In early 2012, President Aquino was dubbed an absentee president by former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who denounced his “nobody's at home” attitude when he convened his cabinet only four times in 2011. Later that year, two newspaper columnists characterized the president as a “do-nothing chief executive” who is “not working hard enough to solve the country's problems”. However, the Social Weather Stations (SWS)’ September 2012 survey signified that the majority of Filipinos saw their president in a different light. The SWS’ third quarter survey showed that 77 per cent of Filipinos were satisfied with the performance of Benigno Simeon Aquino III as president of the Philippines. The survey noted President Aquino's record-high net satisfaction rating of 77 per cent which indicated a 25 per cent increase from his rating of 47 per cent in May 2012. Thus far, it is the highest recorded net satisfaction rating obtained by any of the post-1986 Philippine presidents. The following year, the SWS and Pulse Asia surveys showed that President Aquino enjoyed a high performance rating of 72 per cent which showed that, almost three years into his term, public satisfaction for the president remained at unprecedented highs.

In early 2013, President Aquino's popularity was at its peak as the Philippine economy expanded and many analysts attributed this to his relentless anti-corruption campaign. The Aquino Administration's campaign against corruption in government, which led to the impeachment of the chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, generated political capital for the state and the economy. Thus, the Philippines emerged as a possible tiger economy in Asia as its economy grew by 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, and was expected to grow by an average of 6 per cent in the same year. However, in the latter part of 2013, the Aquino Administration was jolted by a series of unexpected challenging events.

Early in August, a rescue of a kidnap victim by a law-enforcement agency led to an investigation of several Filipino legislators who were allegedly involved in the US$200 million pork barrel scandal. Consequently, President Aquino was accused of targeting opposition legislators when the government filed plunder cases against them. In September, Muslim insurgents from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) stormed the southern city of Zamboanga.

In assessing the impact of desentralisasi, it can be viewed in at least two ways — as a manifestation of a change in the political balance flowing from changes in the political economy or as the implementation of a (technocratic) policy to improve economic and social development. The analysis in the previous two chapters presents the emergence of decentralization as primarily a manifestation of changes in the political side of the political economy. In an under-industrialized economy comprising a plethora of small- and medium-sized local capitalists and a tiny conglomerate sector (for the size of the country), the end of the crony regime and the consequent privileged position of crony capital has unleashed a dynamic giving more room to move for the smaller, local capitalists. This is the essence of desentralisasi. It is the basis for a more anational political format.

Perhaps anational is a difficult concept to use. The Indonesian nation, as a stable community inhabiting clear borders (though disputed in western Papua), with a common language, economic and cultural life, certainly continues to exist, even if with lowered expectations for itself than previously held. There is a national government which, despite desentralisasi, controls the majority of the nation's state revenues and sets the policy frameworks, in which local governments must operate. It is perhaps also further complicated by the dominance of classical liberal and neo-liberal economic policy thought in Indonesia, which emphasizes market mechanisms rather than intervention by the national state. This may not be so much a complicating factor, but rather a reinforcing factor. In the absence of a strong national social class providing direction for the nation, an ideology emphasizing a smaller role for the state finds a comforting environment at elite levels. The New Order government may have pursued an agenda which included prioritizing protecting the privileges of crony capitalists but the powerful character of the core military rule established in the 1960s and 1970s also meant that it could impose a national direction.

A primary thesis of this essay is that the sudden emergence of decentralization, seemingly out of nowhere (but actually initiated from within the technocracy) and its strong consolidation over the last ten years is a direct consequence of two interlinked phenomenon. Firstly, the end of crony capitalism. And secondly, in some ways more fundamentally, that Indonesia's general economic underdevelopment has not fostered the growth of a large, strong national capitalist class, i.e., a class with a strong presence throughout the country with a concomitant national perspective, even if one emphasizing its own interests. The inability of Indonesia to industrialize over the last fifty years has meant that most capitalists in Indonesia are small, local capitalists, orienting to limited local markets. The larger capitalists have either evolved as protected cronies, or in very specific market niches, which give limited political clout. And, for a country the size of Indonesia, this group is not only not made up of industrialists, but also small in number.

