Indonesia and China explore potential AI and digital economy cooperation

Two expert institutions from Indonesia and China have discussed potential cooperation in the digital economy and artificial intelligence (AI) between the two countries at the ‘China-Indonesia Digital Economy Forum: From Vision to Action’. The event, held in Jakarta on Thursday (11/6), was organised by the Association of Indonesia-China Economic, Social and Cultural Cooperation (AICCC) and the China Development Institute (CDI) from Guangdong Province, China. ‘Today is the implementation of the economic and people-to-people contact aspects. The focus is on the economy of the future, namely the digital economy, but it is not just about technology; it is about how to empower communities, create opportunities, and shape an inclusive and sustainable future,’ said AICCC Chairman Sudrajat in a statement received by ANTARA on Friday. The event was attended by around 40 people from Indonesia and China, representing expert institutions, industry players, and relevant associations. ‘The number of digital economy users in Indonesia is very large, which presents an opportunity, but not just to become a market. It is about how to use it for the people’s welfare,’ said Sudrajat, who also served as Indonesia’s Ambassador to China from 2005 to 2009. ‘Artificial intelligence is one of China’s strategic priorities for the next five years. AI will be widely applied and empower various sectors in China, including think tanks like ours, so this presents an opportunity for both China and Indonesia,’ Sudrajat added. Meanwhile, Fanny Liao, Director of Strategic Communications at Chinese technology giant Tencent, said at the event that the company views the dissemination of technology as one of the most important goals of artificial intelligence. According to Fanny, when large language models (LLMs)—AI programmes for text with very large quantities of high-quality data—become affordable and practical, developers and businesses will naturally use them. Trio Adiono, a lecturer at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Chairman of the Indonesia Chip Design Collaborative Center (ICDEC)—a consortium of 21 Indonesian universities and six strategic industries—said that semiconductors and AI have also been included in Indonesia’s National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) for the 2025–2029 period. The first opportunity for Indonesia-China cooperation, according to him, lies in the field of electric vehicle battery control and energy storage. The second opportunity is healthcare, as health issues in Indonesia are highly localised and still require significant improvement involving AI. The third opportunity is smart agriculture, given that food security remains a challenge, meaning efficiency can be enhanced through the application of AI-based agricultural technology. ‘China can contribute through AI algorithms for analysis as well as semiconductor-based IoT hardware and sensors, while Indonesia can provide large amounts of tropical data and a workforce for implementation,’ said Trio.