Indonesia

Search and rescue are ongoing after Virgo Transport 8, with 243 people on board, lost contact with its operator.

Rescuers are searching for 140 people from an Indonesian passenger ship that sank in the Java Sea after 103 others were evacuated, one of whom has died, a search and ‌rescue agency official said.

The Virgo Transport 8, with 243 people on board, lost contact with its operator in the early hours of Sunday, according to Indonesia’s search and rescue agency.

It had sailed from Surabaya on the Indonesian island of Java on Saturday and was heading for Banjarmasin, a port city on Borneo.

Rescuers are searching for the remaining passengers and crew.

The ship encountered rough weather, said I Putu Sudayana, head of the local search and rescue office in Banjarmasin.

The ferry’s last known position was in the Java Sea, about 81 nautical miles (150km) from Banjarmasin, the AFP news agency reported.

Rescue ships and a helicopter have been searching the area, where Sudayana said waves as high as 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) have hampered the operation.

“It is extremely risky for vessels. Even our Basarnas vessel, which is 40 metres [131 feet] long, is at great risk,” Sudayana told reporters, referring to the country’s search and rescue agency.

Last month, a fire on a ferry sailing between Bali and Lombok killed one person and left five missing. In July, a ferry carrying more than 70 people sank near Selayar Island, south of Sulawesi.

JAKARTA, Indonesia: Nearly 2,000 people, most of them students, fell ill in suspected food poisoning outbreaks linked to President Prabowo Subianto ‘s flagship Free Nutritious Meals program this week, raising fresh concerns about food safety as the government rapidly expands the multibillion-dollar initiative nationwide, officials said Saturday.

The incidents, reported between Tuesday and Thursday in East Java, Central Java, West Sumatra, Aceh and South Sulawesi, affected about 1,950 students, teachers and Islamic boarding school pupils who became sick after consuming meals distributed under the government program, known by its Indonesian acronym MBG.

The outbreaks are the latest setback for Prabowo’s signature free meals program, which has been rolled out across the archipelago despite repeated food poisoning incidents and corruption allegations.

The largest outbreak was reported in Central Java’s Rembang regency, where 752 students and 25 teachers at State Senior High School 1 Lasem, suffered diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and stomach pain after eating meals provided through the program, according to Rembang Health Office head Ali Syofi’i.

In Sidoarjo, East Java, 730 people, most of them students at the Manbaul Hikam Islamic boarding school, were affected in another suspected food poisoning incident linked to the program. Sidoarjo health office chief Lakhsmie Herawati Yuwantina said 706 victims had been discharged and were recovering at home.

Authorities also reported 276 suspected cases involving students and teachers in Agam regency, West Sumatra, where food distribution from the local nutrition service center was suspended pending an investigation. In Aceh’s Bener Meriah regency, 15 elementary school students and a school principal were treated after experiencing dizziness, nausea and other symptoms following a school meal.

Another 152 students from two junior high schools in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi, were treated at three hospitals after developing symptoms consistent with food poisoning. Regent Zadrak Tombeq ordered hospitals and health centers to prioritize treatment for the victims.

No deaths have been reported, and authorities are investigating the causes of the outbreaks.

The latest incidents add to a growing number of food poisoning cases linked to the program since its launch in January 2025. According to Health Ministry surveillance data as of Sept. 2, food poisoning incidents associated with MBG have affected 50,059 people in 560 cases across 245 districts and cities in 36 provinces.

In a hearing with the House’s Commission IX overseeing health issues, National Nutrition Agency chief Sudaryono said internal reviews found that roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of previous food poisoning incidents were linked to failures to follow food safety procedures, including rules governing food storage, receipt of ingredients, temperature control and consumption deadlines.

“The recent incidents in Sidoarjo, Agam, Rembang and other areas have been a major blow for us,” said Sudaryono, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.

He said the agency was tightening oversight of meal providers and reviewing about 27,000 meal distribution centers nationwide. Inspectors have found hundreds of allegedly fictitious facilities, while at least 833 kitchens have been shut down for failing to meet hygiene and sanitation standards.

The free meals program aims to combat malnutrition and reduce childhood stunting by providing meals to nearly 90 million students, toddlers and pregnant women. The initiative, expected to cost about $28 billion through 2029, is a cornerstone of Prabowo’s administration and one of his key campaign promises.

