State Terminology and Knowledge Production on Chinese Indonesians: a Bibliometric Analysis of the ‘Cina’ Term (1968–2013)

This study aims to map and analyse the development of academic studies on Chinese Indonesians before the removal of the term ‘Cina’ and its replacement with ‘Tionghoa’ in 2014. Using a bibliometric approach, this study examines 292 documents indexed in the Scopus database between 1968 and 2013. The research results show that publication production developed unevenly. The number of publications, which was relatively low and sporadic during the early New Order era, increased significantly in the late 1990s in line with political changes, the economic crisis and the strengthening of public discourse on ethnic relations. These findings suggest that academic knowledge production before 2014 was still influenced by state terminology and discourse institutionalised through the term ‘Cina’, which contributed to the framing of ethnic Chinese as a problematic category. This study asserts that the shift in terminology is not merely a linguistic correction but has the potential to mark an epistemic transformation. However, identity politics and populism in 2017 proved that negative sentiments and stereotypes towards Chinese Indonesians still exist.