‘Let’s copy Malaysia’: fake news stokes fears for Chinese Indonesians

Indonesia is seeing a surfeit of hoaxes and fearmongering on social media over rising levels of Chinese investment and an influx of its workers

The hostility is causing anxiety among Chinese-Indonesians, and sparking fears presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto could succumb to the opportunity to stoke the fire of ethnic tensions during the polls

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Prabowo Subianto at a campaign rally in Bogor, West Java province. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:15pm, 7 Apr 2019Updated: 12:35pm, 7 Apr 2019

WHEN INDONESIAN PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Prabowo Subianto faced off against incumbent leader Joko Widodo in a televised debate last week, he surprisingly steered clear of one topic: Chinese investments.

The 67-year-old, locked in an increasingly close race with the 57-year-old Widodo, had previously accused the president of selling out the country to China by accepting infrastructure loans, feeding into anti-China sentiments that Jokowi has had to navigate in seeking his second term.

If he were to win, Prabowo said last year, he would review some of China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative projects in Indonesia, including the US$6 billion Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail.

But as the April 17 polls draw near, the former three-star general’s reticence on the China issue has done little to dampen the surfeit of hoaxes and fearmongering on social media over rising levels of Chinese investment and an influx of its workers.

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From Facebook posts on Chinese workers in Indonesia being given ID cards so they can vote, to China helping the Elections Commission repair damaged ballot boxes, fake news has emerged fast and furious.

The growing anti-China sentiment has left the country’s tiny ethnic Chinese community – comprising about 2 per cent of Indonesia’s 260-million, Muslim-majority population – fearful it would also be on the receiving end of hostility.