Author: Antonia Timmerman
Antonia Timmerman is a Jakarta-based journalist with over 10 years of experience reporting in Southeast Asia. Starting out as a business reporter, Antonia developed a specialization in technology and labor issues. Her articles have been published in Rest of World, South China Morning Post, VICE, Nikkei Asia, and more.
Antonia has won multiple awards for her journalism, including two SOPA 2023 Awards for her coverage of nickel and electric vehicle development in Indonesia, and a SABEW 2022 Best in Business Award.
Related Posts
Coal-Free Future: A Diary From China-Indonesia Energy Field Trip
Do you remember when the weather was small talk? It used to be a conversation you would have with a stranger at the bus stop, perhaps about the imminent rain or how unusually hot today is before it became quiet again and your ride arrived.
Related Posts
Chinese Firm Transsion Eyes Indonesia As Top Market, Owes Gaming Community For Success
Transsion Holdings, the world’s fourth largest smartphone maker, is now eyeing Indonesia as its number one focus market in Southeast Asia. Engaging gaming communities, improving after-sales services, and innovative marketing are among Transsion’s top strategies to beat competitors in the archipelago, according to managers in Carlcare, ...
Indonesia Is Handing Out Coal Mines To Religious Groups. Here’s Why China Stands To Benefit
This article is co-authored by Antonia Timmerman, Southeast Asia Editor at the China-Global South Project, Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, Director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), and Yeta Purnama, researcher at CELIOS. Indonesia found ...
U.S., China, Indonesia’s Nickel Gridlock: A Perspective From Below
“Without Indonesia’s nickel, have no future in America,” declared Indonesia’s coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan in Foreign Policy last month. A bold statement from Indonesia’s top minister. He blasted Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for ...
What Does Non-Alignment Movement Mean to Contemporary Indonesia, and Will It Satisfy China and U.S.?
“Honored to be invited by Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet him in person in Beijing,” Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto tweeted on his official account on Tuesday, 2 April, 2024. Wearing the Indonesian traditional cap “peci”, Prabowo posed and shook hands with the Chinese leader.
Can “Strongman” Prabowo Subianto Take Indonesia’s Nickel Dream Away From China’s Orbit?
Prabowo Subianto, an ex-military commander and former son-in-law of Indonesian dictator Suharto, is finally on his way to the presidency. During the campaign season, Prabowo drummed up the promise that he would continue Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s policies, including the promise of nickel-for-battery developments. Lo ...
Prabowo Subianto Set to Win Indonesia Presidency, Relations With China, U.S. Expected to Remain Stable
The clouds still hadn’t left the sky on Wednesday morning in Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta, where millions were preparing to elect their new president and vice president. Parts of the city were flooded due to heavy rains on the previous night, causing some polling stations to ...
Q&A: Indonesia’s EV Success Now Hinges on U.S. & EU. Will Indonesia Be Forced to Pull Away From China?
In November last year, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo met with United States President Joe Biden to talk trade and investment. At the very top of Jokowi’s agenda was to find a way to expand markets for Indonesian nickel-based EV batteries. Jokowi had hoped to secure ...
Southeast Asia: Best Place To Celebrate Chinese New Year Outside China
Chinese migration is one of the oldest and largest movements of people in the world. The latest tide lasted for over 300 years, which intensified in the sixteenth century and again in the nineteenth century due to the Opium Wars. As a result, there are about ...
Indonesia 2024 Election: VP Candidate Bizarrely Frames “Anti-Nickel” as Supporting China
In Indonesia’s second vice presidential debate, Gibran Rakabuming — the eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate of Prabowo Subianto — tried to trap his rival Muhaimin Iskandar by asking the latter’s team’s campaign about lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), a nickel-free electric vehicle ...
Indonesia 2024 Presidential Election Infographic: Candidates Debate South-South Cooperation, South China Sea, and Foreign Debts
In four weeks, Indonesians will head to the polls. Indonesia’s elections body, the General Elections Commission, is hosting a total of five presidential debates during the campaign season for the candidates to discuss a wide range of topics. The three presidential candidates ...
