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LIEM SIOE LIONG'S SALIM GROUP: The Business Pillar of Suharto's Indonesia. By Richard Borsuk, Nancy Chng. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014. xiv, 573 pp., [20] pp. of plates. (Illustrations.) US$52.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4459-57-0.
Numerous academics and journalists have written about Liem Sioe Liong. This is because it is not possible to discuss or to understand the political and economic history of modern Indonesia without dealing with this pivotal figure. But in this book, Borsuk and Chng have drilled down deeper than others, producing an analysis that is not only forensic in its detail but rich in its picture of the life and times of Liem.
It moves from Liem's early years in Java and then in Jakarta, tracking his beginnings as a trader and small entrepreneur and looks at how his business life was transformed in the revolution. These early chapters are evocative and read easily as we are taken into the relationships he began to develop with various generals and politicians and within the intriguing and complex world of business in Indonesia and Southeast Asia more generally. The authors paint a picture, not only of the wheeling and dealing that underpinned the rise of Liem and other Chinese Indonesian capitalists in the chaotic days following the ending of Dutch colonialism, but also of how military and political patronage and relationships with regional capitalists, including Chin Sophonpanich and Robert Kuok, became the factors of commercial success.
We are then introduced to the diverse individuals who drove Liem's business juggernaut through the 1970s and 1980s. It is interesting that these individuals included both political and business figures...