- Chen Yan
- BBC Chinese reporter from Indonesia
image source,Xinhua
On the evening of November 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indonesian President Joko Widodo watched the trial operation of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail in Bali.
“Start!” Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indonesian President Joko Widodo issued instructions at the same time, and witnessed the trial operation of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway (Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway) jointly built by the two countries through a video connection. After the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on November 16, before the bilateral talks between the leaders of the two countries, they specially participated in the above-mentioned sessions.
The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway connects the capital Jakarta and the fourth largest city, Bandung, with a total length of 142 kilometers, roughly equivalent to the distance from Beijing to Tianjin, or the distance from Taipei to Taichung; following completion, the running speed will reach 350 kilometers per hour, reducing the travel time between the two places from three hours shortened to more than 40 minutes.
This railway is special to both China and Indonesia:
For China, it is the first high-speed railway export order of China’s general contract, which may set standards and provide experience for more exports in the future. In the context of Chinese media, high-speed rail is considered one of China’s four major contemporary inventions (the other three are mobile payment, online shopping, and shared bicycles), and it is the one with the highest added value that has export capabilities.
For Indonesia, it is the first high-speed railway in Indonesia and even in Southeast Asia, connecting two major cities on the island of Java, in order to alleviate the congestion problem that plagues Java, improve production efficiency, and promote more balanced regional development.
The railway is also facing controversy, such as budget overruns, project delays, etc., as well as the impact on the environment and the community. The BBC Chinese reporter flew to the other end of the video connection – Bandung Dekarur High Speed Railway Station, and then went all the way west to Jakarta to learn more regarding this railway.
Bandung: the easternmost end of the high-speed rail, the Paris of Java
image source,Xinhua
After the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on November 16, and before the bilateral talks between China and Indonesia, Xi Jinping and Widodo watched the trial operation of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail together via video.
More than ten kilometers away from the center of Bandung is the Dekarur High-speed Railway Station, which is one of the four stations of the Jakarta-Bandung High-speed Railway Phase I project and is also the easternmost end.
In a piece of farmland, a huge building is slowly unfolding in front of the eyes. The rice fields around it have not yet been planted, and flocks of ducks are looking for food in the paddy fields. The contrast between the magnificent modern buildings and the ruined houses is sharp. The locals said that this piece of land has been included in the planning of the new district by the Bandung City Government, and some plots have been bought by developers and put up signs to declare their ownership.
The railway bridge has been erected, and the rails extend straight into the distance. Each rail is 50 meters long, all of which are imported from China. When they arrive in Indonesia, the port facilities are even rebuilt before they can be transported to the construction site. The sound of construction machinery keeps coming. When Widodo inspected the high-speed rail project last month, he said that nearly 90% of the project has been completed and is expected to achieve commercial operation in June next year.
image source,BBC News Chinese
The Bandung Dekarur High Speed Rail Station is one of the four stations in the first phase of the Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail Project.
Bandung is the fourth largest city in Indonesia with a population of regarding 2.5 million and the capital of the most populous West Java province. Surrounded by mountains, the terrain is high, the climate is cool, and the scenery is pleasant. It is called “Paris of Java”. Local people told us that many Jakarta people will come on weekends and holidays, and tourism is an important source of local income.
In 2008, Indonesia planned to build a high-speed railway. Japan proactively promoted preliminary research and planning. The first consideration was to connect Bandung and Jakarta—because the two cities have high economic and political status, but they are not too far apart (regarding 140 kilometers) ), which means less investment and higher profitability.
Japan is very active in the research and planning stage. It not only completed the comprehensive research from Jakarta to Bandung, but even further completed the research on the long-term plan. From Bandung to the west for nearly 600 kilometers, it connects Jingli, Semarang, and Surabaya, and runs through the entire Java island.
Japan built the Shinkansen in the 1960s and has a good reputation in the high-speed rail field. It is also very aggressive in winning the Indonesian project, and it seems that it is bound to win by offering preferential financing conditions.
High-speed rail ambitions for crowded islands
image source,BBC News Chinese
Dr. Yogi from Bandung believes that high-speed rail has the greatest impact on business convenience. But he is worried that only a small number of people can afford a car, and he is not very optimistic regarding the passenger volume and sustainable operation ability.
Indonesia’s geographical environment is very special. The main land is distributed in five large islands, but the economic and population distribution is very uneven.
