Organised in the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta on 7-10 November, IndoDefence 2018 was significant for demonstrating not only local defence requirements but also consequences of Chinese-centred mobility observed recently in the Asia-Pacific region.

Composed of a thousands of islands scattered along the intersection point of the Pacific and the Indian oceans, the highly-populated Indonesia suffers mainly from marine-based security problems just like the neighbouring countries of Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Besides the most critical consequences of China’s policies creating anxiety all over the world, the country also faces other challenges like piracy, illegal fishing and smuggling. However, upon closer analysis, it can be concluded that the gist of the problem is related with population density and accompanying poverty, and that most domestic security problems can be associated with lack of sufficient incomes. In fact, the kind of changes instigated by the falling trend in oil markets, which badly affected the Middle East and Africa, had a positive impact on Asia-Pacific countries like Indonesia, whose major source of revenue is oil.