This week, that planning may be paying off. Even before crowds of rioters ripped through Chinese-owned businesses Thursday and Friday, any Indonesian company with substantial foreign debt was probably insolvent anyway.
Race riots are nothing new to Indonesia.
After the carnage in 1965 against ethnic Chinese during and after the coup that brought President Suharto to power, came riots against the Japanese in 1974. But over the last few weeks, the scale of the capital flight has grown exponentially, he said. The wisdom of international hedging was not lost on Indonesia's richest ethnic Chinese businessman, Soedono Salim, one of whose houses in Jakarta was set on fire by mobs this week. A poor immigrant from China who came to Indonesia 60 years ago, he was fortunate enough to meet and becomes friends with a future army general and president, Mr. Suharto. Mr. Salim's real name is Liem Sioe Liong, but like many of Indonesia's Chinese, he adopted an ethnic Indonesian name long ago.