choice to take them as Chinese nationals, according to the current
political climate.
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To the Kuomintang, the dust of the issue of Chinese citizenship
has already been settled. It was settled in 1949, when the Indonesian
government declared that all people born in Indonesia were Indonesian
citizens by birth, unless they declared to the contrary to the
Indonesian government within two years. The Kuomintang blamed the
Communists for disturbing the settlement by re-opening negotiations over
this issue. In this way, China would not be forced to declare her
position in writing, and at appropriate times,
forward to protect her overseas Chinese.
circumstances, could overseas Chinese be best benefitted. The
Kuomintang further argued that because of this written treaty, overseas
Chinese would be losers in many aspects, especially in economics, as
they could not be protected by
by China in anti-Chinese riots, often
originating in jealousy of Chinese success in business.
Like their predecessors,
China could still come
Only under these
54
the Communist position on the issue was
badly tested in one of the worst anti-Chinese riots, which occurred in
1965 in Indonesia.
ships to rescue
During the riots, the PRC was forced to send two
Chinese of all kinds who came to seek protection from
the riots. As pointed out earlier in this article, they would have a
hard time morally and politically if they would have had to refuse to
take those who had been denaturalized according to the
Treaty. The PRC rescued over 300,000 overseas Chinese,
China-Indonesia
many of them
converted Indonesian citizens.
Thus, all three regimes
were
tested on the issue of
denaturalization,
and none showed a weak hand. Apparently, overseas
Chinese crises in America, Indonesia and elsewhere, forced all three
regimes
to take a strong stance in handling the issue of naturalization
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