China’s Criticism Over Handling of Missing Flight

China’s Criticism Over Handling of Missing Flight
Stirs Malaysian Backlash
By KEITH BRADSHER MARCH 27, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Chinese government’s unrelenting criticism of
Malaysia’s handling of the disappearance of Flight 370 and an angry protest outside
the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing this week have produced a nationalistic backlash
here.
Social media in Malaysia has been flooded with criticism of China this week,
with many noting that Malaysians as well as Chinese died on the Malaysia Airlines
flight. Many on Malay-language social media contend that China is wrong to assail
Malaysia during the national mourning that began Monday night, when Prime
Minister Najib Razak announced that the flight had disappeared into the stormy
waters of the southern Indian Ocean.
Chinese officials’ demands for greater transparency by the Malaysian
government in its investigation of Flight 370 have been met with online retorts that
China itself has one of the world’s most opaque governments. Many here have been
particularly dismayed that relatives and friends of Chinese passengers were able to
break through thin screens of police officers in Beijing and march to the Malaysian
Embassy.
“I don’t agree with their activities because Malaysia has made a big effort to
find the plane,” said Muhamad Hairi Sulaiman, a 35-year-old telecom technician,
as he left a special prayer session for Flight 370 passengers and crew at the
cavernous National Mosque here Thursday night. “The general view of my friends is
that we are shocked that they are biased against Malaysians.”
The burst of nationalism here is in some ways a relief for the Malaysian
government, since Internet users had castigated Kuala Lumpur in the first days
after the Boeing 777-200 vanished.
By contrast, Malaysian newspapers and television, controlled by pro-government business leaders, were circumspect about the government’s repeated
release of contradictory information in the early days, and said little about the air
force’s failure to react as the plane turned around and flew back over the country
nearly unnoticed.
Yet public hostility toward China also holds risks for the Malaysian
government. China is the nation’s biggest trading partner and one of its largest
foreign investors. Chinese tourists throng Malaysia’s resorts and shopping malls,
one reason that more than 150 of the 239 people aboard the Beijing-bound flight
were Chinese.
Malaysian officials have been low-key in their response to China’s anger. They
even asked for China’s help on Thursday in seeking to assuage the anger of the
family and friends of passengers aboard the flight, as bad weather over the
southern Indian Ocean forced another interruption on Thursday afternoon of an
aerial search to find traces of the plane.
Malaysian officials asked Huang Huikang, China’s ambassador to Malaysia,
“to request the government of China to engage and clarify the actual situation to the
affected families in particular and the Chinese public in general,” Malaysia’s
transport ministry said in a statement Thursday evening.
The pro-establishment New Straits Times weighed in with an editorial on
Thursday noting that China had nuclear weapons and the world’s largest standing
army in addition to the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, and
concluded that, “In short, China is a friend not to be antagonized.”
James Chin, a professor of political science at the Kuala Lumpur campus of
Monash University, said the government was eager to avoid quarrels with Beijing.
“The elites understand that in the long term, you have to deal with the dragon,” he
said.
The nationalistic response has complicated the political environment for
Malaysia’s broad-based opposition, which has been chastising the government for
its slow response but now perceives a public enthusiasm for national unity.
Fuziah Salleh, a vice president of one of the opposition parties and a member
of Parliament, said that while many Malaysians were sympathetic toward Chinese
families who lost loved ones, some were also upset at the Chinese government and
angry about the embassy protest.
“Being Malaysians, we rally together and feel it is wrong to treat our embassies
that way,” she said.
The prospect of heavy claims by the families of Chinese nationals and others
against Malaysia Airlines, the national carrier, has unsettled many here andcontributed to unease about foreign criticism. Hishammuddin Hussein, the defense
minister and acting transport minister, declined to address a question on
Wednesday about whether the airline might need a government bailout.
But insurance executives say that Malaysia Airlines is heavily insured against
air disasters because it operates the world’s largest commercial airliner, the Airbus
A380. Air carriers commonly insure themselves based on the number of passengers
carried by their largest jet, in case of individual claims by every passenger or the
passengers’ estates.
Malaysia Airlines configures its A380 to carry 494 passengers. By contrast,
Flight 370 had 227 passengers, as well as a dozen crew members.
Because the details of the aircraft’s disappearance are not yet known, it is
unclear whether the airline could make insurance claims for the loss under a
terrorism policy, a mechanical failure policy or some other type of policy. While
local insurers wrote the initial policies, they transferred most of the exposure for
claims to a consortium led by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, part of Allianz
of Germany, a financial services conglomerate.
“In this case, only a small percentage of the risk is retained with the local lead
insurer, with the remaining proportion of the risk fully reinsured,” Allianz Global
Corporate & Specialty said in a statement, adding that various reinsurers have
already begun making claims payments.
The most volatile aspect of Malaysian politics involves race relations. Malays,
roughly half the population, have dominated the political process and sometimes
limited participation by the country’s ethnic Chinese minority.
But that minority has had weakening links to mainland China in recent
decades. Most people here appear to have drawn a distinction between Malaysian
Chinese and the government in Beijing.
Unhappiness over the Chinese government’s response to the disappearance of
Flight 370 “is not going to affect race relations within Malaysia,” Mr. Chin
predicted