Chung Hwa Hui

'Chinese Association') was a conservative, largely pro-Dutch political organization and party in the Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia), often criticised as a mouthpiece of the colonial Chinese establishment.

[1][2] The CHH was led by scions of the 'Cabang Atas' gentry, including its founding president, H. H. Kan, and supported by ethnic Chinese conglomerates, such as the powerful Kian Gwan multinational.

"I speak here of that vast majority, the practical and soberly thinking part of this industrious group, who...keeps its cool and fully realizes that the link with the former fatherland does not need to be broken in order to protect its own real interests in the country whose welfare is so closely tied to its own existence.

Without having to renounce one's race, without having to be unfaithful to what has been called by an English writer 'the religion of the seed', each must consider it a duty to oneself and towards his fellow inhabitants to give his best for the progress of the country and for the improvement of the people, to whom also the Chinese are thankfully indebted".Despite their conservative reputation, the party's Volksraad members, led by H. H. Kan, voted in favour of the Soetardjo Petition of 1936, widely seen as progressive, which requested Indonesian independence as part of a Dutch commonwealth under the Dutch Monarchy.

[3] CHH members in the Volksraad did, however, oppose widening the electoral franchise for elections to the legislature to either more indigenous people (H. H. Kan) or to women (Loa Sek Hie).

[3][9] In 1932, this dissatisfaction with CHH within the Chinese-Indonesian community resulted in the founding of an opposition, pro-Indonesian party, Partai Tionghoa Indonesia, led by the leftwing newspaper men and progressive activists Liem Koen Hian, Kwee Thiam Tjing, Ong Liang Kok and Ko Kwat Tiong.

[1] The new PTI gained the support of parts of lower and middle class Peranakan society, and won a seat in 1935 election to the Volksraad, though without ever challenging CHH's overall majority in the legislature's ethnic Chinese ranks.