| Summary/Abstract |
Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation (273 million people) and
abuts the globe’s busiest trade route (the Straits of Malacca); as such, Indonesia is on track to become the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050.1
Indonesia will be a major venue for US–China geo-economic competition in the
Indo-Pacific. It was no accident that Pres. Xi Jinping chose Jakarta to unveil
China’s proposal for a Maritime Silk Road in October 2013, a plan that evolved
into China’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Pres. Joko “Jokowi” Widodo
embraced the BRI to help solve Indonesia’s infrastructure needs, signing deals
worth billions of dollars in Chinese investment. At the same time, Jokowi established Indonesia as a model for how a developing nation can protect itself from
undue Chinese influence by setting key conditions on BRI projects and pursuing
alternate foreign investment partners. Despite providing development finance to
Indonesia for decades, Washington was slow to incorporate its efforts into the US
regional vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP). The delay gave Beijing
an opening to present itself as the partner of choice for infrastructure development and allowed the BRI to dominate public discourse.
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