To this end, the party advocated ethnic Chinese participation in colonial Indonesian politics: until the Japanese invasion in 1942, the majority of ethnic Chinese members of the Volksraad were CHH leaders. Kan articulated in his Dutch maiden speech to the Volksraad in 1918 a position that later came to define CHH:  "Our group is very thankful for all the improvements in the position of the Chinese thus far, but entire satisfaction can only come with complete legal equality with Europeans. "[A]lthough the Chinese population group...is still not completely satisfied, a large proportion of this group nevertheless values the steps taken to improve its position in society. "I speak here of that vast majority, the practical and soberly thinking part of this industrious group, who...keeps its cool and fully realizes that the link with the former fatherland does not need to be broken in order to protect its own real interests in the country whose welfare is so closely tied to its own existence. Without having to renounce one's race, without having to be unfaithful to what has been called by an English writer 'the religion of the seed', each must consider it a duty to oneself and towards his fellow inhabitants to give his best for the progress of the country and for the improvement of the people, to whom also the Chinese are thankfully indebted". Despite their conservative reputation, the party's Volksraad members, led by H. H. Kan, voted in favour of the Soetardjo Petition of 1936, widely seen as progressive, which requested Indonesian independence as part of a Dutch commonwealth under the Dutch monarchy. CHH members in the Volksraad did, however, oppose widening the electoral franchise for elections to the legislature to either more indigenous people (H. H. Kan) or to women (Loa Sek Hie). They maintained an ambiguous, and sometimes dismissive, stance on the emancipation of Indonesia's indigenous population. CHH's cultural outlook was both Peranakan and Dutch, as reflected in the party's two languages of communication: Dutch and Malay. At the same time, the party – which used a Mandarin Chinese name – also valorised the retention of ethnic Chinese heritage and ties to the ancestral land. In keeping with CHH's political commitment to the Dutch East Indies, however, they also promoted the use of Dutch, instead of Chinese or Malay, as the language of instruction for ethnic Chinese education in the country. In the historian Leo Suryadinata's words, the party favoured a 'Peranakan Chinese culture with a Dutch flavour'.