From Latent Threat to Possible Partner: Indonesia's China Debate
Abstract
China has played a major and at times controversial role in Indonesia s post-independence history. While founding President Sukarno viewed China as a role model, the emerging power of Indonesia's Communist Party (PKI) greatly alarmed the military. Following Soeharto's emergence to power after 1965, China and domestic communists were viewed as the principal threats to Indonesia s cohesion. Indonesia s civilian and military elite, obsessed by fears of national disunity, refused, from 1967 to 1990, to engage in normalized relations with China on the grounds that the People s Republic of China (PRC) had fostered internal rebellion and remained a military threat. Since the 1980s a debate has been waged in Indonesia between the military (TNI) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (Deplu). The TNI, which viewed China as a threat, urged Soeharto not to restore the relationship, while Deplu argued that failure to normalize would hold Indonesia back diplomatically and economically. Deplu won the debate, but Indonesia's military establishment is still wary of an emerging China. China's growing economic power poses an immense challenge for Indonesia's growth. Currently Indonesia has a healthy trade surplus with China, but the structure of trade with Indonesia providing raw materials while China exports manufactured goods could be the death knell for an array of Indonesian firms. Fear of the Chinese market could conceivably become fused to the indigenous Indonesian community's (imagined) fear of the economic dominance of Indonesian Chinese. Indonesians fear China's possible involvement in behalf of domestic ethnic Chinese. While a skepticism of China's intentions is alive and well in Indonesia, the relationship has grown in terms of substance and warmth over the last decade. In particular, Western criticism of Indonesia's questionable human rights record and U.S. sanctions on military-to-military contact, have pushed Indonesia to look to its other options.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA592206
Entities
People
- Anthony L. Smith
Organizations
- Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies