The party was created in September 1932 as a result of the dispute over whether Chinese Indonesians should aspire to Dutch citizenship or whether they should remain citizens of the Republic of China.
[3] The party's leaders, H. H. Kan and Loa Sek Hie, advocated cooperation with, and participation in, the Dutch colonial state.
[5] So, in 1932 Liem along with Kwee Thiam Tjing, Ong Liang Kok and other Surabaya Peranakan Chinese founded the PTI with the support of some moderate Indonesian nationalists such as Soetomo and Suroso.
[6] In 1934, the Leiden-educated lawyer Ko Kwat Tiong, hitherto chairman of the PTI's Semarang branch, was voted to succeed Liem as president of the entire party.
[8] Ko opened up the PTI to Totok Chinese members, and as the party's representative in the Volksraad, was one of the six initiators and signatories of the Soetardjo Petition of 1936, which requested Indonesian independence as part of a Dutch commonwealth.