JAKARTA -- When Indonesia awarded the contract for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway to a Chinese consortium six years ago, the project was supposed to be completed by 2018 with no financial contributions or guarantees required from the Indonesian government.
But with construction years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo issued a decree Oct. 6 that lets the government put state funds into the project -- negating one of the biggest perks that had led Indonesia to choose the Chinese proposal over a Japanese alternative.
