Some backdrop on the matter:
- Trump's visit to Malaysia looks to be a twofold one
- Malaysia clarifies that it still maintains ban on raw rare earths export despite US deal
With Malaysia housing the largest rare earth processing facility outside of China, it's a big deal in terms of who is able to get the supplies of these processed rare earth compounds. And Trump's recent visit was to ensure that the US stands to benefit from that, no doubt as China continues to use this as an ace in the hole in terms of negotiating prowess.
It would be weird for Beijing to want to scrutinise and express their dissatisfaction about anything else as what threat does Malaysia really stand to against China. To put things into context, the latter economy is over 40 times the former. As such, it is pretty much irrelevant to the conversation. The only thing I can think of and would argue that China would want to meddle with is this one above.
