Balancing Risk and Reward: Who benefits from China's investments in Indonesia?

Balancing Risk and Reward traces how China has become Indonesia’s most significant source of development finance and foreign direct investment (FDI). Produced by AidData in partnership with Foreign Policy Talks, this report systematically decodes the money, relationships, and outcomes from more than two decades of Beijing’s investments in Indonesia. The authors leverage AidData’s global dataset of Chinese development finance projects and the Financial Times’ fDi Markets platform to analyze the character and nature of nearly $70 billion in Beijing’s state-backed finance from 2000 to 2023 and over $94 billion in private Chinese FDI from 2010 to 2024, ground-truthing this with Foreign Policy Talks’ local networks of experts. They untangle the vast network of players involved in Beijing’s development finance projects in Indonesia, including 58 Chinese state-owned financiers, 208 co-financiers from Asia, Europe, and North America, 213 implementers, and 206 recipient entities. Finally, the research uncovers the extent to which China follows through on its promised commitments, how it manages the risk of public harm from its projects, and the downstream effects across Indonesian society.