제목: The US-China Competition and its impacts on Indonesia

일시: 2023년 10월 19일 14:00-15:30

발표자: Evi Fitriani (Universitas Indonesia)

장소: 서울대학교 아시아연구소 304호

주최: 서울대 아시아연구소 동남아시아센터, 서울대 인류학과4단계 BK21교육연구단

문의: 동남아센터 (02-880-2695, seacenter@snu.ac.kr)

강연 내용:

China’s rise has been perceived as threats not only to the liberal world order but also to the domination of the USA and Western countries. In the last five years the competitive relations between the US and China have intensified from trade-economic activities to access to rare-earth minerals, and to technological advancement. Unavoidably, the development of geopolitical tension between the two countries has affected international/regional stability and cooperation on global agenda in recent years. Their strategies of “de-coupling” or “de-risking” to each other appear to create some degrees of fragmentation in what was previously perceived as our globalized and interdependent world.  

This presentation will discuss how developing countries like Indonesia have strived to maintain its relevance and roles in global governance to voice out the interests of countries in the Global South and to emphasize that the world’s agenda cannot be merely encapsulated into the big powers’ interests. In the past, with its “Bebas Aktif” (Independent and Active) foreign policy principle, Indonesia managed to survive the West-East Block competition of the Cold War. Nowadays, Indonesia’s foreign policy has been put under pressures as the geopolitical tension between the two big powers links directly and indirectly to the country’s economic development and technology acquisition.  Indeed, the impacts of the US-China competition on Indonesian domestic politics cannot be undermined, especially because the country will have presidential election in 2024. Indonesia has had unease experiences with both Americans and Chinese in the past, thus the country strives not to be preoccupied by either side believing that the country’s interests are best served by being “independent” from both sides and by maintaining multilateralism in world politics. Regional and global institutions like ASEAN and G20, as well as MIKTA and ASEAN Pus Three (ten ASEAN countries plus Japan, China, and Korea) play important roles in Indonesian strategy to navigate current turbulent geopolitics.

강연자 소개:

Evi Fitriani is a Professor of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia and the head of International Relations Department from 2012 to 2016. She was co-founder of the University’s Master Program of European Studies as well as the ASEAN Study Center of FISIP UI. She is also the Indonesian Country Coordinator of the Network of East Asian Think-tanks (NEAT), the Track-2 of ASEAN Plus Three (APT). She completed the doctorate program in Political Science and International Relations from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2011. She was trained in international relations discipline in Indonesia, the UK, and the USA, as well as in Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary. She has obtained more than 13 international awards and grants. She became a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia and Meiji University in Japan (2016-2019). Professor Fitriani’s research interests include Indonesian foreign policy, ASEAN, Asian regionalism and China, East Asian affairs, Indonesia-Australia relations, Asia-Europe relations, and Indonesia’s land border. She published numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as provided policy recommendation to Indonesian Government, APT Summits, EU, and ASEM.