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Diplomacy
OpinionChina Opinion
Brian Y. S. Wong
Opinion
Brian Y. S. Wong

How China and Indonesia can build a truly sturdy partnership

From handling business friction to aligning long-term goals, three practical steps can elevate ties beyond economic convenience

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting in New York on May 26. Photo: Xinhua
Brian Y. S. Wong
Brian Wong is an assistant professor in philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, and a Rhodes Scholar and adviser on strategy for the Oxford Global Society.

In April 1955, amid the Cold War, 304 representatives across 29 Asian and African nations convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss the principles of a more complex future world order. Among them were India, China and host Indonesia.

While India would go on to champion the non-aligned movement at the 1961 Belgrade Conference, Mao Zedong’s China and Sukarno’s Indonesia were more sceptical of the colonial, Western order. Then the more US-sympathetic Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1966. Despite the Sino-Soviet split and Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s, Beijing-Jakarta relations remained frosty until normalisation in August 1990.

Seven decades on from Bandung, China is the world’s second-largest economy while Indonesia is the largest economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which is China’s top trading partner. China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner, and it has ranked among Indonesia’s top three investors for the last five years.

Such remarkable growth in ties inevitably comes with undercurrents that must be taken seriously. Indonesia recorded a US$20.5 billion trade deficit with China last year, and some view the surge in high-quality and affordable Chinese imports as displacing domestic producers, especially in the textile and manufacturing sectors.

To protect domestic interests, the Prabowo administration has, among other things, introduced anti-dumping duties of up to 20 per cent on Chinese steel imports. Yet the China Chamber of Commerce wants a rethinking of the “substantial tax and levy increases” and tightened “forestry law enforcement”.
While Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoy a warm relationship – Prabowo attended the Beijing military parade last year – escalating US pressure, growing fears of excessive dependence on Chinese goods and a historically rooted wariness among Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese business community pose potent obstacles to the bilateral relationship.
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