Conglomerate, Crony vis-à-vis Local Capital

Indonesia has a population of 240 million people, 80 per cent of the United States’ population size. It is likely that by 2050 Indonesia will have overtaken the population size of the United States. It is predicted to reach 450 million. Their gross domestic products (GDP) are, of course, very different from each other. The U.S. GDP for 2012–13 is US$15.7 trillion. Indonesia's GDP is just under US$900 billion. The U.S. per capita income for 2012–13 is close to US$50,000 whereas Indonesia's is US$3,500. It is not surprising that in economies which are so hugely different in scale, their capitalist classes are also very different in scale and nature. This class, to the extent it assumes the role of ruling class, may “rule” over a smaller economy than that of the United States but politically it has to manage a huge and complex country of 250 million people, heading to 450 million, with an island geography and massive issues of underdevelopment.

One way to get a picture of this is to compare the number of billionaires in each economy and also the nature of their enterprises. According to the Forbes listing, the United States has 442 billionaires to Indonesia's 25 billionaires. The majority of the Indonesian billionaires are listed by Forbes as being worth less than US$2 billion.

In 2013, after several years of basking in the glow of strong economic growth and prominent international events, the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) faced an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-prescribed “overheating economy” and a number of international controversies. Under the glare of uncharacteristic scrutiny, the regime was unable or unwilling to explain how a prominent community leader could disappear in the company of police. Then, in order to circumvent regulatory processes, it insisted that a planned hydroelectric project damming part of the Mekong River was not a “mainstream” dam (i.e. on the main stem of the river). In some ways, these responses recalled an earlier period of LPRP rule when the regime would routinely deny, obfuscate and stonewall in the face of external criticism. But as the leaders’ more sophisticated response to its budgetary woes indicated, Laos has changed profoundly in the past two decades, including in the ways the LPRP utilizes language, rhetoric and other forms of communication in reinforcing state power. In surveying the events of the past year in Laos, this article considers the rhetoric of rule in contemporary post-socialist Laos.

Political language and rhetoric are critical in any political setting but play an especially important role in revolutionary regimes, which use language to produce new cosmologies of rule, and in one-party systems, where in the absence of open democratic elections, state rhetoric plays a key role in mobilizing legitimacy. In Laos, although the most turgid expressions of revolutionary socialist rhetoric have long been forgotten, many of its keywords — solidarity, progress, discipline, patience, consensus and so on — continue to structure state pronouncements, political actions and public grievances. These have been coupled with the pervasive rhetoric of international development, with its alluring argot of projects, growth, sustainability and good governance, together with promissory slogans like those that guide state development policies around the world. None is more ubiquitous in Laos than “graduating from least developed country status by 2020”. Although this hybrid language has emerged over a period of two decades or more, the Lao government has become more adroit at deploying it. While state- and donorfunded projects disseminate much of the hegemonic rhetoric, keystones of the socialist era such as meetings and mobilization campaigns remain crucial tools of propagation. Despite the pervasively political nature of this rhetoric, it continues to depoliticize public political space by defining acceptable limits of discourse.

INTRODUCTION

The insurgency in southernmost Thailand entered a new phase in 2013 with the 28 February announcement of a peace dialogue between the National Security Council (NSC) and the main militant organization, Barisan Revolusi Nasional Patani Melayu (BRN, Patani-Malay National Revolutionary Front). The dialogue process is Bangkok's most determined and public effort to peacefully resolve the conflict, which is more than a decade old. It has roots in Malay nationalist resistance to Thai rule that stretch back to Siam's conquest of Patani and annexation of the region at the start of the twentieth century. Armed resistance to Thai rule took shape in the early 1960s, as a variety of underground separatist fronts formed and fought a low-level guerrilla campaign for an independent Patani state. This struggle had subsided by the 1990s, but the separatist fronts endured in exile and violence never ceased.

In 2001, and intensifying in 2004, a reconfigured militant movement emerged to wage a campaign of unprecedented potency. Security agencies believe that the Coordinate faction of BRN began quietly preparing for their campaign in the early 1990s, recruiting, indoctrinating and training a new generation of fighters. Today, most rank-and-file insurgents appear to identify themselves simply as “fighters” (juwae) in a national-liberation movement, not as members of BRN or other groups, though the organization has a leadership council in exile in Malaysia. The movement casts its cause as self-determination, a struggle to liberate Patani from Thai rule. Recruitment appeals emphasize a history of Siamese conquest and oppression, and most new recruits swear oaths to keep the movement's secrets on penalty of death. The cause is couched in religious terms as a jihad, but religious justifications are linked to a local Malay ethnic identity; it remains a local insurgency, not part of a transnational jihadist movement.

