The paper was founded in Batavia on 1 October 1910 after Lauw Giok Lan came up with the concept and approached Yoe Sin Gie. The two men had worked at Perniagaan,a conservative Chinese newspaper closely allied with the Chinese Officer system and the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan. When Sin Po launched,Lauw took on the editorial duties and Yoe took on the administrative aspects,with Hauw Tek Kong as director.[1] At first it was only a weekly paper.[2] The paper quickly became very successful.
Lauw was an experienced publisher who had worked for the Van Dorp Co.,which had published Java Bode and Bintang Betawi.[3] He had been editor of Perniagaan since 1907.[3]
Front covers of the first and fourth issues of Sin Po,dating from October 1910
J. R. Razoux Kühr
In 1912,when Sin Po became a daily paper,it hired a European (Indo) editor-in-chief,J. R. Razoux Kühr.[2] The higher legal status of Europeans made this standard practice in Malay newspapers of the time because legal punishments for contravening press laws would fall less harshly upon them.[1] Razoux Kühr was a strange figure,a disgraced former civil servant who had written an English-language booklet denouncing the Dutch system of laws.[4] However,he had good relations with the Peranakan Chinese community and was an excellent writer who spoke several languages.[5]
By late 1912 he had already been called before the court for printing defamatory content in Sin Po. The article in question had described the murder of a Chinese person in Sukabumi,and by its factual description was said to stir up hatred against the Indies government.[6]
In early 1913,Sin Po got into a feud with some more conservative elements of the Chinese community due to its criticism of the colonial Chinese Officer system. That feud resulted in calls to boycott Sin Po.[7] In particular the paper harshly attacked Phoa Keng Hek and Khouw Kim An,high-profile Chinese Officers,and accused them of corruption and abuse of authority.[8] One Sin Po editor was forced to resign from the board of the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan and was then expelled as a member of the organization.[9]
By 1915,rival newspaper Perniagaan was waging their war against Sin Po on a new front. They accused the paper,under Razoux Kühr's tenure,of accepting payment for its reporters to travel. One case that they printed proof of was a receipt for payment of a Sin Po journalist to Garut where they were hosted by the local Chinese community and directed to investigate a district head who had been mistreating them.[10] Since Razoux Kühr was already a pariah in the European community at this point,it only added to their suspicions that he was an unscrupulous figure.[4]
In March 1916 Razoux Kühr stepped down as editor,ostensibly for health reasons,and the paper got its first Chinese editor,Kwee Hing Tjiat.[11] Although Razoux Kühr was announced as editor in chief of Sin Po's rival paper,Perniagaan in 1918,it was apparently short-lived,and he never again held a prominent editorial job.[12]
Kwee Hing Tjiat
Toean Kwee Hing Tjiat
Kwee Hing Tjiat was a lifelong journalist who by 1916 had already been editor of Bok Tok and Tjhoen Tjhioe in Surabaya as well as Palita in Yogyakarta.[13] Under his tenure the paper took on an even more aggressively Chinese nationalist line. The paper continued to develop its very pro-Peking and pro-Totok Chinese position and to harshly criticize the Chinese Officer system.[14] Hence the paper's bitter feud with rival paper Perniagaan continued under Kwee's tenure.[15] Historian Leo Suryadinata notes that Sin Po came to lead a distinct group at this time which he terms the Sin Po group. He states that this group believed in Peranakan-Totok unity,Chinese language education among Peranakan and non-participation in local Indies politics.[16] Kwee stepped down from his position in 1918 and went to work for a private company called Hoo Tik Thay.[13]
Tjoe Bou San
Toean Tjoe Bou San
In 1919 Tjoe Bou San,who had previously been editor-in-chief of Tjhoen Tjhioe and Hoa Tok Po,took up the position at Sin Po.[17] He had already been working at Sin Po at a lower level since his return from China in 1918.[17] It was at around this time that the former editor Razoux Kühr,now at Perniagaan,got into a legal dispute with director Hauw Tek Kong of Sin Po.[18] It is unclear what the substance of the case was.
