The Promise and the Glam:The Unbeatable Low Cost to Build...

The Promise and the Glam:


The Unbeatable Low Cost to Build Indonesia's Nickel Plants:


China-Indonesia Economic Cooperation:
"There has been a lot of commentary about the ESG performance of Chinese companies in Indonesia. However, there is much less about the structure of the political economy underpinning these business activities – such as labour relations, informal networks, and how the interplay between elites and institutions shapes the ESG practices of Chinese firms and their Indonesian business partners.

For example, there have been alleged violations of Chinese and Indonesian workers’ rights at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) – the country’s largest nickel industrial area.

Nickel-processing companies sub-contract labour hire agencies to recruit workers. Typically, these workers are not provided with written contracts and are introduced to the job by friends from the same village, relatives or online advertisements on WeChat. Chinese workers have said their passports have been withheld, they suffered from respiratory problems and memory loss and were forced to work more than 12 hours per day. From the Indonesian side, a lack of local management and poor occupational health and safety rules are consistently highlighted as the most pressing concerns. Some companies in IMIP used poorly maintained furnaces and appointed Chinese workers to safety administrator positions even though they could barely speak the local language.

In late December 2023, an explosion at IMIP killed 18 people – ten Indonesian and eight Chinese workers – and injured dozens. Yet, despite grievances and petitions from civil society, cases were quickly closed, with subcontractors and Chinese furnace supervisors being held accountable. The political and economic networks based in line ministries, among policymakers and in local governments that enabled this to happen remain undisturbed."
- University of Melbourne, Trissia Wijaya.