Malaysia to Join BRICS

So per the article the PM said:

> “When I first met President Xi Jinping, I was attracted to him because President Xi is one of the few outstanding leaders who talks about civilisation. In a sense, he is unique,” he was quoted as saying.

But last year we had a headline like "Malaysia rejects new China map claiming entire South China Sea":

* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/31/malaysia-rejects-ne...

Curious to see how the ocean dispute will play into this.

Former Malysia PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrote the following on Twitter on the Ukraine war:

https://twitter.com/chedetofficial/status/162898188067786342...

In particular the follow up (European's love of war) is hilarious and not an uncommon view in that part of the world.

Whatever I feel about Malaysia aside, it is not hard to take this position if you are watching events from the third world aka the global south aka the non aligned bloc or whatever you want to call it. The fact that most of us were colonised by Europeans at some point of time or other doesn’t help either.

Malaysia and other SE Asian countries were "colonized" by Chinese diaspora, whom control most of the wealth in their countries. Hard work is most definitely one component of their success. How about their insularity and doing business mostly amongst themselves? Try breaking into those social and business circles as a non Chinese.

Alas, we don't hear that narrative because it's only bad when Europeans do it.

Now try the same argument on Jewish merchants in 30s Europe and see how that sounds.