June 30, 2026
JAKARTA – Nanyin melodies from China’s Fujian province mingled with the strains of the Indonesian folk song Rasa Sayange on a Jakarta university campus on a recent day in June.
The performance by a visiting Chinese arts troupe at the LSPR Institute of Communication and Business reflected a broader trend: Indonesian universities are increasingly forging partnerships with Chinese institutions as educational ties between the two countries deepen.
Indonesian colleges and universities are linking up with institutions such as Tsinghua University and Sichuan International Studies University, marking a shift away from a decades-long tilt towards the West.
Under the double-degree model, students spend half their programme at a local campus before completing the rest at a partner institution abroad – a pathway once dominated by European, American and Australian universities that is now opening eastwards.
Most programmes are undergraduate degrees, though some involve postgraduate research exchanges. A decade ago, such arrangements overwhelmingly involved Western universities.
The shift reflects how Indonesia’s educational priorities are increasingly following its economic realities.
As China cements its position as Indonesia’s largest trading partner and a major investor in sectors such as nickel processing and electric-vehicle batteries, universities in both countries are forging partnerships aimed at training the workforce needed for those industries.
Dr Prita Kemal Gani, who founded LSPR in 1992, told The Straits Times: “We aim to enhance research development, cultural exchange and industry engagement…, providing greater exposure and opportunities for our students and faculty members.”
The private Indonesian university has worked with Shanghai University of Finance and Economics since 2025 and Jilin Animation Institute since 2022. It is also set to launch a joint Chinese language and culture centre with Sichuan International Studies University in Jakarta in September 2026.
LSPR is only one of a growing number of Indonesian institutions forging links with Chinese counterparts.
In November 2023, state-run Institut Teknologi Bandung, widely regarded as one of Indonesia’s top engineering universities, partnered with China’s Central South University and Shenzhen-based battery recycler GEM Co to train engineers. The collaboration included a joint research laboratory backed by an initial investment of US$30 million (S$39 million).
Similar partnerships have emerged elsewhere.
In 2022, Tsinghua University and Bali-based non-profit education foundation United in Diversity launched an entrepreneurship and academic exchange programme. More recently, public university Universitas Gadjah Mada signed a research pact with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in May 2024.
There has been a “huge increase” in ties between China and Indonesia, particularly in higher education and industry, noted Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology Stella Christie.
She highlighted Tsinghua University’s recent decision to reserve 50 places annually for Indonesian high-school graduates. The arrangement is notable, given the university’s fiercely competitive admissions process and the fact that China has not extended a similar offer to any other country, she said at a forum on China-Indonesia relations in Jakarta on June 24 organised by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia.
“I recently went to Aceh and spoke to high school students there. When I asked where they wanted to study after graduation, they didn’t say Harvard or other US Ivy League universities, like many would say previously. A lot of them said Tsinghua,” she told ST on the sidelines of the event.
Not all students, however, aim for China’s elite universities.
Agnes Helena Claresta Hariyadi, 20, graduated from a high school in Central Java in 2024 and is now studying tourism management at Chongqing Jiaotong University on a partial scholarship. Classes are taught in English, although applicants must demonstrate basic Mandarin proficiency.
“China has a massive economy, strong tourism prospects, and is a leader in the AI sector. I am hoping to secure a job here after graduation,” she told ST.
The number of Indonesians studying in China has grown over the past decade. About 20,000 Indonesians were enrolled at Chinese institutions as at January, up from around 13,000 in 2016, according to data from the Indonesian embassy in Beijing.
As economic ties deepen, universities follow
The growing appeal of Chinese universities mirrors China’s broader economic presence in Indonesia.
China’s Ambassador to Indonesia Wang Lutong told participants at the China-Indonesia forum that Beijing had been Jakarta’s largest trading partner for the past 13 years and a major investor over the past decade.
Two-way trade reached about US$155 billion in 2025, keeping China as Indonesia’s top trading partner and accounting for close to a quarter of Indonesia’s total trade. Indonesia ships coal, nickel and palm oil northwards and buys back machinery, electronics and other manufactured goods, according to Indonesia’s statistics agency.
China is also the dominant investor in nickel processing and electric-vehicle batteries, having poured over US$65 billion into the sector. The funds built smelting and battery-materials hubs in various places including Morowali in Sulawesi and Weda Bay in North Maluku, which have helped make Indonesia the world’s biggest nickel producer, accounting for about 60 per cent of all nickel mined globally.
For Wang, those industrial investments explain the push for deeper university ties.
The factories Chinese firms have financed need skilled Indonesian workers, and the universities are where they will be trained. Asked by ST what should come next, he said: “Even closer cooperation in education, particularly in higher education. This will be conducive to generating more jobs here.”
From Berkeley to Beijing?
Indonesia’s eastwards turn marks a departure from a longstanding pattern.
For decades after independence, Indonesia sent its brightest students abroad chiefly to the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan, and those who returned went on to staff its ministries, universities and boardrooms.
The most storied example is the so-called “Berkeley Mafia”, a cohort of Indonesian economists sent to the University of California, Berkeley, from the late 1950s under a Ford Foundation-funded programme during the Sukarno era. Figures such as Widjojo Nitisastro and Ali Wardhana returned home to become the technocrats who, after Suharto took power in 1966, designed the New Order’s economic stabilisation and steered Indonesia’s development planning for the next two decades.
A senior research analyst at a local investment bank said Ford Foundation funding and other Western-backed scholarship programmes helped educate a generation of Indonesian leaders, many of whom later shaped the country’s economic policy.
The architect of that Ford-funded Berkeley programme was Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, then dean of the University of Indonesia’s economics faculty. Widely regarded as the godfather of Indonesian economics, he was also the father of President Prabowo Subianto.
Whether China’s universities ultimately produce a new generation of Indonesian technocrats remains to be seen. But for a growing number of students, Beijing and Tsinghua now compete with Boston, Melbourne and London as destinations of choice.
Officials say expanding university partnerships reflects economic realities and student demand, not ideology.
As for whether the growing educational ties between Indonesia and China amount to a comparable effort to “China-ise” Indonesia’s future leaders, Stella said that was not the case then and is not the case today.
“What we are doing is opening opportunities for Indonesian best talents to get the best education, exposure wherever it may be, and right now those best opportunities are in China,” she told ST.
“It has never been about Westernising or China-ising our future leaders.”