China has upset Asian neighbors from Japan to Vietnam by flexing harder than the rest on its claims to vast swathes of disputed oceans. But Asia’s third largest country, Indonesia, usually tolerates its brushes with Beijing to keep up prized economic ties.
Now China is pushing its only friend in the disputed oceans of East Asia to decide how much more it can take. China and Indonesia dispute sovereignty over a tract of water near the 272 Natuna Islands northwest of Borneo as they fall under Beijing’s nine-dash line claim for almost the entire 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea. The Philippines takes such issue with that line that it appealed to an international arbitration court, which is due any time to make a ruling. A Chinese offshore oil rig sparked riots in Vietnam two years ago and Beijing has flown aircraft near Japanese islets to assert a disputed claim east of Shanghai.
Indonesia normally says little about China’s coziness with waters near the Natuna Islands to keep channels open for Chinese investment in infrastructure and purchases of palm oil, likewise to avoid risking a naval conflict that it probably wouldn’t win: China’s military ranks world No. 3 and Indonesia’s No. 14, according to the database globalfirepower.com. The Indonesian navy has only 66 coastal defense vessels, two submarines and no aircraft carriers, the website says.
But over the past four years the Southeast Asian archipelago of 13,000 islands has reluctantly stepped up its vigil against Chinese fishing vessels. The two entered a standoff in March when Indonesian authorities tried to make an arrest but a Chinese coast guard vessel intervened. The same month Indonesia said China had officially included waters near the Natuna Islands on a territorial map, a move that the local Antara news service quoted chief security minister for defense Fahru Zaini as creating a “large impact on the security” of that tract of ocean.
Indonesia was already zooming in more on protection of marine resources because of shipping piracy and illegal fishing.
“They don’t really have too much of a navy to talk of and thousands of islands and of course fisheries to harvest, so this is where they don’t see eye to eye obviously,” says Song Seng Wun, economist with CIMB Private Banking in Singapore. “Indonesia can’t really challenge the Chinese but doesn’t want to be pushed around.”
Jakarta will probably try to manage security impacts going forward while staying friends with China, which also buries most of the flaps rather than getting huffy about them in public as it does when other countries make it upset.
“Bottom line is that Indonesia has other priorities,” says Carl Baker, director of programs at the U.S. think tank Pacific Forum CSIS. Incidents at sea with China “are really peripheral because Indonesia recognizes that China is a crucial economic partner,” he says. There’s something as well to be said for a friendship with the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Last year Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo signed eight agreements partly to let China build infrastructure in the Southeast Asian nation. Indonesia needs railways, for example, while Chinese firms need new markets for construction. Widodo called then on the two sides to raise two-way trade to $150 billion by 2020.
Chinese leaders also appreciate Indonesia’s willingness to work out disputes state-to-state rather than through U.N. channels or unilateral acts, analysts say.
More arrests and low-key squabbles will follow at sea, but expect no big clash.
"Since Indonesia has regularly been willing to resolve issues bilaterally and quietly, China has been careful to avoid any open confrontation and has seemed to discourage fishermen from challenging Indonesian claims to resources in boundary areas," Baker says. The Natuna Islands, he says, "seems to be a good example of how both sides have been very careful to avoid confrontation."
