, founding president of CHH Founded in 1928 after preliminary congresses through 1926 and 1927, CHH was loosely associated with the eponymous
Chung Hwa Hui Nederland, a
Peranakan student association in the
Netherlands, established in 1911 in
Leiden. Throughout its existence, CHH was dominated by its founding and only president H. H. Kan, a patrician doyen of the Cabang Atas. Members of the party's founding executive committee consisted of other scions of the Cabang Atas, such as
Khouw Kim An, the 5th Majoor der Chinezen of Batavia,
Han Tiauw Tjong and
Loa Sek Hie, or representatives of ethnic Chinese conglomerates, including , head of Kian Gwan, Asia's largest multinational at the time, and the Semarang business tycoon
Thio Thiam Tjong. They maintained an ambiguous, and sometimes dismissive, stance on the emancipation of Indonesia's
indigenous population. In 1932, this dissatisfaction with CHH within the Chinese-Indonesian community resulted in the founding of an opposition, pro-Indonesian party, Partai Tionghoa Indonesia, led by the leftwing newspaper men and progressive activists
Liem Koen Hian,
Kwee Thiam Tjing,
Ong Liang Kok and
Ko Kwat Tiong. Phoa, who indicated a willingness to support the Indonesian nationalist movement, resigned from CHH in 1934, citing H. H. Kan's dominance of the party; and was appointed to the Volksraad in 1939 as an
independent member. CHH was disbanded following the Japanese invasion of 1942 as part of
World War II. The new outfit was, in effect, the institutional heir to Chung Hwa Hui's political and social legacy. What was seen as the new party's CHH heritage, pro-colonial legacy and pro-western stance did not bode well for PDTI, which came to be regarded as irrelevant in post-revolutionary and increasingly anti-western Indonesia. PDTI never received much electoral support, and was eventually disbanded in 1965 with the military coup of
General Soeharto and the end of all semblance of parliamentary democracy. ==See also==