{"id":1075,"date":"2013-01-04T12:56:58","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T18:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1075"},"modified":"2025-03-02T13:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T19:20:06","slug":"the-new-and-the-old-were-on-display-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2013\/01\/04\/the-new-and-the-old-were-on-display-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The new and the old were on display today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jakarta<\/p>\n

The first time I took Mrs. Hoyt to Shanghai, we were having dinner in the old Sassoon Hotel along the Bund, and she noted, \u201cForeigners built as though they were going to stay forever; only the buildings have remained.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s as true of Batavia\u2014er, Jakarta\u2014as it is of Shanghai, though to a much lesser degree.<\/p>\n

In the morning, we went to one of those old buildings, a Doric-columned old Dutch government office building that screams \u201cPower.\u201d Built to house the Javanese bank (the bank that furnished the financial wherewithal that brought the spices\u2014pepper constitutes 20% of the world\u2019s spice trade even today) to enrich the Dutch, it became the National Bank\u2014and today houses \"\"<\/a>a museum displaying both the history of Indonesian economy, and a numismatic approach to its history.\u00a0 I liked both aspects, partly because of the information it contained; the VOC\u2014the Dutch East India company, with its 17 Dutch masters, pictured on the Dutch \"\"<\/a>master\u2019s cigars\u2014went bankrupt during the Napoleonic Wars, and in fact the British under Sir Stafford Raffles, he who founded Singapore, seized the Dutch East Indies and held them until 1815, when, as part of the Congress of Vienna, they went back to the Dutch; the Islands fell to the Japanese in 3 days during World War II (2000 miles long, over 17,000 islands) because the Japanese had placed spies in the major cities; and the crisis of 1997 brought a sobriety to the fiscal system that continues today.\u00a0 The building had some fine art deco touches, and, speaking of touches, we got to touch a gold bar, \"\"<\/a>all 13.5 kg of it.<\/p>\n

From the museum, we went to the \u201cNew\u201d Indonesia, the Lippo group, one of the major Chinese conglomerates that dominate the economy, for a presentation on its operations.\u00a0 The Lippo group is into a variety of businesses (as are so many of the large Chinese companies), including hospitals, property, media, and education.\u00a0 As explained to us, the company has worked out a pattern that will target middle-class families by building schools, hospitals, and malls (it owns or operates 25% of existing malls in Indonesia), followed by the housing.\u00a0 The company sort of builds to order; it announces it is going to build, gathers advance orders (paid in advance), and when it has sufficient funds to cover the construction costs (and as our host explained, cover the cost of the bribes), they build. The current developments are in the Jakarta area, but they are focusing on second- and third-tier cities, such as Samaridan, Kalimantan, where the average income is $16, 500, because it is a mining community, and the raw materials are being purchased by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans right now.\u00a0 I should point out that the company also owns funeral homes, making its coverage, as our host explained, from cradle to grave.\u00a0 Given the shortage of good schools and good hospitals, and the fondness of the Indonesians for shopping, the construction of \u201ctowns\u201d seems like a good idea. One other item in its portfolio\u2014the Lippo group (one of its leaders, James Reddy, was implicated in a corruption charge\u2014he gave the Clinton campaign what were illegal contributions, as I recall) has a university\u2014with a difference.\u00a0 UPH is a fairly new university on Lippo property that has 7,000 mostly Chinese Catholic students (a rarity in this Muslim predominant country). The head of the group gives required lectures weekly, but the facilities are wondrous, including an archway that proclaims, \u2018With God, anything is possible.\u201d\u00a0 One of our participants, a Chinese Indonesian, pointed out that it wasn\u2019t until the 1990s that Chinese were allowed to celebrate the Chinese new year in public, or even to have Chinese names.<\/p>\n

The other session today was put on by members of the International Society for Sustainability Professionals, an NGO that was formed in 2012 to help educate people (and businesses) about the need for sustainability.\u00a0 One of their emphases was forests, which was interesting because Indonesia has the second largest area of forests in the world, and the management of them has been a real challenge.\u00a0 Part of the challenge comes from the use of natural resources to raise the population out of poverty.\u00a0 Over 100 million live on $2 a day or less, which is certainly a sobering fact that should inform everyone who visits Indonesia that the malls (and do they have good food!) cater to a growing middle class but in a society that is still bimodal.\u00a0 Ironically, last week, my Scouts were at Trees for Tomorrow, which the newspaper companies in Wisconsin started to build awareness of the need to replant trees;\u00a0 I still believe that the answer will have to include an enlightened business community at least as much as a concerned government.\u00a0 My roommate, a Dean of a Business School, told me that the accrediting body for business schools in the U.S. has mandated curricula additions dealing with sustainability and corporate social responsibility, perhaps allowing the students we reach to help be part of the solution.\u00a0 I certainly hope that more than Scouts are thrifty with scarce resources.<\/p>\n

The 2 \u00bd hour ride the 28 km back to our hotel was also about the new\u2014the lack of infrastructure, or at least the proliferation of automobiles.<\/p>\n

Then to dinner at a mall.\u00a0 If you want to find out why I love Indonesian food (and it is hard to find in the U.S.), find somewhere that serves coconut rice.\u00a0 That would be a nice start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jakarta The first time I took Mrs. Hoyt to Shanghai, we were having dinner in the old Sassoon Hotel along the Bund, and she noted, \u201cForeigners built as though they were going to stay forever; only the buildings have remained.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s as true of Batavia\u2014er, Jakarta\u2014as it is of Shanghai, though to a much lesser … Continue reading “The new and the old were on display today”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indonesia-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8473,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions\/8473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}