Hong-hong based newspaper South China Morning Post in a report said that Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamed would take the side of China if his country was forced to take a side.
Mohamed acknowledged the growth opportunity China presents to Malaysia, and said, “we want to benefit from China’s growing wealth”. Although the 93-year old Malaysian leader has been a strong critic of Chinese investments in his country.
The decision to take side with China was because according to Mohamed, the U.S. is unpredictable “as to the thing they do”.
Asked about Beijing’s growing clout, the PM 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”.
Mohamed added, “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”. (China’s Economic Slowdown: Which currencies are most vulnerable?)
On Huawei Controversies
There have been controversies surrounding Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei over the past year. Western countries fear that China, the second-largest economy in the world, uses Huawei’s technology to spy on other countries. Huawei has denied those claims countless times.
The countries that put the company under too much pressure include the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In a report by the Washington Post, the U.S. Justice Department announced on January 28 that it is charging the tech giant with bank and wire fraud.
Mahatir told the newspaper, “At the moment we have not found them a threat to our security. Not yet, maybe later. But we cannot just follow actions taken by other countries because Chinese technology seems to be ahead of Western technology.”