The island of Java, where Bandung is located, is roughly the size of England or China’s Anhui Province, accounting for only 7% of Indonesia’s population; however, it has a population of more than 140 million, accounting for regarding half of the country; its economic output even accounts for nearly 60%. And the island of Java is very long and narrow.
The superposition of these factors has made the island’s freight and passenger transportation extremely crowded.
Driving to the suburbs of Bandung, I immediately felt the pain of the traffic jam. The road was less than 20 kilometers, and I drove for an hour and a half.
In the city and outside the city, traffic congestion has become the norm, which has given birth to an interesting social phenomenon: at some very busy intersections, some surrounding residents spontaneously direct the traffic every day to clear the flow of traffic, and some passing drivers will give tips , It turned out to be a kind of livelihood.
Because of this, Dr. Yogi Suprayogi Sugandi, a native of Bandung, is very pleased with the opening of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail. Yogi is a scholar at National Bachcharan University, where his research focuses on urban and social development. He rode a matte black Yamaha motorcycle to join us at the Bachcharan campus because “the traffic was too heavy to drive”.
“One end of the high-speed rail is Bandung. I am very proud.” Yogi recalled the transportation development in the past 30 years, which seemed familiar to many Chinese people. “I still remember that in the 1990s, it took a day to go to Jakarta. When we set off, we can only arrive when it is getting dark; around 2000, the highway was opened, and it was said that it would take more than 3 hours to arrive, but it was difficult to achieve, because there were always traffic jams, and it took five hours sooner; until between Jakarta and Bandung It is almost unimaginable that the new high-speed rail can arrive in 40 minutes.”
Yogi believes that high-speed rail has the greatest impact on business convenience. If you get on the train at 8:00 in the morning, you can catch up with a meeting in Jakarta at 9:30, and if you get on the train following get off work, you can rush back to Bandung for dinner.
Indeed, as Yogi said, the high-speed rail can often create a city-wide effect between two big cities and relieve big city diseases. The World Bank’s research on China’s high-speed rail shows that commercial productivity along the line increases by an average of 10%.
money problem
image source,Archyde.com
On November 16, Indonesian President Joko Widodo (right) shook hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Bali.
Even as optimistic as Dr. Yogi, he also has his worries.
The first is the fare issue. According to current news, the fare from Bandung to Jakarta is regarding 300,000 Indonesian rupiah (140 yuan; 600 NT$), which is not low for locals. According to CEIC data, the average monthly income of Indonesians in 2021 will be around IDR 2.7 million. A bus ticket is more than one-tenth of the monthly salary.
Yogi is worried that only a small number of people can afford a car, and he is not very optimistic regarding the passenger volume and sustainable operation ability.
However, to a certain extent, this is also the reason why Indonesia chose the Chinese solution instead of the Japanese solution.
“Japan’s seven years of hard work have come to naught.” In September 2015, when Japan learned that Indonesia had chosen China’s plan, Toyo Keizai Daily commented. The words used by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga were “extremely regrettable” and “incomprehensible”.
Afterwards, Japanese officials and business circles all asked a question, “How might they lose to China?” From Japan’s point of view, the discount given to Indonesia’s high-speed rail was unbelievably good-the offer of more than 4 billion US dollars was lower than China’s 50 Multi-billion dollars; long-term Japanese yen loans with interest rates as low as 0.1%, compared with 2% loans in China; plus the widely acclaimed Japanese Shinkansen.
However, there are two points in the Japanese plan that make Indonesians hesitate. First, 25% of the cost needs to be raised by the Indonesian side, and the other 75% comes from Japanese low-interest loans, but requires government guarantees.
At the time, however, the Indonesian government insisted on not providing a government guarantee, even arguing that funding for the project should not appear in the government budget. “Jokowi wants a B2B (business-to-business) solution, not Japan’s G2G (government-to-government) solution,” Yogi concluded.
The Chinese proposal met Indonesia’s needs in this respect, being willing to accept the financial risk of the project and forgoing the Indonesian government’s guarantee, while Japan was unable or unwilling to do so.
image source,BBC News Chinese
Dekarur High Speed Rail Station. The locals said that this piece of land has been included in the planning of the new district by the Bandung City Government, and some plots have been bought by developers and put up signs to declare their ownership.
