Sia (title)

[2] These title holders and their families constituted the so-called Cabang Atas, the traditional Chinese establishment or gentry of colonial Indonesia.

[6][7] As a class, they dominated the administrative posts of Majoor, Kapitein and Luitenant der Chinezen, or the Chinese officership on a near-hereditary basis.

[2][7] To a significant extent, they also monopolised the colonial government's lucrative revenue farms, which formed the economic backbone of their political influence.

[10] This mirrored the decline in the importance of the Chinese officership as a government institution in the early twentieth century, which presaged its eventual abolition in most of the Dutch East Indies with the exception of the colonial capital, Batavia.

[10] As part of the Cabang Atas, Sias played an important role in the history of Indonesia, particularly in relation to the country's ethnic Chinese community.