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Thio Thiam Tjong berasal dari
Semarang. Entah bagaimana begitu banyak tokoh-tokoh sejarah golongan
Cina/Tionghoa berasal dari Semarang. Thio Thiam Tjong termasuk salah satu tokoh
Cina/Tionghoa dalam awal sejarah menjadi Indonesia. Kota Semarang sebagai kota
melting pot sejak era VOC akan dideskripsikan sebagai artikel sendiri.
Thio Thiam Tjong (born on 4 April
1896 – died on 22 September 1969) was an Indonesian politician, community
leader and businessman whose public career spanned from the late colonial
period to the early decades of Independence. He was a founding board member in
1928 of Chung Hwa Hui, a Chinese-Indonesian, colonial political party, and was
President of the group's post-WW II political successor Persatoean Tionghoa,
formed in 1948, then renamed Partai Demokrasi Tionghoa Indonesia in 1950. Thio
was born in 1896 in Semarang. His father, the wealthy businessman Thio Sing
Liong (1871–1940), was a third-generation Peranakan Chinese and the founder of
Handel Maatschappij Thio Sing Liong, a leading export-import company. In
contrast to his father's business background, Thio's mother – Tan Tien Nio –
hailed from the ‘Cabang Atas’ gentry as a granddaughter of Tan Ing Kie,
Kapitein-titulair der Chinezen (1835–1895). Through his mother, Thio was
therefore a direct descendant of Tan Yok Sing, Kapitein der Chinezen of
Semarang (1737–1800) under the Dutch East India Company (V0C). Thio had an
entirely Dutch language-based education in Semarang, then at a Hogere
Burgerschool (HBS, secondary school) in Leiden in the Netherlands. He studied
engineering at Delft University, but left prior to graduating in 1922 to join
his father's business. Following his father's retirement in 1933, Thio took
over the family business and expanded it. He was also a board member of a number
of other companies. Thio emerged as a community leader in the late 1920s, and
played an important role in the Chung Hwa Congress of 1927, which led to the
founding in 1928 of the political association Chung Hwa Hui (CHH). The
influential group was later criticised by left-wing critics as the ‘Packard
Club’, a supposed cipher for the interests of the colonial Chinese
establishment, most notably the conglomerate Kian Gwan, owned by Thio's
in-laws, the Oei family. Thio (first on the left) at part of the Preparatory
Commission of the Chung Hwa Congress of 1927. Thio sat on the central board of
CHH under the elder statesman HH Kan and became President of the group's
Semarang branch in the 1930s. From 1930 until 1934, he acted as Chairman of the
Siang Hwee, or Chinese Chamber of Commerce, of Semarang. He also served as a
member of the Provincialen Raad van Midden-Java or the Provincial Council of
Central Java.
Lantas
bagaimana sejarah Thio Thiam Tjong? Seperti disebut di atas, Thio Thiam Tjong adalah
salah satu tokoh generasi awal sejarah menjadi Indonesia. Lalu bagaimana
sejarah Thio Thiam Tjong? Seperti kata ahli sejarah tempo doeloe, semuanya
ada permulaan. Untuk
menambah pengetahuan dan meningkatkan wawasan sejarah nasional, mari kita telusuri
sumber-sumber tempo doeloe.