Okay.

Maybe we should firstly invite students to say.

Oh, sorry.

So, shall we.

Okay, without further ado.

Okay, nevermind. We will start with the cautiously friendly ties between between China and Malaysia.

I will do a very brief introduction into what what is Malaysia that presents itself as a truly Asia because it's the crossroads of Southeast Asia pretty much of the Eastern Hemisphere.

It's a really interesting country, a country that is mid size, pretty much the size of Germany, which is large by European standards but rather rather smallish by Asian standards with a mid sized population of 33 million which is much smaller in Germany's, but still

interesting.

Very multi ethnic and multicultural. It's a federation.

It's dominated by the malaise Muslim malaise by the Constitution, the ethnic Chinese, which is an important factor also in the topic I'm talking about today, as they form almost one quarter of the population ethnic Indians and many other groups, both are on us Lee in West Malaysia,

as well as the native groups of East Malaysia in Borneo. So if you look at this map, you will see that this country is not only fairly large in terms of the land but also when it comes to the territorial waters, although slightly divided here by the not to not not to an archipelago

that belongs to Indonesia.

If we go back. It's a country which is not large, as I said, but it's a country that is arguably punching above its weight, unlike the neighboring Indonesia, which is really huge.

It has a lot of regional power and rising middle power so to speak, but it has been punching below its weight, while Malaysia considerably smaller has been punching about its weight being, I mean due to being quite active in in the arena of international

diplomacy. It's one of the founding members of ASEAN.

And actually it was apart from being a member and important one of all these, all these groupings regional groupings. It was also quite recently a non permanent member of the UN Security Council which is no small feet, I would say.

And here's the position or location of Malaysia which is highly strategic. And also due to this location, it, since it, it lied on the crossroads of trading sealings between India and the Middle East on the one hand, and Indochina and the

Middle East on the one hand and the Middle East on the other. There was always intensive cultural exchange. So there are layers of Indian Chinese Arab Persian Malay and Javanese influence later on European impact Malaysia is a triple colony.

And sometimes when you, when you hear about the history of the Philippines people would say oh, you know we have experienced two sets of colonizers but rarely it is mentioned that Malaysia had a triple set of colonizers so it's a post colonial state.

And in it means, well, post colonial state.

Not every former colonists post colonial state but. So what it means is that is this actually an artificial creation, which wouldn't have come into being without the colonizers. So this was a merger of several British controlled policies,

which in the end combined Malayos, Sarawak, Sabah, and for two years Singapore. So, and Singapore was the only country in the world, probably that was ever ousted from another country, you know, normally countries or lands or regions want to separate like

Patache or Patani or the Basque region in Spain or whatnot, but here, Singapore was ousted. But anyway, let's move on.

Malaysia is a quite developed or advanced country, one of the most advanced countries of this area, which is the result of the industrial transformation during the long term, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Here we have him on the left. That's him during the first term, while he's not incumbent sorry anymore, but he's became Prime Minister for the second time, two and a half years ago, and despite some controversies around his personality and policies.

He is still widely and or generally respected as a visionary who did transform Malaysia from agrarian export based economy into a newly industrialized modernized country.

He's now 95 and until very recently, he was Prime Minister, he was the oldest ruling Prime Minister in the world. So, if you say that Biden is old, he's 79, while he's not that old, he's still 16 years younger than Mahathir.

So, well, let's focus on Malaysia though. Here are the sources of Malaysian prosperity. I mentioned the strategic position, that's the fifth point, shipping and maritime trade.

So, you profit from just, you know, the, the tolls and customs and operating of the of the ships and the transportation, etc. But what happened during Mahathir's first rule was that strategic light industry mainly electronics and IT components production was was

used. Tourism, it's one of the popular, most popular Southeast Asian destinations, along with that comes medical tourism. It's also an important educational hub for the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and also East Africa, because it provides affordable

education at at high quality. It's also a retirement destination for British and Chinese and other citizens, and it is rich in terms of natural resources, be it in mineral resources, as well as vegetation, such as the controversial palm oil and durian, which we will

talk about in a week of later.

One of its.

One of the important factors of its or causes of its economic prosperity is also the dynamic 7 million strong Chinese community.

23, sorry, 23% of the population, as I said before, of the population is is of Chinese descent. In addition to that there's over 3 million migrant workers or non citizens who come to work temporarily, or sometimes they settle for good, and it

does contribute in a major way to the prosperity of Malaysia.

Here are some of the sources of Malaysian prosperity or before Malaysia was was formed Malayas British Malayas prosperity the rubber tree and the controversial oil palm mentioned the location on the strategic sea lanes.

We see that Malaysia has control of one of the most important sea lanes globally that is the Straits of Malacca.

And very quickly about the political system. It's a very unique form. It has a very unique form of government. It's a federal constitutional elective rotational parliamentary monarchy.

It's one of its kind, the only one, so to speak, because it's a country where the king, the paramount ruler is elected every five years out of nine monarchs on a lower, lower level.

So, it's as if Germany was still super monarchy, consisting of countries such as Bavaria, which was kingdom, and Saxony, and so on. And one of these rulers would be elected the paramount ruler.

So here we have the incumbent young Departure on Agong, he who has made the great Lord. And apart from being a symbolic authority, he hit, I mean, His Majesty, it's usually a man it's always been a man so far does have some, some influence, especially at times of crisis,

and some crises which happened exactly last February.

This is his palace.

You see the prosperity, you see also the forms, the combination of the Mughal the Middle Eastern and other influences.

If we speak of the ethnic composition of Malaysia, we need to mention that some of these issues some of these factors are actually included in the Constitution, which means that there is a special article that safeguards some kind of affirmative action.

In other words, the king has a responsibility for safeguarding the special position of the Malays, and the natives of the states of Sabah and Sarawak, etc.

What does that mean in reality.

What does that mean on the ground, it means that there are established quotas for the civil service, public scholarships, vacancies at universities, etc. for Malays and other so called Bumi Putra, the princes of the soil, you see it's, it's a combination of two Sanskrit words Bumi