Xi Jinping visits Malaysia and Bill O'Reilly says we have no money

Fine, I'll talk about the tarrifs.

I wrote this after having a lovely morning at a beautiful lake near my home. As I ate the delicious lovely tuna cheese toastie, I thought life was really grand.

But I have to go and ruin it by writing about geopolitics.

On April 15, Xi Jinping visited arrived in Malaysia.

I honestly did not have deep thoughts about the whole affair and was mostly entranced by the sight of the hot security guards, in full suits, jogging beside his limo.

No, like they're actually hot. No Malaysian in their right mind would be jogging in this heat in a full suit!

I also wanted to express my wonder that, Xi Jinping and Wang Yi (probably one of my favourite foreign ministers in the world) were a mere 45km away from my home.

This almost-close proximity to the people I watched on Youtube every day doing super official things was surreal to me.

This is Xi’s second visit to Malaysia (the first being in 2013). During this visit, Malaysia and China signed 31 memoranda of understandings to cooperate across fields such as tourism, AI, digital economy and more.

But I hesitated posting on social media because I kneeew this would attract racist/sinophobic/ignorant comments and decided to spare myself the pain.

Then, I thought, hey I'll write the post in Chinese instead. Har har, that'll teach 'em.

But before I could, Bill O'Reilly decided to say this about Malays (or Malaysians, I can't be sure with these people):

"Hey, President Xi, let me just break it to you. Those folks have no money at all. They cannot help you, they are not gonna buy your stuff because they don’t have any money."

Me blinking as I watched the video on my China-made Lenovo Thinkpad and grabbing my Xiaomi Redmi phone to type a furious social media post.

First, dude didn't even know how to say "Malay" properly.

He also doesn't seem to know that Malaysians are made up of many ethnicities and the proper way to call us is "Malaysians".

And if O'Reilly is actually talking about the Malays, the majority ethnicity in Malaysia, well, he's a really big [insert pejorative of choice].

Why O'Reilly's insult hits a raw nerve

This insult is actually a very sore and nasty one. I am oversimplifying this, but I will try.

In school, we were taught how the British ruled by dividing the various races into "sectors" or "jobs": Indians did professional, government jobs (they were the lawyers and clerks, for example), the Chinese were the merchants, and the Malays worked the land as farmers, though a select number of their aristocrats were given an education. Due to the heavy taxation, and the wealth of the nation being funelled to Britain, Malays were often living in abject poverty.

After independence, the lives of Malays have improved, but many are still struggling with poverty till this day.

So, it's a pretty shit remark. I know O'Reilly is just a hack whose words aren't worth toilet paper wiped on a donkey's ass, but it was a very xenopobic and neocolonialist comment, so Malaysians, especially the Malays, would probably demand a response from the prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.

Anyway, Anwar did respond on 18 April:

"This is a clear display of extreme arrogance by individuals who are, in fact, poorly informed, ignorant, and who believe that only their group or nation is successful.

“In social sciences, this is referred to as a trapped mindset...a worldview shaped by imperialist attitudes that fosters xenophobia, racial prejudice, and Islamophobia." - The Edge

Will there be boycotts?

Well, since O'Reilly isn't really an official but an insignificant blowhard to most Malaysians, I'm not very sure.

But many Malaysians, especially the Malays, have exercised their boycott muscles over Gaza, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did it again.

McDonalds and Starbucks are probably trembling in their boots right now.

The tariffs on Malaysia and taking sides?

Apparently Malaysia is 14th in the “Dirty 15” list of nations that accounted for the bulk of trade imbalances with the United States.

We were hit by a 24% tariff on imported goods to the United States.

Western media views Xi Jinping's visit to Malaysia as an attempt to coax us to her side. Many assumed that Xi Jinping's visit to Malaysia is in response to the tariffs.

No, his trip was arranged quite a while ago.

In Asean, the ethos is to stay neutral and trade with everybody. We'll happily trade with the US if we can, but since they don't seem to want us....

A centuries-long relationship

Another misconception is that people think China only formed a relationship with Malaysia in the last few decades.

In truth, the China-Malaysia relationship is centuries old. In history class, we learned about the visit of the legendary Chinese-Muslim Admiral Zheng He to Malacca, and the story of Hang Li Po, a Chinese princess who married the Sultan of Malacca during the Ming dynasty (around the 1400s).

Former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad famously said in this Straits Times article:

"China does not have a history of creating empires through conquests," Dr Mahathir said, contrasting that history to centuries of European colonial violence and plunder. "We have relations with China for almost 2,000 years, but they never conquered us." - Straits Times

Cough, yes, Malaya was conquered mere decades after Western powers discovered the peninsular, first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British.

Although the relationship was not always smooth, and was particularly strained during the communist insurgency from 1968 to 1989, Malaysia had always had a mostly peaceful relationship with China.

Of course, many of my readers will know from my writings that the Chinese settled in Malaysia over the centuries and this is a very important cultural bridge to China.

So coaxing Malaysia to ditch its ties to China is futile, especially since they’re our biggest trading partner for 16 years.

Many Malaysians also have relatives in China, and since we have been trade partners for 2,000 years, we have long memories, and so does China.

On a personal note

So, when O'Reilly said what he said, I immediately thought about what to boycott, and realised that I don't have many things to boycott except for my favourite brand of chips, Lays, which, to be honest, I really shouldn't consume too much of.

I'm also not a big fan of boycotting services like McDonalds or Starbucks because I don't want the Malaysians who work there to lose their jobs.

Since I mostly do not use American products, I guess I'll continue life as normal.

But one thing for sure: I’ll stop consuming news about China-South-East Asia relations.

Everything is spun as an us vs them battle. Everything is a competition.

"Whose side are they going to be on?" "South East Asia is being duped!"

The tribal thinking is exasperating; I just throw my hands up. But I guess the 24-hour news cycle beast needs to be fed, even if it's eating mostly bullshit.

Unfortunately, all the insults, arrogant and ignorant remarks coming from US officials and the media are not helping with the world’s perception of the US. In Malaysia, it has been at the lowest of the low because of Gaza, so this is just adding more fuel to the fire.

A Cambodian point of view

After Xi Jinping visited Malaysia, he visited Cambodia.

Wonderfully, my neighbour Dorathtey Din wrote about Xi Jinping’s visit to Cambodia. South-East Asian perspectives deserve to be read more, don’t you think?

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