Lauw Giok Lan The paper was founded in
Batavia on 1 October 1910 after
Lauw Giok Lan came up with the concept and approached
Yoe Sin Gie. The two men had worked at
Perniagaan, a conservative Chinese newspaper closely allied with the
Chinese Officer system and the
Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan. When
Sin Po launched, Lauw took on the editorial duties and Yoe took on the administrative aspects, with
Hauw Tek Kong as director. At first it was only a weekly paper. The paper quickly became very successful. Lauw was an experienced publisher who had worked for the Van Dorp Co., which had published
Java Bode and
Bintang Betawi. He had been editor of
Perniagaan since 1907. However, he had good relations with the Peranakan Chinese community and was an excellent writer who spoke several languages. By late 1912 he had already been called before the court for printing defamatory content in
Sin Po. The article in question had described the murder of a Chinese person in
Sukabumi, and by its factual description was said to stir up hatred against the Indies government. In early 1913,
Sin Po got into a feud with some more conservative elements of the Chinese community due to its criticism of the colonial
Chinese Officer system. That feud resulted in calls to boycott
Sin Po. In particular the paper harshly attacked
Phoa Keng Hek and
Khouw Kim An, high-profile Chinese Officers, and accused them of corruption and abuse of authority. One
Sin Po editor was forced to resign from the board of the
Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan and was then expelled as a member of the organization. By 1915, rival newspaper
Perniagaan was waging their war against
Sin Po on a new front. They accused the paper, under Razoux Kühr's tenure, of accepting payment for its reporters to travel. One case that they printed proof of was a receipt for payment of a
Sin Po journalist to
Garut where they were hosted by the local Chinese community and directed to investigate a district head who had been mistreating them. Since Razoux Kühr was already a pariah in the European community at this point, it only added to their suspicions that he was an unscrupulous figure. Although Razoux Kühr was announced as editor in chief of
Sin Po's rival paper,
Perniagaan in 1918, it was apparently short-lived, and he never again held a prominent editorial job.
Kwee Hing Tjiat Kwee Hing Tjiat was a lifelong journalist who by 1916 had already been editor of
Bok Tok and
Tjhoen Tjhioe in
Surabaya as well as
Palita in
Yogyakarta. Under his tenure the paper took on an even more aggressively Chinese nationalist line. The paper continued to develop its very pro-Peking and pro-
Totok Chinese position and to harshly criticize the Chinese Officer system. Hence the paper's bitter feud with rival paper
Perniagaan continued under Kwee's tenure. Historian
Leo Suryadinata notes that Sin Po came to lead a distinct group at this time which he terms the
Sin Po group. He states that this group believed in
Peranakan-
Totok unity, Chinese language education among
Peranakan and non-participation in local Indies politics. Kwee stepped down from his position in 1918 and went to work for a private company called
Hoo Tik Thay. He had already been working at
Sin Po at a lower level since his return from China in 1918. It is unclear what the substance of the case was. When
Hauw Tek Kong was barred from re-entering the Indies after a visit to China, Tjoe briefly became director of the paper as well as editor-in-chief. Kwee Kek Beng was a Dutch-educated former schoolteacher who had been a contributor to
Bin Seng and
Java Bode before being hired as a junior editor at
Sin Po in 1922. Like his predecessors, he was also a strong Chinese nationalist. By the second half of the 1920s, with the
Indonesian nationalist movement gaining strength,
Sin Po moderated its pro-China line and became more sympathetic to the Indonesian perspective. During the
Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, Kwee managed to avoid arrest and hid in
Bandung from 1942-5. After the war ended the paper resumed publication and Kwee returned to his position, but he got into a feud with publisher Ang Jan Goan, and resigned as editor-in-chief in 1947. Chinese-educated, and having been interned by the Japanese during the war, his written contributions to the paper while editor focused more on China. It was forced to change its name in 1958 due to government regulations. It became
Pantjawarta and then
Warta Bhakti. In this era the paper took a pro-
PKI line and was therefore banned in the crackdown after the
September 30 Movement (G-30-S) in 1965. == Legacy ==