PETALING JAYA: A business group has called on China to support Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in gaining access to its digital platforms following President Xi Jinping’s visit to Malaysia.
William Ng, president of the Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia (Samenta), said local SMEs offer high-quality products such as halal food, health supplements, and artisanal goods but struggle to reach out to China’s massive consumer base.
“If China is serious about helping Malaysian SMEs tap into the Chinese market, we urge China to facilitate access to cross-border digital platforms.
“Platforms operated by Chinese tech firms would especially help local producers and service providers tap into the vast Chinese market,” he said in a statement today.
Ng said China remains a daunting market for Malaysian SMEs due to inequitable resources, financing and their scale when compared to their Chinese counterparts.
To address this, he proposed mutual recognition of product standards and certifications to reduce export barriers, especially for food, cosmetics and medical products.
He also called for greater transparency and inclusion of Malaysian SMEs in China-funded infrastructure and digital economy projects in the country.
“We have in the past, promoted the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) to accommodate certain Chinese businesses to use Malaysia as a springboard to the Asean market, but with mostly negative results,” he said.
“Our own e-commerce infrastructure grew not because of that move, but in spite of it. So we cannot repeat the same mistake.”
The DFTZ was launched in March 2017 as a joint initiative between the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation and Alibaba Group, aimed at transforming Malaysia into a regional e-commerce hub and to integrate SMEs into global supply chains.
Despite the early hype, critics have said that local SMEs’ uptake of cross-border e-commerce platforms had remained low.
Source: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2025/04/17/help-malaysian-smes-to-access-your-digital-platforms-china-told