Malaysia PM says can't provoke Beijing on South China Sea, Uighur issue

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Malaysia does not want to
take a confrontational stance towards China over the disputed
South China Sea and Beijing's alleged mistreatment of its
minority Uighur Muslims, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in
an interview published on Saturday.
Malaysia is too small to face up to the Asian powerhouse,
even though Chinese ships surveying its waters for oil and gas
in South China Sea do so without permission, he told an online
news service during a visit to New York this week.
"We watch what they are doing, we report what they are
doing, but we do not chase them away or try to be aggressive,"
Mahathir told BenarNews https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/malaysian/question-answer-09272019150003.html.
"The Malay states have existed near China for the past 2,000
years. We have survived because we know how to conduct
ourselves. We don't go around trying to be aggressive when we
don't have the capacity, so we use other means."
He said that in the past Malaysia used to send to China
"gold and silver flowers every year as a symbol of our being
practically, well, subservient to them".
This month, China and Malaysia agreed to set up a joint
dialogue mechanism for the South China Sea, as ties between the
countries improve. China is Malaysia's biggest trading partner.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been overseeing a sweeping
plan to refurbish its army as the country ramps up its presence
in the South China Sea and around self-ruled Taiwan, rattling
nerves around the region and in Washington. Mahathir also said China's might was the reason
Muslim-majority Malaysia did not speak out much against
Beijing's alleged repression of Uighur Muslims.
"You don't just try and do something which would fail
anyway, so it is better to find some other less violent ways not
to antagonise China too much, because China is beneficial for
us," he said.
"Of course it's is a big trading partner of ours and you do
not want to do something that will fail, and in the process,
also, we will suffer."
The United Nations says at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs
and other Muslims have been detained in what China describes as
"vocational training centers" to stamp out extremism and give
people new skills.
The 94-year-old leader also said Malaysia's police was
trying to ascertain if fugitive financier Low Taek Jho was in
China. Investigators have named Low, better known as Jho Low, as
a key figure in the scandal at 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB),
which U.S. and Malaysian prosecutors say was used to siphon out
hundreds of millions of dollars.