.Chapter 2 Interests

Before the Spring Festival, the second major event happened on January 7th.

After two years and three months of arduous negotiations, the territorial and territorial dispute between China and Malaysia in the South China Sea was successfully resolved in mid-December 2029. Subsequently, the legislative bodies of both sides approved the "Agreement on the Package Resolution of the Dispute between China and Malaysia in the South China Sea". At the invitation of the Malaysian Prime Minister, Li Pingko flew to Kuala Lumpur on this day and jointly signed this bilateral agreement of great historical significance.

No more controversy in black and white.

According to the agreement, Malaysia will hand over the South China Sea islands and reefs and related waters to China at 0:00 a.m. on March 1, 2030.

Of course, this is not without a price.

In this agreement, it also stipulates that within the next ten years, that is, by 2040, China will provide Malaysia with RMB 140 billion in interest-free loans each year, and promise to promote bilateral trade during this period and maintain an average annual growth rate of 10%.

This is true, many people believe that China is using money to buy back its own territory and territorial waters.

It seems that it is.

Only by seeing the essence can you know the truth of the matter.

Although China helped Malaysia a lot in the 2027 freshwater dispute, which eventually prompted Singapore to purchase processed freshwater from Malaysia at market prices, creating billions of dollars in foreign exchange income for Malaysia every year, and also helped Malaysia resolve domestic water supply issues. According to the agreement reached by the two sides at that time, Malaysia recognized in principle that China had sovereignty in the South China Sea and the Nansha and had related negotiations with China. However, in the following year, Malaysia was not active. In order to prompt Malaysia to change its mind, Li Pingko visited Kuala Lumpur five times in 2028 and 2029, and repeatedly made economic and security commitments.

It was not until the end of 2028 that Malaysia began to pay attention to this issue.

The reason is not from China's pressure, but from external pressure. That year, Singapore announced that it would introduce more than 100 fighter jets including twenty F-22s from the United States, and then signed an agreement with Germany to purchase four conventional submarines, accelerating the pace of military expansion.

Singapore's actions triggered a series of reactions in Southeast Asia.

Although judging from the situation at that time, Singapore's move was mainly to maintain its military advantage against Malaysia, because Malaysia had obtained 48 j-22m from China and planned to purchase 48 more advanced j-25m. The two leased 041 submarines have also been put into service. The 042 submarines are likely to arrive in 2032, and Malaysia's military strength will be greatly improved. However, in the view of another neighbor of Singapore, namely Indonesia, this is not entirely targeting Malaysia.

As a result, Indonesia also joined the arms race.

At the end of 2028, Indonesia and Russia signed a military trade contract to introduce a large number of arms from Russia, including 350 5 main battle tanks, with a total trade volume of up to US$17 billion, of which two-thirds will be paid with cargo such as palm oil.

Now, Malaysia is anxious.

If Indonesia only introduced fighter jets, warships and submarines, it might be regarded as targeting Singapore, while the introduction of main battle tanks would only target Malaysia, because Indonesia does not border Singapore and there is a territorial dispute with Malaysia.

At that time, 350 vehicles of 5 were caused a lot of panic in Malaysia.

Although this is somewhat related to propaganda, because Russian arms dealers claimed that 5 is a standard fourth-generation main battle tank, surpassing all other tanks in performance. In fact, 5 is only three and a half generations at most, which is far from the fourth generation and is not advanced enough in performance. At most, it is comparable to the 99a, which made a big splash in the Second Korean War. It is still a big gap compared to the new main battle tanks of China, the United States and Europe, otherwise the unit price would not be only 8.5 million US dollars. You should know that the unit price of the m1a3 of China and the United States is more than 12 million US dollars, and the "Leopard 3" developed by Germany is priced at 18 million euros on the export list. However, the Malaysian Army does not have enough tanks to fight against 5 because its most advanced main battle tanks developed from Type 96.

Malaysia can not take Singapore's threat as a matter of caution, but it cannot take Indonesia's threat seriously.

You should know that 80% of Malaysia's population is concentrated on the Malay Peninsula in the west, and Sabah and Sarawak in the east are vast and sparsely populated. What's more, there are territorial and territorial waters disputes here and the relationship between the two sides is not harmonious.

Now, Malaysia must enhance its combat capabilities as soon as possible.

Tanks in Europe are too expensive and Malaysia can’t afford them at all. Moreover, Singapore is a major customer of German fire merchants, so Germany may not necessarily sell the best tanks to Malaysia. Even if it can buy tanks from Germany, Malaysia will be worried because Singapore is more familiar with German tanks. In Europe, in addition to Germany, you can also choose French tanks, but French tanks are not only mediocre in performance and expensive in price, but also have many problems in after-sales guarantee. Even if Malaysia can afford them, it may not be able to afford them in the future.