Jakarta: Indonesia halted operations at its main international airport outside Jakarta on Sunday after ash spewed from the Anak Krakatoa volcano more than 150 kilometres away, impacting thousands of passengers. Mount Anak Krakatoa erupted on Saturday, producing a fountain of lava and booming sounds that could be heard up to 700 kilometres (435 miles) away, the geology agency said in a statement. Two new eruptions were recorded on Sunday, the volcanology agency warned.

Ash from the volcano was detected in the airspace surrounding Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, prompting authorities to suspend operations from 01:30 am Sunday (Saturday 1830 GMT). “The latest paper test…showed positive results indicating the spread of volcanic ash in the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport area, consequently the airport closure was extended until Sunday at 09:30 am (0230 GMT),” the transport ministry said in a statement Sunday.

The suspension was later extended by four hours “due to increased eruptive activity”, the airport said on social media. More than 22,000 passengers have been impacted by the suspension, the transportation ministry said, adding that 209 flights were affected, in particular to and from Singapore. Other affected international routes included Doha, Sydney, and Kuala Lumpur. At least 16 domestic flights to Bali were also cancelled, local airport authorities said.

Anak Krakatoa, which means Child of Krakatoa, sits in a strait that separates the islands of Java and Sumatra. Ships passing through the strait should increase vigilance for possible disruption to navigation safety due to volcanic activities and are prohibited to approach within the exclusion zone of a 3-kilometre radius from the volcano, local port authorities said in a statement. The volcano has been sporadically active since it emerged from the sea at the beginning of last century in the caldera formed after the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatoa. That disaster was one of the deadliest and most destructive in history, with an estimated 35,000 people killed.

Extended Closure and Heightened Alert

Jakarta’s main airport and three others have extended their closures to 6:00 pm on Monday, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. Eight airports halted operations over the weekend, disrupting hundreds of flights and leaving more than 170,000 passengers stranded, the transport ministry reported. Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, in particular, extended its closure from Monday morning to 6:00 pm (1100 GMT), according to airport operator Angkasa Pura.

“In connection with the increasing eruption activity of Mount Anak Krakatau, flight operations at several airports have been suspended; passengers are advised to regularly monitor their flight status with the respective airlines,” the operator stated. The probability of an eruption remains high until Monday morning, the country’s geology agency noted, highlighting threats from incandescent rocks and heavy ashfall, while lava flows present potential hazards if the eruptions persist.

A 2018 tsunami triggered by a collapse of parts of Anak Krakatoa resulted in 429 fatalities and thousands displaced. Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago nation, sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

Country implements state of emergency in Sarawak’s Serian district after air pollution reaches ‘hazardous’ levels.

Malaysia has declared a state of emergency in a district in Sarawak state after haze caused by wildfires in neighbouring Indonesia increased air pollution to “hazardous” levels.

King Sultan Ibrahim “has consented to the declaration of emergency throughout Serian Division, Sarawak, following haze conditions that have reached air pollution levels hazardous to public health and safety”, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s office said in a statement on Thursday.

The declaration followed a formal request from the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee after the region’s Air Pollutant Index reached levels warranting consideration of a local emergency.

Under the order, 647 schools in Serian will close from Monday until at least the end of next week, alongside government and private offices, plantations, construction sites and quarries, with only essential services continuing to operate.

The state’s disaster management authorities said a three-day cloud-seeding operation launched on Thursday would be extended to at least Monday, citing forecasts of “more conducive cloud formations” during that period.

Sarawak State Disaster Management Committee chairman Douglas Uggah Embas, speaking at a news conference in Kuching, stressed that the emergency applied only to Serian, not the entire state, but urged residents there to take the situation seriously.

“Please minimise outdoor activities and avoid strenuous activities outdoors,” he said.

Sarawak, in the northern part of Borneo island, has been heavily affected by haze for weeks, as have the neighbouring states of Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.

Other Southeast Asian countries like Brunei have also reported smoggy conditions. Singapore announced it would start providing daily haze advisories from Friday evening, after the 24-hour air quality readings entered the unhealthy range, the first since 2023.

It has also hit the Philippines, where President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the suspension of classes in the capital region, Metro Manila, as well as more than a dozen provinces on Friday.

This year’s transboundary haze, which originates from fires burning across Indonesia, particularly the Kalimantan region and Sumatra island, is part of a wider seasonal wildfire crisis in the archipelago country.

