In recent years, China-Indonesia relations have developed rapidly, and Indonesia has become the second largest investment destination for China in ASEAN. The investment of Chinese-funded enterprises covers a wide range of fields such as agriculture, mining and metallurgy, electric power, real estate, manufacturing, industrial parks, digital economy, finance and insurance, etc., covering Indonesia's major islands, and production capacity cooperation has achieved remarkable results.
Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Marine and Investment Affairs Luhut said that investment by Chinese enterprises is very important to Indonesia's economic development, and "Indonesia's ability to maintain today's economic state is inseparable from the cooperation between Indonesia and China."
Develop downstream industries
Indonesia is rich in natural resources and has the world's largest nickel ore reserves. However, for a long time, Indonesia has been mainly exporting nickel ore raw materials, with low industrial added value and serious environmental pollution. In recent years, the Indonesian government has vigorously carried out the middle and downstream industries of natural resource development and achieved remarkable results. Among them, the investment of Chinese-funded enterprises and cooperation in technology transfer and talent training have played an important role.
Chinese-funded enterprises are the earliest and most important foreign-funded enterprises that respond to and support the Indonesian government's policies and actively invest in the development of the downstream industry of nickel ore resources. At present, a number of modern industrial parks based on the nickel industry have been formed, including the Tsingshan Park invested and constructed by Qingshan Park Development Co., Ltd. of Indonesia Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone and the Delong Industrial Park invested and constructed by Jiangsu Delong Group.
The investment of Chinese-funded enterprises has brought international advanced smelting technology and enhanced Indonesia's position in the international industrial chain. Global nickel ore is divided into two categories: nickel sulfide ore and laterite nickel ore, and Indonesia is dominated by laterite nickel ore. The large investment and advanced technology of Chinese-funded enterprises have opened up the channel from laterite nickel ore to new energy raw materials, assisted Indonesia to use rich laterite nickel ore resources, and deeply participated in the global stainless steel and new energy industry chain. At present, Indonesia has become the world's largest producer of nickel pig iron and the second largest producer of stainless steel.
During a visit to the De'Longhi Industrial Park last December, President Jokowi said that the De'Longhi Industrial Park has brought the most advanced smelting technology to Indonesia. By processing nickel ore into ferronickel, its added value can be increased by 14 times, and if it is further processed into stainless steel, the added value of the product can be increased by 19 times, and the production and sales of related products can make a huge contribution to Indonesia's tax revenue and foreign exchange revenue. Jokowi said that it was the investment of a number of Chinese companies, including De'Longhi, that enabled Indonesia, which originally only exported nickel raw ore, to export stainless steel to US$20.8 billion in 2021, which is a huge leap.
Jokowi said that while Chinese enterprises bring raw material processing and production technology to Indonesia, they also create more local employment opportunities and bring more business opportunities to the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, "Delong Industrial Park has created more than 30,000 local jobs, which is a remarkable number."
According to Zhou Yuan, general manager of Delong Industrial Park, Jiangsu Delong Nickel Industry Co., Ltd. cooperated with China First Heavy Group to invest 6 billion yuan in an annual output of 600,000 tons of ferronickel smelting project, and with Xiamen Xiangyu Group to invest 18 billion yuan in an annual output of 2.5 million tons of nickel-iron and stainless steel integrated smelting project, has been included in the "Belt and Road" key project database jointly built by China and Indonesia and Indonesia's national strategic projects, Delong Industrial Park has also been listed by the Indonesian government as Indonesia's national large-scale industrial zone.
Transportation network upgrades
With its vast territory and large population, improving transportation infrastructure and developing a modern transportation network are of great significance for alleviating traffic pressure, promoting economic growth, promoting industrial upgrading, improving people's livelihood, and especially solving problems such as unbalanced development between regions. Over the years, Chinese enterprises have actively participated in the construction of Indonesia's transportation infrastructure, undertaking a large number of roads, bridges, ports and high-speed rail projects.
The Yawan high-speed railway, built by China Railway Corporation and China Power Construction Group Co., Ltd., is the first high-speed railway in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and a landmark project of the "Belt and Road" initiative and practical cooperation between China and Indonesia. Fully launched in 2018, the 142-kilometre project connects Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, with Bandung, a famous city in West Java province. After the opening of the high-speed rail, the travel time between the two places will be shortened from more than 3 hours to 40 minutes.
