Indonesia ‘a friend to all’ and won’t play favourites with US and China, says former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa
- China has been Indonesia’s largest trading partner since 2017, when it leapfrogged the US, and is also one of the country’s biggest investors
- But Jakarta’s ties with Washington remain important, both as a military ally and in countering extremism
Jakarta will not play favourites, the country’s former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa told This Week In Asia , and will continue to maintain close ties with both the US and China even as the latter’s economic importance expands in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
“Indonesia is not unique in the sense of having very close and substantive economic relations with China but at the same time having friendly relations, not only economic but also political, security relations with United States,” Natalegawa said on the sidelines of the 33rd Asia-Pacific Roundtable in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
“Over the years we have managed to manage this reality in a good way, making sure this can go hand in hand, it’s not like an either/or [scenario].”
Natalegawa served as Indonesia’s foreign minister from 2009 to 2014 and is currently a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Board on Mediation, among other things.
