Indonesia’s decision to join BRICS was not simply a geopolitical declaration against the United States and its allies. It was the latest expression of a foreign policy that has sought for decades to preserve strategic autonomy while giving the country more influence in a world increasingly divided by competition among major powers.
Indonesia became a full member of BRICS on Jan. 1, 2025, becoming the first Southeast Asian country to join the grouping. Brazil, which held the BRICS presidency at the time, formally announced Indonesia’s accession on Jan. 6. The decision followed an invitation originally approved at the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg.
The timing was significant. President Prabowo Subianto, who took office in October 2024, moved more quickly toward membership than his predecessor, Joko Widodo. The Center for Strategic and International Studies said Widodo had hesitated over whether membership could compromise Indonesia’s longstanding policy of nonalignment, while Prabowo made joining BRICS a priority soon after taking office.
Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry described membership as a “strategic step” to increase collaboration with developing countries, based on equality, mutual respect and sustainable development. It also said the move reflected Indonesia’s desire to play a more active role in global affairs and strengthen multilateral cooperation.
Those objectives are rooted in Indonesia’s history.
In 1955, President Sukarno’s government hosted the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, which brought together 29 countries and helped establish the principles that later informed the Non-Aligned Movement. Indonesia’s postcolonial diplomacy has generally sought to avoid becoming a formal ally of any major power while maintaining an active role in international institutions.
That philosophy is known in Indonesia as bebas aktif, or “free and active” foreign policy. Indonesia’s current foreign minister, Sugiono, has said BRICS membership is an embodiment of that policy rather than a departure from it. Reuters reported in January 2025 that Sugiono said Indonesia would continue to pursue peaceful conflict resolution, diversify its economic relationships and strengthen partnerships with countries in Africa and the Pacific.
Klaus Heinrich Raditio, a lecturer in Chinese politics at Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta, made a similar argument in an analysis for the Lowy Institute. He wrote that Indonesia’s decision under Prabowo was primarily about gaining development opportunities and becoming more active in international forums, rather than endorsing the positions of Russia or China.
The economic calculation is substantial.
Indonesia’s economy reached 22,139 trillion rupiah, or about $1.396 trillion, in 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund. Real GDP grew 5 percent, while the Indonesian statistics agency, BPS, recorded growth of 5.03 percent. GDP per capita was about $4,909 to $4,960, depending on the source and exchange-rate calculation. The IMF projects growth of about 5 percent annually through 2028.
Indonesia has a population of about 284 million, making it the world’s fourth-most populous country. Its scale gives BRICS something it did not previously have: a major Southeast Asian economy and a country whose diplomatic influence extends beyond its immediate region.
The country’s trade relationship with BRICS is already large.
Indonesia exported $266.53 billion worth of goods in 2024, up 2.7 percent from the previous year, according to BPS. Imports were $235.20 billion, producing a merchandise trade surplus of about $31.3 billion.
China is particularly important. Indonesian imports from China reached $73.85 billion in 2024, accounting for 31.4 percent of all Indonesian imports. China was followed by Singapore at $21.53 billion and Japan at $14.98 billion.
The relationship is not simply about consumer goods. More than 72 percent of Indonesia’s 2024 imports, or $170.7 billion, consisted of raw materials and intermediate goods, while capital goods accounted for another $41.75 billion. That means China’s role is closely connected to Indonesian manufacturing and industrial supply chains.
China has also become central to Indonesia’s industrial transformation.
Indonesia has enormous deposits of minerals required by modern industry. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that Indonesia accounted for 62 percent of global mined nickel production in 2024, making it the world’s largest producer. It also accounted for 19 percent of global tin production and 12 percent of cobalt production.
Nickel is particularly important because Jakarta has tried to prevent the country from remaining an exporter of low-value raw materials.
Indonesia prohibited exports of nickel ore in 2020 and subsequently encouraged investment in domestic smelting and processing. The policy is part of what Jakarta calls “downstreaming,” an effort to capture more value inside Indonesia by processing minerals before exporting them. USGS data show that Indonesia produced an estimated 2.31 million metric tons of nickel content in 2024, up from about 2.03 million tons in 2023.
The results are visible in the country’s trade figures. Indonesian exports of base metals and related products were worth about $44 billion in 2024. China received 56 percent of those exports. Nickel pig iron and ferronickel alone accounted for about $14.1 billion.
