Although the 93-year-old Malaysian leader has been a strong critic of Chinese investments in his home country, he acknowledged that China is an economic power that presents opportunities.
Malaysia has to “accept that China is close to us”, he told the SCMP. “And it is a huge market. We want to benefit from China’s growing wealth”.
Mahathir told the newspaper that the Southeast Asian country will decide how to handle relations with China independently.
“Well, it depends on how they behave. Currently the US is very unpredictable as to the things they do,” Mahathir told the SCMP in an interview in Manila where he was on an official visit.
Weighing in on fears about Beijing’s growing clout, he said: “China’s attitude, of course, is to gain as much influence as possible.”
“But so far China doesn’t seem to want to build an empire. So we will remain free people,” he added, CNBC reported.
The prime minister said that Beijing will make use of its economic strength “to achieve what is to China the best objective – that they have to grow richer and richer, and this is the ambition of all countries.”
“With their wealth they are going to be in the same position that the Western countries were in the past,” he said.
On the controversies surrounding Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, Mahathir said Malaysia was “watching closely.”
The US has said that it is worried about the security risks posed by Huawei, alleging that the company’s equipment may be used by the Chinese government for espionage. Huawei has denied those claims.
“At the moment we have not found them a threat to our security. Not yet, maybe later,” Mahathir said. “But we cannot just follow actions taken by other countries because Chinese technology seems to be ahead of Western technology.”