ABSTRACT
Suramadu bridge is the longest bridge in Indonesia (and Southeast Asia) and the longest one ever built by China abroad. The construction of this 5.4 kilometer bridge began in 2003 by Indonesia-China joint consortium with a budget of 5.4 trillion Rupiah (US$490 million). The bridge that will connect East Java’s provincial capital of Surabaya and Madura is hailed by officials of both countries as an iconic symbol of the increasingly strong and sturdy bilateral relations. The desire to build land connections between islands dated as far back as the
1960s. By 1986, the plan to connect Sumatra, Java and Bali caught the interests of a Japanese consortium and in 1990s numerous feasibility studies and planning for Suramadu bridge were set in motions. The Asian financial crisis, which was also followed by a dramatic political change in Indonesia, halted the project. With Indonesia’s post 1998 intensifying decentralization as the backdrop, East
Java provincial government took the initiative to revive the project. Japan’s unwillingness to finance did not dissuade them, because they quickly caught the interest of China. “We don’t need Japan,” said Achmad Zaeni, Chairman of the East Java Intellectual Forum, to the press after visiting President Megawati Sukarnoputri to seek her willingness to officiate the construction.2 The construction process commenced and, despite several delays due to financial hiccups, the bridge will be inaugurated and began its operation this year. This bridge is amongst the fruits of increasingly engaging bilateral relationships
between Indonesia and China. It is one story amongst hundreds of government to government projects in Indonesia that have increased quite significantly during the past decade. Indonesia-China relations will reach its 60th anniversary in 2010 and both
countries have been “strategic partners” for almost four years. But what does being China’s strategic partner mean, considering that China has signed numerous “strategic partnerships” with other countries? Has Indonesia’s perception of China shifted from regarding China as a long time “yellow threat from the north”
to regarding China as an actual strategic partner? How does the largest country in Southeast Asia, which has gone through the most problematic relations with China, sort out those problems and pursue its “natural” leadership role in ASEAN? This chapter delves into Indonesia’s relations with China, briefly starting from
Indonesia’s independence period, then giving greater attention to the last decade while pinpointing some major changes in the characteristics of bilateral relations. The chapter began by highlighting the Chinese Indonesian factor that, for better or worse, has been one of the critical elements to the development of bilateral relations. And then after giving brief chronology of Sino-Indonesian relations since independence period, the paper highlights key elements in Indonesia’s democratization process that contextualizes the development of Indonesia-China relations. The main argument of this paper is that Indonesia’s China policy and the framing
of the “China Threat” have been predominantly shaped by political dynamics in Indonesia and Indonesia’s desire to have a meaningful standing in the regional setting, particularly within the Southeast Asia region and the East Asia new constellation. Even though economic cooperation remain as the backbone of bilateral as well as regional engagements, political and security concerns still determine the speed, nuances and quality of such relations. Politics of identity will also be one of the key determinants in that contributes to the malleability of the threat perception in Indonesia.
