Hua Chunying, a spokesperson of the Chinese Communist Party, said the president of Indonesia is traveling to China to meet with President Xi Jinping.
Xi invited Indonesian President Joko Widodo to meet with him July 25 and 26, marking the first time Xi will be meeting individually with another world leader in two years, outside of the Beijing Olympics, Yahoo News reported July 21.
"China looks forward to receiving President Joko Widodo and deepening strategic trust and practical cooperation," Hua Chunying said in a July 21 post on Twitter. "Both China and #Indonesia are major developing countries and emerging economies. Together, we can be a model of common development and pacesetters of South-South cooperation.”
“When the Indonesian President visits China, he can communicate face-to-face with the Chinese leadership,” spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, according to the Yahoo News article.
China and Indonesia have a strong trade relationship, with more than 16% of China's total exports going to Indonesia in 2020, making the country China's top trade destination, SupChina reported in December 2021. Indonesia has also expanded the use of the Chinese yuan, following a 2019 local currency settlement agreement.
China views Indonesia as a key component of its Belt and Roads Initiative, as well as a gateway into the Southeast Asia market, due in part to Indonesia's expanding technology sector, according to the SupChina article. China’s “vaccine diplomacy” also bolstered China-Indonesia relations, with approximately 80% of Indonesia's coronavirus vaccines coming from China.
China uses strategic partnerships with various countries to expand its global influence, Jon B. Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Middle East Program, said on an episode of the ChinaPower Podcast.
“[China will] leave the United States to making good friends and hostile enemies and everything else. And they'll just try to do business with whoever they can do business with,” Alterman said on the podcast. “There's a lot of interest in the Chinese experience in getting away from the American insistence that if you want economic transformation, it requires social and political transformation to go along with it.”