Violence had been largely confined to the southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, and Yala and four southeastern districts of Songkhla: Chana, Na Thawi, Saba Yoi and Thepa. This region of roughly 13,500 square kilometres is home to almost two million Thai citizens. Close to 80 per cent of the population are Muslims who speak Malay as their first language, the remainder almost all Thai or Sino-Thai Buddhists.

Major powers’ interests in enhancing their engagement with Southeast Asian states and the main regional organization, ASEAN, are at a historic high and rising. The United States of America and Japan, the established, mature major powers, and India and China, the re-emerging and neighbouring ones, are each increasing their policy interest in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian states, ASEAN and the larger regional groupings that include Southeast Asian states. Reflecting this, India, in mid-2013, became the last of these four powers to commit to a separate ambassadorial-level diplomatic relationship with ASEAN. This enhancing engagement is due to the perceived growing strategic influence of key Southeast Asian states, particularly Indonesia, and the perceived central position of the region in the rapidly changing Asia-Pacific security order.

It is clear that some of these major power interests in Southeast Asia are competitive, often pitting China against the United States, Japan or India in the search for closer ties and greater influence with regional states. China's early move to sign a preferential trade deal with ASEAN and Japan's (and South Korea's, India's, Australia's and New Zealand's) tit-for-tat response is held up as an example of such competition as is the present competition between the US-led, China-less Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership favoured by China and India.

Less commented on is the fact that there is growing policy cooperation among these major powers and Southeast Asian states. The establishment from 2009 of Forum, each exercise co-chaired by an ASEAN and non-ASEAN member of the Forum, is but one example. Greater major power interest in Southeast Asia has strengthened ASEAN as well as ASEAN's role in wider Asia-Pacific regionalism and aided Southeast Asian states to enhance their own security, market access and diplomatic influence.

Southeast Asian states, as small and medium-sized powers surrounded by the world's greatest ones, have long worried individually and collectively through ASEAN. As is the lot of small and medium powers, these worries have oscillated sharply between being ignored and abandoned by these major powers and becoming individually or collectively entangled with and constrained by great powers’ regional interests. The growing engagement in Southeast Asia by the world's four largest national economies have brought the latter fears to the fore. This can be seen by the current concerns in Southeast Asia over the regional implications of US-China and to a lesser extent Japan-China competition.

US-China relations are a complicated mix of positive and negative elements, competition and cooperation. Conflict between the US and China is not inevitable. In agreeing to establish a new type of major power relationship, Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping have prioritized the need to manage differences and avoid confrontation and conflict. Both leaders are focused on reinvigorating their economies and addressing other pressing domestic challenges, and hope to avoid bilateral strains where possible.

Nevertheless, it remains possible that the US and China will be unable to sustain an amicable relationship. In this regard, there are three broad categories that deserve discussion: (1) tensions could increase over political and economic issues; (2) a military conflict could occur either as a result of escalation of an inadvertent incident or deliberate action; and (3) a Cold War-like strategic competition could emerge over time as a consequence of increasing mistrust and diverging interests.

Possible Tensions over Political and Economic Issues

Friction over political and economic issues is commonplace in the US-China relationship. In the past few years, Washington and Beijing have bickered over the exchange rate of the renminbi; China's unwillingness to condemn North Korea's sinking of the South Korean vessel the Cheonan or its shelling of Yeonpyong Island; and Beijing's veto of United Nations Security Council resolutions aimed at imposing sanctions on Syria, to name only a few issues. In most cases, US-China differences over specific issues do not spill over into other areas and threaten to set back the entire bilateral relationship. In the foreseeable future, the majority of issues on which the US and China disagree are also not likely to threaten the overall relationship. There are, however, a few potential matters that could send US-China ties into a tailspin.

Korea

Denuclearization remains a shared goal, but the US and China have never agreed on how to achieve it. At times the two nations have appeared to be in lock-step, for example in the aftermath of North Korea's third nuclear test when both joined the other members of the UN Security Council in passing a resolution that tightened sanctions on North Korea. In the future, cooperation on North Korea could go badly and sour US-China ties, but not end up in a US-China military confrontation. North Korean military provocations against South Korea or proliferation of nuclear material could prompt the US to seek to overthrow the regime in Pyongyang.