The radiation driving effect of the Yawan high-speed railway on the economy along the line is comprehensive and all-round. The high-speed railway will connect the cities along the route into lines, give play to the same city effect, close logistics transportation and personnel exchanges between the two cities, and accelerate the formation of the "Yawan high-speed railway economic belt". The construction of the Yawan high-speed railway has also driven local industrial development and employment. China Railway and PowerChina not only employ a large number of local workers in the construction of high-speed rail, but also pass on technology and experience in various ways, and many Indonesian workers can continue to engage in high-speed rail operation and maintenance after mastering technology. Deviana, general manager of the Indonesia-China high-speed railway company, said that as of December 2021, 69.7% of the total procurement expenditure of the high-speed rail project used local capital goods and created jobs for 13,477 local workers.
Sethiavan, an employee of PowerChina Indonesia, said: "Now more and more Indonesian young people like me have joined the big family of PowerChina Yawan high-speed rail project, learning advanced high-speed rail technology and management experience, and moving forward together with Yawan high-speed railway. I can't wait to take my family on the high-speed train I helped build! ”
In addition, China Road and Bridge Engineering Co., Ltd. and China Harbor (Indonesia) Co., Ltd. have also undertaken the construction of Surabaya Madura Bridge, Tayuan Bridge, Solo Expressway, Bandung Phase III Expressway, Medan Airport Expressway, Palembang Light Rail and other projects. Among them, the Surabaya Madura Bridge, which was completed and opened to traffic in June 2009, has become a benchmark construction project in Southeast Asia, with a total length of 5,438 meters, which is the first cross-sea bridge connecting the economically developed island of Java and the resource-rich Madura Island, and the largest and longest cross-sea bridge in Indonesia. At present, China Road and Bridge is actively building Indonesia's first seawall expressway, contributing Chinese wisdom to Indonesia's infrastructure.
Building a "Digital Indonesia"
In order to realize the vision of enabling every Indonesian to embrace the "digital era", PT Huawei Technologies Investment Co., Ltd., ZTE Indonesia, FiberHome International Indonesia, China Mobile International (Indonesia) Co., Ltd. and other Chinese-funded enterprises have actively joined hands with Indonesian operators to build a "digital Indonesia", using digital across the ocean and mountains to connect the "country of a thousand islands".
Over the past 22 years, PT Huawei has worked closely with all major Indonesian operators to achieve network coverage on all major Indonesian islands, deploying more than 100,000 communication base stations, providing high-quality network connections to about 260 million Indonesians, and enriching people's communication and lives. In 2021, Huawei supported local operators to achieve 5G releases, and Indonesia's communications sector entered the 5G era.
In 2018, ZTE worked with local operators in Indonesia to complete the verification test of ultra-long coverage of the sea surface, achieving the actual coverage of the network signal in the sea surface scene to reach 70 kilometers, helping the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information to develop fishery communications. In 2022, ZTE joined hands with local operators and mining enterprises in Indonesia to explore underground 5G smart mines, build Indonesia's first 5G SA network, and take the lead in realizing the first 5G unmanned mine remote control in Southeast Asia.
Under Indonesia's national strategy of "nationwide coverage of 4G mobile network signals", the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology launched the 4G LTE network coverage project to open up the "information artery" of Indonesia's rural access to the digital economy era, so that the "communication difficulty" problem in the most cutting-edge, outermost and vulnerable areas has been historically solved. In 2021, PT Huawei, ZTE and Fiberhome won the bid for the project, and at the beginning of construction, nearly 10,000 jobs were created, effectively solving the problem of employment difficulties for people in remote areas of Indonesia under the new crown pneumonia epidemic. FiberHome built wireless communication base stations under this project, covering more than 2,700 natural villages.
In addition, China Mobile International provides Asia-Pacific 6D satellite resources for the Indonesian market, and adopts the latest high-orbit and high-throughput technology to achieve full coverage of signals throughout Indonesia, reduce satellite communication costs, and improve transmission efficiency. Three POP points were built and used in Indonesia to provide services for Indonesian enterprises to connect to the global network. In view of the problem of signal coverage and network instability in remote areas of Indonesia, the company integrates resources to build LTE networks for industrial parks in remote areas to solve the coverage problem.
Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Lu Kang said that Chinese-funded enterprises are a seed of economic, trade and investment cooperation between the two countries, which have been deeply rooted in this land, and have become big trees and fruitful fruits, and hope that Chinese-funded enterprises will continue to make new contributions to the joint construction of a community with a shared future between China and Indonesia. (Economic Daily News reporter in Jakarta Chen Xiaofang)
Source: Economic Daily
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