Xi meets Jokowi in Beijing as Indonesia prepares to host G20

INDONESIAN President Joko Widodo invited China's Xi Jinping to attend the Group of 20 summit in November, as the 2 leaders met in a rare summit in Beijing amid strict Covid controls.

The 2 leaders met Tuesday (Jul 26) afternoon, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said, and Xi's response to the invitation was unclear. Jokowi's trip to China marks the first by a foreign leader since the Olympics in February, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and others entered a bubble designed to keep visitors separate from the public.

China's zero-tolerance approach to the virus has largely kept foreign leaders out of the country during the pandemic, with Xi last leaving in January 2020. Jokowi will likely try to convince him to physically attend the G20 summit planned for Nov 15-16 in Bali, Wellian Wiranto, economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking in Singapore, said on Tuesday in a note.

Boosting trade and investment would also be at the top of his agenda, with China accounting for 1-quarter of Indonesia's total trade, he added.

"If Jokowi can move the economic needle that much more in his Beijing trip, he will have an easier time convincing the leaders in Tokyo and Seoul, with their own geopolitical calculations in mind, of the importance of plonking down more investment in Indonesia," Wiranto said. "Japan, for one, could be politely reminded of how it used to be the top 2 or 3 FDI investor in Indonesia."

Earlier on Tuesday, Jokowi discussed boosting palm oil exports to China with Li Keqiang, prioritising Indonesia's other agricultural goods and improving cooperation in an industrial park in North Kalimantan, according to a statement from the Indonesian government.

The upcoming G20 summit presents Jokowi with a diplomatic balancing act in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Several G20 nations including the US have sanctioned Moscow over the war, and called for China to condemn Moscow's military actions.

A recent meeting of G20 finance chiefs was marred by divisions over President Vladimir Putin's military campaign and ended without a joint agreement, although made some progress on how to address the global food crisis.

Jokowi is slated to visit Japan and South Korea later this week, on the back of recent trips to Ukraine and Russia to discuss the war and global grain security issues.

The Communist Party's Global Times newspaper reported Tuesday that ties between China and Indonesia were set to undergo an "all-round upgrade" from Jokowi's meetings with Xi and Li, citing trade as a key area to benefit. Since China, the world's biggest user and importer of coal, stopped buying that commodity from Australia amid a geopolitical spat, Indonesia has become the nation's largest supplier of thermal coal.

The Chinese newspaper also praised Indonesia's role in the non-aligned movement that helped bring many former colonies to independence as proof of its "determination to stand up against hegemony," a term China often uses to refer to US global influence. BLOOMBERG