Indonesia – The Invisible Giant

The most populous country in the world is China – and everyone has heard the predictions that China will be the next super power.
The second most populous country is India – and everyone is aware that India is Asia’s other giant.
The third most populous country in the world is the United States of America – and there is no need to mention what everyone knows about it.
The fourth most populous country in the world is …. How many people could finish that sentence correctly?
A new colleague of mine, knowing of my connection to Indonesia, went away and consulted an encyclopaedia for some facts about the country. Later she asked me if what she had read was true. Did Indonesia really have 240 million people? I thought the number sounded a little light but I acceded that it was close.
“But that means it is bigger than Germany, bigger than France,” she responded in amazement.
My colleague, it appeared, had previously thought of Indonesia as just an exotic tourist destination whose greatest importance came from being close to Australia. She was clearly stunned by the implications of Indonesia’s population statistics.
There is weight in those statistics. Any country which has that many people, my colleague clearly realised, was a country with some power. And she was very surprised that she had reached middle age without realising that Australia’s neighbour was so much more than a cheap tourist destination.
Indonesia is probably best known for the island of Bali, an idyllic island that is a Mecca for tourists. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Bali is even better known than Indonesia. The author of this article remembers a conversation with someone who said they had never been to Indonesia, but that they had been to Bali.
This conversation was probably symptomatic of the lack of attention paid to Indonesia even by those who should know better.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation on earth. Only China, India and the USA are larger. It is also developing fast in ways that are important but would not show up strongly in the economic statistics by which most countries’ relative health is usually analysed.
 
Democracy
Since the fall of Suharto in 1990 Indonesian democracy has become increasingly robust. The first democratically elected President in this period, Abdurahman Wahid, was barred from running again by the country’s elite for being beyond their control and the next two presidents were consequently members of the ruling class (Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former President’s daughter and Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, a former general) but the current president Joko Widodo makes much of his humble origins and is certainly not from the military/inherited wealth background of his predecessors, a fact which suggests that democracy is now too firmly entrenched in Indonesia for the elites to control. This is a very positive sign for Indonesia, speaking to the growth of institutions that become too strong to corrupt. With increasing democracy comes increasing accountability and amidst anti-corruption drives and civil society activism Indonesia is slowly descending in the global corruption rankings - steadily falling away from its former world number one ranking under President (read dictator) Suharto.
 
The Arts
Exactly why the arts should matter is still not exactly clear to the author of this article but what is clear is that the flourishing of the arts coincides with the flourishing of a country. All countries that have had a golden age of artistic achievement have had a coinciding golden age of influence in the world as well. With this thought in mind the impressive artistic output of Indonesia should be heeded. Though Indonesian is a very new language it has already (in the author’s opinion) produced at least one great novelist, Mochtar Lubis, and many great musicians. And now its movies are starting to attract international attention, as its painters and sculptors long have.  This vibrant arts scene means that Indonesia has soft power force. The author remembers watching television in Madagascar and seeing how all of the local stars were just imitating American models. He realised then that a country’s artistic output can bind other peoples to it far more surely than any military might. Soft power comes out of the arts and Indonesia’s artistic output in the Indonesian language is part of what is helping to bind this archipelagic nation together. The author’s personal experience of this comes from noting that twenty years ago Sasak children on the island of Lombok would be speaking only Sasak as they played and would wait to learn Indonesian at school, starting in the fourth grade, whereas today Sasak children run around imitating their favourite cartoon and television characters and calling to each other in the Indonesian that those characters use. Indonesia’s art scene is increasing the internal strength and cohesion of the country. An important factor in an island nation that boasts more than 300 ethnicities, each with their own language.
 
But isn’t Indonesia too divided amongst all its ethnic groups?
The fact that Indonesia needs to work to bring its people together is something which is often cited as the reason why analysts doubt that Indonesia will ever have the influence that its population figures suggest it should. It is said that Indonesia is too divided ethnically and geographically. However, it is the authors observation that Indonesia hangs together much more easily than many imagine. It is true that there is resentment in the outer islands for the domination of Java and the Javanese, but this does not mean that there is resentment for the idea of Indonesia. In many ways it has felt to me on my travels there that the outer islands are more Indonesian than Java. You are more likely to hear Indonesian being spoken on the side of the road in Sulawesi and Kupang than you are in Java. The outer islands also share a cosmopolitan history that separates them from the central islands of Java and Bali. Java and Bali have abundant fertile plains that gave rise to cultures that derived their main source of wealth from farming. Aristocracies ruled over peasants and very hierarchical, self-sustaining, inward looking cultures developed. The outer islands by contrast were mostly mountainous with poor soils. Farming was pursued, certainly, but it was not the abundant provider that it was in Java and Bali, consequently the people of the outer islands were much more dependent on fishing and sea-craft and developed cultures that saw maritime trading as their main source of wealth. What they traded varied from location to location. In some places it might be minerals like iron, in others, spices which grew well on those islands like cloves and nutmeg, some sold swallows nests from their limestone caves, in other areas dried fish or other marine resources like trepang were sold. Whatever their trade goods, in the outer islands the richest centres were always their trading ports and their main source of wealth was trade. Consequently, the cultures that developed in these islands were led by traders. Therefore, they were more egalitarian, far more outward looking and dependant on constant interaction with other islands and other peoples for the maintenance of their standard of living.
The cultures of Indonesia’s outer islands therefore have always been living in a loose web of inter-dependence with each other, so the idea of a unified maritime empire, which is essentially what Indonesia is, sits quite naturally with them. Foreign analysts who arrive in Jakarta and see the relative wealth and power of Java compared to the other islands and consequently deduce that Indonesia is essentially a colonial system controlled by Java, can be forgiven for thinking that, given the enormity and variety of Indonesia’s peoples and geographies, the centre cannot hold. However, Indonesia is not that classic ‘core and peripheries’ colonial system. Certainly, Java is the powerful and dominating core, but there is much more binding the peripheries together than Java’s power. In many ways the true heart of Indonesia is spread among those islands and Java and Bali are the odd ones out not the uniting force.
 
Isn’t Indonesia at a massive economic disadvantage through being spread among all those islands?
Being an archipelagic nation is an economic advantage, not a disadvantage, take a look at Japan and the United Kingdom by way of quick examples.
The seas between the Indonesian islands are sheltered and narrow. It does not require ocean crossings to move between these islands; these seas, or straits, are small and calm. Furthermore, they are equatorial waters that are out of the path of hurricanes. They are very safe waters to cross. Now, given that even with today’s modern transport systems, moving goods by boat is still far cheaper than moving them by rail or truck, all of this water, is, in fact, an economic advantage. Think of all the trouble that China is having trying to develop the regions that are not either coastal or on a navigable river. That is never going to be a large problem for Indonesia. Indeed, Indonesia has prospered by its archipelagic nature in the past. Sophisticated maritime trade was already present in Indonesia when the Europeans finally arrived, looking for spice, in the fifteenth century and for a while Indonesia was the economic epicentre of the global trading system. The European discovery of the continents of the Americas and Australia were all just accidents in their search for the riches of the Indes (read ‘Indonesia’). As another example of Indonesia’s economic importance back then the island of Manhatten, where stands modern day New York, was swapped for a tiny Indonesian island called Rum.
 
But aren’t Indonesia’s people too spread out to provide economies of scale in a central location?
It is also not the case that, with all its islands, Indonesia lacks a population centre with the critical mass to sustain an advanced economy. The island of Java has more than 100 million inhabitants and according to some estimates Jakarta is the second largest city on the planet. Not only that, but Indonesia is also urbanising fast and currently stands at 54.7% urban (www.worldometers.info). Indonesia has both a concentrated core and a hinterland accessible by coastal shipping. There are economic virtues here to be capitalised upon.
Furthermore, Indonesia sits astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These are the sea lanes which connect China and Japan with Middle East Oil and connect the West Coast of the USA with India.
The Malacca Strait is the second most important sea route in the world and its waters are divided between Indonesia and Malaysia (A country which, in large parts, shares both language and ethnicity with Indonesia).
 
What about border change? Isn’t Indonesia too unstable?
Since Independence Indonesia has acquired and then released the territory of East Timor and has fought a successful war to gain the western half of Papua and an unsuccessful war to incorporate Malaysia. There is a feeling that Indonesia’s borders are not yet set and that this is a potential risk factor for the country. This is true and there is much that can be said on this topic, but I would simplify it down to saying the area it is most likely to lose would be the western half of Papua, the least developed part of the archipelago, and the area it is most likely to gain is Malaysia, a more highly developed neighbour, which shares language and ethnicity with Indonesia and really only developed as a separate nation due to one area having been ruled by the British in European colonial times and the other having been ruled by the Dutch.
Were Indonesia to merge or federate with Malaysia at some point in the future then the resulting country would have complete control of the Malacca Straits and would be an even larger and richer and well-positioned nation than the current Indonesia. That such a union could be brought about successfully at some point in the future seems quite likely given that the two nations both share the same national language, Bahasa, and are ethnically very similar as well.
Were Indonesia to lose western Papua, it would admittedly lose its richest mining province, but it would also lose its least developed and least integrated citizens. It is quite possible that the loss of western Papua would be a benefit to Indonesia as whole.
Being an island nation also means that Indonesia is far less susceptible to invasion from its neighbours than a country with land borders.
 
