For most of his 57 years on the island of Sulawesi, Jamal has become accustomed to scarcity, mediocre expectations and a dismal lack of jobs. People mined sand, caught fish, and coaxed crops from the soil. Chickens often disappeared from front yards, stolen by hungry neighbors.
Mr. Jamal, like many Indonesians by one name, regularly rode his motorbike to construction jobs in the city of Kindari, half an hour away.
Then, six years ago, a high-rise smelter was erected next to his house. The plant was built by a company called PT Dragon Virtue Nickel Industry, which is a subsidiary of the Chinese mining giant, Jiangsu Delong Nickel.
Indonesia recently banned the export of nickel ore to attract investment into processing plants. Chinese enterprises have arrived in force, and have set up dozens of smelters. They were anxious to secure nickel for factories at home that needed the metal to make batteries for electric cars. They were intent on moving the pollution from the nickel industry away from Chinese cities.
Mr. Jamal got a job building housing complexes for workers from other parts of Sulawesi. He increased his income by building seven rental units in his home, where he was born and raised. His son-in-law was hired at the smelter.
Inside Mr. Jamal’s house, a new air conditioner softens the humidity of the tropical air. Previously stripped concrete floors now sparkle with ceramic tiles.
He and his family complain about the dust flying from the waste piles, about the burping stacks, and the trucks passing by at all hours carrying fresh ore. On the worst days, residents don masks and struggle to breathe. People go to clinics with lung problems.
“What can we do?” Mr. Jamal said. “The air is not good, but we have better living standards.”
Here is the gist of the bargain Indonesian officials struck with the wealthy Chinese companies that now dominate the nickel industry: pollution and social conflict in exchange for upward mobility.
At the heart of the bartering process is Indonesia’s unparalleled stock of nickel.
One morning at the Cinta Jaya mine on Sulawesi’s southeast coast, dozens of excavators tore through the reddish soil and loaded the dirt into trucks, hauling it to the edge of the Banda Sea. There, they dumped the ore onto barges that transported it to smelters up and down the island.
Much of the nickel was headed north to the Morwali Industrial Park, an empire of 50 factories that sprawls across nearly 10,000 acres that functions like a walled city, complete with a private airport, dedicated seaport, and central kitchen that produces 70,000 meals a day.
The park was officially established in 2013 through an agreement announced by the then Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The China Development Bank provided a loan of more than $1.2 billion.
Nearly 6,000 workers from China live in apartment complexes, drying their clothes by railings. Visiting Chinese executives sleep in a five-star hotel run by Tsingshan, a Chinese company that invests in a smelter that makes components for electric car batteries. His restaurant, which serves dim sum and rice porridge, overlooks trucks dropping goods off the sidewalk.
Five million metric tons of nickel ore are scattered on a hillside above the port – a stockpile on a cosmic scale. A structure the size of several hangars holds mountains of coal waiting to be fed into the park’s power plant to generate electricity.
Some of the boats leaving the nickel mine were heading south, to the Morosi area, where Mr. Jamal lives, and where two sons-in-law with Chinese investments have – for better and for worse – comprehensively changed local life.
The Obsidian Stainless Steel plant, another subsidiary of the Delong Group, looms over the surrounding rice fields. As the last afternoon shift ended, workers poured out of the gates on motorbikes, heading for the surrounding dormitories. Many of those from mainland China stopped by a strip of shops and restaurants festooned with signs displaying Chinese characters.
Standing vigil over a charcoal grill in front of her shop, Wang Lidan fanned squid skewers while selling her other goods — scallion fritters, fried dumplings, ice cream and cans of pickled radishes.
She grew up in Xiamen, southern China, and has been in Indonesia for nearly 30 years, selling jewelry imported from China to tourists on the island resort of Bali, and running a modest restaurant in the capital, Jakarta.
She had arrived in Sulawesi five years earlier, after hearing that thousands of Chinese workers were on their way to a secluded part of Sulawesi to work in the new smelters. She rented a hut topped with plastic tarps and corrugated aluminum sheets, and set up a restaurant. She slept on a wooden bench in front of the kitchen.
She hired a local chef, Eno Priyanto, who recently opened his own restaurant, to prepare seafood and satay.
“This was an empty swamp,” he said. “It’s way better now.”
On the other side of the road, a smelter worker from central China’s Henan Province is examining crabs and fish at a makeshift stall at the edge of the road.
Another person from Liaoning Province, northeastern China, ate a bowl of noodles inside a rare air-conditioned restaurant. Then he stopped at a produce stand, buying corn on the cob and a pineapple to take back to his lodgings.
He chatted in Mandarin to the woman behind the counter, Erniante Salem, 20, the owner’s daughter. She was studying Chinese in a nearby classroom—first to help her mother sell fruits and vegetables, then to improve her chances of getting a job at a nearby factory. She earned about 150,000 rupees a month (about $10) doing laundry, but hoped to multiply her wages 25-fold with a job in a start-up factory.
“I have more hope now,” Ms. Ernanti said.
Behind the smelter, however, farmers complained that their hopes had been dashed.
Rosmini Badu, 43, mother of four, lives in a sturdy home that directly overlooks her rice fields. Chimneys now dominate her view and a concrete wall surrounds her land – the only barrier separating her subsistence from the piles of steamy waste dumped there after the smelting process.
Early this year, just after she had planted her crop, a fierce storm swept across her land. Before the factory was built, it could drain the water. Not anymore. The concrete wall directed the flow into her expulsion, destroying a crop worth 18 million rupees (about $1,200).
She said the fish she and her family keep in the pools are no longer growing as big as locals speculate that toxins are seeping into everything.
Her husband and son were unable to secure work in the factory.
Throughout Sulawesi’s nickel belt, local employees know they earn much less than their Chinese counterparts, and many of them are supervisors.
As workers travel the surrounding roads on their motorbikes, they wear construction helmets whose colors denote their rank – yellow for entry level, red for the next class, followed by blue and white. It is not forgotten that Indonesians wear almost entirely yellow, while blue and white are the preserve of Chinese workers.
“It’s not fair,” said Mr. Jamal. “Indonesian workers work harder, while Chinese workers just point and tell them what to do.”
Sometimes violent protests by local workers have led to crackdowns by the police and an Indonesian military unit.
In the Morwali Industrial Park, Chinese workers are now confined to buildings, and their employers have forbidden them to go out into surrounding communities for fear of encountering hostility.
In the Morosi neighborhood, Chinese workers continue to frequent local shops and restaurants, but the owners fear their business may not last.
“I am afraid,” said the restaurant manager, Mr. Eno. “The more Indonesian workers protest, the less Chinese workers will turn out.”