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.”
I hope Malaysia and all the countries caught in the middle find a way to maintain their independence. A return to great power politics will end in pain and suffering for their people.
Please read “Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism” and then explain what you mean.
That’s what they’re saying. China is state capitalist as well.
A democratic state where the proletariat are in control owning the MoP fundamentally isn’t capitalist, “state capitalist” or otherwise. Capitalism requires specific social relations that aren’t met within socialized ownership.
“The proletariat are in control” gets jailed for forming a union
Read Rosa Luxemburg on the limitations of unions, you’ll have a better idea on why China prefers their union system.
Sure, but the proletariat don’t own shit in China.
The overwhelming majority of large firms and key industries are in the public sector, while the private sector is dominated by small firms, cooperatives (huawei is an example, as are farming cooperatives), and sole proprietorships.
They have a democratic state which owns most of the MoP.
If you don’t think China is democratic, what would they have to do in order to meet the definition?
fairfree electionsFree in what way?
How do they not meet the standard?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China
No it’s not. Just because you are willfully ignorant doesn’t change reality
China’s Public Sector is the principle aspect of its economy, large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly in the public sector while the private is dominated by small firms, cooperatives, and sole proprietorships. This is classically Marxist, as he thought you needed to develop out of private ownership, not just make it illegal. Calling it “state capitalists” or whatever doesn’t change those fundamental facts, the structure is Socialist.
Further, China doesn’t fit the points laid out by Lenin, financial and industrial Capital is largely held by the state, not freely influencing and dominating the state. China’s involvement in the Global South is very different as a consequence, rather than using large loans with clauses that require privatizing national industries and whatnot, or exporting factories to super-exploit for domestic super profits like the US does, China focuses on development so that they can trade easier and have more customers so as to not be reliant on the US.
So no, the PRC isn’t Imperialist.
Like I said, the state behaves like a capitalist. Owns a bunch of shit and is beholden to no one.
They’re not a democracy if you think so.
Communism doesn’t get rid of property ownership. Communal ownership is still property ownership, including the right to sell/rent to private/outside interests.
The right framework for judging an econo-governance is the level of oligarchy, capital, corporate supremacy/power maximalism in the rulership/policies. Corporate/Capital vs Labour power is a primary political axis, but fights among supremacist forces makes democracy automatically corrupt.
UBI/freedom dividends provides a market based power equality between capital and labour, and always ultimate solution. But countries that are able to control oligarchist/CIA excess will continue to do better than those who can’t. We/our media labels them authoritarian for resisting evil.
Communal ownership implies that there is a democratic ownership, which is not the case in china
You keep making that unbacked assertion despite evidence to the contrary. This is erring on chauvanism at this point, it seems like you have more of an emotional attachment to refusing to recognize the PRC as democratic than a logical one. Why is that?
I mentioned UBI/Freedom dividends. The right/obviousness of that is that all citizens have an equal share in nations revenue/taxes. No nation is at that level of freedom yet. The next best thing is not corrupting nation’s resources for oligarchist/corruption power maximalism, and governing for shared prosperity. Corporations also often have a management bias in arguing that investing in growth is better than a dividend. While they can be right, even in hindsight, and so the mildest corruption, it is always less corrupt to pay dividend, and let the shareholders reinvest that dividend if they want for greater promised returns from the corporation.
China does a fair job in distributing investment across regions, with overweight on its less developed provinces. It doesn’t meet my perfection ideal. Corrupt supporters of US empire cannot justifiably criticize it as worse than their clear corruption.
I don’t think calling public ownership “state capitalism” makes any real sense, Marxism is not a “state capitalist” ideology. Trying to redefine all socialism as Anarchist is reductive, unless you’re trying to say something else entirely.
Further, they are democratic, just a different model of democracy than Western countries. The Chinese people seem to enjoy their system too, indicated by an increasing belief in their country moving in the right direction:
The Chinese people are right, their system is working fairly well. For now.
They’re not democratic though.
You can keep making that assertion, but without backing it means nothing. China is democratic. You can read this article talking about why the Chinese democratic model is in place and why the people support it, or this article on how the Chinese model of democracy works in contrast to western democracy, or this short video on how it works, or this video on how elections work, or this article on the makeup of the NPC.
By what metrics is China not democratic? What mechanically would they have to change for you to accept the opinions of the Chinese citizenry on their own system? I recommend this introduction to SWCC, it goes in-detail about how elections and the democratic model work in China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_China I’m just going to leave this here.
The only way to gain independence in the face of usa imperialism is teaming up with other antiimperialist nations to crush usa once and for all
Everyone needs allies, and having allies doesn’t necessarily reduce one’s independence, although admittedly you need to navigate some relationships deftly to maintain that.
It’s this “soft power” that the US has enjoyed for many decades that Trump has discarded because it just doesn’t translate in his transactional view of world politics.
What has Malaysia ever done for the US? Maybe nothing, but at least they didn’t think that the US were complete idiots that are trying to bully everyone with economic warfare from the 1700’s. Now that cat is out of the bag of course you’re going to draw closer to China, you’d be mad not to.