When Hauw Tek Kong was barred from re-entering the Indies after a visit to China,Tjoe briefly became director of the paper as well as editor-in-chief.[1] It was under his tenure that Sin Po launched its Chinese language edition in February 1920.[2]Lie Chen Fu was the first editor-in-chief of that edition,followed by Chuang Yu Lin from 1921-27,and Hsieh Tso Yi from 1927-29.[1] That Chinese edition quickly became the most influential such paper in the Indies.[17]
In 1922 Ang Jan Goan joined the editorial board of the newspaper. One of his first innovations was to launch an East Java edition of the paper in Surabaya in 1922,edited by Lim Bok Sioe,as well as a new paper called Bin Seng in Batavia.[1][2] The purpose of Bin Seng,also a daily paper,was to cover local news in Batavia.[1]Bin Seng was also edited by Tjoe Bou San under the pseudonym Oen Tjip Tiong;unfortunately,the paper did not last long.[17] The paper also launched a new weekly publication in April 1923.[2]
Kwee Kek Beng
When Tjoe Bou San died in 1925,Kwee Kek Beng became editor-in-chief while Ang Jan Goan was promoted to be director. Both men would be in those positions for several decades[19]
Kwee Kek Beng was a Dutch-educated former schoolteacher who had been a contributor to Bin Seng and Java Bode before being hired as a junior editor at Sin Po in 1922.[20] Like his predecessors,he was also a strong Chinese nationalist.[20][21]
By the second half of the 1920s,with the Indonesian nationalist movement gaining strength,Sin Po moderated its pro-China line and became more sympathetic to the Indonesian perspective.[14] Kwee himself was a close personal friend of Sukarno and other leaders of the movement.[21] Their like-minded counterparts at Djawa Tengah in Semarang also become more Indies-oriented. Many of the Sin Po group who had advocated that Peranakan Chinese 'go back' to China for work and education gave up on this campaign.[16]
In January 1927 the paper launched yet another publication,De Chineesche Revue.[2] This was a weekly journal published in European languages,including but not limited to Dutch,in which Chinese intellectuals could discuss the issues of the day in a more serious manner.[1] Kwee was the driving force behind the creation of this journal,as he had seen how many intellectual journals were published in the Netherlands and believed the Indies Chinese were capable of writing at that level as well.[21]Henri Borel,a Sinologist,was influential in it for a time.[1]
In the late 1930s Sin Po shifted its campaigning towards fundraising for China and spreading an anti-Japanese message among the Indies Chinese readership. The paper managed to raise 1.7million guilders from 1937 to 1942 for the Chinese war effort against Japan.[16] A comic strip Put On,by Kho Wan Gie,also started to be serialized in Sin Po from 1931 onwards.[22]
Sin Po office in Batavia,Dutch East indies c.1935
During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies,Kwee managed to avoid arrest and hid in Bandung from 1942-5.[20]Sin Po continued to publish in a limited form,without an editor-in-chief and constrained by strict Japanese censorship.[21] Another paper called Kung Yung Pao,edited by Oey Tiang Tjoei briefly took the place of Sin Po in Batavia society during this era.[23] After the war ended the paper resumed publication and Kwee returned to his position,but he got into a feud with publisher Ang Jan Goan,and resigned as editor-in-chief in 1947.[20]
Gouw Tiauw Goan
After Kwee resigned,he was briefly replaced by Thio In Lok,who departed after nine months.[21] His more long-term replacement was a veteran journalist named Gouw Tiauw Goan.[24] Chinese-educated,and having been interned by the Japanese during the war,his written contributions to the paper while editor focused more on China.[24]
The paper continued after Indonesian independence. Several of its editors were arrested and held without charge as part of the mass arrests of leftists and Chinese Indonesians ordered by the Soekiman Cabinet in August 1951;this included editors A. Karim,Tjia Tjo Soen,Lieng Jing Chen,Lee Swie Kee and Oen Tek Hian,as well as the director Ang Jan Goan.[25] It was forced to change its name in 1958 due to government regulations. It became Pantjawarta and then Warta Bhakti. In this era the paper took a pro-PKI line and was therefore banned in the crackdown after the September 30 Movement (G-30-S) in 1965.
Legacy
Since 2023,two Indonesian companies,PT Catra Media Nusantara and PT Selaras Banten Bersama use Sin Po as the name of their news media:web portal SinPo.id and television channel Sin Po TV,respectively.[26] Both are believed to be under the same ownership.
Related Research Articles
Nio Joe Lan was a Chinese-Indonesian writer,journalist,and history teacher.
Lauw Giok Lan was a Chinese Indonesian journalist and writer. He was one of the founders of the newspaper Sin Po.
Kwee Hing Tjiat was a Chinese-Malay journalist and a leading peranakan Chinese intellectual of the late colonial era.
Djawa Tengah was a major Malay-language peranakan Chinese daily newspaper in Semarang,Dutch East Indies from 1909 to 1938. It is said to have been the first Chinese newspaper in Semarang.
Tjhoen Tjhioe was a Malay language Peranakan Chinese newspaper from Surabaya,Dutch East Indies catering mainly to the Chinese population. The full title of the paper was Tjhoen Tjhioe:Soerat kabar dagang bahasa Melajoe jang moeat roepa kabar penting bagi bangsa Tionghoa. Although the paper only existed for a short time,during that time it was recognized as one of the top Chinese newspapers in the Indies,alongside Sin Po and Perniagaan.
