One hankered after power, the other after money, and when they paired up they made a potent team that kept them on top in Indonesian politics and business respectively for three decades. President Suharto and Liem Sioe Liong worked very closely together, building a symbiotic relationship that resulted in huge benefits for both. Liem, founder of the colossal business conglomerate known as the Salim Group, proved himself to be a reliable businessman and became Suharto's main cukong — a Chinese financial backer who is given protection by powerful political or military leaders. In his rise from an itinerant peddler to Indonesia's wealthiest businessman, Liem received patronage from several generals, but most importantly from Suharto himself. The strongman acquired unchecked and, for a long time, uncheckable power and until his shocking resignation in May 1998, was one of the world's longest-serving heads of government. In 1983, sycophantic parliamentarians conferred on him the title Bapak Pembangunan — “Father of Development”, which Suharto cherished, as he liked to claim that all his endeavours were for the good of the “common man”. But while he claimed to identify with the “wong cilik” (Javanese for “little people”), Suharto saw himself as possessing the wahyu, sort of a divine right, to be the country's ruler. An Indonesian historian once commented: “Like a Javanese monarch, Suharto always equated his selfcontrol and harmony in relation to the spiritual world with the well-being of the nation and the state.”

He surrounded himself with people who could serve faithfully and unquestioningly. To stay at the apex of power, Suharto relied on several pillars. One was the military — which the general used effectively. He used money to keep the armed forces loyal to him and used them to suppress political opponents — both real and perceived ones. The military had stepped in to run companies of the colonial Dutch that Sukarno, the first president, nationalized in 1957, and top generals became used to having opportunities to enrich themselves. They became an even bigger player in Suharto's New Order. Another crucial prop for Suharto was financial and other aid from the West. Indonesia was in dire straits when he came into power, and the way he and his team of Western-trained technocrats opened the country for foreign investment was vital for economic growth.

In the years after the downfall of his patron, Liem spent most of his time in Singapore, leading a mostly sequestered life far removed from his days as one of the most recognized faces in the Indonesian corporate world. Unlike in Jakarta where he was constantly hounded, he was able to move around in the island republic scarcely disturbed. Unaccustomed to being at home much of the time, he kept up the habit of going to the office, only this time it was to the office of Permanent Pte Ltd usually every afternoon, except Sundays, when he would go to the KMP office at the Fook Hai Building in Chinatown, which was Anthony's base. No real business had been conducted at Permanent for years, but Liem felt that in keeping with its name, the office should remain open. Sometimes, visitors from China dropped by to see him. It was Anthony's habit to be in Singapore on weekends when he was not travelling elsewhere on business. He would brief his father about the latest business developments. Liem continued to make occasional trips to China as long as his health permitted. He particularly enjoyed going to his hometown, Fuqing, which welcomed him with open arms. Before his health declined to the point he could no longer travel, Liem also made the occasional short trips to Jakarta, and whenever possible he would stop by at Jalan Cendana to visit his old friend Suharto.

A “HOMECOMING” IN CHINA

Liem regarded Indonesia as his home, but there always was a special place in his heart for his native town in China. When he was able to return to his village of Niuzhai, he would pay respects to his ancestors at their simple graveyard. He was much loved as a philanthropist in Fuqing, credited with leading the charge in transforming the provincial backwater into a modern city. Here, he was simply called “laoban” — the Boss — and the one who was instrumental in providing seed money that enabled Fuqing to have roads, bridges, shopping malls, hospitals, schools, industrial areas and even a port. In his ancestral home, Liem was accorded demigod status. It was evident during one visit he made during Chinese New Year in February 2006.

FAREWELL TO A TYCOON

Liem died on 10 June 2012 at Raffles Hospital in Singapore, just short of his ninety-fifth birthday. By the Chinese lunar calendar, it was the twenty-first day of the fourth leap month; a date that some considered coincidental as the figure 21 had always been special for the tycoon. Liem was buried at the Choa Chu Kang Cemetery in Singapore on 18 June, a date chosen by Buddhist monks. Despite the fact that he regarded Indonesia, where he lived for sixty years, as home, it was decided that the island state was the most appropriate place to hold his funeral and burial at this time. The long-term plan was to have his remains eventually moved to Java where he and his wife, who in June 2012 was too frail to travel, would eventually be buried. (A burial plot in land-scarce Singapore is only guaranteed for fifteen years, with the government exhuming multiple cemeteries to make way for development.)

