Indonesia’s Emerging China Dependencies — SkimNews
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- Indonesia moved furthest toward China relative to the United States among major ASEAN states from 1995 to 2024, according to the Anatomy of Choice Alignment Index, with the shift overwhelmingly economically driven
- Chinese EV brands captured overwhelmingly 2025 Indonesian wholesales, with BYD alone taking nearly 50 percent even as EV sales surged to over 10 percent of the overall automotive market, displacing Toyota and Honda dominance built over decades
- Chinese firms like Tsingshan flowed into Indonesia's world-leading nickel reserves, supplying upstream extraction tools and HPAL processing technology; after South Korea's LG Energy Solution withdrew from a major battery project, Huayou replaced it as lead investor
- Huawei and ZTE hardware underpins Indonesia's 5G networks, creating infrastructure optimized for Chinese technical standards and trained personnel that would be prohibitively expensive and technically complex to substitute
- Indonesia's security ties remain formally diversified across the US, Japan, Australia, China, Russia, and Turkiye via exercises like Super Garuda Shield and a new 2+2 dialogue with Beijing, but the country's overall military effectiveness is rated "mediocre"
- Indonesian public opinion has swung toward Beijing as trust in Washington has collapsed, and opposition to a strategic China alignment appears to be softening—even as Japan retains more trust than China, with its advantage narrowing
Why it matters: Indonesia is ASEAN's only G20 member and a critical mineral supply chain node, so its drift toward China carries regional weight: full-stack Chinese entrenchment across EVs, batteries, telecoms, and nickel processing means Jakarta's 'free and active' rhetoric risks becoming hollow, and the largest economy in Southeast Asia may no longer offer US allies a reliable economic counterweight to Beijing.
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