Tan Boen Kim (1887-1959) was a Peranakan Chinese journalist and novelist from Batavia,Dutch East Indies.
Ang Jan Goan was an Indonesian Chinese journalist,publisher and political thinker,and director of the influential newspaper Sin Po from 1925 to 1959.
Tjoe Boe San was a Chinese nationalist,translator and newspaper editor in the Dutch East Indies,most notably editor and director of the influential Indonesian Chinese newspaper Sin Po until his death in 1925. Along with Kwee Kek Beng,he was a key member of the "Sin Po Group" which was a political faction of the Indonesian Chinese which believed that they should stay out of Dutch colonial politics and remain focused on China.
Perniagaan was a Malay language Peranakan Chinese newspaper in Batavia,Dutch East Indies from 1907 to 1930. The newspaper was the conservative rival of Sin Po and was closely associated with the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan and the Chinese Officer system.
Keng Po was a Malay language Peranakan Chinese newspaper published in Batavia,Dutch East Indies from 1923 to 1958. During most of that time it was the second-most popular Malay-language Chinese newspaper in the Indies after Sin Po. It was also an important paper in the early period of Indonesian independence in the 1950s.
Warna Warta was a Malay language Peranakan Chinese newspaper published in Semarang,Dutch East Indies from 1902 to 1933. Alongside its more popular rival Djawa Tengah,it was highly influential among the Chinese Indonesian population of Semarang during this time.
Kwee Kek Beng was a Chinese Indonesian journalist and writer,best known for being editor-in-chief of the popular Malay language newspaper Sin Po from 1925 to 1947.
Hauw Tek Kong (1887-1928) was a Peranakan Chinese newspaper editor and publisher from the Dutch East Indies associated with Sin Po and later Keng Po.
Yoe Sin Gie (1880-1957),sometimes spelled Joe Sin Gie,was a Peranakan Chinese businessman and newspaper owner largely remembered for being one of the co-founders and first director of Sin Po,one of the most popular Chinese Indonesian newspapers of the Dutch East Indies.
Siem Piet Nio,who wrote under the pen name Hong Le Hoa,was an Indonesian language writer,magazine editor,journalist and women's rights advocate from the Dutch East Indies who was active during the 1920s and 1930s.
Njonja Tjoa Hin Hoei,who was born Kwee Yat Nio and was also known by the Buddhist name Visakha Gunadharma,was a Chinese Indonesian journalist,writer,Buddhist figure,and political activist during the late colonial and early independence periods. She was especially known for being publisher and editor of a women's magazine Maandblad Istri which ran from the 1930s to the early 1950s.
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Sinar Sumatra was a Malay-language newspaper published in Padang,Dutch East Indies from 1905 to around 1941 or 1942. It is generally considered a Peranakan Chinese publication,although it had European publishers and Minangkabau editors as well. During the pre-World War II period it was one of the most widely-read Malay language newspapers in Sumatra.
Lie On Moy (1884–1951) was a Peranakan Chinese journalist,writer and translator in the Dutch East Indies. She is thought to have been one of the first Peranakan women journalists and published writers in the Indies.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sin Po Jubileum Nummer 1910–1935 (in Indonesian). Jakarta: Sin Po. 1935. pp.3–9.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Sin Po Jubileum Nummer 1910–1935 (in Indonesian). Jakarta: Sin Po. 1935. pp.3–9.
1 2 Salmon, Claudine (1981). Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: a provisional annotated bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. p.223. ISBN9780835705929.
↑ "De "Sin Po"-campagne". Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië (in Dutch). April 15, 1913.
↑ "Van den dag". De Preanger-bode (in Dutch). April 22, 1915.
↑ "Journalistiek". Bataviaasch nieuwsblad (in Dutch). April 4, 1916.
↑ "Journalistiek". Bataviaasch nieuwsblad (in Dutch). January 5, 1918.
1 2 Salmon, Claudine (1981). Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: a provisional annotated bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. p.201. ISBN9780835705929.
1 2 3 Suryadinata, Leo (2005). Peranakan Chinese politics in Java, 1917-1942. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic. pp.70–2. ISBN9789812103604.
1 2 3 4 Salmon, Claudine (1981). Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: a provisional annotated bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. pp.360–1. ISBN9780835705929.
↑ "Persdelict". Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië (in Dutch). April 28, 1919.
1 2 3 4 Salmon, Claudine (1981). Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: a provisional annotated bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. p.202. ISBN9780835705929.
↑ Salmon, Claudine (1981). Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: a provisional annotated bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. p.278. ISBN9780835705929.
1 2 Suryadinata, Leo (2015). Prominent Indonesian Chinese: Biographical Sketches (4th edition) (4thed.). Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. p.42. ISBN9789814620512.
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