Scientists say temperatures are expected to peak this month, potentially intensifying the fires by bringing hotter and drier conditions across the region.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Smoke from forest and peatland fires burning across Indonesia has pushed air quality in parts of Malaysian Borneo to hazardous levels, triggering a surge in respiratory illness and forcing the cancellation of outdoor Independence Day celebrations.

The smoke – drifting from fires in Kalimantan in the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo – has settled over the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the same island, for much of August. It has also reached peninsular Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

It is the region’s worst haze episode since 2015, when fires in Indonesia exposed tens of millions of people to toxic smoke and caused more than 500,000 people to suffer respiratory ailments.

On Tuesday, six areas in Sarawak recorded hazardous air quality, with readings above 300 on Malaysia’s Air Pollutant Index. Anything above 100 is considered unhealthy. In Kuching, the state capital, the index hit 407, while in Serian, a town close to the Kalimantan border, it hit 408.

Mia Emylia Hassan, 33, a mother of two in Kuching, said the smell of smoke was inescapable.

“The air here is very thick,” she said. “It smells like smoke, and it’s just white all over.” Visibility from her house, she said, had dropped to about a kilometre, or roughly half a mile. “We have not seen blue sky for over a month,” she said.

The haze arrived in early August, shortly after her 10-month-old daughter came home from the hospital after a lung infection. “She’s not healing properly because her lungs are still developing,” Hassan said. “She’s been on medication this whole month, and she has been coughing and vomiting.”

Twice, the family has had to rush the infant back to the emergency room because she could not breathe.

“It’s a mini heart attack for us every time,” Hassan said.

Asthma cases surge

Malaysia’s Ministry of Health has reported a sharp rise in illness nationwide. During the week of August 23 to 29, asthma cases climbed to 1,811, up from 219 the previous week, the ministry said on Saturday, while conjunctivitis cases also rose to 720, from 146.

In peninsular Malaysia, Karen-Michaela Tan, an asthma patient who lives near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, said that a week after the haze thickened, she was “wheezing audibly” and “breathless when climbing stairs”. The 52-year-old said she needed two nebuliser treatments back to back to stop the wheezing, along with a heavy dose of steroids.

“Doctors are erring on the side of caution when it comes to asthma patients, choosing to up dosages rather than risk a patient being hospitalised for shortness of breath,” she said.

Her house is sealed, and two purifiers run continuously. Still, “I battle throat scratchiness and nasal dryness even with these measures”, she said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc, has activated a Level 3 transboundary haze alert – its highest – for the southern part of the region. The alert signals a high risk of severe cross-border haze. ASEAN cited an increase in fire hotspots and prolonged dry weather, fuelled by an intensifying El Nino weather pattern.

The toxic smoke has forced Sarawak to cancel its outdoor Independence Day celebrations on Monday, and officials warned that worse restrictions could follow. Any area where readings cross 500 will be placed under a local emergency, and all public and private offices will be closed, the deputy premier, Douglas Uggah Embas, told reporters. “Only essential services will be allowed to operate,” he added.

In Kuala Lumpur, where skies were grey for most of the month, the haze thinned enough to reveal blue sky for the first time in a week, just as the Independence Day parade got under way early in the morning.

Schools, too, have been hit hard. Under Ministry of Education rules, outdoor activities are suspended when the index reaches 100, and schools must close at 200. On August 20 and 21, nearly 600 schools in and around Kuching shut, affecting some 200,000 primary and secondary students. And on August 28, 30 more schools in Sarawak closed, keeping more than 4,000 children at home.

This week, schools are closed for the Independence Day holiday.

Youth sport has been affected, too. Yap Kai Jinn, 31, a coach at Square One Football, a Kuala Lumpur academy, said the club had cancelled all training sessions and matches since last week.

“Along with our parents, we decided that it is not healthy; it is not safe for our players to play under these conditions,” he said. “For now, we are looking for an enclosed area to do sessions, and for outdoor, we have to wait and hope that the weather gets better.”

Fires surge in West Kalimantan

The toll of the haze has been far heavier in Indonesia.

The country’s deputy health minister, Dante Saksono Harbuwono, told reporters on Monday that some 13,500 people were treated for respiratory infections in July and August, while about 5.5 million people on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra have been directly exposed to smoke.

Borneo is the world’s third-largest island and is divided between Indonesia, which controls the southern two-thirds as Kalimantan; Malaysia, whose states of Sarawak and Sabah run along the north; as well as the sultanate of Brunei.

According to the Indonesian government, fires between January and July burned more than 200,000 hectares (about 494,000 acres), an area three times the size of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, across Borneo and Sumatra. Nearly 95,000 hectares (about 235,000 acres) burned in July alone.

And despite efforts to control the blazes, the fires continue to surge in parts of Indonesian Borneo.

Hotspots in West Kalimantan nearly doubled on Monday, rising by 3,553 to 7,377, while the number of active fires rose by 88 to 104, and visibility fell below a kilometre, said Berton Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency. In Central Kalimantan, hotspots declined by 147 to 5,244, while fire spots increased by 16 to 72, he said.

Cities in Kalimantan have recorded hazardous air, too.

Readings in Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan reached 780 on Monday on the air quality index used by IQAir, a Swiss company that monitors pollution data. Pontianak in West Kalimantan reached 593.

The fires are largely set on purpose, analysts say, with plantation companies and smallholders alike burning rainforest and carbon-rich peatland to clear ground for palm oil, farming, and pulp and paper production. The practice is illegal, and Indonesian police said last week that they had arrested 72 people suspected of setting recent fires.

Super El Nino

Researchers warned people in Southeast Asia to brace for a long fire season.

El Nino – the naturally occurring pattern that shifts winds, air pressure and rainfall worldwide – appears headed for “super” strength, said Helena Varkkey, a specialist on transboundary haze at Universiti Malaya.

In Southeast Asia, she said, “the intensifying El Nino means hotter and drier conditions”, so “any fires that happen will have a bigger and longer regional impact”.

Jayaprakash Muralitharan, a Malaysian atmospheric scientist, said the worst was still ahead.

Haze conditions are “going to be severe and longer, because the hot weather started much earlier last year”, he said. “El Nino came in and made conditions drier. Now you have the extreme drying of the peatland.”

And peat can make fires stubborn, he said. What looks extinguished on the surface can smoulder underground for weeks and flare up again, and nothing short of sustained rain will soak the soil enough to put it out.

Until the rains arrive, Muralitharan said, there is little to be done.

“Human intervention now is only a temporary solution. It would go on until end of September or October when the rain comes in. I hope that rain comes in by then.”

Crude oil and natural gas supplies have been disrupted worldwide by the United States-Israel war on Iran, but one energy sector appears to be cashing in – coal.

This week, South Africa’s thermal coal producer Thungela Resources said it had doubled its half-year profits as the war has forced more countries to buy the fuel.

Although abundant and relatively cheap to produce, coal is considered one of the dirtiest fossil fuels.

Mining it causes water pollution, and burning it releases enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming.

In recent months, several countries, especially in Asia, have reversed or delayed promises to scale back on coal production.

Global coal consumption was already rising in 2025 with the Eurasia region and the US using the fuel to power artificial intelligence data centres, according to the World Bank.

Here’s what we know:

Why is more coal being used?

The US-Israel war on Iran has triggered a global energy crisis. Soon after strikes on Tehran began on February 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped during peacetime.

Negotiations to reopen the strait are ongoing.

Its closure has reduced oil and gas supplies and caused oil prices to soar, prompting many countries to fall back on the most readily available alternative to keep the power on – coal.

While coal prices have also risen, the fuel is still much cheaper than oil – and is more readily available.

No region has been more impacted than Asia, which largely depends on the Gulf for its energy needs. About 82 percent of oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asia in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration. China, India, Japan and South Korea were the top destinations.

Besides being unable to ship exports through the strait, Gulf countries caught up in the conflict have also been badly impacted by Iranian strikes. Qatar, for example, was forced to declare force majeure on its delivery contracts in March when Iranian drones hit its Ras Laffan oil facility – the world’s largest LNG complex – forcing it offline. Iran’s attacks had knocked out 17 percent of Qatar’s LNG exports by March, state officials said.

Similarly, the United Arab Emirates’s Das Island LNG terminal, Fujairah oil terminal, Ruwais Refinery Complex and other energy sites have been attacked during the conflict. Facilities in Saudi Arabia and Oman have also been hit.

Where has coal use increased?

