alternatehistory.com

In the 19th century there were three Chinese-ruled polities in Borneo that the Dutch called republics or democracies. Wikipedia has a short article about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongsi_federations

There were three major kongsi federations: Fosjoen (Heshun), Lanfang, and Samtiaokie (Santiaogou). Some of these federations were truly democratic for the Chinese citizens - if less so for their indigenous slaves - with elections every four months, and others were more oligarchic with many rich families dominating the government. They also had different attitudes toward the Dutch colonizers: Fosjoen was called an "irreconcilable enemy" of the Dutch while Lanfang was pro-Dutch. But (from an academic book on Chinese in Borneo):

In spite of their rivalries and weaknesses, in all of West Borneo from 1819 to 1850, large kongsis like Lanfang and Fosjoen established control over territory, regularly chose their leaders, dealt with criminal and civil offenses, meted out corporal punishment, maintained a standing army, improved overland communications (via a network of footpaths), promoted trade, commerce, and industry, collected taxes and tolls, minted coins, set up schools, and regularly held religious ceremonies to insure solidarity and public welfare. [.....] They often built a network of forts in their territories, stationing officials there or in subordinate towns and settlements, and they levied taxes, rents, tolls, and import and export duties, even from native vessels sailing under the Dutch flag. The colonial authorities in West Borneo, for their part, only began to attempt many of the tasks expected of a state in the late nineteenth century.
[.....]
Whatever their constitution, the markedly independent and powerful kongsis enraged the colonial authorities. As perceived by the Dutch, these Chinese organizations had arrogated to themselves powers to which they were not entitled, including access to land, while colonial policy dictated that the land belonged to the sultans and not to the Chinese, who were merely entitled to use it if they paid a tax or rent. The Chinese punished crimes cruelly, even with the death sentence, on their own authority. They avoided the taxes and monopolies set up by the Dutch. Insofar as they were democratic, they could remain democratic by resisting the rule of an outside authority. [....] From the Dutch perspective, the Malay principalities could be tolerated, more because of their weaknesses then their virtues; Chinese organizations, whatever their virtues, were intolerable because of their strength.​

With all this in mind, have at least one of the three big kongsis remain independent up to 2016 (IOTL Lanfang, which survived to the end mostly because it was a Dutch ally, was finally dissolved in the 1880s).
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