Constructivism: China & Indonesia Relations
Today, I joined my very first webinar session related to my postgraduate major: International Relations. This webinar was held by International Relations Department of Bina Nusantara (Binus) University as a guest lecture, invited Mr. Johanes Herlijanto, M.Si, Ph.D, from Department of Applied Communication Sciences of Universitas Pelita Harapan, as the keynote speaker. Taking “Constructivism in Indonesia and China Relations” as its main topic, the discussion of this was going well, interesting, and also enriching.
There is one thing I consider as the important point in this discussion. It is one question that was being questioned to the keynote speaker, about how China perceive Indonesia (in many aspects), from two sides: on how the government and on how the society perceives Indonesia as well. This question came from the idea on all this time, ever since, we mostly underwent the discussion on how we perceive China (as an Indonesian), but rarely got an opportunity to discuss otherwise — on how they perceive us.
The important knowledge I obtained today regarding to the answers of the first important point — that was being asked in this discussion — as it has already expanded my horizon too; it is mainly relies on terms of how China perceive Indonesia as well. Through the answers of the keynote speaker, Mr. Johanes explained that there are still no solid and strong evidences on how China actually (both from its government and citizens or societies) perceive Indonesia. “There should be conducted any cooperation to their government, to conduct any empirical researches to discover what and how they actually perceive Indonesia.” he added. Moreover, he also explained that to conduct any of researches, there are still any probabilities that takes bureaucracy of their government as heavy barriers (including permission), so in the end, it still is difficult to conduct any, for the sake of discovering strong evidences on how China actually perceives us. But this does not mean that there are no probabilities that we cannot see a single hints to know how they actually percieve Indonesia.
Mr. Johanes, furthermore, added “At a time I was in one of the library in China, I tried to type something related to Indonesia in one of its computer there (to find any resources regarding to my researches), but then I found several terms such as “anti-china in Indonesia” in many search histories in that computer. This makes me wonder on probably, that was the thing that intended to be seen from their citizens (when they are about to see and discuss Indonesia), is there any anti-china movement or Sinophobia ideologies that is being developed in Indonesia? This is what I address as the interesting point. I wonder on why they want to know if there is actually that kind or movement or not in Indonesia — if this is literally the one important point on how they perceive Indonesia. We really need a further work to prove this one — and one of the very possible way, is forming a cooperation to conduct any empirical research regarding to this, as well.”
From this discussion, too, I learned much on how constructivism paradigm sees the relations between China and Indonesia. As far as I comprehend that constructivism is one of paradigm in IR that sees international systems is merely came from any sets of idea that has been constructed since a long time ago, so it may give any implications in every international or foreign policies formation, depending on each state’s major sets of ideas and norms that has been strictly constructed. This to say that, any implications toward any conducted and finally decided-foreign policies in each state or countries, cannot simply neglected the historical context of state, as it is also may strongly influencing the construction of norms and ideas, and ideologies, in one state. To some extents, this to say that if we are about to see China and Indonesia relations through constructivism, mainly on each foreign policies, diplomacy relations, as a matter of fact, we cannot use a single perspective to perceive. This contains multitude aspects to arrive at the point that finally we can discover what might be influencing the relations of both countries.
Thank you very much for the opportunity, the Department of International Relations of Bina Nusantara University. This helped me much to make a good kick-off toward my continuity in my master studies, because I come from different major in my Bachelor’s degree. To infer, this helped me much in broadening, and expanding my very fundamental horizons in many aspects to dive deeper in International Relations as well.