The Centre of Asia
In many ways Indonesia is at the centre of Asia. Certainly, some might look at a map and say Sinkiang or Tibet were at the geographic centre of Asia but it can be argued that Indonesia is at the cultural meeting point of Asia. The two great realms of Asia are China and India and those two worlds meet in Indonesia.  Most obviously, Indonesia is halfway along the sea route between these two giants and located at the natural choke point of that sea route, at the end of the Malay Peninsula, but its claim to being between them goes further than that. Many Indonesian ethnic groups have genetic and linguistic connections to southern China but culturally Indonesia is much closer to India. So, there is a fusion of both East Asia and South Asia in Indonesia. And, yes, sitting on that great trade route between the two, being able to disrupt the trade of either yet being far enough removed not to be vulnerable to invasion does give Indonesia an ability to influence the giants from a position of security that a place like Myanmar does not have.
 
If Indonesia’s geography is so good then why hasn’t it been cashed in on already?
In a sense, Indonesia’s geography has already shown its worth at various times in the past. We have already mentioned that when the Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century they found the islands were already home to sophisticated maritime trading networks. And the technology found among the islands was also comparable with what the Europeans were using. Some islanders, for example, were already using cannons (indeed there is some speculation that cannons and firearms in general might have been an Indonesian invention, combining the fireworks powder traded from China with the local penchant for using blow pipes) and their ships too were comparable to what the European’s were using, though designed for the calmer protected seas of South East Asia rather than open ocean sailing.
There were small maritime empires operating in Indonesia, at that time, such as the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore and the Bugis of Makassar, with whom the Europeans had to fight for control when they arrived. But there had been large and wealthy empires in islands before that too, with the most notable being the Majapahit and the Sriwijayan, who were known to the rulers of China. So, history shows that the island of Indonesia could provide the base for both large empires and societies that were advanced by the global standards of the time. It also shows that the islands were a relatively secure base from which to operate as they were never conquered by an external power until the arrival of the Europeans and the creation of their global maritime empires.
So, Indonesia’s geography has proved its worth in the past, and it looks to be moving toward fulfilling its potential once again. In some ways its population is providing the impetus. During colonial times Indonesia’s population was sparse, but now it is growing to a point where a certain degree of influence is inevitable. Perhaps consequently, Indonesia is beginning to take off as one of the new China’s (the countries set to take over China’s low-end manufacturing role as wages in China continue to increase), and constant visitors to Indonesia can see the steady rise in living standards that are becoming available to the general population.
 
Won’t de-globalization stall Indonesia’s growth in its tracks?
So, Indonesia is following in China’s cheap manufacturing footsteps, but what happens if globalisation fades with increased tariff boundaries, robotization, 3D printing and fear of supply route disruption in this period of terrorism and state failure? Could it not be that Indonesia is following an out of date model?
If globalization does fade, Indonesia is one of the few countries that would grow its relative strength in such a world. Such a world is all about having the resources locally and Indonesia is one of the most resource rich countries, it has oil and minerals as well as some of the most productive farmlands on the planet, combining volcanic soils with year-round growing seasons. Indonesia can be both self-sufficient due to its resources and secure thanks to its island geography. So, Indonesia it seems is poised to benefit regardless of what the future brings.
 
Conclusion
Indonesia’s growing power is already showing in how other powers treat it. In particular, its treatment by China is telling. China is throwing its weight around with other South China Sea countries at the moment; building on islands and having naval stand-offs. When Chinese fishing boats are caught fishing in Indonesian waters, however, the Indonesian president flies in to watch them be burned. And the response from China? Very low key. China may be bullying other South China Sea claimants, but it is choosing not to pick a fight with Indonesia.
Indonesia is already a G20 country both economically and militarily and its ranking in both regards has been climbing over recent years.
For mine, though, the real joker in the pack for Indonesia’s potential power is its linguistic and ethnic brotherhood with Malaysia. Regardless of how the relationship between these two countries develops, though, Indonesia is very much the unseen giant of today’s world. It goes under the radar on account of its past poor performance, but there are many reasons to believe that its future will be more significant than its recent past, and for those who look closely there are many signs of building strength.