Liem's death sparked a send-off rarely seen in Singapore for a nonpolitical figure. A parade of people from all over the region attended his week-long wake. The demand for wreaths was so great there was a shortage of fresh flowers in the country for a few days. Friends and business associates flooded Indonesian and Singapore newspapers with condolence announcements. First Pacific issued a statement on the death of its long-time chairman, noting that while retired from active involvement, Liem “stood at the peak of a long and distinguished career… His career culminated in the unofficial title, Indonesia's first industrialist.”

At the wake, air-conditioned tents were set up, and the Mandarin Orchard Singapore hotel, controlled by Mochtar Riady's Lippo Group, provided five-star catering for guests. Mourners covered the myriad of people whose lives had been touched by the cukong, including politicians, industrialists, businessmen, fellow clansmen and schoolchildren — beneficiaries of his philanthropy. Visitors from Indonesia included former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose family ties with Liem began with her grandfather Hasan Din, as well as Suharto's two youngest daughters, Titiek and Mamiek — the two among the six Suharto progeny that Liem once told the authors he felt the most affinity with.

On the night of 4 September 1990, Jakarta bankers were stunned by a press release from the central bank unlike any they had seen. In a terse statement, Bank Indonesia announced that the board of supervisors — including the chairman — and the board of directors at PT Bank Duta had been fired by its majority shareholders following “operational mistakes” and foreign exchange losses. Bank Duta, widely considered to be Suharto's bank as its dominant shareholders were three foundations chaired by the president, was Indonesia's fifth largest privately owned bank. The dismissed bank chairman was Bustanil Arifin, Suharto's close ally and a good friend of Liem. Bustanil, a retired general, was Minister of Cooperatives as well as head of Bulog. And the losses incurred at the bank involved a senior bank executive, who happened to be Bustanil's son-in-law.

BANK DUTA: THE “FAVOUR-EXCHANGE” BANK

Bank Duta's “operational mistakes” turned out to be serious gambles on currency movements that caused the bank to lose more than twice its total capital. The Duta scandal encapsulated many elements of the murky and sometimes wild Indonesian business environment. Duta was a publicly listed company, yet there was a complete absence of transparency about its financial position as well as a woeful lack of prudent banking regulation. In the handling of the scandal, what showed to be functioning well was Indonesia's version of the “Favor Bank”, taking a term from American writer Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. One character in the book, a lawyer, declares that “everything in the criminal justice system in New York operates on favors. Everybody does favors for everybody else. Every chance they get, they make deposits in the Favor Bank… It's saving up for a rainy day.” People who make regular deposits in the Favor Bank, he explains, put themselves in position to ask politicians for big favors.

Suharto's Indonesia operated as a kind of Favor Bank. Liem, who had given 30 per cent of BCA's shares to Suharto's eldest son and daughter, was arguably the biggest “depositor” in Jakarta's version. In June 1985, when Liem was squeezed by cement overcapacity and debt, the president returned the favour. At times, Suharto needed to call in favours, and Liem responded, as did others in the case of Bank Duta. The Salim Group reaped good dividends for providing needed deposits.

At the time Suharto was solidifying the power wrested from Sukarno in 1966, Liem had little business outside Indonesia and was relatively unknown outside his Hokchia circle. Early in the New Order, though, Liem and his partner, fellow Hokchia businessman Djuhar Sutanto, established a beachhead for outside activity. On 31 March 1967 — less than three weeks after Suharto's handpicked assembly declared him acting president — Waringin Private Limited was registered in Singapore. Its principal activities, according to the registration, were “general wholesale trade” and “wholesale on a fee or contract basis (e.g. commission agencies)”. The company registration papers listed Liem Oen Kian (Djuhar's Chinese name), as managing director, and Liem Sioe Liong as director. (Much later, Djuhar's role ended. In 2006, Liem owned 120 of the unlisted company's 300 shares, or 40 per cent, while unidentified nominees in Vanuatu held the other 180.)

