Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said his administration intends to remain as neutral as possible with regard to foreign policies and sanctions by the “big powers”.

“We want to maintain good relations with all the countries of the world without caring about their policies or systems of government.

“Malaysia is a trading nation. We want to have access to all markets around the world, east or west, communist or non-communist, it is of no concern to us.

“Our business is to establish relations,” he told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

He acknowledged that some “big powers” might impose sanctions on other countries, but insisted that Malaysia will not be influenced by these decisions. 

However, Mahathir also conceded that these “big powers” might then impose sanctions on countries who do not respect their other sanctions.

“Big powers deciding on their own will not influence our policies.

“But of course we are very well aware of the powers of these big powers who might want to impose sanctions on countries which do not respect or do not agree with them on applying sanctions on countries.

“But as far as possible, we are going to be neutral and we are going to be friendly with all countries,” he said. 

Under former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak's administration, Malaysia was perceived to be strengthening its economic ties with China, with projects such as the RM55 billion East Coast Rail Link being funded by Chinese loans. 

Mahathir had previously spoken out against China-linked projects such as the ECRL and the Forest City development project in Johor, saying the former could be nixed if it was found to be "unbeneficial" to the country.

Reuters reported that China today urged Mahathir to uphold bilateral agreements signed prior to Harapan's win in GE14.