According to an analysis by the energy data company Ember, coal output will rise globally by 1.8 percent by the end of 2026 compared with 2025 in a “worst-case” scenario.

This represents a notable uptick considering that countries are meant to be transitioning away from coal, experts said.

Since the war began, several Asian countries have announced plans to increase coal-fired electricity generation.

Japan has lifted restrictions on older, high-emission coal plants to cope with the energy shocks while South Korea has delayed the shutdown of coal-powered plants it promised to wind down by 2040.

In Bangladesh, the government at first imposed power cuts, closed universities and rationed fuel sales for vehicles before announcing it had ramped up coal-powered electricity generation.

Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam have also increased coal-powered electricity generation to preserve dwindling gas reserves.

In Pakistan, data from the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority showed that by July, electricity generated from imported coal had risen by 90 percent compared with the same period the previous year.

China and India already consume 70 percent of the world’s coal and are also major producers. In India, where electricity demand is increasing partly due to more intense heatwaves, the government plans to launch several new coal-mining projects that will see global supplies increase by 2.5 billion tonnes a year, according to the Global Energy Monitor.

Germany also said it won’t jeopardise electricity generation because of earlier climate promises it made while Italy has pushed back its coal phase-out plans from late 2025 to 2038.

Who is making a profit from coal?

Indonesia is the top coal exporter by a wide margin, followed by Australia and Russia.

In March, Jakarta reversed previous plans to curb coal production and reduce oversupply in a bid to benefit from the rising prices. Prices were set at $131.85 per tonne in July, compared with $102.20 in the previous year.

South Africa’s Thungela, meanwhile, reported doubled profits from January to June, compared with the same period of 2025, driven largely by higher production from its Ensham mines in Queensland as well as higher demand and higher prices at both Ensham and its South Africa operations.

Production at Ensham rose by 38 percent in the first half of the year – during the peak of the conflict – to 2.2 tonnes, compared with 1.6 tonnes in the previous period.

The company reported 4.80 South African rand ($0.30) in headline earnings per share – or HEPS, a primary metric of profitability used in South Africa. That’s up from 1.92 rand ($0.12) in June last year.

In a statement, Thungela said prices will likely remain high as European and Asian markets prepare for winter.

What does this mean for the drive for clean energy?

In 2021, more than 40 countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, promised to scale back coal use at the COP26 global climate summit. India and China did not sign up, however. Last year, South Korea joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which helps coal-dependent economies transition away from the fuel.

However, the Middle East crisis has upset those plans largely because many countries do not have sufficient renewable energy-generating capacity to fall back on, said Nick Hedley, an energy transition analyst at South Africa-based Zero Carbon Analytics.

“For the likes of Bangladesh, it’s easy to lift coal use when global gas supplies are disrupted because the country invested heavily in coal infrastructure in recent decades, and much of that capacity has been sitting idle,” he said.

“Coal becomes cheaper than imported gas when gas prices surge. Importantly, coal still cannot compete with renewables on cost,” Hedley added.

It’s not all doom, however. Analysts noted that upticks in some places are being offset by long-term declines in coal use in places like Europe.

China’s domestic coal production also fell this year as the government tightened oversight following a deadly explosion in May at the Liushenyu coal mine, where 82 people died. Beijing has also made large investments in renewables.

In addition, the breakdown of global fossil energy supply chains could make clean alternatives more competitive and force more countries to invest in them, Hedley pointed out.

“The lesson here is that Asian countries need to speed up their shift to clean energy and electrification to safeguard themselves against future global crises,” he concluded.

By chaining bilateral naval exercises across a widening circle of partners — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and now Indonesia — Beijing is not assembling an alliance. It is manufacturing the impression that a Chinese warship’s presence near every regional flashpoint, including the waters off Taiwan, is unremarkable.

On July 29th, the Indonesian frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai wrapped up a two-day naval drill with the Russian navy in Vladivostok, part of Exercise Orruda 2026. Two weeks later, on August 12th, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the same ship, on its way home, would run a “passing exercise” with a Chinese frigate, the Honghe — not in Indonesian waters, not in the South China Sea, but east of Taiwan. Jakarta’s navy described it in the blandest terms available: communications drills, a resupply run, “a universal naval tradition.” Taipei was not reassured. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it “sternly condemns” the move and complained that Beijing had “unilaterally claimed” Indonesian participation before Jakarta had said a word about where, or why, this was happening.

