Resolving the Malacca Dilemma: Malaysia’s Role in the Belt and Road Initiative

Chinese financial statecraft in Southeast Asia: an analysis of China’s infrastructure provision in Malaysia

“…It is within this context that Chinese technical expertise and financial largessebacked up and coordinated by the Chinese state's financial statecraftprove an attractive proposition to regional economies including Malaysia. Coupled with strong diplomatic ties dating back to 1974, Malaysian economic planners and politicians have grown increasingly reliant on China to pursue costly infrastructure development marked by a longer-than-normal payback period, otherwise undersupplied by market forces (Gomez, Tham, Li, & Cheong, 2020;Lim, 2018;Malgeri, 2019). Cumulatively from 2013 to 2018, the country had been the largest recipient of Chinasourced investment and construction contracts in Southeast Asia, receiving some 35 billion dollars in total (Rana & Ji, 2020).…”

“…Bee Yin Yeo, a Pakatan Harapan law-maker and one-time Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (May 2018 to March 2020), asserted that the project has been awarded to CCCC without an open tender. According to Yeo, there was a high possibility that the project was over-priced or even over-designed because the absence of an open tender limited competition for the best value-for-money solution (Cited in Lim, 2018). Another rationale of opening up the tender process is to reduce avenue for rent-seeking, a longstanding issue plaguing the Najib-led Barisan Nasional administration (Case, 2017;Pua, 2011).…”

“…Another rationale of opening up the tender process is to reduce avenue for rent-seeking, a longstanding issue plaguing the Najib-led Barisan Nasional administration (Case, 2017;Pua, 2011). Despite pledging to publicly release the ECRL's financial feasibility study report in November 2016 (several months before the project's commencement), Barisan Nasional failed to keep its end of the bargain (Lim, 2018).…”

Urban speculation for survival: Adaptations and negotiations in Forest City, Malaysia

“…Over the past decade, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Malaysia has increased exponentially 1 , particularly following the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Malaysia has become a hotbed of Chinese investment for reasons including its natural resources, lower costs of labour, eagerness for FDI, and economically and geopolitically strategic location next to Singapore and along the Strait of Malacca (Juego, 2018; Lim, 2018; Yeoh et al, 2018). Real estate comprises one of the major sectors of Chinese FDI in Malaysia, increasingly in the form of urban megaprojects and concentrated in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Iskandar Malaysia in Johor, where we have identified at least eight Chinese-financed, -planned, and -constructed real estate developments launched since 2012 with a gross developmental value (GDV) of over U.S.$1 billion 2 .…”

“…Real estate comprises one of the major sectors of Chinese FDI in Malaysia, increasingly in the form of urban megaprojects and concentrated in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Iskandar Malaysia in Johor, where we have identified at least eight Chinese-financed, -planned, and -constructed real estate developments launched since 2012 with a gross developmental value (GDV) of over U.S.$1 billion 2 . China surpassed Singapore to become the largest real estate investor in Malaysia in 2013, and the largest overall foreign investor in Malaysia in 2016 (Hamzah, 2020; Lim, 2018).…”