Does the belt and road initiative in the east coast of peninsular Malaysia create win-win partnership with China?

Abstract

The China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) established by the President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Xi Jinping in 2013 has offered tremendous investment prospects to those countries along the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and ocean-going “Maritime Silk Road”. In the Malaysian context, Malaysia and China have inked 14 business-to-business agreements and 16 government-to-government Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) in November 2016 amounting to approximately RM144 billion. By reviewing the literature of BRI, this paper identifies the two major projects in the east coast of peninsular Malaysia, namely East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) and Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park (MCKIP), in particular. In addition, it also elaborates the benefits of these projects in helping to improve the economic and infrastructure; and to create more job opportunity in this region. Ultimately, through the initiative, Malaysia and China will be able to achieve the connectivity in policy, trade, finance and their people countries, followed by the realization of a “win-win” partnership for both countries. However, as BRI is still flawed in some ways, a few recommendations are made to ensure the people from this region as well as the country (Malaysia) are benefited from this initiative.