[The Chinese and Malaysian militaries began
conducting joint exercises last year. Until now, the Malaysian forces have been
heavily equipped by the United States, particularly the air force, and the
United States and Malaysia have enjoyed close defense and security cooperation.]
By Jane Perlez
 |
|
Prime Minister Najib
Razak of Malaysia, left, with President Xi Jinping of China
at a summit meeting in
Manila last year. Mr. Najib is visiting Beijing this
week and is expected to
buy a fleet of Chinese patrol boats.
Credit Susan
Walsh/Associated Press
|
BEIJING — Malaysia’s prime minister, miffed by
a Justice Department investigation into his nation’s sovereign wealth fund,
arrived in Beijing on Monday ready to buy Chinese military hardware, a deal
that will rattle his relationship with the United States.
The presence of a Malaysian leader here would
normally not get much attention. But China is seizing on another chance to best
Washington in the Southeast Asian battleground after a successful visit by the
new Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, who excoriated the United States
during his visit here two weeks ago.
As the Obama administration is winding down,
the Chinese leadership is taking advantage of the moment by trying to chip away
at the president’s signature policy of the pivot to Asia, offering attractive
military and economic deals to America’s friends in Southeast Asia,
particularly to those countries that border the contested South China Sea.
Even visits by relatively minor figures, like
Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the army in Myanmar, are being given upbeat
coverage in the Chinese state-run news media. President Obama has taken pride
in drawing Myanmar closer to Washington.
Malaysia’s premier, Najib Razak, is expected to
buy a fleet of Chinese fast patrol boats that can carry missiles, a deal that
will further strengthen Malaysia’s fledgling military relationship with China.
The Chinese and Malaysian militaries began
conducting joint exercises last year. Until now, the Malaysian forces have been
heavily equipped by the United States, particularly the air force, and the
United States and Malaysia have enjoyed close defense and security cooperation.
Mr. Najib, the leader of a majority Muslim
country, has leaned toward the United States in his subtle balancing act
between Washington and Beijing. He pushed hard for the Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal to get approval in Malaysia. As the United States
increased its activities in the contested areas of the South China Sea, he has
quietly allowed United States Navy P-8 aircraft to make surveillance flights
from Malaysian territory.
In 2014, after Mr. Obama made the first visit
to Malaysia by a sitting American president in nearly half a century, Mr. Najib
was the president’s guest on a golf course in Hawaii.
Those warm feelings soured in July when a unit
of the Justice Department known as the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative
announced it was investigating what happened to $1 billion from the nation’s
sovereign wealth fund — called 1 Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
A complaint by the department said people close
to the prime minister transferred more than $1 billion of embezzled funds into
the United States to buy real estate and other assets. Mr. Najib has been
described as particularly bitter about the publicity around the investigation,
which his aides point out is a civil matter, not a criminal one.
“Najib is said by his aides to be angry and to
feel humiliated by the Justice Department’s investigation of him under U.S.
kleptocracy laws,” said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is prompting him
to tilt toward China in order to burnish his image, restore his international
standing and provide aid and credits ahead of upcoming elections expected next
year.”
Even before the Justice Department complaint,
China had helped Mr. Najib with the problems in the scandal-ridden sovereign
wealth fund. Last December, China’s General Nuclear Power Corporation bought
1MDB’s power assets, a move that helped shore up the fund and substantially
reduce its debts.
In a reflection of Beijing’s attitude, a
Chinese analyst, Zhang Baohui of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, said
countries in Southeast Asia want good relations with China.
“It is wishful thinking on the part of
Washington that these countries will equate their own national interests with
that of the United States and will therefore pursue hard balancing against
China,” Mr. Zhang said. “The reality is these countries do understand that
maintaining good relations with China enhances their overall national
interests.”
Like the Philippines and Vietnam, Malaysia has
differences with China over contested islets and reefs in the South China Sea,
but unlike those nations it has generally played down those disputes. When a
Chinese Coast Guard vessel showed up last year close to the Luconia Shoals —
about 90 miles north of Malaysia and inside its exclusive economic zone but
more than 1,200 miles from China — the Malaysians did little more than make a
low-key protest.
“Since the U.S. began pushing the South China
Sea issue, Malaysian officials have been very careful to avoid being seen as
allying with Washington,” said Michael Auslin, an expert on Asia at the
American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Before leaving for his seven-day trip to China,
his third since becoming prime minister in 2009, Mr. Najib told the Chinese
state news agency, Xinhua, that relations between the two countries had reached
a “special phase,” and that military ties were at a “new height.”
The Chinese news media reported that Mr. Najib
would sign deals for completion of a high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur,
the Malaysian capital, and Singapore, and several port projects. China is
Malaysia’s biggest trading partner.
In some ways, Mr. Najib’s warming relations
with Beijing should be a leitmotif for Washington, said Ernest Z. Bower,
president of the Bower Group Asia, a Washington-based business advisory outfit
that operates in the Southeast Asia.
“The U.S. must recognize that no Southeast Asia
country can envision a stable and secure Asia without China being actively
engaged and participating fully in economic integration, security cooperation
and people-to-people ties,” Mr. Bower said.
“What scares the hell out of Southeast Asia,
including Malaysia, is that the Chinese might try to use their size and
perceived U.S. unwillingness to remain engaged through thick and thin to force
smaller neighbors into sovereign concessions and Sinocentric institutions.”
Yufan Huang contributed research.
