The privileged position of the Peranakan Chinese under the Dutch had been reinforced in the late colonial era by pride in their identification with the resurgent Chinese state. This confluence of historic privilege and new nationalism contributed to a collective self-esteem that sustained the minority in an anxious time of transition. How natural for pribumi to perceive this as a form of ethnic snobbery! To this resentment add the religious divide between Muslim and infidel, amid continuing economic insecurity under successive Indonesian governments, and Indonesians of Chinese descent become the obvious scapegoats.