That creates an important strategic relationship between Indonesia and China.
China provides capital, technology, industrial equipment and a huge market for Indonesian commodities and processed metals. Indonesia provides resources, a large domestic market and access to Southeast Asian supply chains.
But Jakarta has simultaneously tried to prevent this relationship from becoming exclusive.
The IMF’s 2026 Article IV report notes that Indonesia has joined BRICS while also negotiating membership of the OECD and pursuing deeper integration with Western economies. Indonesia has signed economic agreements with the European Union and Canada and is seeking membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The IMF described trade diversification as potentially beneficial to Indonesia if accompanied by productivity-enhancing reforms and investment.
This is one of the most revealing aspects of Indonesia’s BRICS strategy: Jakarta is pursuing BRICS and the OECD at the same time.
It suggests that Indonesian policymakers do not necessarily see membership in one institution as requiring withdrawal from another.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has described the approach as part of Indonesia’s broader effort to maintain balance amid U.S.-China competition. Its analysis notes that Indonesia remains committed to ASEAN, while simultaneously seeking additional diplomatic and economic channels.
There is a historical reason for that caution.
Indonesia is geographically close to the South China Sea, where China’s territorial claims have produced repeated disputes with neighboring countries. Indonesia does not claim territory in the main South China Sea disputes, but Chinese vessels have entered waters around Indonesia’s Natuna Islands that Jakarta considers part of its exclusive economic zone.
In January 2025, Indonesia’s foreign minister said the country would continue to prioritize peaceful conflict resolution and support negotiations between ASEAN and China over a South China Sea code of conduct. He also said BRICS membership was consistent with Indonesia’s independent foreign policy.
This makes Indonesia’s position different from that of countries that have treated BRICS primarily as an instrument for confrontation with Washington.
Indonesia needs China economically while also protecting its maritime interests and maintaining security relationships with countries including the United States, Australia and Japan.
That balancing act is visible in the country’s defense policy as well. Indonesia has expanded defense cooperation with Western countries even as its economic relationship with China has deepened. Raditio noted that Prabowo, while displaying a favorable attitude toward China, maintained closer defense cooperation with Western countries during his time as defense minister.
The BRICS expansion itself also changed the calculation.
The original BRICS group consisted of Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa joining in 2011. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates became members in 2024, followed by Indonesia in 2025.
The expanded grouping represents a significant share of the world’s population and economic output, although the precise figure depends on whether GDP is measured at market exchange rates or purchasing-power parity. Indonesia’s government said in July 2025 that the 11-member group represented about 50 percent of the world’s population and 35 percent of global GDP, using its preferred measure.
The larger significance is not simply the size of the bloc. It is the range of countries involved.
BRICS now includes major economies in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Its members have different political systems, currencies, security relationships and economic interests. India has its own strategic competition with China. Gulf states maintain extensive relationships with the United States. Brazil has traditionally pursued strategic autonomy. Indonesia itself rejects formal alignment.
That makes BRICS fundamentally different from the European Union or NATO.
It has no common currency, no mutual-defense commitment and no supranational government. Its members coordinate positions and projects where their interests overlap.
One of the most frequently discussed BRICS initiatives is reducing dependence on the U.S. dollar in international trade. But Indonesia has been cautious about the idea of “de-dollarization.”
In 2025, the Lowy Institute reported that Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said Jakarta was “not interested in the issue of de-dollarisation” after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs against countries pursuing alternatives to the dollar. The same analysis concluded that a unified BRICS challenge to the dollar remained distant despite growth in local-currency transactions among individual members.
For Indonesia, the more immediate opportunity is likely to be greater use of local currencies in bilateral trade rather than a common BRICS currency.
That distinction matters.
A shared BRICS currency would require monetary coordination among countries with dramatically different economies, inflation rates, exchange-rate systems and capital controls. No such institutional framework currently exists.
Local-currency settlement is considerably less ambitious.
Indonesia can already pursue it with individual trading partners without abandoning the dollar-based international financial system.
The financial side of BRICS could nevertheless become more significant through the New Development Bank.
Indonesia joined the New Development Bank in 2025, giving it access to another potential source of financing for infrastructure and development projects. The bank was established by the BRICS founding members to finance infrastructure and sustainable-development projects in emerging economies.
For Indonesia, the attraction is straightforward.
