Summary
- In the past twenty years, China has risen not only as an economic partner for Southeast Asian countries, but also a defence and military partner. Defence diplomacy has become Beijing’s tool not only to demonstrate its prowess as an emerging military great power, but also to promote its image of “peaceful development” to Southeast Asian countries, especially those with territorial and/or boundary disputes with China. China’s defence diplomacy is not just about building trust or confidence with partner militaries. Rather, it is more about gaining international diplomatic support and political legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Hence, Beijing challenges the Western understanding of “defence diplomacy” that places the military above politics, because the primary objective of the PLA is to safeguard the political power and survival of the CCP. Calling it “military diplomacy” instead, China’s defence diplomacy additionally aims at alleviating Southeast Asian concerns over China’s forceful assertion of maritime claims in the South China Sea.
- Defence diplomacy is categorised based on the frequency of bilateral military training and exercises, arms transfers, number of defence senior dialogue meetings, naval port calls, as well as instructor and student officer exchanges. The last three data categories are more difficult to obtain than the rest. According to data from the U.S. National Defense University, Southeast Asia topped China’s defence diplomacy activities in the past ten years or so, even surpassing Russia– its “no-limit partner”–in some categories. It is clear that Beijing has made Southeast Asia its priority region for defence diplomacy.
- Based on the first three categories above, this study finds that China and Indonesia are not close defence diplomacy partners. Between 2008 and 2023, China conducted more defence diplomacy activities with Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia. Likewise, China only ranked eighth among the top ten arms suppliers to Indonesia, claiming only 4.7% share of total arms imports in the same period. Indonesia-China defence and military senior official meetings (SOMs) only constituted 2.5% of Indonesia’s total in 2022—2023. These figures stand in contrast to, perhaps counterintuitively, China’s defence diplomacy activity trend in Southeast Asia as a whole. This means that China’s defence diplomacy, while prioritising Southeast Asia, has been unable or unwilling to capture the sympathy of the region’s largest country, Indonesia.
FSI Analysis Special Edition
March, 2025
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