Kleptocracy and Malaysia's Foreign Policy Change Towards China : A Political-Administrative Relations Account

Author: Abdul Muein Abadi
Publisher : UKM Press
ISBN: 9786294863736
Page: 126pp
Year: 2024
Price: RM35

Malaysia’s foreign policy change toward China amid Najib Razak’s kleptocracy case raises a broader theoretical question: How is the effect of kleptocracy on foreign policy change mediated by the political-administrative relationship? In the case of Malaysia’s foreign economic policy, despite the presence of high-caliber bureaucrats, they were unable to stop the over-inflated loans from being signed, as well as the fire-sale of Malaysia’s Edra Energy to China.

Najib Razak not only managed to exclude those bureaucrats, he even included his allies to propose those loans from China, which ended up being used to bail out the 1MDB debt. This was also the case in Malaysia’s foreign defense policy changes. Despite the Navy’s plan to build the LMSs domestically, the kleptocrats purchased them from China instead. 

Accordingly, this book provides an insight into the dynamics of foreign policy-making in the case of kleptocracy that can be reflected on by other smaller powers around the globe, in the face of the US–China rivalry in the 21st century and beyond.