5 Most Important China Stories of 2023 in Southeast Asia’s Climate Landscape
With the overwhelming war in Gaza and the return of rising COVID-19 cases around the world, as we end the year, it’s easy to lose track of other defining events in the past twelve months. From China’s river diplomacy in Mekong ...
TikTok Finds Its Way Back Into Indonesia’s Booming E-Commerce Market
Chinese-owned TikTok announced on Monday that it is taking over 75% stake in Tokopedia, the Indonesian e-commerce unit of GoTo’s super-app ecosystem. The company said that it will spend a total of $1.5 billion and that the transaction will be completed by the first quarter of ...
Explaining Indonesia’s Different Responses To Palestine, Xinjiang, and Myanmar’s Rohingya
On November 16, 2023, an overcrowded wooden boat carrying around 250 Rohingyas attempted to land in the Indonesian province of Aceh. They were unwelcome, and locals turned the boat away. The Rohingyas are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority group in Myanmar. Thousands are forced to risk ...
South China Sea Crisis and ASEAN’s Quiet Diplomacy
At the maritime symposium this week in Hainan, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi warned against a “bloc confrontation” approach to solving disputes, alluding to the Philippines, the United States, and Japan’s growing complaints about the brewing tension in the South China Sea. On October 22, two Chinese ...
Indonesia’s EV Ambition May Be Underestimating Some Challenges. Relying On China Won’t Be Enough
Indonesia is on a quest to build an end-to-end electric vehicle (EV) industry. The country is rich with nickel, an important raw material for nickel cobalt manganese (NCM)-based EV batteries. It’s a “confident middle-income” country, according to the World Bank, and it’s got a thriving automotive ...
China’s Belt & Road Checks May Get Smaller, But Indonesia Can Still Get Plenty
After complaints surrounding debt and environmental woes, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is finally changing. At the Belt and Road Forum this week, China announced that the BRI will now be “Small but Smart”, aiming to fund smaller-sized projects that are greener. ...
Southeast Asia is Testing TikTok’s Limits
ByteDance’s TikTok is learning some very valuable lessons from the past few weeks: overconfidence is bad, and a new level of creativity might be in order if it wants to keep up with Southeast Asia’s policy quirks. Charm alone is not enough in this part of the ...
Lots of People Are Confused About Indonesia’s Decision to Ban E-Commerce on TikTok. Here’s Why They Did It.
The Indonesian government last week outlawed the use of TikTok to sell goods online goods, delivering a massive blow to the Chinese social media giant in its fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia. Since the ban went into effect last Wednesday, there's ...
China’s Wuling Electrifies Indonesia’s EV Market, but Can the Spark Last?
Chinese electric vehicle maker Wuling is reaping what it sowed almost eight years ago in Indonesia — the largest and most lucrative auto market in Southeast Asia. After injecting a billion U.S. dollar investment over that period, Wuling has now sold over 10,000 Air EVs and ...
ASEAN Knocks On The West’s Doors While Keeping China Close Amid Territorial Flare-Ups
This week’s summit in Jakarta saw ASEAN countries again knocking on the West’s door to ask for far more concrete support for their future growth. At the same time, the bloc seemed united in refraining from ruffling China’s feathers too much on the subject of the South ...
Q&A: ASEAN Is Showing Teeth To Myanmar
On the first day of the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Jakarta, the group leaders released a review on the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC), which was put out in 2021 to help resolve the crisis in Myanmar. The document ...
ASEAN’s Hyper-Focus On Economic Growth Won’t Make Geopolitical Tensions Go Away
Indonesia’s ASEAN Chairmanship this year leans heavily towards spurring economic growth, believing that the focus on the more “neutral” subject would unite the group. In these economic efforts, ASEAN has been consistent in its messaging about working with all partners, because ...
The New “BRICS6” May Complicate Indonesia’s Agenda in ASEAN
BRICS on Thursday officially invited six countries to join the group — Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. After all the speculations made in local media about Indonesia’s possibility to join, the country was missing from the invite list. And that is ...
