Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to deepen his country’s strategic partnership with Indonesia, ahead of a regional tour that will take him to three Southeast Asian nations this week.
According to a report by China’s state news agency Xinhua, Xi spoke with President Prabowo Subianto yesterday by phone to mark the 75th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations.
Xi told Prabowo that China and Indonesia “have stood together through thick and thin and engaged in sincere cooperation over the past 75 years, achieving remarkable progress in bilateral relations and fostering deep-rooted friendship between the two peoples,” according to Xinhua’s paraphrase.
“As major developing countries and important members of the Global South, the cooperation between China and Indonesia carries strategic significance and global influence,” he added.
In turn, Prabowo “expressed the hope that both sides will continue to deepen cooperation and cement the friendship between the two peoples so as to make positive contributions to world peace and stability.”
The call comes as Xi departs today on a three-nation tour of Southeast Asia aimed at shoring up important regional relationships amid the economic turmoil unleashed by the Trump administration’s erratic tariff announcements. Xi will arrive today in Vietnam for a two-day visit, followed by trips to Malaysia (April 15-17) and Cambodia (April 17-18). The tour is Xi’s first overseas visit of 2025, and his first visit to Southeast Asia since his state visit to Vietnam in December 2023.
The trip comes at a time of great regional uncertainty about U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia. Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has shredded bipartisan foreign policy assumptions and engineered a significant reorientation of American priorities. Then, on April 2, came Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, which saw him impose punitive “reciprocal tariffs” on nine of Southeast Asia’s 11 nations, including astronomically high import duties on goods from Cambodia (49 percent), Laos (47 percent), Vietnam (46 percent), and Myanmar (44 percent). While these have now been delayed by 90 days, a considerable uncertainty remains as to what the tariff rates will be in July, let alone in a year or two.
All this has given Xi a golden opportunity to depict China as a steadfast and reliable partner, and a champion of a rules-based international trading system, and to contrast this with the chaos and volatility emanating from Trump’s court. The Chinese leader pledged this week to deepen “all-round cooperation” with China’s neighbors.
Given the limited nature of Xi’s overseas travel schedule, his “decision to make a tour of Southeast Asia is an important signal,” Susannah Patton of Sydney’s Lowy Institute wrote in Nikkei Asia. “It suggests that China sees now as the right time to advance its interests in each of the three countries, different though they are.”
In Vietnam, Xi and his Vietnamese counterparts are expected to sign about 40 agreements today, including some on cross-border railway connections, two Vietnamese officials told Reuters. In February, Vietnam’s National Assembly approved an $8 billion railway connecting the city of Lao Cai, on the Chinese border, with the capital Hanoi and the country’s largest seaport, Hai Phong. This suggests that despite the ongoing frictions in the South China Sea, economic integration between the two nations is set to increase further.
The tariff announcement has also created further incentives for Malaysia and Cambodia to deepen their economic engagement with China. Malaysian officials told the Straits Times that they are hopeful that the visit will help promote deeper economic engagement with China in order to cushion the blow from the 24 percent tariff imposed on the country by Trump, even if it means “compromising our strategic centrality, because disrupting 40 percent of our economy is an assault on our sovereignty.” In exchange, the Times reported, the Malaysian government will look to Xi for assurances about the feared coming wave of cheap Chinese goods, which many in Southeast Asia fear could undercut local industries and jeopardize jobs.
Even before Trump’s disruptive trade announcements, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had arguably begun tilting away from the U.S. He has still not held a call with the U.S. president, and has been a vocal opponent of U.S. backing for Israel. In November, during a trip to Beijing, Anwar said that “we view China not just as a leader of the East but as a voice for the Global South, one that champions the interests of the developing world.”
Cambodia, meanwhile, is already China’s closest partner in Southeast Asia, and Xi’s trip to the country, his first since 2016, is best seen as a form of diplomatic maintenance. Beijing reportedly remains frustrated at the continued presence of online scamming operations on Cambodian soil, and could push government into taking more concerted action on this front, but relations otherwise have few dark spots.
Last week, Cambodia announced the completion of the China-backed refurbishment of Ream Naval Base, during which Prime Minister Hun Manet downplayed any suggestion that the “all-weather” partnership between Cambodia and China had slackened.
“Lately, there have been various comments in the media suggesting that relations between the new Cambodian government and the Chinese government have significantly weakened,” he said. “I will not go into detail, but what matters is that the inauguration, the joint training, and the official visit of China’s top leader speak for themselves.”
It is unclear whether any substantial agreements come out of the tour, but this is less important than its symbolism and timing, given the damage that the Beijing’s main geopolitical rival in Southeast Asia seems set on inflicting on itself. All Xi needs to do is to avoid unforced errors, play down areas of disagreement, and ensure that economic cooperation with Southeast Asia continues along the same steady trajectory.
