No one here can say exactly when it happened, but suddenly China is everywhere in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.
Compact Chinese electric cars weave through the streets. Chinese cosmetics crowd pharmacy shelves. Chinese hot pot restaurants and milk-tea chains have sprouted across the city’s many, many malls.
“It’s all very sudden — they just came to this country, all the brands, including cars and drinks, without us knowing,” said Kavin Hibrizy Pradipto Eska, who recently traveled hours from his university to a motor show in northern Jakarta just to admire the Chinese cars on display.
Squeezed by cautious, penny-pinching consumers at home, Chinese companies are fanning out across the globe — from Brazil to the United Arab Emirates — in search of new ones. Indonesia, with its young, teeming population, is an obvious target.
But the courtship is complicated. China is already Indonesia’s largest investor and the biggest buyer of Indonesia’s natural resources, yet its presence is not always welcome. A flood of cheap Chinese goods has wiped out local jobs, and anti-Chinese sentiment, which has erupted into riots in the past, still simmers beneath the surface.
And yet Chinese brands are winning over Indonesians. Companies like Mixue, Haidilao and BYD are reshaping how Indonesians see China. They are rising as American companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s struggle to win back young Indonesians, many of them Muslim, who have been boycotting American brands over U.S. support of Israel’s deadly attacks on civilians in Gaza.
For decades, China has been the world’s factory for items like vacuum cleaners, umbrellas and flip flops. But in the past few years, its companies have become household names, driving a sweeping technological shift across industries such as solar panels and electric vehicles. Chinese firms are now selling more of everything abroad, sending a tsunami of exports into every corner of the world, but especially to Southeast Asia.
Large, fast-growing markets like Indonesia are increasingly vital for Chinese brands as U.S. trade barriers, including steep tariffs and restrictions on Chinese carmakers, close off what was once their largest export market.
That push into new markets is already shaping consumer choices for Mr. Kavin, 20. As a university student, he has no income yet. But once he does, he said, he plans to buy a Tiggo, a hybrid from the Chinese automaker Chery, because it looks cute and costs half as much as other foreign cars.
“China is just, like, the future for me,” Mr. Kavin said, acknowledging that the sentiment surprises even him. He used to associate Chinese products with poor quality, he said, but that assumption has faded as more Chinese brands have appeared around him, often at the forefront of new technology.
Electric vehicles changed Eski Badillah’s mind about Chinese companies. Mr. Eski, 35, is a remedial loan officer who repossesses borrowers’ motorbikes when they fall behind on payments. He started to notice the Chinese ones that he was apprehending.
“Before, like 20 years ago, people would say: ‘Oh, what is this? It’s made in China,’” Mr. Eski said one recent afternoon, sitting outside a Mixue, the Chinese fast-food chain, in a residential Jakarta neighborhood. “We probably would laugh at it, the idea of a car or motorcycle from China.”
“These days, that has changed,” he added. “The image of Chinese brands has become more positive.” When he has the money, he said, he plans to buy an electric vehicle from BYD.
BYD and Geely, another top Chinese carmaker, are battling fierce competition at home and a glut of unsold electric vehicles. To survive, they have pushed aggressively into foreign markets. In Europe and the United States, their cars have faced a slew of trade barriers. Indonesia, by contrast, offers preferential tax rates to carmakers willing to build factories here.
Chinese cars are “the most innovative, and they have the most features,” said Bramantya Adji Pratama, 27, a bank officer who was sharing hot pot with his partner at a location of the Chinese franchise Haidilao on a recent weekday.
Nearby, a Haidilao employee stretched ribbons of dough into noodles, gyrating to a loud beat — part of the theatrics that have helped fuel the chain’s popularity. With 12 locations in Indonesia, Haidilao has exported more than just food, bringing a distinctive level of service that includes massages and manicures for customers waiting in line.
China is also exporting shopping habits. Indonesia has become one of the largest global markets for livestream shopping on TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
Like many other young Indonesians who are tethered to their phones and constantly online, Lutfiah, 29, who goes by one name, discovered the Chinese makeup brand Skintific through social media influencers, she said. The brand hosts hourslong livestreams during which presenters demonstrate products, answer questions and offer discounts.
“How I see China and Chinese people has changed because of some of the products I use,” she said.
Tauhid Ahmad, an economist at the Institute for Development Economics and Finance in Jakarta, said that South Korean pop music and culture were wildly popular in Indonesia a decade ago, but that Chinese dramas had overtaken them in popularity these days. He said many young Indonesians were unaware of the historical tensions between China and Indonesia.
“They don’t know about the past,” he said. “They believe that China is good because it is a rich country and they have good technology.”
This shift is unfolding as some young consumers turn away from American brands. Boycott campaigns targeting McDonald’s, Starbucks and KFC have spread widely on social media, eating into sales and opening opportunities for rivals. The intensity of the boycott campaign has eased since Israel’s war with Hamas began in 2023, but many consumers are still avoiding those brands.
In Jakarta, the embrace of all things Chinese is visible in places like Glodok, the city’s Chinatown, once known for its wholesale shops selling inexpensive goods. The area is now crowded with coffee shops and food stalls, set against restored facades and heritage temples.
Restu Ramadhani Putri, 24, wanted to visit the neighborhood after seeing it featured on TikTok alongside impressive videos of China’s vast highways, trains and infrastructure.
“In the past, if we bought something from China, we would say, ‘Ugh, it’s from China,’” Ms. Restu said. “Now it’s like, ‘Wow, China is really cool.’”
Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times, reporting on China’s economy and society.
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