Chinese EV Brands’ Push In Indonesia Intensifies. Can They Help Boost Slow Adoption?
The roads in Jakarta are looking a little different lately. At times, in the sea of black SUVs stuck in traffic, one can spot one or two tiny electric cars developed by Chinese electric vehicle maker Wuling. When one hops into a Blue Bird — the country’s ...
Indonesia 2024 Presidential Election: Forecasting Future Proximity With China
Indonesia will hold a presidential election next year that will potentially see three candidates battling for office: Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, and Prabowo Subianto. Since declaring their presidential bids, the three candidates have talked about various issues, ranging from improving education, boosting employment, healthcare, ...
Q&A: Untapped Opportunities In Indonesia’s Impact Tech Startups For Chinese Investors
Conversations around the China-Indonesia cooperation usually revolve around the big, flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects like the high-speed rail, the industrial parks, or nickel processing in Morowali and Weda Bay. But, development and sustainability can be driven by a ...
Q&A: China’s Transsion’s Little-Known Phone Repair Business Thrives in Global South, Offers Clues To Sustainable Hardware Services
Carlcare, a post-sales repair service provider, is a little-known unit of Transsion Holdings, a Chinese maker of mobile phones beloved across Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Like its parent company, Carlcare’s business is thriving in developing countries thanks to its adept localizing; in this case, tapping into ...
How to Talk About China in the Global South: Key Lessons From the Digital Asia Hub 2023 Conference
Academics from dozens of top universities around the globe gathered last week in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for the 20th Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC). Hailing from Peking University, Nanyang Technological University, Warwick University, and more, the researchers presented their latest research on the Chinese Internet’s flows and ...
Southeast Asia Inches Closer to China to Survive Harsh Heat Waves
Extreme high temperatures — a ‘once-in-200-years heat wave’ — have been hitting many Asian countries in recent weeks, including those in Southeast Asia. Experts said that it is only the beginning of an era that will see more frequent heat waves and other erratic weather.
Searching for Climate Solutions In a Haze of Geopolitics
In the afternoons when I would reach for the air conditioner’s remote control, unable to go on without turning on the cooling machine, I grieve a little. I know it didn’t used to be this hot. I remember playing outside as a child at this hour. The ...
Southeast Asia’s Climate Goals Are Ultimately Economic Goals: U.S. Vows to Help, But China Delivers
Two weeks ago, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his ministers received a visit from the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council (U.S.-ABC). Green industries — particularly electric vehicles — were at the top of Indonesia’s talking points. “How can Indonesia get facilities to ...
TRANSLATION: Deaths, Work Accidents, Busting Unions, Criminalization: The Fate of Indonesian and Chinese Workers in the Gunbuster Nickel Industry
The following is a summary translation of an article on Project Multatuli, written by journalist Permata Adinda, on the plights of nickel workers at Chinese-owned nickel firm Gunbuster Nickel Industry (GNI) in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. At about ten in the evening ...
Q&A: Indonesian, Chinese Nickel Workers Struggle With Racial Tension, But Must Tread Path to Solidarity
This year opened with a clash that erupted between Indonesian and Chinese workers at Gunbuster Nickel Industry (GNI), a Chinese-owned nickel processing plant in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, claiming lives from each side. It’s tempting to count the clash as evidence ...
Why Many Indonesians Think Jokowi Fumbled Chinese High-Speed Rail Diplomacy, Even As It Nears Completion
The China-backed high-speed train that runs from Jakarta to Bandung, two main cities in Indonesia, is nearing completion, and is slated to begin serving the public in August this year. But after about a decade of planning and construction, the excitement just isn’t there. Not anymore.
Q&A: Chinese-Dominated EV Supply Chains in Southeast Asia Grapple With Abuses
Since the 2010s, China has moved swiftly to secure mineral resources around the world to feed its gigantic electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturing industry. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China was reported to own 15 of the 17 cobalt operations in the country, producing ...
