The construction site of China-built East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) in Malaysia Photo: Courtesy of China Communications Construction ECRL

 
China-Malaysia ties are at the forefront among relations between regional countries, and have set a benchmark and an example, and China hopes to take the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties as an opportunity to accelerate the building of a China-Malaysia community with a shared future, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said during his meeting on Wednesday with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim as he took his first official visit to the Southeast Asian country. 

The leaders also agreed that China and relevant ASEAN countries should independently and properly handle the South China Sea issue, manage disputes and differences, promote dialogue and cooperation, and stick to the general direction of bilateral settlement, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Li also met Malaysia's King, Sultan Ibrahim, and attended a ground-breaking ceremony at a construction site for the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), on Wednesday, according to media reports. 

China-Malaysia relations have been playing a pioneering and exemplary role for other ASEAN countries, and the deepening bilateral cooperation is primarily characterized by strong political mutual trust, some Chinese experts said. 

Over the past 50 years, the overall development of China-Malaysia relations achieved significant accomplishments in political, economic and cultural aspects, which has had a leading effect on regional countries, experts noted. 

Li's visit also comes as tensions have been exacerbated in the South China Sea recently due to the continued provocations by the Philippines with the US' backing. As one of the claimant countries the South China Sea disputes, Malaysia is focused on properly managing the situation and controlling disputes, experts said, noting that this consensus, agreed by some other ASEAN countries and China, is clear. 

We place more hope on bilateral efforts by engaging in dialogue and peaceful means, and based on relevant international laws, we aim to handle these existing disputes, experts said, noting that we particularly do not want external forces, especially militarized factors from outside the region, to be drawn into the South China Sea issue.

New momentum 

China and Malaysia signed a range of agreements on Wednesday, renewing a five-year economic cooperation pact and allowing the export of fresh durians, Reuters reported. The new five-year pact provides for strategic collaboration in areas such as trade and investment, agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure and financial services. 

The bilateral economic interactions are already very significant and close-knit, Ei Sun OH, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and principal adviser to the Pacific Research Center of Malaysia, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

"[Under the new pact], perhaps more collaborations in high-tech and sustainable industries will be explored, together with even bigger trade in services, such as tourism and education," the Malaysian expert said. 

The renewed pact also reflects that the two countries are adapting to some major changes in supply chains, Ge Hongliang, vice dean of the ASEAN College at the Guangxi Minzu University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

"In particular, Malaysia's Penang has been emerging as a new investment hub for semiconductor sector since last year. Compared to Vietnam, Malaysia has many advantages, like in talent pool," Ge said, noting that cooperation between China and Malaysia in high-tech fields such as semiconductor could be more suitable than that between China and Vietnam. 

China has been Malaysia's largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years. In 2023, the bilateral trade volume between China and Malaysia reached 450.84 billion ringgit ($98.9 billion), accounting for 17.1 percent of Malaysia's total trade, according to China's Ministry of Commerce. China is Malaysia's largest source of imports, making up 21.3 percent of Malaysia's total imports.

Also on Wednesday, Li and Anwar appeared together in a significant display of bilateral cooperation to officiate the groundbreaking ceremony for the ECRL Gombak Integrated Terminal station, local Malaysian news outlet The Star reported. 

The ceremony paved the way for the scheduled completion of the ECRL alignment from Kota Baru, Kelantan to the Gombak Integrated Terminal in Selangor in December 2026.

The Malaysian ministry of transport is also exploring the possibility of extending the ECRL alignment to tap into Thailand's rail network, paving the way for the ECRL to be part of the Pan-Asian rail network that can link Malaysia with China, realizing the vision of the BRI, the media report said. 

Refuting Western hype 

As China and Malaysia inked new cooperation deals during Li's visit, some Western media have been defaming cooperation between the two countries, particularly, seeking to attack flagship infrastructure projects such as the ECRL. 

A Financial Times report said on Tuesday that some earlier Malaysian bets on BRI projects have stalled indefinitely or been cancelled. The ECRL has been halved from its initial $13 billion price tag and with much lower technical specifications following a corruption scandal that toppled a former prime minister, the report noted. 

"The so-called debt trap linked with BRI projects is a topic hyped by the Western media," Ge said. "While the China-Malaysia relations had never experienced significant disruptions due to political transition in Malaysia, the individual BRI project has been going through technical adjustments," the expert said. 

"Such adjustments are based on agreements and contracts, which is a matter of commercial activity," Ge added. 

In an exclusive interview with the Global Times in October 2023, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook refuted the Western media's distortion of BRI projects by saying that "we definitely do not look at it as a trap." 

Overall, cooperation between China and Malaysia has been somewhat affected by the political changes in Malaysia over the years, but the progress is now relatively smooth, Xu Liping, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

"The completion of this railway in the future will be of great significance, further highlighting the sustainable and high-quality development of the BRI," Xu said. 

Some experts also noted that the achievement of the China-Laos railway and the advancement of China-Thailand railway have demonstrated the Southeast Asian countries the value and importance of these infrastructure projects for the local connectively, which also serve as the best rebuttal to the Western hype.