The China-Indonesia Trade Relationship

When you look at the actual origin of investment flows, China is now the biggest investor in Indonesia. And two macro trends are currently at play in the trade relationship. Chinese (and other) manufacturers are diversifying out of China and finding relatively young and affordable Indonesian labor attractive especially as other countries like Vietnam become saturated and more expensive. And Indonesia as we know has become a major potential market for an investment opportunities by Chinese technology companies, and Chinese capital in general.

We talk with Liky Sutikno, Chair of the Indonesia Chamber of Commerce in China (Inacham) on this and other issues. Liky explains how Indonesia has been shifting its focus to use its abundant labor and natural resources to attract overseas investment on the condition that Indonesia does more and more value-added processing work, not just resource extraction and export.

We also dive into major trade zones and infrastructure projects and the role for Chinese players there. We further get into the role of the Chinese-Indonesian business community in bridging the two economies. And finally we discuss opportunities for Indonesia companies starting out in certain niche industries to expand into the Chinese market directly. Have a listen and please remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast channel.