Comprehensive strategic partners but prosaic military ties: the development of Malaysia-China defence relations 1991-2015.

• Author: Bing, Ngeow Chow

China and Malaysia marked forty years of diplomatic relations in 2014. Despite the tragic loss in March that year of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 (which included 152 Chinese citizens on board), bilateral ties do not seem to have been too adversely affected. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak visited China in late May to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, during which the two sides signed a joint communique that formalized the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Malaysia and China. Economically, China has been Malaysia's largest trade partner since 2009, while Malaysia is China's sixth largest trade partner in the world and the largest among the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In 2013 and 2014, public opinion polls conducted by the Pew Research Center found Malaysians to be generally pro-China. (1) Politically, mutual visits by senior leaders are frequent, and the two countries have signed several important bilateral joint communiques or documents over the past four decades--in 1974, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2014--that progressively upgraded the relationship to the present level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Notwithstanding the persistence of the South China Sea dispute--in which Malaysia and China have overlapping territorial and maritime boundary claims--Malaysia's policy towards China is generally recognized as being more accommodative and friendly than other Southeast Asian claimants, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines. (2)

However, there is one aspect of bilateral relations that appears to be growing at a much slower pace than economic and political ties: defence relations. The Sino-Malaysian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership envisages a closer defence relationship. Yet, little attention has been paid to Malaysia-China defence relations in the academic literature. (3) This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It begins with a discussion on how a series of important bilateral documents have provided the foundations for Sino-Malaysian defence ties. It then moves on to examine in detail several areas of defence relations, including mutual visits by senior military and civilian officials, the exchange of military students, arms sales, defence and security dialogues and combined military exercises. The final section assesses the state of Malaysia-China defence ties. The major sources for this article are drawn from newspaper reports, or reports from online news portals, most of them from Malaysia and China. In addition, from March to May 2014, the author carried out semi-structured interviews with a Chinese defence official based in Kuala Lumpur and three Malaysian military officials who have had experiences in or knowledge of Malaysia-China defence ties. (4)

Background: Evolving Defence Ties

In 1974, Malaysia became the first ASEAN country to establish diplomatic ties with China. However, from the very beginning two issues continued to make Malaysian leaders wary of China. The first was the Chinese Communist Party's continued support for the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), which was then waging a guerrilla war against the Malaysian government. The second issue was Beijing's policy towards Malaysia's ethnic Chinese community. Malaysia suspected China of treating overseas Chinese as their own nationals rather than citizens of the countries they had settled in. Therefore, as groundbreaking as the 1974 decision was, Malaysia did not immediately develop close ties with China. In fact it was not until China introduced economic reforms in 1978, and particularly the end of the CPM insurgency in 1989, that relations began to improve.

Nevertheless, even as old issues gradually disappeared, new issues began to emerge, especially the South China Sea dispute. While in the 1970s and 1980s Malaysia was much more suspicious and worried about Vietnamese claims and actions in the disputed maritime area, (5) in the late 1980s a combination of factors made Malaysia more aware and worried about China. These factors included the Sino-Soviet rapprochement (which freed the Chinese navy from being preoccupied with the threat posed by the Soviet Pacific Fleet) and China's actions in the Johnson Reef South skirmish in 1988, which Malaysia watched anxiously as China defeated Vietnamese naval forces. (6) These developments prompted a well-known Malaysian security analyst to argue in 1991 that "Malaysia has, and will in the foreseeable future, regard China as its greatest threat in one form or another." (7) The then Malaysian Chief of Armed Forces, General Hashim Mohamed Ali, asserted in 1992 that "The Malaysian armed forces will fight to the end to protect the nation's sovereignty should there be any use of force by countries claiming ownership of the Spratly archipelago" and warned ASEAN to be "wary of China's military expansion". (8)

Yet the early 1990s also saw the first tentative steps towards the establishment of defence ties between Malaysia and China. For Beijing, the main purpose of conducting military diplomacy with Malaysia, as well as with other Southeast Asian countries, was to persuade them that China did not pose a strategic threat, and that it was sincere about its pledge not to seek hegemony. In addition, China wanted to cultivate a positive image among regional armed forces. (9) For example, a Malaysian defence official wrote in a national newspaper after his visit to China as a guest of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) that "there are strong indications that China is a benign power". (10) For Malaysia, engaging China in the defence sector provided an important opportunity to better understand Chinese thinking on military affairs pertaining to the region (and beyond), and occasionally, to explore the possibility of buying Chinese-made weapons systems. For these reasons, Malaysia and China have emphasized the importance of expanding bilateral defence ties.

Mutual visits of defence ministers began in 1992 and the two countries established defence attache offices in their respective embassies in 1995. The political will to create, sustain and strengthen bilateral defence relations is embodied in four bilateral documents: the 1999 Framework for Future Bilateral Cooperation; the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Defence Cooperation; the 2005 Joint Communique; and the 2014 Joint Communique.

The 1999 Framework, which was a bilateral agreement aimed at improving long-term, institutionalized, and multifaceted cooperation between China and Malaysia, includes a clause stating that both countries should:

promote defence cooperation by facilitating the exchange of visits at various levels, including study visits, ship visits, training, exchange of information/intelligence, organizing of seminars, and undertaking mutual/beneficial research and development besides exchange of high ranking military officers. In the area of defence industry, both sides will encourage reciprocal visits by officials of the defence industry companies and organize exhibitions, seminars and workshops to explore the possibility of identifying joint or co-production projects. (11) In September 2005, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Defence Cooperation. (12) In the view of one Chinese official, this MOU "laid down the guiding thought and the basic principles (for bilateral defence relations), pushes bilateral military ties to a new phase, and results in the stable development (of the relationship)". (13) The MOU identifies several areas of defence cooperation, including, inter alia, the establishment of a security and defence consultation mechanism, officer training, high-level visits and exchange of information. The MOU was preceded by a 2004 Joint Communique, and followed by another Joint Communique in 2005. While the 2004 Joint Communique (which formalized the beginning of a Strategic Partnership) was silent on defence ties, the 2005 Joint Communique mentioned the expansion of military exchanges, the promotion of greater cooperation in the defence sector, positive appraisal of the 2005 MOU, the establishment of a defence and security consultation mechanism and possible cooperation between the two countries' defence industries.

In October 2013, during a visit to Malaysia, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed upgrading the two countries' Strategic Partnership into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. To that end, Xi put forward a five-point proposal that covered political, economic, science and technology, military and people-to-people exchanges. (14) To underscore the elevation of the bilateral relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, during a visit to China by Prime Minister Najib in May 2014, the two sides signed a new Joint Communique. Clause 22 states that:

both sides agreed to strengthen defence cooperation to enhance rapport, understanding and coordination between the defence agencies of China and Malaysia. The aforesaid cooperation may include exchange of high-level visits and meetings, joint exercises, (15) personnel training, setting up a hot-line for communication between the two Armed Forces, and exchange of port-call visits by both navies. Both countries also agreed to promote cooperation in defence science, technology and industry based on the principles of equality and mutual benefit with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the field of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. (16) From these official statements it can be seen that both countries made a firm commitment to strengthen defence ties. These documents cover a wide variety of cooperative activities. However, it will be shown that despite the stated will to strengthen defence ties, progress has been greatly uneven.

Mutual Visits of Senior Defence Officials

Although it was not reported at the time, the year 1991 marked the beginning of...