There are approximately 1000 Chinese company in Indonesia, 50% of it or around 500 companies are mainly built on Java island. Why are there so many investments from China in Indonesia? And why does Indonesia has a bilateral relationship with China that much?

Before getting there, I’ll tell you in a brief about China’s economics history in case you don’t know about that. Do you know the history of Chinese currency spans more than 3000 years ago? A type of currency has been used in China since the Neolithic age which was between 3000 and 4500 years ago, and the earliest form of currency used in Central China is the Cowry shells.

Then around 210 BC, the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang (appr. 260–210 BC) abolished all forms of local currency and introduced a uniform copper coin. Paper money was invented in China later on in the 9th century, but the base unit of currency remained the copper coin. Copper coins were used as the main currency in China until the introduction of the Chinese Yuan (人民币, read: rénmínbì) in the late 19th century.

Besides, we all know that as of 2019, China has the second-largest economy in the world with a GDP of $14.4 trillion, behind the US' GDP of $21.4 trillion. China edges out America as the largest economy with a purchasing power of $27 trillion.

Before, Indonesia already has many Chinese companies. ICBC (工商银农行, read: gōngshāng yínháng), BOC (中国银行, read: zhōngguó yínháng), Sinar Mas group (金光集团, read: jīnguāng jítuán), etc. But since the Tiktok (Douyin 抖音) and Musica.ly hyped, Chinese companies are becoming very famous in Indonesia. Other than the ByteDance company, there are giant unicorns from Alibaba growing. For example, Shopee, Tokopedia, BukaLapak, etc.

After received investment from Ant Financial Services Group (蚂蚁金服, read: mǎyǐ jīnfú) or Alipay, Now Indonesia has an online payment service called OVO. After OVO successfully built, there’s also another service named DANA, Linkaja, GoPay, etc. There are also many construction projects with investments from China, like Jakarta’s MRT for example.

Chinese companies are growing bigger in Indonesia these days and I believe it will grow bigger in the future. So many job vacancies opened for Indonesian, and it absolutely helps Indonesia’s economy grows