We won’t be influenced by others in our ties with China, says Mahathir

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad says Malaysia needs to understand China’s policies and strategies to gain some benefit from them.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will make its own independent decisions on China despite Western suspicions of Beijing’s cyber espionage involvement, said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

In an interview with South China Morning Post published today, he said fear would not sway both countries’ long-standing relations.

Instead, the end goal is to work together with China, Malaysia’s largest trading partner.

“Whatever may be our attitude towards China, we have to admit that China is a big power.

“It is a regional power and we need to deal with them.

“We need to understand their policies and strategies and we have to make adjustments so that we can gain some benefit from China’s policies,” Mahathir said in the interview from Manila where he is currently on a three-day visit.

Mahathir also said the Asean region must have a “common stand” on China and collectively deal with the superpower nation.

The prime minister added that Malaysia had yet to find Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei to be a threat to Malaysia’s national security, but it (Malaysia) is “watching closely”.

The US has restricted the use of Huawei products following national security concerns. According to reports, the US had also lobbied allies to do the same.

On Thursday, Huawei, one of world’s largest telecommunications equipment provider and a global leader in 5G technology, filed a lawsuit against the US government over the ban, saying the US has failed to provide evidence to support the ban.

The company also rejected claims that it had links to the Chinese government.

Meanwhile, when asked to comment on the debt-trap accusation against China, Mahathir said the Chinese, who are naturally good business people, would “see opportunities and with their capital they want to penetrate areas where before they had no representation or little representation”.

But he said every sovereign state was able to decide if it should take on such foreign loans.

“You make that decision, you know capital flowing into the country exerts some influence over the country.

“So, it is up to the countries concerned to make sure that the money flowing into their country is not borrowed money, is not money for infrastructure, but may be limited to money for investment in productive processes,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post report. - FMT