Chinese officially started with Malaysia $13 billion railway project 9, which is Malaysia's largest railway construction project, but also an important part of The Belt and Road "infrastructure construction.
The Malaysia East Coast Railway project is 688 km long and built by the China Communications Construction Co. It will connect the strategic Straits of the Malacca Straits in the South China Sea, the Thailand border and the western part of China after the completion of the construction. This is Chinese "The Belt and Road" initiative one of the most popular project, "The Belt and Road initiative aims to establish a modern" Silk Road ", Chinese will be the world's second largest economy and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe together.
The groundbreaking ceremony of the project in Malaysia Pahang state capital of Kuantan, Malaysia's prime minister Naguib at the launching ceremony said: "for the Malaysia East Coast Railway, we broke the inherent pattern and way of thinking, it will greatly shorten the Malaysia Peninsula coast between the traffic time."
China State Councilor Wang Yong attended the ceremony and delivered a speech said: "Chinese government attaches great importance to bilateral relations, we always believe that Malaysia is a good neighbor and partner worthy of trust, Malaysia has been committed to seek common development and mutually beneficial cooperation with Chinese."
Naguib said that the project will receive 85% of China's import and export bank loans, funded by the local investment bank managed Islamic bonds project funding. In the past few months, Naguib has announced a series of infrastructure projects, many of which are financed by china. China's direct investment in Malaysia grew by 119% in 2017, and continued to grow at an annual rate of 64% in the first quarter of 2016, according to Nomura's Research Report last month. In addition, Thailand approved a $5 billion 500 million rail project last month that links industrial areas along the eastern coast of Thailand to southern China's interior.