Jokowi will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeo — leaders of Indonesia’s most important trading partners and biggest foreign investors, which happen to be members of an exclusive club of the world's 20 largest economies.

President Jokowi is also expected to discuss the ongoing global food and energy crisis and the impacts of the war in Ukraine with the three Asian leaders.

The East Asian trip comes just a month after Jokowi attended the Group of Seven summit in Germany and visited Kyiv and Moscow for a peace-building mission. In Moscow, Jokowi asked President Vladimir Putin to open the blockade of wheat and sunflower oil from Ukraine, which he invaded in February. Jokowi also confirmed his invitation to Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to the G20 summit. 

Senior government officials of Indonesia and the three Asian countries are still negotiating details of Jokowi’s outing. Indonesian officials hinted the trip will not be official but working calls. Tentatively, the President begins his East Asian tour to China, before proceeding to Japan and South Korea.

The order of Jokowi’s itinerary is probably designed for the convenience or availability of the hosts, but it can also reflect the President's priority. Such order, therefore, makes sense because China is the world’s second-largest economy, ahead of Japan and South Korea.

But for Indonesian diplomacy should not just be about the economy, but also about friendship. Therefore, we call on President Jokowi to start his tour with a visit to Tokyo because the Japanese people are still mourning the tragic death of former prime minister Shinzo Abe on July 8.  

Abe, Japan's most powerful politician in the last two decades, had done a lot for Indonesia and ASEAN. Jokowi’s choice of Japan as his first destination can reflect Indonesia’s high respect for Abe and grief of his departure.

President Jokowi and President Xi have long fostered a close relationship through their frequent meetings, either bilaterally or on the sidelines of multilateral forums. Visiting Beijing as the second — even the last — leg of Jokowi’s tour will unlikely harm the deepening ties between Indonesia and China.

While in Beijing, the President needs to raise the delayed Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train project. Failure to clear barriers to the project immediately will not only cost China its good reputation but will also affect the relationship between the two countries. The project’s completion will be four years behind its original schedule in 2019, and its budget has increased by at least 23 percent. Indonesia will have to bear 60 percent of any losses.

Meanwhile, in Seoul, Jokowi’s meeting with President Yoon will likely focus on bilateral economic ties. Last year, South Korea’s foreign direct investment (FDI) in Indonesia ranked sixth, after Singapore, Japan, China, Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Indonesia is South Korea’s fourth most attractive FDI destination, most recently in the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

We do hope the President’s trip will help boost bilateral cooperation and contribute significantly to the G20 Summit.