To get away from the political wrangling and daily grind of Jakarta, Suharto liked to retreat to Tapos, his 700-hectare ranch near Bogor, south of the capital. Originally part of a Dutch plantation taken over by the Indonesian state, it was “provided” for Suharto's use in 1974 by the governor of West Java and managed by a company owned by the president's children. Set amid rolling hills and lakes, the ranch had an experimental station for breeding cattle and sheep. It even featured a go-kart track, where Suharto used to enjoy a few laps. He felt most relaxed there; as he wrote in his autobiography: “I feel very much at home in the environment of agriculture and animal husbandry.” He often invited friends on weekends for a barbeque and to chew the cud, so to speak. Liem, a frequent guest, recalled that steaks and sate (satay) were often on the menu. On one Sunday in March 1990, the tycoon was present at the retreat, but the atmosphere that day was not that relaxing, and the presence of quite a few corporate bosses indicated the occasion had an agenda beyond that of a social event. Liem and some thirty other business chieftains had been summoned to Tapos to hear the president outline plans to deal with an issue receiving increased media attention. It was the thorny subject of income disparity, or social envy — kecemburuan social in Indonesian. It was no surprise that those present, except for two, were Chinese. Adding to their discomfort was the fact that the event was telecast nationwide as Suharto lectured them, urging them to take concrete action to help narrow the income gap. His solution to share the wealth: Make conglomerates shift a chunk of their equity to cooperatives.

ARM-TWISTED COOPERATION

In 1990, Indonesia was on a healthy growth track, but there were also increasing signs that Suharto, turning seventy in June the following year, was getting more out of touch, and dangerously overconfident his path was the right one. (Two years earlier, he blackballed think-tank CSIS when its director Jusuf Wanandi sent a memo suggesting that Suharto consider planning for political succession.) At this stage, he was given to surrounding himself with people less likely to question his judgements. He was also less inclined to accept advice from his economic technocrats.

Fifty years after he reached Java's shores from China in 1938 with barely more than the clothes he wore, Liem Sioe Liong was boss of Indonesia's biggest conglomerate and was showing up in magazine lists of the world's wealthiest people. This reflected how much the Salim Group he founded flourished during the long presidency of his friend and patron, General Suharto. At the height of his success, Liem sat atop a vast business empire, estimated by some to encompass 600 affiliated companies — Liem said he didn't know the exact number — and was a force in many strategic industries, including wheat-milling, cement-making and banking.

In the mid-1990s, more than 200,000 people worked for Salim companies in Indonesia and overseas. In 1996, the year before the Asian financial crisis hit Salim — and Indonesia — hard, revenue from group operations was estimated at US$22 billion, nearly three times as large as the second-ranked group, Astra. Liem noted in a Salim corporate profile published that year — the last one issued: “Today, our companies are intimately involved in the day to day lives of literally millions of Indonesian families.” Liem's Bank Central Asia grew to become the country's biggest private bank. Indocement, an agglomeration of Salim's cement plants, became Indonesia's dominant cement producer; Bogasari, its flour processing unit, expanded a Jakarta plant into the world's largest mill; and Indofood overtook Nissin Foods of Japan as the world's leading instant noodle manufacturer.

Liem himself didn't like to dwell on indicators of wealth — he was uncomfortable with portrayals of himself as the richest businessman in Southeast Asia (but he didn't object to rankings issued by the Finance Ministry showing him as the No. 1 taxpayer in Indonesia, as he wanted it be known that he paid his dues). In a country where the Chinese have historically been subjected to discrimination and periodic violence, the tycoon understandably preferred to keep a low profile. Liem liked to quote a Chinese proverb: “Tall trees attract the wind. We don't want to talk about how big we are; people get jealous.” Until a foreign journalist for the Associated Press mentioned Liem's Salim Group in 1971, very few people outside the country had heard of the man who became Suharto's most important business pillar.

On 4 May 1998, Liem left for Hong Kong enroute to the United States, where he was scheduled to undergo cataract surgery. A couple of days earlier, he stopped by Jalan Cendana, to inform Suharto about his departure, as was customary before he made any extended overseas trips. The political tension was palpable in recent weeks; the IMF was just about to reopen the critical money tap but the economy was in dire straits while calls for Suharto's resignation were getting more strident. Despite signs that all hell could break loose, Suharto maintained a typically calm Javanese demeanour. “He said to me, ‘semua beres’ [everything's in order],” the cukong recounted. He said the president told him he was leaving for a trip himself — to Cairo. (Suharto was scheduled to attend the eighth Summit of the Group of 15.) But the president added as an afterthought that it was probably a good idea for his old friend to be away for a while as even he “was unable to protect me”.2 Little did the two men know that they would not see each other for years, and when they met again, Suharto was no longer president and Liem was no longer living in Indonesia.

