China’s President Xi Jinping has arrived in Malaysia as part of a Southeast Asian tour which is seen as delivering a personal message that Beijing is a more reliable trading partner than the United States amid a bruising trade war with Washington.
Xi’s three-country tour and his “message” that Beijing is Southeast Asia’s better friend than the truculent administration of US President Donald Trump comes as many countries in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc are unhappy with their treatment after the US imposed huge tariffs on countries around the world.
“This is a very significant visit. You can read many things into it,” said Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, a former Malaysian ambassador to the US and minister of legal affairs.
“Under PM Anwar, Malaysia is getting very much closer [to China]. It’s a good thing,” he added, noting that “in the long run”, Washington’s “influence will be reduced”.
Washington hit Malaysia with a 24 percent trade tariff, accusing it of imposing a 47 percent tariff on US imports, a rate that Malaysian officials rejected.
Xi’s visit to Malaysia is in part an effort to “reinforce” the view that China can “offer to bypass America”, said James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia, via a different international order such as BRICS – the 10-country intergovernmental organisation comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China, among others.
“Basically, this is all architectured to build a new international order… Trump has given China the excuse to push harder amongst countries around the world, especially developing countries,” Chin said.
Of the three countries Xi chose to visit this week, analysts said Malaysia is deemed to be the most important for China, given its sizeable 32 million population, its developing high-tech base and its current chairmanship of ASEAN. China is also Malaysia’s largest trading partner since 2009, and in 2024, China-Malaysia trade reached $212bn.
“China hopes to jack up trade with Malaysia, which will make up for the expected downgrading of exports to the US,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a senior China analyst with the US-based Jamestown Foundation and author of the book, From Confucius to Xi Jinping.
“Politically, Malaysia has a lot of influence among all 10 ASEAN states,” Lam said. “Including how countries that have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea should respond to Beijing’s aggressive tactics in bolstering its hold over.”
The more you tighten your grip, the more ~~star systems~~ countries will slip through your fingers. Every year, more and more middle income countries that were unaligned are buddying up with China and the ones that were buddying up with the US are playing the field. China is keenly attentive to this global battle over hearts and minds while Americans are too preoccupied to even notice, and don't care when they do.
A lot of Americans have 0 concept of how open trade has benefited them. They just think that they don’t need the rest of the world and we’ll just do it on our own. It’s unbelievably stupid but it’s unfortunately how a sizable portion of the US thinks.
A lot of Americans think 'free trade' means all countries involved are on an equal footing. That's what it should mean, and what the term looks like when taken at face value. Most don't recognize that 'free trade' as the US uses it means free for corporations to exploit the global south through the use of Neo-colonialism. It means coercing the global south to privatize their natural resources, become indebted in the process, and be forced to let foreign corporations control and exploit the local labor force down to wage slavery. Crippling their economies as western corporations maximize profit and resource extraction at the expense of the local government and population.