SINGAPORE BEACHHEAD

During the early Suharto years, the ability of Indonesian companies to export or import depended entirely on government licences. Dismantling stifling trade-controls was not an economic priority for Suharto, who had his focus on taming rampant inflation and getting money from the West. For sizeable Indonesian traders, it was good to have a presence in Singapore, whose port handled nearly all goods going to or from Indonesia. At this time, it was difficult for Indonesian traders to obtain letters of credit, a consequence of the economic mess the country was in at the end of Sukarno's tenure, and a Singapore firm would find it easier and cheaper to borrow from banks than an Indonesian one. In July 1968, Liem opened a second trading company in Singapore, Permanent Pte Ltd. That same month, he and others registered a textile business in Singapore, called International Spinning Mills Pte Ltd., to spin, weave and print yarns and fabrics. A co-shareholder was Indonesia-born businessman Henry Kwee, another Hokchia who later became a property king in Singapore. In the late 1960s, Singapore had a thriving textile industry but by the 1980s, the business had shifted to lower cost countries. Liem sold the Singapore factory plot and moved the machinery to Indonesia.

The end of the Japanese Occupation in 1945 was universally celebrated but brought fresh challenges. As the Japanese were surrendering, nationalist leader Sukarno proclaimed independence on 17 August, raising a red and white flag hastily stitched by his young wife Fatmawati. The declaration of independence, however, was not recognized by the Dutch, who were keen to reassert control over their colony and all its resources. The tussle between the colonial forces and the independence fighters went on until 1949. During this time, the Dutch tried to choke off supply lines to the revolutionary soldiers, imposing sea and land blockades. Suppliers had to sneak through Dutch controlled areas, turning them effectively into smugglers. For those willing to take the risks, smuggling was a lucrative activity.

For small itinerant traders like Liem, it was a chance to start recouping his lost income. His hard-earned savings in Japanese Occupation-issued notes — stashed in sacks — were wiped out overnight when it was declared worthless. As he recalled: “The new government compensated every household by the number of occupants living there: regardless of how much money you had, each person was entitled to only one rupiah. There were eight of us living in our house, and we received a total of eight rupiah. That was all. The Occupation ended but I had to start all over again.” Adding to his responsibilities as a family man was the arrival of his first-born, Albert, that year. Although he was back to square one, Liem was luckier than most; he was once again able to capitalize on the strong Hokchia kinship, borrowing capital from his clansmen to restart his business. There was even a new customer base — the independence fighters. He joined others in smuggling basic necessities to them, laying the groundwork for a role that would reach far beyond being just a supplier. It was during this time that he established important contacts that later helped put him on the road to riches.

STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

After the Japanese surrender, the Dutch, aided by British and other allied forces, waged a bitter war with the nationalists in their attempt to recover their colony.

1996 — the year before the financial crisis hit the region — could be called Salim's high-water mark. Everything was progressing smoothly — business was booming and the sky looked to be the limit. In July 1996, Asiaweek magazine in Hong Kong put out its first annual list of people it labelled Asia's “Power 50”, and Suharto and Liem proved their potency — the president topped the list, while his leading cukong was Number 5 (and the highest ranking businessperson). That year, Salim published its first comprehensive corporate brochure, a forty-page full-colour production with a plain white cover featuring the group's logo — an embossed globe with the name Salim written across it. Chairman Liem's written message declared confidently that the group's “best years still lie ahead”. What lay ahead instead was a traumatic plunge from power for Liem and his patron. In retrospect, the bucolic days of 1996 for Salim were somewhat akin to the maiden voyage of the Titanic before it struck the iceberg: there was celebration and partying on board, and passengers envisioned grand dreams for the future. It was the prophetic calm before the storm. For Suharto, 1996 portended the calamity that would follow. Having ditched his close military advisors and at the apogee of power, Suharto continued dispensing favours for his children's ventures, and indeed, extended it to the next generation as well. That year proved to be a turning point for the president when his wife — his pillar of support, and some say, the possessor of his wahyu — died.