MAY “MADNESS”

Even with the IMF back on board, the picture in Indonesia was far from in order. To get the IMF money flowing again, Suharto made additional concessions in late April, including consenting to raise domestic energy prices to cut the state subsidies that had kept fuel prices among the lowest in the world. On 30 April, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Ginandjar Kartasasmita said that energy prices would rise by early June “at the latest”. In fact, action came faster than the IMF asked for or expected. On the afternoon of 4 May, Suharto directed his energy minister, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, to announce whopping price rises effective at midnight. Petrol was jacked up a massive 71 per cent. The percentage increase for kerosene, the fuel most used by poor Indonesians, was smaller, but still a painful 25 per cent. Jakarta bus fares were raised 67 per cent, to Rp500. Although that seemed paltry, equivalent then to about 6 U.S. cents, it was a hardship for the growing numbers of poor struggling to feed their families.

One of the crown jewels in the Salim stable was Bank Central Asia (BCA). Its transformation to the country's leading private bank from one that was barely breathing in the early 1970s could be credited to the efforts of one person — Mochtar Riady, who Liem brought on board in 1975. Prior to Riady's entry, Liem's banks (including Bank Windu Kencana, co-owned with a Kostrad foundation) were in dire need of professional help. Both were nowhere able to offer fully fledged financial services. In 1973 Salim had two flour mills in operation and was constructing a cement plant. Big factories required huge funding, and Liem was one of the few individuals in Indonesia at that stage — still early in the New Order — who was able to line it up. His immediate rapport with Chin Sophonpanich of Bangkok Bank was critical for channelling seed money into his cement venture. Although he could tap into outside funds, Liem knew that gaining long-term strength hinged on developing his own banking capability. When Suharto came to power, Liem was already a “banker” in the sense that he partly owned banks, but this meant just possession of a licence, not any real accumulation of assets. In the late Sukarno period, Indonesia had scores of minuscule private banks, many of which were owned by politicians or their pals, but they were weak.

BCA started life as a textile company called NV Semarang Knitting Factory. Curiously, its articles of association allowed it to conduct banking activities. As the company was not doing well, Liem and a Hokchia friend named Tan Lip Soin purchased the licence in 1957 from the owner, a businessman in Semarang named Gunardi. Liem wanted the company for its banking licence, and changed its name initially to Bank Asia N.V. and subsequently to Bank Central Asia. He also moved its operations to Jakarta from Semarang. Liem, who was not yet an Indonesian citizen, installed his good friend Hasan Din as a director. When Suharto tapped Liem to be his cukong, he assigned Liem to cooperate with his generals at the Kostrad Foundation (Yayasan Dharma Putra Kostrad) that he headed. Bank Windu Kencana had been incorporated in 1954, but in 1967 it was reconstituted with several of Suharto's financial generals on its board. Liem and his two brothers were listed as co-owners.

This project on Liem Sioe Liong and the Salim Group was undertaken as an independent venture — neither authorized nor financed by the group or the Liem family. The root was our interest to document the life and times of Liem, a pivotal figure in Asian business who founded a conglomerate that in its heyday was by far the largest in Southeast Asia. As Liem was Suharto's main cukong — a Chinese businessman providing funds for Indonesia's military and political leaders while receiving patronage and protection — his story provides an insight to how Suharto was able to stay in power for more than three decades.

There have been a few books published in Indonesian and Chinese about Liem, mostly hagiographies. Significantly, none included the tycoon's direct inputs. Given Liem's desire for a low profile, he had declined previous requests from prospective biographers. Historically, the Salim Group has been highly averse to publicity despite its very public participation in a wide range of businesses during the Suharto regime. Indeed, in many cases, the group chose to ignore inaccuracies in news reports and was content to allow errors in stories to go uncorrected.

Years after Suharto fell from power, we approached Liem's youngest son, Anthony Salim, and said we wanted to write a book on his father and the group. By the mid-2000s, Indonesia had found its footing in the post-Suharto period and Liem had long ago left the driving to Anthony. Currently CEO of the Salim Group, Anthony spent years after Suharto's fall working to avert a collapse of the group due to the massive debts incurred from events in 1997–98.

