Why did China side with Malaysia and not with Singapore?
(The Independent) – This is the extent of the Malaysia-China deal, and Najib would want the Chinese promises, the lavish signing ceremonies and the talks of Chinese investment rising in Malaysia as part of the Barisan Nasional plans to woo voters.
The answer to this question is glaring, and it was the obvious choice that the Chinese had in their push in the Asean region where it has made more enemies among the member states over the South China Sea issue.
While a Bloomberg report on Friday said that “China views Singapore as being less supportive of Xi’s plan,”, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak played his cards well to woo Beijing into its own plans at home.
Playing the domestic cards by opening its borders to China’s investment and development projects – many of which have shown traces of fatigue in the long run – Najib brought the Chinese government to understand that he needed them for his own political survival.
Now that it is a given the Bandar Malaysia-China company deal was a show, it is obvious the Najib went to China to get more ‘deals’ on paper to show that he is the man of the moment.
But like the Bandar Malaysia and the Forest City deals – which collapsed – should we expect more such deals to collapse in the months ahead of us?
And can the Chinese government trust Najib in his promises he made to them, or should Najib be the one wary of what the Chinese can do since they are the ones who are definitely behind the collapse of both the Forest city and the Bandar Malaysia project.
That is if we are to believe reports from the Wall Street Journal that said the Chinese government pulled the plug on Bandar Malaysia since it is not interested in investing in projects dealing with construction and property development.
It is mostly interested in the Bandar Malaysia project if it gets the nod from Najib for the High-Speed Rail project signed between Malaysia and Singapore.
In the current state of affairs, both Malaysia and China are playing a tug-of-war game in which China allows itself to be pulled in the Malaysian domestic game plan, but not promising to finish the game as it pulls Malaysia towards its One Belt One Road (OBOR) project.
Last week, Malaysia said it signed dozens of deals with China and Chinese companies during Najib’s visit last year to China, and it is now saying it has signed billion dollar deals, yet again.
With China inviting the rest of the world to ‘invest’ its One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative – which it is jealously defending as its own idea to beef up global trade linkages – something is not right.
Does China has the money to pump in all these multi-billion dollar projects it is announcing?
First, we have Chinese president Xi Jinping who promised that China will bring along with him $100 billion of investment commitments over five years to India.
This is not the only billion dollar promises made by Beijing over the years and the Indian promises were made in 2014.
