Chinese Investor's Choice in Malaysia Forest Park Investment, has it become an election campaign issue ?

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         In the run up to the  most anticipated and contested next elections, newly launched opposition party Bersatu set its agenda clear, to regain Malaysia for all Malaysians. The recent massive trade and investment deals with China, worth RM144B (HK$250B) was questioned by Dr. Mahathir on how,’ Prime lands in Kuala Lumpur, Johor, Malacca and Penang are sold to foreigners ? These sales of  land are shown as FDI or Foreign Direct Investments to the country !

Alerting the public to these sale  part of Malaysian territory to foreigners has raised a storm and war of words between Dr. Mahathir, the Johor Royalty a stakeholder and the Johor government. The RM443 billion Forest Park Project is a massive City Project in Johor, set to begin construction in Febuary 2017. It has plans to expand territory to build four artificial islands besides land, house 700,000 people along with building office towers, parks, hotels, shopping malls and an international school.

The Chinese are attracted to Johor by lower real estate prices and proximity to expensive Singapore. Country Garden has partnered with Johor state investment to build Forest Park , earlier it had launched Danga Bay waterfront project in 2013 selling all 9,539 apartments. It opened the way for China state-owned Greenland Group building office towers, apartments and shops on 128 acres in Tebrau, about 20 minutes from the city center. Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. has begun construction on the first phase of Princess Cove, with about 3,000 homes. Who will buy these homes after  the state run Chinese real estate bubble burst is clear.

It is cheaper for  Chinese construction firms  to work in tandem with Chinese foreign  policy of building infrastructure in overseas projects to advance their economic and political interests. To market hundreds of new units of housing built every month, some companies began flying in planeloads of potential buyers from China to Malaysia. It has prompted, low-cost carrier like AirAsia to start direct flights between Johor and southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in May. On the first such flight, 150 of the 180 seats were booked by a subsidised tour group organised by Country Garden. Almost half of Chinese ‘tourist’ ended up buying a residence, the developer confirmed in an e-mail to Bloomberg.


Defending the Project, Johor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammed Khaled Nor claimed, the total land size of the state as 1.8 million hectares while the total land size affected in the Forest City project was only 1.977ha, which is only 0.108 per cent of the land in Johor. The immigration department does not hand out citizenship as easily as buying homes in the country he stated. However, he admitted, the project was not 100 percent foreign owned but 58 percent while government partnership stood at 42 percent.

The new party leadership stated, FDI will be redefined as investments in the production industry for local and foreign market and the purchase of lands in a big scale by foreigners with the aim of residing their people will be investigated especially the future political ramifications. Furthermore, Dr Mahathir, citing a report from business news wire Bloomberg, claimed that the Forest City project was meant to entice Chinese nationals, and is expected to draw in 700,000 of them there. He also claimed that they could be given permanent residence status and allowed to vote if they reside there for more than three years.

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