Kwee Kek Beng (Chinese: 郭克明, 1900–1975) was a Chinese Indonesian journalist and writer, best known for being editor-in-chief of the popular Malay language newspaper Sin Po from 1925 to 1947.
Kwee was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies on November 16, 1900. He received a Dutch language education at the Hollandsch Chineesche School in Batavia.[1] Around 1915-17 he attended the Openbare Muloschool (MULO) in Batavia[2][3] and then a teacher training institute (Kweekschool).[1] In 1922 he started working as a schoolteacher in Bogor, not far from Batavia.[4]
While still working as a teacher in 1922, Kwee contributed writings to the Dutch-language Java Bode.[5] Impressed by his writings, Na Tjin Hoe, an editor at Sin Po invited Kwee to work at the short-lived Bin Seng, a spinoff newspaper of Sin Po focusing on local news.[4][6] Even this junior position at the newspaper gave him almost double the salary he had been making as a teacher.[7] He soon transferred to the editorial board of Sin Po itself.[4] When former editor-in-chief Tjoe Bou San died in 1925, Kwee Kek Beng was promoted to the position.[1] That same year, he became vice-chairman of a union for Indies journalists, the Journalistenbond Asia, along with editors of Hindia Baroe, Perniagaan, Bintang Hindia, and other papers.[8]
In 1929 he travelled outside of the Indies for the first time in his life, touring the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, following a few years later with his first trip to China in 1933.[1] Like his predecessors, he was also a strong Chinese nationalist.[1] But, as with many other Indies Chinese intellectuals during the late 1920s and early 1930s, he also became increasingly sympathetic to the rising Indonesian nationalist movement. He was a close personal friend of a number of nationalist leaders including Sukarno, Sartono, and WR Soepratman.[5] During the 1930s he served as an assistant at Soeloeh Indonesia Moeda (Indonesian: Voice of young Indonesia), the magazine of the Partai Nasional Indonesia.[4] He also used his position at Sin Po to publish 5000 leaflets containing the score of the nationalist song Indonesia Raya, which were distributed with the paper in November 1928.[5]
Shortly before the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, Kwee sent his relatives to hide out in Sukabumi.[5] He himself planned to stay in Batavia under the assumed name Thio Boen Hiok, but soon found it too dangerous and fled to Bandung, where he spent most of the war.[5][1] Shortly after his departure his house in Batavia was discovered and looted by the Kenpeitai.[5]
After the war ended Sin Po resumed publication and Kwee returned to his position. In 1947 he got into a dispute with publisher Ang Jan Goan, and resigned as editor-in-chief in 1947.[1]
After Indonesian independence, he became a vocal critic of Indonesia's treatment of its Chinese minority.[4] For example, he was co-writer of the Memorandum Commissie Chung Hwa Hui in 1947 which documented abuses against the Chinese population by the Indonesian republican forces.[1] Nonetheless, in 1950 Kwee became an Indonesian citizen.[4] He spent most of the 1950s as a freelance writer, publishing prolifically, especially about China. He founded a monthly journal Java Critic in 1948, contribute to the monthly Reporter during the 1950s and was editor of the annual journal Sin Tjhoen during 1956–60.[5][1]
He died in Jakarta on May 31, 1975.[4]
His wife was named Tee Lim Nio.[5] Their first son Kwee Hin Goan, born in 1932, became a well-known architect in Indonesia during the 1950s-1965 and in the Netherlands from 1966 to 1992.[9] Their second son Kwee Hin Houw, born in 1938, became a journalist and lived in Germany from the 1960s until his death in 2016.