Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Indonesia

China‟s increasing integration with the world economy is met with much anticipation and much anxiety in the Southeast Asian region. In Indonesia, there is intense interest in Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI), not only among academics but also among policy makers, industrialists and the general public. So much more surprising is the fact that no systematic study of Chinese FDI in Indonesia has been undertaken to date. The current paper contributes to filling this gap and analyses the current composition as well as the historical evolution of Chinese FDI in Indonesia. Relying on a survey conducted in 2008 among Chinese invested enterprises supplemented with available official statistics and secondary data, the study finds that Chinese FDI in Indonesia is performed by mixed entities: some are owned by central government, some by regional government and some are private firms. In the case of joint ventures, their local partners are mostly local Chinese, except in the infrastructure, mining and energy sector where their local partners are Indonesian state-owned enterprises. Where the local developmental effects are concerned, a picture emerges where Chinese investments, at this early period of their internationalization, are likely to give rise to a more modest extent of positive spillovers than investor from more economically advanced countries. This stems from the sectors, investment motives and operational strategies of Chinese investors, the heritage of ethnic tension and segmentation of the economic system along ethnic lines in Indonesia, and the likelihood that Chinese MNCs as latecomers are more vertically integrated than their developed-country counterparts. Finally, considering the evolution of Chinese investments in Indonesia over time, investments have evolved from being individual and isolated projects to acquiring more systemic properties. Chinese companies have acquired a broader sectoral presence in Indonesia and Chinese invested companies in e.g. extractive or manufacturing activities can increasingly rely on complementary Chinese investments in logistics, travel, finance etc.