thee Kian Wie’s unique role as a serious research scholar and economic historian is probably connected with his ethnicity. That is, he comes from an Indonesian-Chinese background. Had he been an indigenous Indonesian, he would certainly have landed a top government job and become a ‘bureaucrat’ or a ‘technocrat’. That would have been the end of his research career.

While many young educated Indonesians of Chinese origin preferred a business career, and did financially well, Thee Kian Wie preferred to wear the scholarly mantle of relative poverty, but having many friends and admirers, inside and outside the country.

(9)

Thee Kian Wie’s strength is in economic history and microeconomics—industry studies, technology, the role of foreign direct investment, entrepreneurship, small and medium enterprise, and industry policy. He has also done important work comparing the performance of Northeast and Southeast Asian countries, for example focusing on SMEs (small and medium-scale enterprises) in Taiwan, Korea and Indonesia. In this respect his work is a welcome complement to that of the larger group of macroeconomists in the government.

In Indonesia there are barely a handful of economists who study economic history. Most Indonesians are not interested in the ‘colonial’ past, because emotionally they are preoccupied with the creation of a ‘national economy’ in an independent Indonesia. Most Indonesians also prefer to look into the future rather than dwell on the past. Perhaps later, when they mature in their judgment, they will be less impatient and recognise that the present is rooted in the past, as is the future. Culture, institutions, attitudes and behaviour change only slowly. Yet young, ambitious and impatient macroeconomists like to think that, if only the ‘right’ economic policies can be implemented over an extended period, the developing Southeast Asian countries can emulate the record of the East Asian tigers.

Another of Thee Kian Wie’s important contributions to recording Indonesian economic history has been his role as interviewer, together with an ANU colleague, of a number of prominent Indonesians who have played an important role in recent history. This has included not only members of the ‘Berkeley Mafia’, but also entrepreneurs such as Soedarpo and Teuku Mohamad Daud.