Are Indonesia’s Prabowo and ultra rich ‘9 Dragons’ on a collision course?

Asia - South China Morning Post · Aug 5, 2026

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s push to reorganise Southeast Asia’s largest economy around a stronger, more interventionist state has put him increasingly at odds, analysts say, with the country’s so-called Nine Dragons. Known locally as Sembilan Naga, the label is a loose shorthand for some of Indonesia’s richest tycoon families – many of them Chinese Indonesian – with interests spanning banking, tobacco, property, palm oil, mining and consumer goods. It has never referred to a formally...