"China’s green mining vision meets Indonesia’s fragile reality", Asia Times, 27 November 2025

[...] one of the most consequential arenas for China’s mineral strategy lies further south—Indonesia, home to the world’s largest nickel reserves and a critical pillar of the global electric vehicle supply chain.

If China’s new initiative is to have real impact, Indonesia will be one of its most important testing grounds. [...].

This means “greening” Chinese financing—embedding environmental conditions into loans, halting new captive coal power plants that exclusively serve industrial processing zones and helping transition existing coal facilities toward renewable energy sources.

Equally important is reducing dependence on new mining itself.

[...] Directing investment toward Indonesia’s recycling sector—including e-waste collection networks, battery recovery plants and metallurgical recycling technologies—would support Beijing’s stated vision of a full mineral life cycle.

[...] Beyond corporate social responsibility programs, Beijing can offer technical assistance to Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance and district governments to strengthen community benefit-sharing systems.