We requested Anthony and his father to help us tell as accurate and comprehensive a story as we could. We made it clear that we had to retain full control of the manuscript; it was clearly understood that the family and Salim executives could not see any of the text prior to publication. Keeping the writing project independent and credible was of paramount importance to us. Anthony agreed to our requests. His father talked to us between 2006 and 2007, whenever his health permitted. Anthony, who did not vet our questions to himself or to his father, spent many hours with us over a period of years.

Seven months after Liem's home was torched, a company was created for the sole purpose of disposing Salim assets in order to repay the outstanding debts. Holdiko Perkasa was formed in December 1998 by IBRA. An information memorandum said Holdiko was established “in relation to the settlement between the Salim Group and the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency with regard to liquidity credits provided to BCA and the affiliated loans which exceeded the Legal Lending Limit given by BCA to Salim Group affiliated companies.” Office space for Holdiko was created in Wisma Indocement, seven floors below Anthony Salim's nineteenth storey office. Cynics viewed it as literally “being under” Anthony. But by then, Salim had lost some of its vaunted clout, and Holdiko worked hard to be credible, keeping more than an arm's length away. Its efforts won kudos as well as criticism. Holdiko worked a lot better than four similar bodies set up by IBRA to sell assets pledged by other debtors.

GETTING STARTED AMID TURBULENCE

Technically, Holdiko was owned by two Salim companies, Gemahripah Pertiwi and Carakasubur Nirmala. But all their shares were pledged to IBRA along with all of Holdiko's in the Salim-pledged assets, and the information memo noted it was “under the effective control of IBRA”, which appointed Holdiko's management and directed its work. IBRA said it would have “hands-off management but hands-on oversight”. Salaries and Holdiko expenses were paid out of sales of Salim assets, not by IBRA. Salim was meant to have nothing to do with Holdiko's operations, but not surprisingly, there were serious doubts that Anthony could be kept at bay. By design, there were two Salim people among Holdiko's directors, but the pivotal person was an American investment banker, Scott Coffey, who had a reputation for solid integrity and no Salim links. Coffey came to Jakarta in 1990 with Citibank and later worked at state-owned Bahana Securities. IBRA chairman Glenn Yusuf hired Coffey, who had a power-of-attorney to act for IBRA. Holdiko's small professional staff — fewer than twenty — included largely young bankers, as they were perceived to be less likely to be steeped in Indonesia's corruption-tainted ways. Holdiko took possession of pledged Salim assets and prepared procedures for selling them.

Liem was not afraid of taking risks and venturing into territory he didn't know much about. His modus operandi was to find the right partner who could run the new venture for him. Liem's talent laid in sussing out capable and experienced people who could help grow his stable of businesses. Mochtar Riady led the charge in banking for nearly fifteen years. Robert Kuok was “instrumental” in building up flour milling, while in cement Liem got start-up help from a Taiwanese partner introduced by Bangkok Bank's Chin Sophonpanich. Another area where Liem forged a beautiful friendship was in property, where he teamed with savvy developer Ciputra, who spearheaded property developments through a company partly owned by the Jakarta government, PT Pembangunan Jaya, and through Ciputra's PT Metropolitan Development.

PARTNERING A PROPERTY KING

Born Tjie Tjin Hwa, Ciputra rose from very simple roots to become Indonesia's best-known property developer. He seemed to possess the “tangan dingin” — the kind of “magic” business touch that Riady and Liem had. Ciputra, who started using that name at age twenty-five, was born in 1931 in the small town of Parigi in central Sulawesi (then known as Celebes). His father was from a different part of Fujian than Liem's village. He was brought to Sulawesi at age ten by Ciputra's grandfather who had migrated earlier and was a shopkeeper in the northern Sulawesi town of Gorontalo. Ciputra's father, a coconut trader, had married a woman who was part-Chinese, part-pribumi; their son did not have any Chinese education. As a child, Ciputra recalls he had to walk seven kilometres each way between his primary school and home. One day, when Ciputra was twelve, during the Japanese Occupation, his father disappeared. The family found out much later that he died in a prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, Ciputra went to high school, where he did well enough to win a place at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in West Java. The institute, where Sukarno studied, admitted very few Chinese students at the time. While studying architecture in Bandung, Ciputra showed strong entrepreneurial instincts; he sold baskets and hats made from palm trees, traded batik, and designed and sold furniture.