• Malaysia — The Missing Piece in US Indo-Pacific Strategy

    Malaysia — The Missing Piece in US Indo-Pacific Strategy

    Malaysia’s growing tilt toward non-Western partners reflects less a natural alignment with China than the cumulative effects of American neglect, protectionism, and transactional diplomacy. Despite deep security cooperation, shared interests in the South China Sea, and critical economic interdependence, especially in semiconductors, US policy has weakened a partnership that is…

  • Malaysia’s Silent Trade War: China’s Overproduction, Malaysia’s Overreliance

    Malaysia’s Silent Trade War: China’s Overproduction, Malaysia’s Overreliance

    Malaysia is facing a silent trade war with China, as cheap imports erode the local market and weaken its domestic industrial base. Chinese dumping, which is driven by subsidies and overcapacity, has accelerated Malaysia’s premature deindustrialization. Anti-dumping duties can only provide a temporary buffer. Thus, only by attracting long-term, high-quality…

  • An Insignificant Sympathy: Assessing Overseas Chinese Influence Operations in Malaysia

    An Insignificant Sympathy: Assessing Overseas Chinese Influence Operations in Malaysia

    Over the last two decades, analysts have increasingly described the PRC’s “Qiaowu” as the “largest diasporic influence operation in history,” with increasingly alarmist examples of the Overseas Chinese manipulating local politics in Europe, the US, and Australia. In the case of Malaysia, the Overseas Chinese exhibit contradictory tendencies. On one…