Speech by MCCC President, Mr Tan Yew Sing
24 February 2018

Honorable Mr. Chen Chen, Minister Counselor of the Embassy of China in Malaysia,

Honorable Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong, Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities of Malaysia,

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the media,

Happy Chinese New Year!

On behalf of the Malaysia-China Chamber of Commerce (MCCC), I would like to welcome all of you to our 2018 Chinese New Year celebration this afternoon.

I would also like to thank everyone for your support, cooperation and assistance over the past year.

For the Chinese community, New Year symbolises time for the agricultural society, reflecting the rhythm of life of the farmers. This tradition has been passed on for over three thousand years in China and in Asia.

“Spring Festival” (“Chun Jie”) is commonly used in China to refer to the Lunar New Year celebrated among traditional Chinese community, or more commonly known as “New Year Festival” (“Nian Jie”), and some of the traditional names for Chinese New Year include New Year (“Xin Nian”), Big Year (“Da Nian”), and New Age (“Xin Sui”). Whether it is the Spring Festival celebrated in China or the Chinese New Year celebrated by overseas Chinese, this tradition has a history of thousands years.

With the development of science and technology, a lot of new technologies have been deeply integrated into life nowadays and thus giving birth to the countless new ways of celebrating Chinese New Year.

Especially in the era of mobile Internet and young people who are accustomed to “mobile” lifestyle. Shopping, entertainment, travel, social networking, red packet as well as blind dates can all be done with one click.

In the era of high competition and intelligence focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), shared economy, e-commerce and the “Internet+” strategic industries, our country must strongly consider leveraging technology to promote traditional industries, and to drive development with innovation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The expansion of the world’s population has aggravated human consumption of the earth’s resources. Modern agriculture has been developing towards the direction of knowledge intensive and high efficiency.

A good example is the Malaysian Rubber Board. Under the leadership of Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong, the Malaysian Rubber Board is actively conducting innovative research with high value-added benefits, to foster high quality, high yield, high disease-resistance, and shorter maturity varieties of rubber trees. This innovation of science and technology promoted by the government would help small rubber plantation owners to carry out systematic management, and in turn improving the yield of rubber harvest.

Looking forward to the future, with the increasingly close cooperation between China and ASEAN, more and more China agricultural enterprises would make their foray into ASEAN countries.

It can be predicted that more and more China technology “genes” would be injected into the exceptional ASEAN products of high quality and low cost, so that China’s excellent agricultural technology would take root and bear fruit on the ASEAN soil.

Malaysia is richly endowed by nature and hence rich in natural resources. The government and the business community should tap into the current favorable China-Malaysia economic and trade relations as the basis, with technological innovation as the goal, accept and learn the accumulated technological achievements of China with open attitude, in order to better foster and enhance our various traditional industries.

Therefore, conforming with this trend of development, MCCC is in full swing preparing for the first Malaysia International Inno-Tech Expo (MIIE), which will be held in November this year in the capital city’s landmark – the Kuala Lumpur Convention and Exhibition Center (KLCC). With scientific and technological innovation as the main theme, MIIE is aimed to drive the economic development of Malaysia by creating the ideal ecological environment for small and medium enterprises, especially for young entrepreneurs.

In addition, we also see that taking holidays is the popular way of the Chinese in celebrating the traditional Spring Festival. According to the “2018 Spring Festival Outbound Travel Trend Forecast Report” jointly issued by China Tourism Research Institute and Ctrip Tourism, it was estimated that the number of outbound tourists would reach 6.5 million this Spring Festival holiday, the largest in history.

Fortunately, in order to cater for a large number of China tourists during the Chinese New Year, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture Malaysia had issued 200 temporary tour guide licenses, and 2,200 China tour guides are ready to receive these China tourists.

The Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association (MITA) estimated that this year’s Chinese New Year would usher in 250,000 China tourists, increasing from about 200,000 last year.

According to the data of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, China’s outbound tourists account for 1/5 of the world’s total consumption, which is two times the consumption of tourists from the United States, and the figure is expected to rise.

As a popular tourist destination in Southeast Asia, Malaysia should strengthen both soft and hardware facilities, such as Chinese language signage, Mandarin-speaking tour guides, including introducing innovation of science and technology such as mobile phone payment system, in order to stand out among popular tourism destinations in neighboring countries or around the world, so to continue to win the heart of China tourists.

In any case, the outbound of China tourists during the Spring Festival holiday brings abundance of business opportunities, while promoting greater exchanges and interaction between Chinese and foreigners, contributing to promoting “people-to-people connectivity.” The people of Malaysia and China should take advantage of this opportunity to get to know each other and continue the spirit of the friendly relations between the two countries.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The annual major event of MCCC, the Malaysia-China Entrepreneur Conference (MCEC) had received overwhelming response in 2017 and gain high attention from China. This year, we are proud to announce that we have secured the recognition and confirmation of Jiangsu Department of Commerce to bring this year’s conference from Malaysia to Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. Again, this year, MCEC will continue to focus on quality instead of quantity, and to this end, we would like to call on local entrepreneurs with strong ambition and clear understanding of economy and trade between Malaysia and China to join us in this conference, in order to create more specific business opportunities and achieve an even fruitful outcome.

Lastly, on behalf of MCCC National Council members, I would like to wish everyone a very happy and prosperous Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai!