Indonesia’s foreign minister said yesterday that the government has not yet decided to create any joint development areas with China in the South China Sea, playing down suggestions that a recent agreement had compromised the country’s maritime sovereignty.
During a visit last month, President Prabowo Subianto signed a joint maritime development agreement with China during a visit to Beijing last month. In a joint statement issued on November 9, the two countries said that they had “reached important common understanding on joint development in areas of overlapping claims.”
This reference to “overlapping claims” appeared to confer legitimacy on the Chinese government’s maximalist “nine-dash line,” under which it lays claim to the majority of the South China Sea.
Speaking to parliament yesterday, Sugiono reaffirmed that Indonesia does not recognize China’s claims in the South China Sea, and that the new administration would make decisions based on the Indonesian national interest.
“Indonesia maintains a position that there is no appropriate international legal basis in the nine-dash line issue,” Sugiono told lawmakers, as per AFP. He added that the joint statement did not mark any change to the government’s position with regard to Indonesian sovereignty, pointing to the joint statement’s reference to “prevailing laws and regulations.”
In any event, Sugiono said, no areas had yet been identified with China on jointly developing fishing or extracting other resources. He added that Indonesia had expressed the joint development plans to leaders of its neighboring countries “in a bid to reduce tension.”
At the time of the joint agreement, some observers said that it appeared to mark a reversal of its long-standing position on the South China Sea. While China’s government holds that Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf around the Natuna Islands overlaps with the southern portion of the “nine-dash line,” Indonesia has rejected the Chinese claims and does not acknowledge any overlapping jurisdiction with China. For this reason, it considers itself a “non-claimant” in the South China Sea and has no reason to agree to any “joint development.”
The fact that President Prabowo Subianto, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and now the minister himself have all since come out to restate Indonesia’s policy and assert that the agreement with China has “no impact on Indonesia’s sovereignty, sovereign rights, or jurisdiction in the North Natuna Sea” raises the possibility that the joint statement was a blunder.
As I wrote in these pages last month, Sugiono, 45, was essentially a political appointee, having previously served as the deputy chairperson of Prabowo’s Gerindra Party. Having only entered politics in 2019, he came to the position with little practical experience in foreign affairs, let alone the tripwire intricacies of international maritime law.
However, others indeed believe that the joint statement reflected a considered shift in the Indonesian approach. Writing last month for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter blog, Emirza Adi Syailendra argued that the Prabowo administration felt that it was no longer viable to deny the maritime dispute between the two nations – a dispute that Emirza argues first became clear in 2016.
“The existence of disputes does not signify Indonesia yielding to Beijing but acknowledges a natural progression in response to China’s assertive stance,” he argued. He added that “recognizing disputes, as Prabowo has done, creates new opportunities – either for aggressively contesting Beijing’s nine-dash line through an international tribunal, as the Philippines has done in the past, or for managing tensions while shelving disputes.” China and Indonesia now appear to have taken the latter course, in the name of bilateral comity.
Assuming that Prabowo’s foreign ministry has initiated a purposeful shift in Indonesian policy, it remains to be seen what benefits it will bring to the nation and its maritime security.