Thio Thiam Tjong

Thio Thiam Tjong (born on 4 April 1896 – died on 19 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. 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. 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. When the Dutch returned to the Indies in March 1946, Thio was appointed as Advisor in the Emergency Cabinet of the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) under his personal friend, H. van Mook, Acting Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. The revolution was both a war of independence against NICA and an internal social revolution against the pro-Dutch established elite. PT, seen by many as a successor of the pre-war CHH, aimed to represent the political aspirations of the Chinese-Indonesian community at the conclusion of the revolution and the handover of power from NICA to the new Indonesian authorities. After Dutch recognition of Indonesian independence, PT was transformed in 1950 under Thio's presidency into Partai Demokrasi Tionghoa Indonesia (PDTI). Liem Koen Hian, founder of the left-wing, pre-revolutionary Partai Tionghoa Indonesia, dismissed PT and PDTI – as he had CHH – as elitist and unable to deal with native Indonesians. In post-colonial Indonesia, PDTI's association with CHH doomed the party, and Thio's background in the pre-revolutionary political establishment meant that he could not play a meaningful role in new politics of the post-revolutionary Republic of Indonesia.

Thio Thiam Tjong died in exile in the Netherlands on 22 September 1969, and left no children.