{"id":87209,"date":"2019-04-14T09:37:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T16:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87209"},"modified":"2019-04-14T09:37:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-14T16:37:11","slug":"chinese-investments-malaysia-dares-something-sri-lanka-pakistan-and-philippines-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/14\/chinese-investments-malaysia-dares-something-sri-lanka-pakistan-and-philippines-didnt\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Investments: Malaysia Dares Something Sri Lanka, Pakistan, And Philippines Didn&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"fs-author-wrapper\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><span class=\"fs-author-name contrib-byline-author speakable-author\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/panosmourdoukoutas\/\" data-ga-track=\"contrib block byline\">Panos Mourdoukoutas Courtesy forbes.com<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thumbor.forbes.com\/thumbor\/960x0\/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fdam%2Fimageserve%2F1139462126%2F960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale\" alt=\"uncaptioned\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In dealing with China, Malaysia has dared to do something Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Philippines didn\u2019t: bring Beijing back to the negotiating table to cut the cost of the investment projects assigned to Chinese contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This week, China agreed to cut the cost of East Coast Rail Link project by one-third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new deal is a big win for Malaysian&nbsp;Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. He made good on his election campaign promise to re-negotiate China\u2019s investments in the country, which served the interests of Beijing more than they served the interests of Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The East Coast Rail is one of the dozens of China\u2019s infrastructure projects around the world \u2013 a bid to write the next chapter of globalization and advance Beijing\u2019s geopolitical agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>China has political and military ambitions to fill this void,\u201d says &nbsp;Xiaomeng Lu, China practice lead at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.accesspartnership.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Access Partnership<\/a>, a global public policy consultancy for the tech sector. Chinese President Xi aims to realize the \u2018great&nbsp;rejuvenation&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Chinese&nbsp;nation\u2019 by projecting power overseas through the Belt and Road\u201d initiative, which covers both Southeast Asia and Africa. This political economy effort is paired with China\u2019s growing military might in the South China Sea and the African continent, posing a growing challenge to the U.S. security umbrella worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trouble is that many of China\u2019s infrastructure projects aren\u2019t economically viable, as they are built at inflated costs and leave countries involved heavily indebted to Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s what happened to Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panos Mourdoukoutas Courtesy forbes.com In dealing with China, Malaysia has dared to do something Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Philippines didn\u2019t: bring Beijing back to the negotiating table to cut the cost of the investment projects assigned to Chinese contractors. This week, China agreed to cut the cost of East Coast Rail Link project by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}