Opinion | For China and Indonesia, a delicate balancing act for better ties

Indonesia and China marked 70 years of diplomatic relations earlier this year, but it has not been a smooth friendship.

It is only in the past two decades, after the fall of dictator Suharto in 1998, that relations have warmed, alongside Indonesia’s moves to remove discriminatory policies towards its tiny ethnic Chinese population.

Bilateral trade, investment and tourism have increased correspondingly. China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner and is technically its top source of foreign investment, although Singapore officially wears that crown because some funds are channelled through the city state.

But with domestic political dynamics being a major driver of foreign policy for the archipelagic nation of 270 million – and amid the efforts of Asean countries to manoeuvre around deepening US-China rivalry – there will always be inherent limitations to the extent of Jakarta-Beijing ties.

For Indonesian President Joko Widodo, this means striking a careful balance between welcoming Chinese investment and living up to public expectations of how Southeast Asia’s largest economy should interact with China. As former vice-presidential adviser and professor Dewi Fortuna Anwar put it in a paper last year, elite and public opinion over China’s rise are split.