HONOURED IN PHILADELPHIA

For Salim, though, 1996 was smooth sailing. There was a high point for Salim's offshore vehicle, First Pacific. In July, the company was named a “component stock” of Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index. Being part of the index boosted interest in First Pacific, whose shares were more than ten times higher than in 1991. The magazine BusinessWeek declared: “First Pacific's mix of East and West may be a model for the future.” It was a nice birthday present for FP chief Manny Pangilinan, who had just turned fifty and celebrated it with a big bash at the posh Shangri-la Hotel in Manila — he was now the head of a certified blue-chip company.

As Holdiko was selling pledged assets, Anthony was consolidating control over what was left of the Salim empire. Not one to sit around licking his wounds, he was already looking beyond the remnants of the group and exploring new growth possibilities. Through the first ten years after Suharto's fall, the Salim story featured twists and turns, low points and highs, as the group lurched ahead. One striking low point — rooted in First Pacific's expansion in the Philippines — was a bruising, public spat between Anthony and his long-time partner at First Pacific, Manny Pangilinan. Fortuitously for both men and for First Pacific, the relationship was repaired and the partnership flourished again. An important albeit low key high point was Anthony getting a document from Indonesian authorities called a “release and discharge” statement saying he had discharged his obligations from debts owed to the state in the wake of Suharto's fall. After receiving this legal all-clear, Anthony decided to become CEO of Indofood, so he was directly running a big listed company for the first time. Anthony's business interests expanded at home and elsewhere. Moves to grow on new turf did not always succeed, most clearly in an effort to get a beachhead in India, which went badly. But on the whole, the Salim Group — or what now should be considered the Anthony Salim Group — was again on the move.

STRESS TEST AT FIRST PACIFIC

The severe backlash against Salim that began as soon as Suharto was forced to step down made the group relieved it had created First Pacific. However badly things went for Salim inside Indonesia, the Hong Kongbased company gave Anthony a tool away from home. First Pacific had cash, thanks to completion of the big sale of Hagemeyer two months before the May 1998 Jakarta riots. Some First Pacific shareholders fretted about the possibility of the Hong Kong-listed company being prevailed upon to come to the rescue of the sinking Salim ship in Indonesia. In mid-1998, they saw its biggest owner imperilled and Asia in crisis while First Pacific's most profitable investment, Hagemeyer, was gone. The May 1998 events pummelled First Pacific's share price.

After Suharto gained power, the United States provided aid to help him consolidate it. But Washington could not provide one thing the general wanted — big supplies of rice. The United States pressed Suharto to accept surplus wheat under the “Food for Peace” programme. But in the 1960s, Indonesians weren't keen on wheat, which they did not grow. Fifty years later, rice remained the essential staple, but the diet of many Indonesians included wheat products in the form of instant noodles, available in a dazzling assortment of flavours — and a Salim company, Indofood, was market king. Per capita consumption of wheat shot up from a miniscule 0.3 kilograms in 1966 to around 9 kilograms at the start of the 1980s and doubled to 18 kilograms in 2010.

As noted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in April 2011: “The price of instant noodles is currently cheaper than rice and many more middle to lower income consumers substitute instant noodles for breakfast or dinner.”2 Over the decades, “Indomie” noodles became the Salim product best known to the public, and noodles became Salim's “money machine”, as described by SWA, a Jakarta business magazine, in 1994 — by which time Indofood was the world's largest maker of instant noodles, surpassing Nissin Food Products of Japan, whose founder Momofuku Ando invented the instant noodle in 1958.

MUSCLING INTO NOODLES

The story of how Salim became a noodle giant reflects the group's potency, not pioneering. For years after Bogasari began grinding wheat, Salim did not try to make anything with the flour it produced. Also of interest is that another man, not Liem, started Indomie, a contraction for “Indonesian mie” (mie is Indonesian for noodles). This case was similar to that of Indomobil, where a product with the “Indo” prefix was originally owned by another party. According to Anthony, Salim got into the noodles business by “accident”, not design. Behind the famous Indomie name was an enterprising businessman from Medan, North Sumatra, by the name of Djajadi Djaja, who also started a distribution company, Wicaksana. He reluctantly entered a partnership with Salim and, over time, was bought out. After Suharto fell many years later, Djajadi sued Indofood and members of the Gang of Four, contending he had been forced to exit the joint venture and sell the now-famous Indomie name for a pittance.

