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Jokowi sets sights on East Asia
A Foreign Ministry official said President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was planning to visit China, Japan and South Korea later this month but that the exact dates had yet to be determined.
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resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is expected to visit China at the end of the month, a Cabinet minister has said, as the two countries look to foster new “growth points” in their relationship amid worries of cost overruns in a Chinese-funded rail project in West Java.
Following the Group of 20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali last week, Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi remained on the island to attend the second High-Level Dialogue and Cooperation Mechanism (HDCM) meeting, hosted by Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi and Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan on Saturday.
Luhut wrote on his official Instagram account on Monday that he had relished his meeting with his “close friend” Wang Yi.
He added that he and Retno had relayed a message to Beijing officials conveying their desire to renew a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to coordinate Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) development strategy with China’s infrastructure-focused Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
“Hopefully the MoU can be extended in time for President Jokowi’s visit to China, scheduled for the end of July 2022,” Luhut wrote on Instagram.
Japan and South Korea are also reportedly on the President’s itinerary.
The visit to Japan was announced in a Foreign Ministry press release on Friday as Retno met with her Japanese counterpart Hayashi Yoshimasa to discuss bilateral cooperation in infrastructure, human resources and coast guard activity.
“Among [other topics], the plan for [the President’s] visit to Tokyo at the end of July and the celebration of 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two states in 2023 were discussed,” the press release read.
A source familiar with the bilateral talks indicated that a stopover in South Korea could also be in the cards.
Abdul Kadir Jaelani, the Foreign Ministry’s director general for Asian, Pacific and African affairs, told The Jakarta Post that Jokowi indeed had plans to visit the three countries at the end of the month, although exact dates had yet to be determined.
Renewed cooperation
Luhut’s Instagram post came after he and Retno accompanied Wang Yi to a meeting with Jokowi at Merdeka Palace on Monday. Retno later said the two sides had discussed various issues, including a commitment to bolster mutually beneficial relations.
“As we know, two-way trade in 2021 saw a significant jump of more than 54 percent to reach US$110 billion. This surge in trade was accompanied by Indonesia’s shrinking trade deficit and greater access to Indonesian goods in the Chinese market,” she said, as quoted in a press statement.
China is one of Indonesia’s most important trading partners. Data from the United Nations Comtrade found that China topped the list in terms of imports in 2021, accounting for 29 percent of Indonesia’s imports, valued at $56.2 billion, nearly five times the value of imports from the United States.
While their bilateral relationship has deepened since the start of the GMF-BRI cooperative initiative in 2015, the pandemic has practically joined the two countries at the hip, a relationship described by former Chinese envoy to Indonesia Xiao Chan as having been “upgraded [...] against all odds”.
The GMF-BRI union is Jokowi’s response to China’s ambitious international infrastructure push, which has raised concerns over a heightened risk of national debt bondage. Jokowi sought to link the BRI with his 2014 strategy to improve connectivity across Indonesia, which he envisioned as “a productive hub between the east and the west, the north and the south”.
Since his inauguration in 2014, Jokowi has made four official visits to China, most recently in 2017 when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss Indonesia’s intention to join the BRI framework, a month after signing five contracts valued at $23.3 billion with Beijing.
The five-year contract is set to end this year, which prompted Luhut’s call for a speedy extension.
Meanwhile, Wang Yi was quoted by state press agency Xinhua as saying that the two sides should “work for the completion and opening of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway as scheduled [...] and foster new growth points of the digital economy, green development and blue economy”.
In a separate regional policy speech on Monday, Wang Yi described the railway project as a mark of “good progress” – despite recent legislative interventions aimed at ensuring that the June 2023 target for the start of operations is met.
The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway project has not been officially acknowledged as part of the BRI but bears many similarities to BRI projects in other states. (tjs)
– A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil contributed to this article.
