Beijing as Cornerstone Partner for 100GW Build-out
Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto, in a recent bilateral engagement with Chinese officials including Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, invited Chinese companies to invest in solar power plant projects totalling 100 gigawatts across Indonesia. The target stems from President Prabowo Subianto’s direction and frames Indonesia’s clean energy shift and downstream industrial development agenda.
According to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, the government is targeting realization of 100 GW of installed solar power capacity by 2029. That compresses what was initially a longer-dated ambition into a tighter delivery window. The acceleration follows recent major power disruptions and growing pressure to strengthen energy security and reduce reliance on fossil fuel generation.
Hartarto highlighted the flagship Cirata floating solar power plant, which uses a reservoir in West Java and is Southeast Asia’s largest operational floating solar project, as a proof-of-concept for scaling floating and land-based solar. For Jakarta, Cirata serves as a proof-of-concept for scaling both floating and land-based solar in partnership with Chinese developers, lenders and equipment suppliers.
Officials have noted that Indonesia’s domestic solar panel manufacturing base is still limited and can be further strengthened and expanded to create a more integrated local supply chain. That message targets Chinese module, inverter and battery players, inviting them to invest in onshore production rather than only exporting into the market.
Trade, Capital and Downstream Leverage
The overture comes against a dense economic relationship that gives Jakarta confidence Beijing can help finance and execute the 100GW solar push at speed. China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner and has held this position for many years. Bilateral trade between Indonesia and China reached about US$127.8 billion in 2023; detailed official data for 2025 and the average annual growth rate for 2021–2025 are not yet available. On the investment side, Chinese capital has ranked among Indonesia’s top foreign direct investors in recent years, with several billion US dollars deployed across sectors including manufacturing, trade, energy, property, and transport and warehousing.
Officials are now channelling more of that capital into green infrastructure and downstream industry linked to renewables. The 100GW programme is explicitly tied to Prabowo’s plan to use cheap, abundant solar as a foundation for broader industrial downstreaming, including batteries and energy-intensive processing. Hartarto’s invitation dovetails with separate efforts to position Indonesia as part of global battery and electric vehicle value chains, where Chinese firms already have a large presence.
These initiatives point to a broader strategy: embed solar and other green projects inside a wider package of industrial parks, logistics and trade facilitation to make project economics more attractive for long-horizon investors.
For investors, the invitation signals that Jakarta will align permits, land allocation and regulation around large-scale solar, while continuing to lean on Chinese partners for capital and technology. The next markers to watch include the final shape of Indonesia’s forthcoming presidential regulation on the 100 GW solar program and the pipeline of named projects that will emerge as implementation advances, alongside any commitments by foreign—including Chinese—developers to local manufacturing as well as project equity.