That gap — between Jakarta’s shrug and Taipei’s alarm — is the story. It is also a useful corrective to how most coverage of Chinese naval activity is currently framed. The default lens is bilateral and confrontational: China versus the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal, China versus Japan around the Senkakus, China versus Taiwan in the Strait. That lens catches real events, but it misses the connective tissue between them — a growing schedule of joint drills with third parties, each one small and individually deniable as “routine,” that collectively do something the confrontational track cannot: they make China’s presence in the surrounding water look normal to everyone except the state it is actually disputing with.

Indonesia and China have their own maritime dispute: Beijing’s nine-dash line overlaps Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone around the Natuna Islands, and Chinese fishing incursions there froze bilateral naval drills between 2015 and 2021. Those “Sharp Knife” exercises resumed in 2021 and have picked up pace since 2024. That history matters, but it is not what explains this month’s drill, because this drill did not happen anywhere near Natuna. It happened off Taiwan — waters Indonesia has no claim to and, until now, no naval presence in alongside China. Indonesia is simply the newest and most sensitive addition to a list that already includes Russia (the mature anchor partnership, most recently “Joint Sea-2026” in July), Malaysia (“Peace and Friendship 2025” in the Strait of Malacca last October), Cambodia (“Golden Dragon” at the newly built Ream Naval Base logistics center last spring), Thailand (“Blue Strike” and “Falcon Strike,” the latter launched again this month), and Vietnam (a Beibu Gulf coast guard and navy patrol series now past its fortieth iteration). All of this sits alongside a separate, unilateral track — a 100-plus-vessel show of force spanning the Yellow Sea to the western Pacific last December, and routine coast guard patrols around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal.

The claim of this piece is that these two tracks are not separate stories about Chinese assertiveness. They are one story, working in tandem: the unilateral patrols draw the lines, and the bilateral drills erase them, by training a widening circle of regional navies — and the publics who read about them — to treat a Chinese warship’s presence near contested space as routine bilateral traffic rather than a signal.

The Indonesia case is the clearest evidence yet, because the location was Beijing’s choice, not Jakarta’s. Indonesia had no dispute-driven reason to be operating near Taiwan; its dispute with China sits in the Natuna Sea, hundreds of miles away. What Jakarta had was a frigate already at sea, returning from Russia, and a willingness to let Beijing choose the itinerary’s final leg. Global Times, writing for a domestic Chinese audience, called the drill’s timing “of great significance” — language China’s defense ministry does not use for routine port calls. The exercise also landed in the same week that Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy, was in Jakarta courting Indonesia’s alignment. Chaining a Chinese passing exercise onto the tail of an Indonesian-Russian one, in waters adjacent to the most dangerous flashpoint in the region, at the exact moment Washington was making its own pitch, is not the profile of a routine bilateral courtesy call.

The strongest objection to this argument comes from analysts of Malaysia’s drills with China, who point out that Kuala Lumpur treats “Peace and Friendship” as a hedging tool it controls, not a concession Beijing extracted — the exercises are deliberately unsophisticated (humanitarian assistance, counter-piracy, no live fire), and Malaysia’s own defense establishment remains wary of Chinese assertiveness even as it participates. That is a fair description of Malaysia’s intent, and it likely holds for Cambodia and Thailand too: these governments are managing great-power competition on their own terms, not capitulating to it. But intent on the partner’s side does not determine the effect on Beijing’s side. Whatever Kuala Lumpur or Phnom Penh tell their own publics, every additional bilateral drill lowers the diplomatic and psychological cost, for Beijing, of being seen operating a warship near water someone else disputes. Indonesia’s case shows why that distinction matters: Jakarta’s intent was almost certainly routine — a frigate coming home. Beijing’s was not. It picked the coordinates.

None of this means China is close to fielding a formal coalition in the NATO sense; nothing here involves interoperability, shared command, or mutual defense. What it means is narrower and, in some ways, more useful to Beijing: a maintenance routine that makes normalization cumulative rather than a single dramatic claim to defend. Each additional partner adds one more government that has, at least once, treated a joint Chinese naval presence near contested water as unremarkable — and one more precedent for the next invitation.

