If you come to Majalaya District, just 30 kilometres southeast of Bandung\u2014the fourth-largest city in Indonesia\u2014it is easy to tell why the district earned its glorious nickname \u201cDollar City\u201d back in the 1960s during the textile boom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dilapidated factory buildings are scattered across the area, creating labyrinthine streets and alleys. Flue-gas stacks thrust toward the sky and thick, black smoke rises from factories housing coal-burning weaving machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Majalaya is a 25.36-square-kilometre district with a total population of about 169,000 as of 2017. There are two creeks that flow through the district\u2014Cikakembang and Cikaro\u2014before joining the Citarum River that splits Majalaya into two halves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The textile industry in Majalaya mushroomed in the 1920s after the Dutch colonial government established the Bandung Textile Institute. Soon, traditional textile factories inside people\u2019s homes began popping up in Majalaya. In the late 1930s, Chinese investors with sophisticated new technology entered the market, marking the end of traditional textile manufacturers who used shuttle looms and hand-dyed processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After independence in 1945, the newly established Indonesian government relied on the textile industry, among other sectors, to boost infrastructure development. Majalaya supplied 40 percent of the Indonesian textile market with products exported across Asia, according to political scientists Hans Antlov and Thommy Svensson in their book<\/a> From Rural Home Weavers to Factory Labour: The Industrialization of Textile Manufacturing in Majalaya.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n During the 1960s, the industry was valued at US$1.2 million and absorbed a 100,000 person-strong workforce from across the province.It was then that Majalaya earned its \u201cDollar City\u201d epithet, at least until the fall of the New Order regime under President Suharto in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During its heyday, there were nearly 13,000 weaving machines around West Java\u2014a quarter of them located in Majalaya. Today, the textile industry in Bandung Regency is valued at US$5 million, absorbing more than 700,000 workers, with China, India and South Korea as the dominant investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n