On November 8, 2024, President of the Republic of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto began a series of foreign visits to several countries for bilateral and multilateral meetings. As the first step after the official inauguration of Mr. Prabowo, this agenda is certainly important, especially in order to show how, where, and what the direction of Indonesia’s foreign policy will be under his leadership. The agenda of foreign visits started from China, then headed to the United States, continued to Peru in order to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, then headed to Brazil to attend a series of agendas from the G20, then continued to the United Kingdom, and then to several Arab countries before finally returning to Indonesia.
President Prabowo’s foreign trips resulted in several things, especially in the context of expansion and bilateral cooperation agreements, including: A visit to China, as the first country visited, resulted in a bilateral agreement in the form of a promise of Chinese investment in Indonesia of 10 billion US dollars and support for one of President Prabowo’s strategic programs, namely funding support for free nutritious food programs. Visit to the US, resulting in a commitment to increase cooperation that prioritizes human rights, labor rights, and fair trade. Visit to Peru, resulting in an agreement to open access to Peruvian products in the Indonesian market and efforts to massively increase cooperation in drug eradication and cultural cooperation. Visit to Brazil, investment commitments made by Brazil amounting to 2.55 billion US dollars and commitments of political support for each other in multilateral cooperation forums attended by both countries. Visit to the United Kingdom, resulting in a cooperation agreement in the field of marine and forestry, as well as investment commitments to Indonesia amounting to 8.5 billion US dollars. The visit to the United Arab Emirates resulted in cooperation commitments in many fields such as Industry, technology, mining, infrastructure, and health, as well as tourism (Antara, 2024).
The results obtained in this foreign visit are certainly very positive, especially with a quite favorable orientation for Indonesia. President Prabowo then delivered a statement that “They (the countries we visited) believe in Indonesia, especially the Indonesian economy. Then I strive for them to continue to carry out investment activities, especially to participate in our development agenda and plans.” President of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto (President of Indonesia, 2024). On the other hand, of course we should not look at this in a simplistic way because after all this is an action taken by a country to another country. This means that what happened, including all the benefits obtained by Indonesia, cannot be seen as something simple. From the results of this foreign visit, Indonesia received the largest investment value from China. So this paper will then focus on the issues behind the claim of the success of President Prabowo’s foreign trip to China based on the huge investment value provided by China.
As mentioned earlier, China agreed to invest IDR 157 trillion in Indonesia covering several sectors, but one of the most highlighted is the financing of President Prabowo’s flagship program of free lunch. Many observers of international relations and international political economy have questioned this decision, weighing in on the current global political situation and conditions. To simply describe the ramifications (or political and economic impacts) of this decision, we can borrow the familiar proverb “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”.
China as a country, providing financial support to programs that are not even profit-oriented will certainly emphasize ramification through reciprocal policies. Based on the current global political economy, the reciprocal policies that will be requested by China will predominantly relate to the trade sector as an economic ramification. This is considering how Donald Trump is currently the US president again, which is likely to escalate the competition between China and the US. seeing what happened before, the US had applied extraordinary import tariffs to Chinese products so that the absorption of US domestic products increased dramatically. The same thing is imagined likely to happen again even worse in the new era of Trump’s leadership, coupled with the issue of de dollarization narrated by BRICS. So that this forces China to look for a large substitute market, the agreement that occurs will then soften Indonesia’s position to accept this. Geo Economically, this will then have implications for Indonesia’s increasing dependence on China. In the geoeconomic scheme, a large dependence on a country is a very expensive price that must be paid by Indonesia. other countries, because this has a very large multi-effect dimension not only at the domestic level of a country, but also at the international level (BBC, 2024).
The political ramifications of this agreement are also very large for Indonesia. Especially related to one of the most strategic issues concerning the region, namely the South China Sea (LCS) issue. Along with the investment agreement between China and Indonesia, it is also accompanied by arguments and narratives in one of its paragraphs, namely “The two sides reached an important common understanding on joint development in areas that are the object of overlapping claims”, this was later reported in several media, that the Chinese government is ready to negotiate with Indonesia regarding maritime overlapping claims. This then becomes very important and is assumed by some international relations researchers as a setback because this joint agreement scheme is implicitly interpreted as how Indonesia recognizes China’s claims. Whereas for a long time, Indonesia has always stated its position that it has no overlapping claims with China in the LCS region, and Indonesia has previously always avoided negotiations related to this issue based on this belief. Simply put, through the negotiation agenda, there is a basis of dispute that forms the basis of the negotiation agenda, which then reflects how the recognition of claims and disputes occurs (BBC, 2024).
The ramifications of this are certainly very large, especially with regard to Indonesia and the trust of ASEAN countries, especially those that have problems that intersect directly with the LCS issue. Indonesia will be narrated as a country that no longer narrates common interests as it has been narrated in the context of the LCS. Not to mention that for China this could be the first step in discussing the settlement of overlapping claims in the LCS region against Indonesia, which could then be escalated into a territorial dispute. Imagining these impacts then justifies how the proverbs previously conveyed can be an expensive reality that must be paid by Indonesia behind the funding agreement provided by China. Returning to emphasize the proverb that actually in the context of state relations, through political economy schemes there is no such thing as a “free lunch” there is always a price paid through various forms, including strategic ones that we can never imagine the form.
