Search

With trade volume registering more than US$10 billion in recent years, Malaysia has already been China's largest Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) trading partner since 2008 and its third biggest Asian trading partner after Japan and South Korea. It is expected that China-Malaysia bilateral trade with an 8% annual growth rate will continue to expand, and this strong bilateral tie is set to be strengthened in the face of Chinese president Xi Jinping's efforts to enhance regional connectivity and especially maritime linkage by proposing the "One Belt One Road" (OBOR) construction. Malaysia is well placed, probably even better than most of its ASEAN neighbors, to embrace the opportunities brought about by the surge of infrastructure development and trade deals that is going to come with the progress in constructing the ocean-based Maritime Silk Road (MSR), one of the two initiatives of OBOR, the other being the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt. With Malaysia's traditional linkage with China's southeastern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and as the holder of the Strait of Malacca, Malaysia is occupying a key strategic location that can serve well as China's gateway to the ASEAN Economic Community. A statement made by the Malaysian transport minister has declared that a few ports in Malaysia has been identified to be part of the MSR. The close ties between both countries have resulted in cooperation in the transportation field such as railway projects and purchasing of trains from China. Indeed, Malaysia is in the process of developing inter-port city collaboration between China's Qinzhou Port and Malaysia's Kuantan Port. In recent years, China's Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group has bought a 40% stake in Malaysia's Kuantan Port Consortium from the construction group IJM Group for a total of US$102 million. It is in such context and with due consideration of such developments that this paper will explore the prospects and challenges facing China-Malaysia cooperation within the overall framework of China-ASEAN strategic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the importance of network trade between Malaysia and China and assesses the extent of product upgrading in components traded. The study brings to the fore the following points. First, China is emerging as an important market for component imports relative to component exports. As such, the increase in two-way flows of parts and components for/further processing and development, implying a shift away from assembly-end operations, remains insignificant. Secondly, network trade appears to have improved the quality of exports destined to China (reflecting a "moving up of the value chain"), but the gaps between the unit values of export and imports have narrowed in the recent past, implying less product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Abstract Although using solar power rather than fossil fuel to generate electricity can greatly reduce carbon emissions, the production of photovoltaic (PV) products consumes a considerable amount of energy and causes substantial emissions. Thus, the environmental benefits of importers and exporters through the PV international trade are imbalanced. Countries that import PV products benefit from PV power generation, while countries that export PV products suffer the costs of energy consumption and carbon emissions during production. Such imbalance makes it difficult to calculate a country's contribution to emission reduction of the world and its trade partners. This paper describes a method to calculate the contribution of a country's international PV trade to emission reduction of the world and its trade partners based on the PV industrial chain, using international trade data from 2008, 2012 and 2016, taking China as an example. As the results show, the contribution of China's international PV trade to worldwide emission reduction is over 1000 kilotons of CO 2 each year and reached nearly 13,000 kilotons in 2016. India and the Netherlands benefit from trade with China, while Malaysia and the Republic of Korea bear the costs of emission transfer from China every year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With higher shares in world merchandise trade and improvements in product quality, China is better positioned than India in the near term for influencing global trade. From the Malaysian perspective, China represents a non-negligible share in Malaysia's trade. The trends in bilateral trade with both Giants however suggest that competition has intensified. Relative to India, China appears to promulgate a more influential role on Malaysia via higher commodity overlap in external markets, greater matched trade that is of vertical differentiation, distinct quality shifts and negative adjustment pressures. Within this broad rubric of trade-induced changes, there is no evidence of skill upgrading for Malaysia in trade expansion with both Giants. This mirrors the lack of product quality improvements and the low levels of export values of high quality varieties in matched trade. Hence trade induced changes from the Giants that have been cited to be favourable from the Malaysian perspective in previous studies, may have been grossly overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of China's WTO entry and the establishment of a free-trade agreement between China and ASEAN on the ASEAN-5 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). We examine the trade competition between the two regions using a market-share model and assess the impact of China's WTO entry on the ASEAN-5 with an exchange rate-tariff model, based on two-digit SITC data. It is found that for the period 1987 to 2000 the competition in trade only occurred between China and Singapore in manufacturing goods, while the competition between China and other four nations was in primary goods. The trade-widening opportunity between the two regions appears much larger than the competitive challenges for ASEAN-5 after the WTO entry of China and the establishment of FTA between ASEAN and China, impacts on different industries are evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper frames the trade relationship between China and Malaysia within the context of ASEAN and the impending RCEP. Specifically trade potentials are derived for the bilateral partnership within the two structures to identify whether China's external options under the RCEP affect her relationship with Malaysia. Potentials for trade expansion between China and Malaysia, estimated through a three-dimensional panel gravity model, are found to be marginally lower under the RCEP structure relative to ASEAN. More importantly, trade potentials appear exhausted for major products traded under both contexts. This suggests a change (decline) in the trade posture of the China-Malaysia partnership, as relative advantages are most likely to be altered under the expanded matrix of Chinese relations with RCEP members. In coping with the larger matrix structure, both nations should innovate new forms of bilateral cooperation, beyond trade, to enhance their strategic partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of real depreciation of ringgit/yuan on Malaysian bilateral trade with her largest trading partner, China, over the period of 1987 to 2013. Using disaggregated import and export data from 39 industries, the results from the bounds testing approach to co-integration and error-correction model reveal that the real bilateral exchange rate has short- and long-run effects in the majority of the industries. However, the short-run effects shift into the long run in nine out of 20 import industries and in 13 out of 20 export industries. Most of these are small industries producing intermediate goods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Malaysia is the second largest producer of edible bird’s nest (EBN) in the world, but it has encountered problems when its main export market, China, imposed a ban on EBN products originating from the country. Edible bird’s nest products are products made of the hardened saliva secretions of swiftlet birds. Purchasing intention of edible bird’s nest products is a vital variable in determining customers’ purchasing behavior for these products. This research explores how attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control can influence the buyer’s intention toward purchasing edible bird’s nest products. A total of 1,361 respondents were interviewed using a structured questionnaire from July to November 2012. Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and multiple regression were used to analyze the data. Multiple regression analysis shows that attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are statistically significant predictors of consumer intention toward purchasing edible bird’s nest products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a discussion on Zainal Aznam Yusof's article "Malaysia's Response to the China Challenge." Analysis of foreign direct investment to China; Commitment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to a free trade agreement with China; Result of the Malaysian government promotion of a multimedia supercorridor; Views of Yusof on human-capital development.