"China Helped Indonesia Build One of the World’s Biggest, Youngest Coal Fleets. It’s Still Growing.", Inside Climate News, 19 October 2025

Today, Chinese companies are continuing to build new coal plants in Indonesia, despite a 2021 pledge by China’s president, Xi Jinping, that Beijing would end such financing.

Chinese entities were planning or building at least 17 generating units at nine coal-fired power plants across Indonesia as of July, according to the Inside Climate News analysis and other reporting. An additional 27 units under construction or in the planning stages had no known Chinese involvement.

[...] so-called “captive” coal plants are not connected to the grid but instead serve as dedicated power sources for new industrial parks [...]. The projects are backed largely by private Chinese companies rather than state-owned enterprises, and their status as captive power plants appears to allow them to flow through a loophole in Xi’s 2021 pledge.

[...] China Shenhua Energy Co., a state-owned enterprise that holds a controlling stake in the station, replanted a mangrove along the project borders and advertises Java 7 as “low emissions.” But the power plant spews out an estimated 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, according to Global Energy Monitor.

the Banten Serang coal plant [...] was completed in 2017 by a Malaysian company in partnership with another Chinese state-owned enterprise.

[...] residents are plagued by respiratory infections. They can no longer access the beach, which was cut off by a petrochemical operation.