Ravando

Ravando’s thesis examines the emergence and development of the Chinese-Indonesian-run newspaper Sin Po from 1910 to 1949, focusing on how it shaped political and social thinking and discourses in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. Ravando argues that Sin Po played an essential role in creating a class and identity consciousness, encouraging organisation and solidarity and formulating new ideas and tactics for the Chinese community and at the same time sustaining and building a political movement for its readers.

Throughout this thesis, Ravando uses different lenses to focus attention on the work the paper undertook to address key issues for the ethnic Chinese and promote particular causes. He shows how Sin Po engaged in a sophisticated way with a host of social and political issues: race and racism across colonial society, the appeal of Chinese and at times Indonesian nationalism, the need for civic and social equality, and the civic duty of Chinese to help others. By studying Sin Po, this research attempts to provide a more sophisticated analysis of the complex dynamics of Chinese Indonesian society. Moreover, it will delve into the sensitive issue of the relationships between Chinese Peranakan and other communities in Indonesia.

This thesis relies in method on a close reading of Sin Po and contextualised analysis of how the paper presented topics, issues and developments to its readers. Through an in-depth analysis of Sin Po, Ravando argues that Chinese political orientation should not be treated as a constant and monolithic; instead, it must be seen as fluid, multi-faceted, and continuously evolving. The complexity of the nations and imagined communities promoted by newspapers in this period is what made Sin Po and other Sino-Malay newspapers so dynamic and important.