Indonesia’s relationship with mainland China has long been entangled with its domestic politics, and the apparent dilemma between the need for more tourism from China and lingering anti-Chinese sentiment at home is just another example.
“There’s no simple answer. It is a contradiction, but keep in mind that Indonesians are not a monolith,” said Yohanes Sulaiman, who lectures in international relations at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani in Cimahi, Indonesia.
“There are lots of people who do not like the Chinese, who think that opening up to China is a bad idea, but on the flip side there are lots of people who want to build a closer relationship with China. What we are having here in the past 20 or 30 years is a kind of pull and push relationship between those who are against China and the others who are for China.”
China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching a record US$77.4 billion last year. Sulaiman observed that under the Widodo administration, the pro-Beijing lobby was “stronger in the sense that they think the US doesn’t really focus that much on the Indonesian economy”.
“Every time you want to ask for money from the US, they will always delay,” he said. “There are a lot of things we have to take care of, from human rights [to infrastructure], and China seems to be easy money.”
CITY OF CONTRADICTIONS
The city of Yogyakarta itself is a beautiful contradiction. It is described by Antariksa, a locally based historian, researcher and co-founder of the Kunci Cultural Studies Centre, as being “cosmopolitan but traditional at the same time”.
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He pointed out that developing the city had a cost – for instance, construction of the new airport saw the eviction of families who had lived and farmed on the land for decades. “It was very problematic, but at the same time bred a new generation of activists in the city,” Antariksa said, highlighting Yogyakarta’s long history of student movements.
“These contradictions in our culture – in Yogyakarta it’s always been like that. But I’m a little bit worried, as a historian, that the recent development pushed by the government is going to commodify our city more and more.
“For example, gentrification is a problem because of this new government initiative to attract more tourists and business to come to the city … The younger generation cannot afford to live in the city, and it’s getting more difficult for artists to live in the city.”
While everything from batik to the sweet local delicacy bakpia contain elements of Chinese culture, the city’s laws state that non-native Indonesians – such as ethnic Chinese – cannot buy or own land there. Antariksa discusses this in the same breath as he points out the city’s strong Chinese community and its “beautiful Chinese New Year celebrations”.