During his thirty-two-year regime, Suharto seldom spoke publicly about Liem. This is not surprising, as the strongman presumably felt no need to defend his relationship with his main cukong, who was supposed to be there to give financial support but not talked about. Also, the Indonesian media never had the chance to directly ask about Liem, as Suharto hardly ever gave press conferences. The few interviews he granted always required the media to submit questions in advance, and if the keepers of Suharto's door didn't like a question, the media requesting the interview was informed that the president's busy schedule made one impossible. Still, there was no way to shut people up completely, and the Suharto-Liem link continued to be a matter of public discourse, with some bolder media commenting on it. Suharto broke his silence one day in 1995, when he surprisingly responded to persisting public discussions about the greatly slowed pace of economic reform by launching an unexpected, robust defence of his ties with Liem.

“CARRYING OUT AN ASSIGNMENT”

One of the major topics in Suharto's unscripted remarks was cement. This was surprising, too, as the subject getting heavy attention at that time was Bulog's continuing monopolies, in particular over wheat imports, and Bogasari's domination of flour-milling; in the preceding months, Salim's position in flour had come under renewed public criticism. Little if any attention was paid then to cement, where there was no monopoly. A decade earlier, though, Suharto had bailed out Liem when his cement business was overextended, and now that he had decided to speak on his pal's behalf, cement was the key subject, along with flour. Suharto told 200 small- and medium-sized pribumi executives at his Tapos ranch that where critics saw the cukong as a big crony in collusion with the President, he saw a capable businessman who dutifully carried out whatever “national service” he was instructed to do. People had the wrong notions about how Salim became big in cement, Suharto declared to the assembled audience, jabbing the air with a finger to emphasize his point. “Everything has been mistaken, as if there was collusion between me and Liem. No.

Clove, the aromatic spice used to flavour the popular Indonesian kretek cigarette, may resemble a nail, but over this humble flower bud, wars have been fought, and fortunes made or lost. For Liem, it was trade in this spice that helped him lay the groundwork for the path to riches. Called cengkeh in Indonesian, cloves were found originally in the five remote islands in Eastern Indonesia known as the Spice Islands. In the late eighteenth century, some seedlings were smuggled to Africa, where they flourished in the soils of Madagascar and Zanzibar (today part of Tanzania). Ironically, cloves that were grown there yielded buds of a preferred quality for use in the production of kretek, the clove-infused cigarette beloved by Indonesian smokers. But importation for the spice was tightly controlled by the government, and suppliers had to be purchased from middlemen in Singapore and Hong Kong, making them immensely wealthy. When Indonesia was not producing sufficient quantities for domestic demand, politically connected companies were granted permission to import from the African countries, starting in the Sukarno era. In 1965, using a company founded by his partner, Hasan Din, a father-in-law of President Sukarno, Liem secured a one-time permission to bring in 3,000 tons from Africa. That single import helped ease his debt burden, and he became convinced there was big money to be made in this business.

Traditionally, kretek have been hand-rolled; the fragrance of the clove said to be further enhanced when rolled by young women using the sides of their hips. Kretek consumption surged in the 1970s following the introduction of machines to roll the sticks, bringing down price per stick. Around 90 per cent of the cigarettes consumed in Indonesia are kretek. From being an industry that was in doldrums in the 1950s, kretek manufacturing began its resurgence and in the last decade or more, the owners of the largest kretek manufacturers consistently rank among the wealthiest in the country. The cigarette industry is the largest contributor to the country's excise coffers. So addicted are Indonesian smokers to their kretek that at the height of the 1997–98 financial crisis, sales of the scented cigarette actually rose — an indication that people were willing to forgo other luxuries but not their puff, or that they felt they needed it more, to soothe their woes.

Anthony Salim, once described by a journalist as a Ferrari-engined executive, has been helming the Salim Group in the post-Suharto era. He very nearly didn't get a chance to know his father. In 1949, just weeks before he was born, his father came close to losing his life in a car accident. Thankful to be alive, Liem named his newborn Fung Seng, literally meaning “meeting a life”. (Decades later, Anthony lived up to his name by resuscitating the conglomerate his father founded, preventing a neardeath of the companies under the Salim umbrella, in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis that also ultimately led to the overthrown of Suharto, Salim's main patron.)

