A TRADE association has urged local small and medium enterprises to up their game and make the most of the current United States-China trade war.

The Malaysia-Foshan Chamber of Commerce (MFCC) said it fears that local SMEs are not doing capitalising on opportunities even after it had matched Chinese businesses with them.

MFCC president David Yeat Sew Chuong said the market is lively now but Malaysian SMEs are not aggressively taking up opportunities.

“We brought more than 100 investors (in July) but regrettably, some SMEs asked us if we can bring the investors to Penang or Sabah instead for their convenience,” Yeat said.

SMEs, even with the government’s assistance, seem set in their ways and are looking inward, he said.

“We’ve brought investors from abroad to Malaysia, why can’t they come down to Kuala Lumpur from Penang?”

Such an attitude is unhelpful and if Chinese investors skip Malaysia in favour of other Asean countries, development in the sector will be stunted, he said.

“And we have no one to blame but ourselves,” he told the Malaysian Insight.

Yeat said the MFCC wants to help local businesses get a leg up before Chinese SMEs enter the Malaysian market and is not receiving any payment for it.

He said businesses cannot survive if they do not take risks.

MFCC held its first business conference in July this year and will organise another next April, hoping to increase the number of Chinese investors in Malaysia from 100 to 350 to allow more than 400 Malaysian companies to participate in the business opportunities.

The chamber, he said, is organising the conferences so that local businesses need not fork out their own funds to get in touch with Chinese investors and explore potential businesses without fearing about cost.

On concerns that Chinese investors will take over local companies, Yeat asked if local businesses are capable of competing on a global stage without Chinese assistance.

“Are there other companies from abroad coming in? If businesses refuse to think in the long term, then how long more can they survive? Why is it that 80% of SMEs are in a bad state right now? It’s not because Chinese businesses are coming that they are doing so badly.”

There is no correlation between the poor state of Malaysian SMEs and Chinese businesses entering Malaysia, Yeat said.

“You may have survived a few new businesses, but can you keep surviving? No you can’t. It’s becoming very difficult. But don’t you want to think of how to uplift your business, including by cooperating with others? Isn’t it better than groaning and griping?”

Any advantage Malaysia has from the US-China trade war will not last and the new generation of Chinese businessmen are increasingly better at adapting to other cultures and languages, he said

“Malaysia has not been managing its economy seriously in the past few years, if SMEs don’t step up, then it’ll be the end of the road for them.”

Yeat said China will not be waiting for others to catch up in its One Belt One Road initiative.

He added that the halting of several Chinese backed mega-projects in Malaysia did not affect Chinese players as a whole. – December 23, 2018.