The guest list is also instructive. The one claimant conspicuously absent from it is the Philippines — the country with the loudest ongoing disputes with Beijing, at Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal, and the one treaty ally the United States has directly on the South China Sea’s rim. Manila gets unilateral coercion, not invitations: coast guard patrols, water-cannon incidents, and jamming, rather than passing exercises. Every partner on the actual list — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia — either has no U.S. mutual defense treaty or, like Thailand, treats its treaty commitments as dormant rather than active. That is not a coincidence; it is a selection criterion. Beijing is not inviting the states most capable of resisting the normalization effect. It is inviting the states most likely to accept it, and saving coercion for the one state structurally immune to the charm offensive.

What happens next

Base case (roughly 55 percent).  The Indonesia relationship deepens but recalibrates location. A higher-tempo revival of the Sharp Knife series continues, concentrated in Indonesian or South China Sea-adjacent waters near Natuna rather than repeated performances off Taiwan. Jakarta absorbs the diplomatic cost of this month’s episode privately — quiet reassurances to Taipei and Washington — while keeping the relationship with Beijing intact. The key assumption: the backlash from Taiwan and the attention from Washington made a second Taiwan-adjacent rerun more costly to Jakarta than its benefit to Beijing.

Downside case.  Beijing repeats the chaining tactic with a second partner within the next twelve months, most plausibly Brunei — the quietest South China Sea claimant, which in February 2025 already agreed to joint oil-and-gas development with Beijing in disputed waters it claims. A first-ever Brunei-China passing exercise, timed to overlap with a Brunei exercise involving another power and staged near a genuinely contested reef rather than international water, would confirm this is a repeatable playbook rather than an Indonesia-specific improvisation — and would be far harder for the U.S. and Japan to counter, since Brunei has never been a vocal claimant to rally around.

Upside case.  Taiwan’s public condemnation, paired with Washington’s trilateral drills with Australia and the Philippines, hardens into an explicit regional habit of naming the chaining tactic itself — not just the individual exercise — making it reputationally costly for the next candidate partner to accept the choreography. The coalition-of-drills strategy stalls not because China stops asking, but because fewer navies say yes.

The takeaway

Beijing did not build a coalition off Taiwan this month; it borrowed one, for two days, from a country with no stake in the fight. That is a cheaper and more durable tool than a formal alliance would be, and it will not show up as a single dramatic escalation — it will show up as a pattern, one passing exercise at a time.

Watch for:  whether Indonesia’s navy does it again, and where. A repeat performance near another sensitive location within the next two quarters would confirm the pattern; a retreat to home waters would suggest Jakarta drew its own line. Watch, too, whether Brunei’s navy — quiet for decades — puts to sea with a Chinese frigate for the first time following its 2025 oil-and-gas pledge in disputed waters.

Thousands of people are waiting for aid in the eastern Indonesia region hit by a powerful earthquake that killed dozens of people, as rescuers combed through collapsed buildings in search of people trapped beneath the rubble.

Late on Monday, the death toll was raised from 54 to 68, said Berton SP Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, adding that more than 200 ⁠have been injured.

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent Monday searching for loved ones and waiting for aid to arrive in communities still cut off by the magnitude 7.7 earthquake.

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country while leading a nationwide moment of silence honouring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 1,300 homes were damaged when the quake struck East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday. Nearly 250 were destroyed on Flores alone. Dozens of public buildings, including educational and health facilities as well as government offices, were also affected.

The province’s governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

About 12,800 people were unable to return to their homes by Monday morning and were dispersed among temporary shelters in several towns on Flores, Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, spokesman for Indonesia’s BNPB national disaster agency, told the AFP news agency.

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

“Our houses are no longer liveable because many have collapsed and are full of cracks, so we can’t go inside any more,” Mbay resident Junaidin, 32, told AFP outside his self-made tent that was sleeping about 30 people.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

“We’re on our own here,” said Junaidin, who like many Indonesians has one name. He expressed frustration with a perceived lag in the arrival of aid.

“As for help from the government, there hasn’t been any – no tents, no medicine, no food, no drinking water, nothing,” Junaidin said.

The Indonesian air force said it was bringing 13 tonnes of emergency aid airlifted in two Hercules transport planes and a Boeing.

It was also deploying helicopters to bring emergency supplies directly to survivors in isolated communities, the Antara state news agency quoted the commander of El Tari airbase in Kupang on Timor island as saying.

The aid included food, clothes, clean water and emergency medical equipment.