In the end, the two parties established a joint venture (KCIC), in which Indonesian state-owned enterprises and Chinese state-owned enterprises accounted for 60% and 40% of the shares respectively. This company enjoys the high-speed rail franchise and uses profits to repay construction costs.
If it is true, as Yogi fears, due to the limited spending power of Indonesians, the high-speed rail passenger flow will not be able to go up, and this joint venture company will not only have difficulty repaying the Chinese loan, but will continue to lose blood every year, losing the shareholder’s equity invested by the Chinese and Indonesian parties. There are lessons to be learned from this concern. For example, Taiwan’s high-speed rail lines are priced high, resulting in mainly business passenger flow, and non-business passenger flow is discouraged. The number of passengers is lower than expected, and it is difficult to cover debts with income. Compared with Taiwan, Indonesia’s consumption power gap is not small.
Why do China and Japan view risks differently?
In the past 30 years, China’s economy has developed rapidly, and infrastructure construction will basically be planned in advance to meet the demand following several years of high growth. Correspondingly, when calculating costs and benefits, China has projected its own past development into Indonesia’s development prospects. ; Japan has experienced “lost thirty years”, hovering under low growth and negative interest rates, and is more conservative in calculating future earnings.
Yogi also agreed that whether the high-speed rail can pay off depends on the development of Indonesia. “Indonesia has a “Vision 2045″ and hopes to become one of the world’s top five economies in the 100th year of its founding. Of course, we hope to achieve it.”
China and Japan are fighting for the Indonesian high-speed rail project at any cost. The Jakarta Post believes that they are “playing a big game”. As the fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia enjoys rapid economic development and great prospects for infrastructure construction. The whole of Southeast Asia and even developing countries in the world will gradually generate demand for high-speed rail construction in the next few decades. The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail is the first step in this game of chess, and both China and Japan want to play it well.
Some details in the Chinese plan can be seen. According to Japanese media reports, China has also promised to establish joint ventures with Indonesian companies to produce locomotives, rails and other equipment, not only for Indonesia, but also for export to other Asian countries, even including the transfer of related technologies.
Cracks on the wall and the image of China
image source,BBC News Chinese
A native of Bandung, Meki Panton is very worried regarding the impact of high-speed rail construction on the environment and the community.
The difference between the Chinese and Japanese proposals in 2015 lies in the timetable. The Japanese proposal will start construction in 2018 and be completed in 2023; the Chinese proposal can start construction in 2016 and be completed in 2019.
Although the project started on schedule in January 2016, for the crowded island of Java, it is almost inevitable to encounter troubles in the rapid advancement of a huge high-speed rail project. Various problems prevented construction from starting almost two years later, and the completion time was delayed until mid-2023, which was exactly Japan’s original plan. China appears to be projecting its own timing estimates for building the high-speed rail onto the Indonesian project.
Another native of Bandung, Meiki Paendong, is worried regarding the impact of the high-speed rail construction on the environment and the community. Meki Panton is the executive director of the West Java branch of WALHI, an environmental NGO.
Pan Dong said that the change in land use has caused conflicts. One reason is that some areas have reported abnormal floods in the past two years. The possible reason is that the forest land has become hardened ground, causing drainage loss, or blocking drainage channels. The forest land has become construction land, which must involve environmental protection. Even if it is not possible to determine that the flood is the impact of the project construction, he believes that at least it proves that the environmental protection assessment is insufficient.
Secondly, the transformation of agricultural land into construction land will involve the question of whether the compensation for demolition is fair. Panton said that according to his knowledge, there was no “meaningful negotiation process” in the compensation process. However, he also said that this is very common in projects large and small in Indonesia, and it is a chronic social disease. Previously, it was reported that the new capital that Indonesia is building in Kalimantan is undergoing land acquisition and demolition at a very low cost.
Finally, Pan Dong said that the more unique impact is the impact on the community near the project site, for example, some houses were severely damaged by the blasting of the project.
According to the clues provided by Pan Dong, along the railway line, you can reach Tipar Sari Asih, a small town on the outskirts of Bandung.
image source,BBC News Chinese
Villager Ahmed recalled that when the high-speed railway was digging a tunnel, following a loud noise, cracks appeared in his house, and the cracks extended from the roof to the floor.
image source,BBC News Chinese
The crack extends from the roof to the floor, and the crack travels on the ground and runs through another vertical wall.
