U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is not a fan of the Biden administration's climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), describing it as a "green scam." Trump has promised to repeal it, which will undoubtedly be welcome news in Indonesia.

Indonesia is home to the world's largest nickel reserves, a critical ingredient for manufacturing EV batteries. But the IRA aims to limit China's role in the battery supply chain, presenting a huge headache for Indonesian nickel suppliers given the outsized role that Chinese smelters play in the country's mining sector.

Putra Adhiguna, managing director at the Energy Shift Institute, an independent non-profit energy finance think tank in Jakarta, joins Eric to discuss Indonesia's uncomfortable position squeezed between China and the U.S. in the race to dominate transition mineral supply chains.

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This week Eric & Cobus sit down with Wu Peng, the director-general of the department of African affairs in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for his perspective on a wide range of issues that are impacting relations between the two regions.

The conversation also features questions from a trio of experts in China-Africa relations including:

• Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (@gyude_moore)
• Zainab Usman, director of the Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (@MissZeeUsman)
• Aggrey Mutambo, senior diplomatic affairs writer for the Daily Nation and The East African newspaper (@agmutambo)

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Since its inception in 2013, Chinese government officials have insisted that the Belt and Road is solely an economic initiative and does not have any military motivations. But the BRI's civil-military distinction is no longer as clear cut as it used to be. President Xi Jinping himself called for a strong BRI security system to protect China's overseas interests, people and property.

One little-known aspect of the BRI is that much of the overseas construction, particularly ports, must conform to standards that conform to the People's Liberation Army's requirements. So, while today there's little evidence that China is leveraging the BRI for security or military purposes, there are concerns that it is positioning to be able to do so in the future should the need arise.

Daniel Russel, vice president for international security and diplomacy at the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute, examined the security dimensions of the BRI in a recent paper. Daniel joins Eric & Cobus to discuss what he calls the Belt and Road's "civil-military fusion" in maritime, terrestrial and space environments.

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Watch a discussion with the authors of ASPI's report Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative: https://youtu.be/PX5PnnnYrFw

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