Opinion | How China and Indonesia can build a truly sturdy partnership

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.

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”.