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China vs. Indonesia: Beijing Seen Alternating Pressure with Peacemaker Moves

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - A Chinese coast guard ship passed through Indonesia's
   exclusive economic zone earlier this month, until driven off by the
   Maritime Security Agency in Jakarta, just five days after China's
   defense minister made a peace-building trip to the Southeast Asian
   country that's normally, nominally friendly to Beijing.

   But Indonesian officials are used to this soft-plus-hard approach by
   China and will play along by expelling Chinese vessels, though careful
   to avoid hot conflict along Beijing's path to consecrate claims to a
   wider sea that includes a piece of Indonesia's zone, experts say. The
   same dynamic is shaping China's other testy maritime relations around
   Southeast Asia, they add.

   "There's no illusion that China intends to stop its behavior or not
   while it tries to make peace with the region," said Evan Laksamana,
   senior researcher for the Center for Strategic and International
   Studies research group in Jakarta. Indonesian officials were unfazed by
   the coast guard vessel, he said. "I think rhetoric and behavior are
   what we have to look for."

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