Indonesia has been forced to clarify that it does not recognize China’s maximalist claims over the South China Sea, after signing a maritime development deal with Beijing that appears to acknowledge Beijing’s “nine-dash line” claim.
A joint statement issued on Saturday during Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s visit to Beijing mentioned that the two countries had “reached important common understanding on joint development in areas of overlapping claims.” It said that the two sides had agreed to set up an Inter-Governmental Joint Steering Committee to manage the development, “pursuant to their respective prevailing laws and regulations.”
Due to their outstanding maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea, rival claimant states – the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan – have generally avoided agreeing to any joint development agreement with China. The fear is that this could be interpreted as a formal recognition of China’s expansive claims over the vital waterway.
The release of the joint statement was interpreted by some South China Sea watchers as marking a (perhaps unwitting) break from a long-standing Indonesian policy.
While China insists that Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf around the Natuna Islands overlaps with the “nine-dash line,” Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry has long rejected the Chinese claim, and does not acknowledge that it has any overlapping jurisdiction with China. For this reason, it officially considers itself a non-claimant state in the South China Sea and, under the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), is entitled to sovereign rights over its EEZ around the Natuna Islands, and exclusive access to the resources that lie within it.
The implicit acknowledgment of “overlapping claims” appears to undermine this position. Collin Koh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies wrote yesterday on X that the agreement appeared to mark a retreat from Indonesia’s stance that it is not a claimant in the South China Sea. He said that this constitutes “nothing less than a historic victory for Beijing.”
In an article for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter blog, Aristyo Rizka Darmawan of Universitas Indonesia argued that by agreeing to the joint statement with China, the new Indonesian administration had become “the first ASEAN member-state to implicitly recognize Beijing’s ‘nine-dash line.’” In so doing, Indonesia appears to have “betrayed Indonesia’s national interest” and handed Beijing a “big win.”
In a statement yesterday, Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry rushed to clarify that its position was unchanged and that Saturday’s agreement would have no impact on its sovereignty over the area that it terms the North Natuna Sea.
“Indonesia reiterates its position that [China’s] claim has no basis in international law and is not in accordance with UNCLOS 1982,” it stated. “The cooperation has no impact on Indonesia’s sovereignty, sovereign rights, or jurisdiction in the North Natuna Sea.”
The Ministry stated that the proposed cooperation agreement with China would cover “various aspects of economic cooperation, especially in the field of fisheries and fisheries conservation in the region.” The trust generated thereby would help push forward negotiations on the long-delayed ASEAN-China Code of Conduct for the South China Sea.
Exactly how this impacts Indonesia’s position around the Natuna Islands remains unclear – as one observer noted today, the reference to “prevailing laws and regulations” could lead to the agreement being blocked in the Indonesian legislature – but at the very least it has created a host of probably unwelcome complications for the Foreign Ministry.
In his article for the Lowy Institute, Aristyo argued that far from helping ASEAN negotiate a Code of Conduct with China it might complicate the process, given the apparent break in Jakarta’s long-standing policy that all claims in the Code should be based on a legitimate claim under UNCLOS. He said the move could also potentially affect the Indonesia-Vietnam EEZ delimitation agreement that was signed in late 2022.
Given the Foreign Ministry’s consistency up until this point, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that all of this was an unforced error by a green and untested administration. When Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto took office last month, he appointed Sugiono, the deputy chairperson of his Gerindra Party, as foreign minister in his sprawling cabinet. A political novice who only entered national politics in 2019, the 45-year-old came to the post with little hands-on experience in foreign affairs. In this respect, he differs dramatically from his predecessor Retno Marsudi, a career diplomat who had nearly two decades of experience in the diplomatic corps before her appointment as foreign minister in 2014.
In the end, the Indonesian move may represent less a conscious shift in policy than a cautionary tale about the perils of turning a nation’s foreign relations into a political sinecure. Bill Hayton of Chatham House, the author of a 2014 book on the South China Sea, said in a post on X that the statement was “starting to look like a giant mistake by a very inexperienced foreign minister.”
Whatever the cause, it seems as if the staff at the Foreign Ministry now have an almighty mess on their hands, and cleaning it up could well reignite the South China Sea question in China-Indonesia relations. Despite the Indonesian government’s clarification, Aristyo wrote, “China may continue to hold the interpretation presented in the earlier statement.” This could have uncertain impacts on the relationship between Jakarta and Beijing.