Anthony's stewardship of the business group was a gradual process, at least in the eyes of the public. If indeed Liem noticed early that the youngest of his three sons was the brightest, the boldest and the hungriest to get into business, he would not acknowledge it to the world. It is a credit to Liem, though, that he was wise enough to break from the traditional Chinese thinking that the eldest son is automatically the heir apparent and thus entitled to inherit the business. In his early teens, Anthony often accompanied his father to his factories; when he returned in 1971 from his studies overseas, he was impatient to learn the ropes of Salim's growing stable of businesses. Nurturing his youngest son's curious mind, Liem frequently took Anthony along to meetings with Cabinet ministers, officials, other businessmen, as well as with Suharto. Those meetings gave the young man an opportunity to learn by observing. For a long time, Liem refused to be drawn into speculation about who among his children would take over the reins of the group. His older sons Albert and Andree were also assigned to Salim businesses, but Anthony showed keenness to get into every pie.

Asked in 1984 if Anthony was the group's “crown prince”, Liem was purposely non-committal, commenting: “All the children are the same. What's needed here is teamwork. Those who say that Anton will replace me are outsiders.” The year Anthony returned from a two-year course in the United Kingdom, Suharto officiated at the opening of the Salim's first huge industrial venture, Bogasari Flour Mills.

In the film The Year of Living Dangerously, a main character, Billy, falls to his death after unfurling from a high-rise window a banner declaring: “Sukarno, Feed Your People”. The message was similarly applicable to his successor Suharto, who in 1966 was in the process of easing the country's first president out of office. The new leader had yet to consolidate his power, but he was well aware that he badly needed to keep people fed if he was to be accepted. The country was seriously short of rice, the staple and the fulcrum of Indonesian life. The grain was the lifeblood of Indonesians, and at the time, soldiers and civil servants received part of their salary in rice. Inadequate food supplies were fuelling runaway inflation, which by some calculations topped 500 per cent. Supplying food to help prop the nascent anti-communist Suharto regime became an important part of a massive effort by Western nations, led by the United States. Suharto demanded huge aid, sending emissaries to Washington. In September 1966, after meeting Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik, U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey wrote President Lyndon Johnson:

Washington donated some rice but Suharto kept pushing for more, given Indonesians’ attachment to the grain. The United States, however, wanted to promote wheat, of which it had stockpiles. Over time, Suharto signalled that wheat would be okay if there really couldn't be more rice.

After Suharto's resignation, the “reformasi” movement brought pressure for significant change in the political system. For many Indonesians who had lived under the repressive regime of the autocrat, the hope for reform was palpable. A liberated domestic media embraced its new role. In business, meanwhile, rivals of Suharto-assisted groups were sharpening their knives, eager to slash the privileges accorded to Salim and the favoured few. Many people wanted the Salim Group to pay heavily for buttressing Suharto. Some politicians saw a chance to get control of valuable assets and ensure Anthony was crushed in post-Suharto Indonesia. “They could go after him for everything”, Indonesian agricultural economist H.S. Dillon remarked. “He would be a very good symbol to crucify. He is the most vulnerable of the cronies.”

Exacerbating Salim's situation was that Indonesia's new president, B.J. Habibie, was no friend. Habibie was an unpredictable, hyperactive man who, during Suharto's time, pushed grandiose nationalistic plans at great cost to the country. He was distrustful of Salim and saw Liem competing for favoured status with Suharto. Anthony, however, stayed on good terms with Habibie's younger brother Timmy (Suryatim), with whom he had business in Batam. But that cut little ice with Habibie who, Anthony acknowledged, “hated me like hell” because the Salim CEO had urged Suharto in early 1998 to give Gen. Try Sutrisno a second vice-presidential term. Habibie had surrounded himself with advisors who were deemed nationalists and not particularly friendly to the cukong culture. Liem confirmed that he also weighed in on the vice-presidential appointment, warning the president that the German-trained engineer was “like a tiger … he will get you when you are down.” Anthony added that when Habibie became president, he wanted to “change the total picture of the players”.

