Mahathir Mohamad said he would prefer to take sides with China over the U.S. if his country was forced to take sides in the trade war, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
Although the 93-year-old Malaysian leader has been a strong critic of Chinese investments in his home country, he acknowledged that China is an economic power that presents opportunities.
Malaysia has to “accept that China is close to us”, he told the SCMP. “And it is a huge market. We want to benefit from China’s growing wealth.”
Mahathir told the newspaper that the Southeast Asian country will decide how to handle relations with China independently.
“Well, it depends on how they behave. Currently the U.S. is very unpredictable as to the things they do,” Mahathir told the SCMP in an interview in Manila where he was on an official visit.
Weighing in on fears about Beijing’s growing clout, he said: “China’s attitude, of course, is to gain as much influence as possible.”
“But so far China doesn’t seem to want to build an empire. So we will remain free people,” he added.
The prime minister said that Beijing will make use of its economic strength “to achieve what is to China the best objective – that they have to grow richer and richer, and this is the ambition of all countries.”
“With their wealth they are going to be in the same position that the Western countries were in the past,” he said.
On the controversies surrounding Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, Mahathir said Malaysia was “watching closely.”
The U.S. has said that it is worried about the security risks posed by Huawei, alleging that the company’s equipment may be used by the Chinese government for espionage. Huawei has denied those claims.
“At the moment we have not found them a threat to our security. Not yet, maybe later,” Mahathir told the paper. “But we cannot just follow actions taken by other countries because Chinese technology seems to be ahead of Western technology.”
Source : CNBC
China ‘can claim the South China Sea’: former Malaysian PM
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that China can claim the South China Sea, but that doesn’t mean that other countries with overlapping claims should accept it, a view that differs from the Malaysian government’s official line.
Beijing has drawn a so-called nine-dash line to demarcate its “historic claim” of 90% of the disputed waters. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also hold conflicting claims over smaller parts of the South China Sea.
“OK, you can claim,” Mahathir said at the annual Future of Asia conference hosted by Nikkei Inc. in Tokyo at the weekend. “We don’t accept your claim but we don’t have to go to war against you because of your claim.”
“Maybe one day you will realize that the claim means nothing,” the 98-year-old former leader said. He did not elaborate.
Mahathir’s statement appears to differ from the Malaysian government’s official line. Most recently in 2023, Malaysia, together with the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, rejected China’s map that depicts its sovereignty in the South China Sea.
“They claim that the South China Sea’s belonging to them, but they have not stopped ships from passing through,” he said, adding that Kuala Lumpur has been producing oil and gas in the sea but “so far they have not done anything.”
“As long as there is no stoppage of the passage of ships through the South China Sea then it’s good enough.”
The former leader argued that priorities should be given to maintaining peace and fostering economic development.
The 10-member Southeast Asian bloc, ASEAN, has been peaceful “compared to other regional groupings,” he said, “Until now there’s no major wars between ASEAN countries.”
ASEAN could serve as “a good model” for the world where there are different ideologies but “we don’t go to war with each other.”
Malaysia will hold the grouping’s rotating chair in 2025, taking over from Laos.
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