The military has deployed personnel to help with distribution in key hubs.

Rescuers were combing the stricken area for victims despite not receiving any reports about missing people, search and rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP on Monday.

Indonesia will also build an emergency field hospital in several areas to treat the injured, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus said.

Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from Ruteng in East Nusa Tenggara, said medical staff there had to quickly assemble a tent hospital after the hospital was damaged.

While doctors said they have a sufficient supply of medicine, they weren’t able to get to essential equipment that allows them to perform blood tests and X-rays, which means they are “having to treat patients in very difficult conditions”, Washington said.

Many elderly patients “are being exposed to the intense heat of the daytime” and the “rather cold” evening temperatures, which complicates doctors’ ability to treat them, Washington added.

Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A magnitude 9.1 tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.

It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

A powerful earthquake that struck eastern Indonesia has killed at least 51 people and forced about 5,000 people to evacuate, as rescue teams work to clear roads blocked by landslides and reach survivors still trapped under rubble.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck at 5:58am local time on Saturday (21:58 GMT, Friday), with its epicentre about 68km (42 miles) north-northwest of the city of Ende, on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, according to the US Geological Survey, which put the depth at 10km (6.2 miles).

The earthquake, followed by some 341 aftershocks, is one of Indonesia’s deadliest in years.

A total of 36 people were seriously injured and 77 more suffered minor injuries, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus told a televised meeting on Sunday.

More than 3,300 people in Sikka regency, one of the hard-hit areas, either fled their homes or were left stranded, taking shelter in a sports arena, according to Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, BNPB.

“The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family,” Nona, a 51-year-old resident of Talibura village, told the Reuters news agency. “There were 13 of us inside the house, and we all ran to save ourselves.”

In the port town of Maumere, some residents camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents, while others received treatment in a makeshift tent outside a local hospital.

“Almost all of Sikka’s residents didn’t dare stay indoors, so they slept on a porch or a tent outside,” Simon Sabandi, the region’s deputy chief, told news channel KompasTV.

Lieutenant General Suharyanto, the BNPB head, said the earthquake destroyed at least 157 houses and damaged nearly 200 more, forcing about 2,000 villagers in Nagekeo regency, the area closest to the epicentre, into temporary shelters.

He said three helicopters and a rescue vessel had been deployed to support the emergency response in a region where the scattered geography of small islands makes access difficult.

East Nusa Tenggara police chief Rudi Darmoko said the disaster had caused severe damage and building collapses across the province.

Rescue teams have yet to fully reach Nagekeo, where landslides have blocked roads and disrupted communications, said Fathur Rahman, head of the local search and rescue agency in Maumere, adding that a team was attempting to reach the area by ferry.

More than 3,500 military and police personnel have been deployed overall, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said. More than 1,300 homes have been damaged, and 20 petrol stations remain shut due to power outages, according to state energy firm Pertamina.

Officials are considering declaring a state of emergency for East Nusa Tenggara, which would unlock further resources and funding.

A tsunami warning issued immediately after the earthquake has since been lifted.

Reporting from Jakarta, Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington said aftershocks could continue for “several days”, with authorities in the island’s northern areas ordering further evacuations as the true scale of the damage is still “emerging”.

She said several affected areas remain inaccessible to first responders and that local authorities have urged residents to stay away from shorelines and damaged buildings.

The same stretch of coastline was struck by a similarly powerful earthquake in December 1992, when the quake and the tsunami it triggered killed more than 2,500 people on Flores, Indonesia’s geophysics agency said.

Indonesia, a nation of some 290 million people spread across roughly 17,000 islands, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, making it one of the world’s most seismically active countries.

About 2,000 residents in Nagekeo were evacuated with damage reported to a number of buildings.

Arnold Welianto, who lives in Talibura village, Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, told the BBC that he was still asleep when he felt the “very strong shaking”.

“I was startled awake and immediately went to my child’s room,” he said.

“Once we were outside, residents in our neighbourhood, which is located close to the shoreline, had already fled their homes and were heading toward the hills and crowding the roads, while some other residents were standing along the roadside because the sea had also receded.”

“The water remained low for quite some time, so everyone panicked and ran – I went around to the community health centre, and the people there had already been evacuated.”

Welianto said many residents were choosing to remain outdoors because of the earthquake, and ongoing aftershocks meant they were afraid to return home.