A Taliban security personnel operating an anti-aircraft gun keeps watch for Pakistani airstrikes near the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Nangarhar province on February 27, 2026 following overnight cross-border fighting between the two countries. Photo by AIMAL ZAHIR / AFP
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared "open war" against Afghanistan on Friday amid a surge of fighting between the two South Asian neighbors. Pakistan said it's retaliating against Afghanistan for a series of attacks, including a suicide bombing in early February that killed at least 36 people ...
Coal-Free Future: A Diary From China-Indonesia Energy Field Trip
Do you remember when the weather was small talk? It used to be a conversation you would have with a stranger at the bus stop, perhaps about the imminent rain or how unusually hot today is before it became quiet again and your ride arrived.
Chinese Firm Transsion Eyes Indonesia As Top Market, Owes Gaming Community For Success
Transsion Holdings, the world’s fourth largest smartphone maker, is now eyeing Indonesia as its number one focus market in Southeast Asia. Engaging gaming communities, improving after-sales services, and innovative marketing are among Transsion’s top strategies to beat competitors in the archipelago, according to managers in Carlcare, ...
Indonesia Is Handing Out Coal Mines To Religious Groups. Here’s Why China Stands To Benefit
This article is co-authored by Antonia Timmerman, Southeast Asia Editor at the China-Global South Project, Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, Director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), and Yeta Purnama, researcher at CELIOS. Indonesia found ...
U.S., China, Indonesia’s Nickel Gridlock: A Perspective From Below
“Without Indonesia’s nickel, have no future in America,” declared Indonesia’s coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan in Foreign Policy last month. A bold statement from Indonesia’s top minister. He blasted Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for ...
What Does Non-Alignment Movement Mean to Contemporary Indonesia, and Will It Satisfy China and U.S.?
“Honored to be invited by Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet him in person in Beijing,” Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto tweeted on his official account on Tuesday, 2 April, 2024. Wearing the Indonesian traditional cap “peci”, Prabowo posed and shook hands with the Chinese leader.
Can “Strongman” Prabowo Subianto Take Indonesia’s Nickel Dream Away From China’s Orbit?
Prabowo Subianto, an ex-military commander and former son-in-law of Indonesian dictator Suharto, is finally on his way to the presidency. During the campaign season, Prabowo drummed up the promise that he would continue Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s policies, including the promise of nickel-for-battery developments. Lo ...
Prabowo Subianto Set to Win Indonesia Presidency, Relations With China, U.S. Expected to Remain Stable
The clouds still hadn’t left the sky on Wednesday morning in Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta, where millions were preparing to elect their new president and vice president. Parts of the city were flooded due to heavy rains on the previous night, causing some polling stations to ...
Q&A: Indonesia’s EV Success Now Hinges on U.S. & EU. Will Indonesia Be Forced to Pull Away From China?
In November last year, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo met with United States President Joe Biden to talk trade and investment. At the very top of Jokowi’s agenda was to find a way to expand markets for Indonesian nickel-based EV batteries. Jokowi had hoped to secure ...
Southeast Asia: Best Place To Celebrate Chinese New Year Outside China
Chinese migration is one of the oldest and largest movements of people in the world. The latest tide lasted for over 300 years, which intensified in the sixteenth century and again in the nineteenth century due to the Opium Wars. As a result, there are about ...
Indonesia 2024 Election: VP Candidate Bizarrely Frames “Anti-Nickel” as Supporting China
In Indonesia’s second vice presidential debate, Gibran Rakabuming — the eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate of Prabowo Subianto — tried to trap his rival Muhaimin Iskandar by asking the latter’s team’s campaign about lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), a nickel-free electric vehicle ...
Indonesia 2024 Presidential Election Infographic: Candidates Debate South-South Cooperation, South China Sea, and Foreign Debts
In four weeks, Indonesians will head to the polls. Indonesia’s elections body, the General Elections Commission, is hosting a total of five presidential debates during the campaign season for the candidates to discuss a wide range of topics. The three presidential candidates ...
5 Most Important China Stories of 2023 in Southeast Asia’s Climate Landscape
With the overwhelming war in Gaza and the return of rising COVID-19 cases around the world, as we end the year, it’s easy to lose track of other defining events in the past twelve months. From China’s river diplomacy in Mekong ...