Tjung Tin Jan

Tjung was born in Sungai Selan,[1][3] part of what is today Central Bangka Regency of Bangka Island, then part of the Dutch East Indies, on 9 February 1919. He studied at a Recht Hogeschool in Batavia, before heading to the Netherlands to study law in the Leiden University, and he received a Master of Laws degree.[4]

After Tjung returned to the Indies, he had worked at a telephone company and became a lawyer before being appointed as a deputy prosecutor in Pangkal Pinang's court. He also founded, and later led, the Bangka branch of the Chinese Association.[4] Additionally, he acted as a legal adviser to a Chinese school in Pangkal Pinang.[1][3] In 1950, he was appointed as a Senator for the newly formed Senate of the United States of Indonesia, representing Bangka.[5]

In 1950, following the Senate's dissolution and the defederation of the United States of Indonesia, Tjung was appointed to the Provisional People's Representative Council as a "minority representative", alongside several other Chinese Indonesian politicians.[6] He joined the Catholic Party in 1953, and he served in the People's Representative Council as a member of that party until 1960. Within that party, he was a member of its central board between 1953 and 1959, and its deputy general chairman between 1956 and 1958.[1]

During and after his time in the Council, Tjung served as a director of several mining companies, including at Aneka Tambang where he was its financial director between 1968 and 1974.[1] He died in February 1994.[4]

Tjung was a proponent of the assimilation of Chinese Indonesians, and was critical of Yap Thiam Hien's writings on discrimination of the group within Indonesia.[1][4] One example of such a critique was titled Indonesia Bukan Amerika (Indonesia is not the United States), published in 1960, in response to one of Hien's essays earlier that year.[4]