Villager Ahmed is a mechanical repairman. He recalled that when the high-speed railway was digging a tunnel, following a loud noise, cracks appeared in his house. The cracks extended from the roof to the floor. The cracks traveled on the ground and penetrated the other side of the vertical The wall looks like it was cut obliquely, and Ahmed’s bed and dining table seem to be cut away. Ahmad said that 15 households in the area experienced this situation at the same time. “We are on a slope and there is a lot of rain. I am worried that the geological structure will be damaged and the overall collapse will occur in the future.”
Due to the limited local time of BBC Chinese, it is impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the negative impact mentioned above. But according to Ahmed, the high-speed rail company hired a team from a local university to nail detection devices to the cracks in the wall to monitor changes in the width of the cracks. However, there is no further investigation and compensation for the time being. Ahmed had no choice but to use scrap wheels to reinforce the foundation to prevent collapse.
image source,BBC News Chinese
Ahmed said that 15 households in the local area experienced this situation at the same time. There is a lot of rain in the area, and people are worried that the geological structure will be damaged and the overall collapse will occur in the future.
Pan Dong reminded that although such incidents will also occur in other projects, the high-speed rail is a well-known Chinese construction project, and if it is not handled properly, it may cause backlash. “Some people in Indonesia have negative views because they think that the Chinese have a high socioeconomic status. There have been bad incidents before, but now the overall image of China is okay, and things that affect the villagers’ personal interests are not handled well. , might become a ticking time bomb.”
Yogi believes that the image of China in Indonesia is divided, and different groups of people have differences, but it is normal, because China is a world power, and another big country (the United States) also faces many disputes in Indonesia. He suggested that China can learn from the United States. While cooperating, the United States can gain the favor of the bottom class through the aid program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
During his stay in Indonesia, a local driver joked, “Americans are building democracy everywhere, Chinese are building infrastructure everywhere, and Saudis are donating mosques all over the world. They all converged in Indonesia.”
balance problem
image source,EPA
On October 13, Indonesian President Widodo (left), accompanied by Governor of West Java Province Ridwan Kamil (right), stood at the construction site of Bandung Tegolua Railway Station to inspect the high-speed rail construction project. The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail has a total length of 142 kilometers and is expected to be put into trial operation in November 2022.
With what I learned in Bandung, I stepped on the train and headed west to Jakarta. Taking the existing railway, the speed is less than 60 kilometers per hour, but it is the fastest way of transportation between the two places.
Dangling, following three hours, I finally arrived in Jakarta. It is huge and energetic; motorcycles, pedestrians, and cars are constantly flowing, chaotic but orderly, which brings people contradictory feelings.
Here we can feel the necessity of building high-speed rail. As of 2021, the population of Jakarta’s urban area has reached 10.91 million, plus the metropolitan area of surrounding towns, the population exceeds 35 million, second only to Tokyo’s second largest in the world metropolitan area.
The dense population not only causes traffic jams and serious pollution. The high demand for water leads to overexploitation of groundwater, which exacerbates land subsidence. In addition, Jakarta is originally low and flat, vulnerable to floods. Bandung Institute of Technology believes that without intervention, a quarter of Jakarta’s land will be submerged in the sea in the next 10 years. Therefore, Indonesia also hopes that the high-speed rail can help relieve Jakarta’s big city disease.
Indonesian Finance Minister Mulyani said in an interview with BBC Chinese that Indonesia, as a developing country with a young population, has obvious needs for infrastructure. In fact, Indonesia has found that the backwardness of infrastructure is the key factor that hinders Indonesia’s higher growth. The high-speed rail meets The demand for large-scale movement of people between cities is exactly what Indonesia lacks, and as Indonesia’s middle class continues to expand, it will also achieve economic balance.
Pan Dong believes that whether it is the natural environment or community residents, they should be prioritized in large-scale project planning, because they lack the right to speak and are easily hurt.
Regardless of praise or controversy surrounding this railway, there is actually a question being discussed: economic development on the one hand, and environmental protection and community protection on the other, are both important. How to balance them?
In fact, the deeper question is, efficiency or fairness. Developing countries like Indonesia often choose to be more efficient and sacrifice some fairness.
Yogi used Indonesia’s national motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika) to answer this question. He believed that although the two are not easy to reconcile, they are not either-or.
In the future, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail may continue to extend westward, running through the whole of Java. How to better find that balance point may require policy makers to think more deeply.