It is even more unlikely to buy tanks from the United States, because the United States has formed an alliance with Singapore.

Russian tanks are cheap, but there is no better choice than 5, and Malaysia will not expect to use 5 against Indonesia's 5.

In addition, there is another option, namely Japan.

However, the performance of Japanese tanks has never been tested in practice, and there is no export record, so no one dares to guarantee that Japanese tanks are advanced enough. As for the price, it is even more fatal. Because there is no export, the development cost of Japanese tanks is higher than the manufacturing cost.

In the end, Malaysia had to ask China for help.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, China has launched a "price list" that is very satisfactory to Malaysia. First, at an extremely low price, 300 refurbished vehicles were sold to Malaysia, and all advanced equipment were retained, and new ammunition used by the Chinese Army was provided to ensure that these tanks were absolutely overwhelming in performance, and in terms of logistics support, they could continue to use the existing system of the Malaysian Army without much change. Secondly, forty-eight J-25 fighters that canceled the landing and catapulting mechanisms, and

According to the requirements of the Malaysian Air Force, air combat capabilities should be strengthened so that it can gain combat capabilities that can confront the F-22s. Third, the two leased Type 041s were sold to Malaysia at half price, and two more Type 042 conventional submarines were sold at the purchase price. The Chinese Navy was responsible for training submarine officers and soldiers for the Malaysian Navy and undertake the later maintenance and maintenance work. Finally, the Chinese Air Force helped Malaysia establish a modern air defense and combat command system to comprehensively improve the combat capabilities of the Malaysian Air Force.

To this end, Malaysia only needs to spend 40 billion yuan, less than 10 billion US dollars.

Judging from the effectiveness of improving the combat capabilities of the army, it is more than 50% higher than that of Indonesia's $17 billion.

However, Malaysia still cannot accept it because its annual defense budget is only $6 billion.

This involves the issue of trade compensation.

Initially, Malaysia proposed to trade barter, that is, exchange arms with products that are popular in the Chinese market, such as rubber, agricultural products, mineral resources, etc., but there were great differences between the two sides in terms of settlement methods. Malaysia insisted on the price at the time of arms delivery, while several Chinese arms companies demanded that the price at the time of signing the contract, and ultimately failed to talk about it.

At this time, the Chinese government came forward and promised to provide trade compensation to Malaysia.

To put it bluntly, it means that Chinese state-owned enterprises import goods from Malaysia to offset Malaysia's foreign exchange losses in arms trade.

However, the Chinese government has also made it clear that settlement must be carried out in RMB.

The negotiation level expanded rapidly, and eventually involved economic aid, that is, Malaysia promised to settle in RMB, but it needed China to provide interest-free RMB loans. Because the RMB was not recognized in international trade, Malaysia also proposed to enhance bilateral trade. To put it bluntly, when Malaysia gets RMB, it cannot be used by other countries, and can only purchase goods from China. It is necessary to expand the scale of trade to digest the RMB in Malaysia and ensure that Malaysia does not trade at a loss.

Only then did the negotiations make progress.

It must be admitted that China has paid a great price to recover its territory and territorial waters, but this price is definitely worth it.

Through huge interest-free RMB loans and settlement in RMB in bilateral trade, China and Malaysia will definitely be closer in economic and trade exchanges. As bilateral exchanges deepen, it is not China that cannot be separated from Malaysia, but Malaysia that cannot be separated from China.

To put it bluntly, if Malaysia wants to continue to develop, it must rely on China economically.

Conversely, as long as Malaysia relies on China economically, it will have to cooperate more extensively with China at the political and military levels.

As the cooperation between the two sides deepens, Malaysia will sooner or later become China's ally in Southeast Asia.

From another perspective, this is also an effective way to resolve the dispute in the South China Sea.

While negotiating with Malaysia, China had already begun contacting Brunei with the assistance of Pakistan and formally put forward territorial and territorial waters demands. Although diplomatic negotiations have not made much progress, as long as Brunei Ken talks, there will definitely be a way to resolve the dispute through peaceful means.

More importantly, Vietnam's attitude has also been affected.

As the largest occupant of the Nansha Islands and reefs, if China wants to resolve the South China Sea dispute, it must settle Vietnam, and there is no way to bypass Vietnam and discuss the South China Sea issue.

Whether to talk or not is one thing, at least Vietnam has realized the seriousness of the situation...
Chapter completed!