The Ngo Ho Tjiang Kongsi (Chinese: 五虎将; pinyin: Wǔ Hǔ Jiàng; the 'Five Tiger Generals'), sometimes spelled Ngo Houw Tjiang, was a powerful consortium that dominated the opium pacht or tax farm of the Residency of Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the early to mid-nineteenth century.
[1][2] The pacht was an outsourced tax operation, collecting customs, excise and indirect duties on behalf of the Dutch colonial government.
[1][2] Of all colonial-era pachten, opium was by far the most lucrative; and the five partners of Ngo Ho Tjiang were consequently among the wealthiest and most powerful tycoons of early to mid-nineteenth century Java.
[1][2][3] Ngo Ho Tjiang had very close ties to the colonial Chinese bureaucracy.
One of the partners, Luitenant-titulair Gouw Kang Soei, sat on the Kong Koan ('Chinese Council') of Batavia, while the consortium's administrator, Lim Soe Keng Sia, was a son-in-law of Tan Eng Goan, the 1st Majoor der Chinezen of Batavia and the city's most senior Chinese official.