Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad says new US-led trade group IPEF intended to ‘isolate China’
- He was referring to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework set up by President Joe Biden for the US and Asian countries to work closely together
- ‘China is a big trading partner for Malaysia, we don’t want to see any tension, any conflict,’ the former prime minister said
“The US will always want to use groupings like this in order to isolate China,” Mahathir said at an international conference in Tokyo. “Many countries recognise that this is not an economic grouping but it is truly a political grouping.”
The signatories are Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. Together they represent some 40 per cent of the world’s GDP.
“This is not good for their own economic development,” Mahathir said of the countries in the grouping.
“China is a big trading partner for Malaysia, we don’t want to see any tension, any conflict with China and we hope that the US will realise that China is there, it’s not going to disappear, and we have to live with China, which is now richer than most countries in the world,” he said at The Future of Asia, a conference organised by Nikkei Inc.