JOKOWI RAPPED OVER CHINA DEALS

Challenger Prabowo pledges to re-evaluate Chinese investment

INDONESIA has become the latest election battleground for Beijing’s soaring economic clout, as the opposition warns pro-China policies are saddling the mineral-rich archipelago with bad debt as it is sold off piecemeal to foreign interests.

Business links with top trade partner China have been thrust into the spotlight by ex-general Prabowo Subianto, who is challenging leader Joko Widodo, or

Jokowi, for the presidency of Southeast Asia’s largest economy on Wednesday.

Trailing by double digits in the polls, Prabowo has leaned on a fiery nationalist ticket and pledged to re-evaluate Chinese investment, even as Jakarta courts huge contracts from Beijing’s US$1 trillion (RM4 trillion) Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

“All (BRI) initiatives should be reviewed,” Irawan Ronodipuro, foreign affairs director for Prabowo’s campaign, said.

“Blindly embracing these projects can compromise the national interest.”

Pushing back at China’s globespanning project has proved successful elsewhere in Asia, including in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Malaysia, as the trademark infrastructure push to link Asia, Europe and Africa is used to whip up fears about eroding sovereignty.

“China’s growing economic power has become a key election issue in many Asian countries... with opposition politicians winning the elections after they criticise incumbents for their ‘proChina’ policies,” Deasy Simandjuntak, a visiting Indonesian researcher at the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said.

Since taking office in 2014, Joko has pushed Chinese investment to fulfil his own multi-billion-dollar drive to build muchneeded roads, airports and other infrastructure across the sprawling archipelago of more than 17,000 islands.

Last year, China and Indonesia signed US$23 billion in Belt and Road initiative contracts, including two hydropower plants on Borneo island and a power station on holiday hotspot Bali.

Indonesia has since said it would offer US$91 billion worth of projects — from ports to power plants — to Chinese investors at a Beijing summit late this month, just after the polls.

Chinese firms are involved in several other ventures, including an industrial park on Sulawesi island and a US$6 billion highspeed railway between the capital Jakarta and mountainfringed Bandung city, which Prabowo has promised to review.

Both projects have stoked fears about an influx of Chinese workers and Indonesia taking on unsustainable debt.

The ethnic minority has suffered a long history of discrimination, including being a target during anti-communist purges in the mid-1960s.

“Chinese capital is associated with communism and that is threatening,” said Trissia Wijaya, an East Asian political economy specialist at Australia’s Murdoch University.

“It’s very ingrained in the Indonesian mindset,” she added.

However, debate over Joko’s so-called pivot to China was full of misleading claims, said Wijaya, with a tide of fake news online fanning anti-Beijing sentiment.

“Most Chinese investment in Indonesia is in industry, such as mining,” she said, adding that little was in strategic or sensitive assets.