“So, is this Malaysia, or have we become a part of China?” — Dr Mahathir asks after seeing Chinese signboards in KL shopping centres

MALAYSIA: Mahathir Mohamad, the former longtime Prime Minister of Malaysia, asked in a social media post on Monday (Nov 18), “Have we become a part of China?”

Dr Mahathir, who turns 100 on July 10, 2025, wrote that on the weekends, he drives around Malaysia’s capital and sometimes visits Kuala Lumpur’s shopping complexes.

He praised the newer ones among them enthusiastically, calling them “fantastic” and noting that they’re bigger and better than those in London or Tokyo.

However, a recent visit to one such new shopping centre was decidedly less pleasing to him as he wrote, though the place itself was “great… but suddenly I felt I was in China.”

He explained that he realized “All the signboards are in Chinese with English translations,” but none of them were written in Malay. “Not at all,” he underlined before asking:

“So, is this Malaysia, or have we become a part of China?”

Dr Mahathir, who served as the country’s Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003 and then from 2018 to 2020, added that he could understand why signboards would have English translations, as this happens even in Japan.

“But big Chinese characters. I was told that some Chinese TV refers to Malaysia as Little China. Why? Because among the Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia displays Chinese characters all over, large and prominent.

Must be because we have so many Chinese visitors,” he wrote.

He implied that signs translated into Chinese—in small characters— would have been acceptable or understandable. However, he reiterated, “Our national language is Malay.”

Dr Mahathir’s post has since gone viral, with almost 3,000 shares and over 4.2 comments.

One much-liked comment reads, “Totally in support of this… There needs to be a push for all Malaysians to embrace the national language, like it or not.”

Several commenters were curious about what particular mall Dr Mahathir had been referring to, and perhaps to prove his point, commenters came up with several guesses, not just one.

Over 2 million visitors from China have come to Malaysia from January to August of this year.

Additionally, since 2013, Malaysia has given citizenship to over a hundred Chinese nationals, noted a report in the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

SCMP added that the city hall of Kuala Lumpur gave a number of store owners enforcement notices as they had used languages other than Malay in an “excessive manner”. /TISG

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