The country consists of thousands of islands and requires enormous investment in transport, energy, ports, telecommunications and urban infrastructure. Additional sources of development finance can give Jakarta more options, even if BRICS institutions never replace the World Bank, Asian Development Bank or private international capital.
The economic rationale therefore extends beyond trade.
Indonesia wants markets for its exports, capital for industrialization, technology for manufacturing, infrastructure finance and greater bargaining power in global institutions.
BRICS can potentially contribute to all five. But there are limits.
Indonesia’s largest trade relationship is also one of its most politically sensitive. The country’s dependence on Chinese industrial inputs means that deeper BRICS integration could reinforce existing supply-chain dependencies rather than eliminate them.
And there is no guarantee that membership itself will produce substantially more trade or investment.
The IMF has identified weak productivity growth and a shrinking middle class as structural challenges for Indonesia despite more than two decades of relatively strong economic growth. It has also emphasized the need for a more diversified formal private sector capable of generating high-quality employment for Indonesia’s large and young population.
This is where Indonesia’s BRICS strategy intersects with its domestic economic ambitions.
The government wants to transform Indonesia into a higher-value manufacturing economy. Nickel processing is one part of that strategy, but Jakarta is also seeking investment in electric vehicles, batteries, renewable energy, data centers, electronics and other industries.
The danger is that resource-based industrial policy can produce large volumes of investment without necessarily creating the productivity gains, technology ownership and domestic supply chains required for sustained income growth.
The CSIS analysis of Indonesia’s strategic culture describes this as part of Jakarta’s attempt to escape dependence on raw commodity exports and capture more value domestically. It also notes that Indonesia’s resource nationalism can sometimes conflict with its efforts to integrate more deeply into international trade frameworks.
That tension will shape the next stage of BRICS membership.
Indonesia wants more global integration, but on terms that preserve policy space.
It wants foreign investment but also domestic ownership and processing.
It wants Chinese capital but does not want to surrender strategic autonomy.
It wants Western markets and technology while simultaneously advocating greater representation for developing countries in global institutions.
And it wants a stronger international voice without formally joining a geopolitical alliance.
Those objectives can coexist, but they can also collide.
The United States and Europe may scrutinize Indonesian trade and investment policies more closely as Jakarta deepens relationships with Russia, China and Iran through BRICS. At the same time, Indonesia has strong incentives to preserve access to Western markets and capital.
ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute researchers Siwage Dharma Negara and Leo Suryadinata wrote in January 2025 that BRICS membership could provide Indonesia with economic benefits and greater leverage, but warned that the bloc’s positions on reducing dependence on Western financial systems could complicate relations with the United States and European Union.
The question is therefore not whether Indonesia has “chosen” China or the West.
The evidence points to a different strategy.
Indonesia is attempting to increase the number of institutions through which it can pursue its interests.
Its simultaneous engagement with BRICS, ASEAN, the OECD, the WTO, the G20 and Western trade partners is consistent with that approach. The IMF notes that Jakarta is pursuing several of these tracks simultaneously rather than treating them as mutually exclusive.
That could become increasingly important as the global economy fragments.
If tariffs, export controls, sanctions and technology restrictions continue to divide international markets into competing networks, countries such as Indonesia will have incentives to maintain relationships across multiple networks.
Indonesia’s size makes that strategy consequential.
With a $1.4 trillion economy, roughly 284 million people, a large commodity base and a central position in Southeast Asia, Jakarta is too important to be merely a passive participant in the rivalry between larger powers. Its nickel resources alone give it influence over an industry central to batteries and electric vehicles. Its trade links connect China, the United States, Japan, ASEAN and Europe.
BRICS gives Indonesia another institutional platform from which to exercise that influence.
The country’s future role in the organization will depend less on whether BRICS becomes an anti-Western bloc than on whether it can turn its growing membership into practical economic mechanisms: infrastructure financing, investment, trade facilitation, local-currency settlement, technology cooperation and greater representation for emerging economies in global institutions.
There is also a political question.
Indonesia has historically preferred institutions that allow it to retain freedom of action. If BRICS becomes more explicitly organized around confrontation with the United States and its allies, Jakarta could face pressure to choose between its BRICS commitments and its broader strategy of economic diversification.
If BRICS instead develops primarily as a platform for emerging economies to negotiate trade, development finance and institutional reform, Indonesia has considerably more room to operate.
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