SHEDDING WEIGHT TO STAY ALIVE

Confronted with a sea change, some Salim executives were not confident about the future of the group. Andree Halim wanted out of Jakarta, as the May riots, the loss of BCA, and the enmity shown after Suharto's exit made him want to stop working in Indonesia. (Andree declined to meet the authors.) The fight to keep Salim afloat was solely on Anthony's shoulders. He was determined to see it survive but given the political situation, it was far from a sure bet.

Liem Sioe Liong never read Dale Carnegie, but for his ability to make friends and win the trust of influential people, he could have been a poster boy for Carnegie's best-selling work How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, two years before Liem set foot in Java. Although he was not fluent in the language and knew little about Javanese culture, within a short time of his arrival, Liem was able to attract customers with his winsome smile and charming ways. As a supplier first to the independence fighters in the foothills of Central Java, then to the Diponegoro Division commanded by Suharto, Liem impressed his customers with his honesty and reliability. Among his Hokchia clansmen, he had a reputation for being trustworthy and discreet. Within a few years of his arrival in Java, he was entrusted with the responsibility of harbouring a political fugitive hiding from the Dutch when they were asserting their claim on the country after the Japanese surrender. It turned out that the fugitive was Hasan Din, a father-in-law to the republic's first president, Sukarno. Liem and Hasan Din became friends as well as business associates, of which more would be written about later.

Thirty years after Liem set foot on Java, he was scouting for big money to fund plans for his first huge venture, the flour milling business. Soon after, he needed fresh funds for the planned cement manufacturing. For this, Liem had to go beyond the country's shores to obtain it. Two overseas Chinese tycoons played important roles in channelling funds as well as expertise. For flour, he turned to Malaysian Chinese Robert Kuok; for cement it was Thai-Chinese banker Chin Sophonpanich, a self-made tycoon who knew a thing or two about the importance of having powerful patrons. But to get to that stage, where he could undertake the role of the country's first industrialist, he would have had to earn the trust of the country's new leader Suharto, who became full president in 1968. Although Liem and Suharto had been acquainted since 1949, the Chinese businessman did not have steady contact with the general until after 1966, when Suharto seized power. For Liem's “anointment” into the privileged position of a cukong, he had members of the senior military men belonging to a group dubbed “Financial Generals” to thank.

Nothing in Liem's childhood gave any indication of how illustrious his future would be. He was born to farmers in a small village of some 600 people in Fujian province, China. Like many village children in China in those days, he lived a hardscrabble existence. His village was located in a region considered inhospitable for farming — surrounded by mountains and bordered by the sea, there was a scarcity of arable land. The soil, tainted by the sea's high saline content, allowed only hardy plants such as peanuts and sweet potato to be cultivated. There was no system of irrigation. Still, farmers coaxed rice to grow. (When Liem became wealthy and wanted to help his homeland, one of the early projects he initiated was the construction of a reservoir, feeding an extensive irrigation canal system. This enabled the entire area of Fuqing to develop and indeed, prosper.)

The disagreeable conditions of the region were pithily encapsulated by the local adage: “jiu nian han, yi nian zai”, which translates to “nine years of drought, one year of disaster [meaning floods.]” It was no surprise that many young men from the area left in droves in search of a better life elsewhere. Liem became one of them. In 1937, the Japanese invaded China. The weak and corrupt Kuomintang Nationalist government, facing a growing threat internally by the Communists led by Mao Zedong, were no match for the invaders. Law and order disintegrated in many parts of the country, with local warlords and bandits claiming power over many areas. By 1938, war had reached Liem's doorstep. He had lost his father the previous year, and now faced certain conscription. He was as reluctant to leave his recently widowed mother as she was to have her favourite son leave her side. Confronted with the realities, they agreed he should join his elder brother Sioe Hie, already in Java with their uncle. Thus began Liem's journey to become one of the wealthiest men in Nanyang, as Southeast Asia was then called.

BACKGROUND

Liem was born Lin Shaoliang, in 1917, the Year of the Snake, on the seventh day of the seventh month of according to the Chinese zodiac. Official records in Indonesia listed his birth as 1916, and the family used that to calculate his age.