Malaysia welcomes US firms, not sanctions, amid chips push. ‘We have an edge’: Anwar

Washington claims these components pose a national security risk if used by China to build competing technology.

“The Americans can impose [sanctions] if they [involve] American companies. It’s fair. But they can’t impose everything on us,” the prime minister said in an exclusive interview with the Post at his office on June 6.

“If it is our product or some other foreign product [manufactured in Malaysia], we are free to do what we like.”

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Anwar Ibrahim on navigating Malaysia through China-US tensions | Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo

Malaysia, which already supplies 13 per cent of the world’s demand in the industry’s packaging and testing sector, aims to secure at least US$106 billion in new semiconductor investments under its National Semiconductor Strategy.

A significant part of the plan involves breaking into front-end wafer fabrication manufacture and integrated circuit design, an area considered to be the holy grail of chip production that could potentially bring in tens of billions of dollars in investments just to build a single fabrication plant, or Fab.

Anwar said Malaysia has already secured investments to build two Fabs, with one confirmed in Penang state, also known as the ‘Silicon Valley of the East’, with the other to be built elsewhere.

On Tuesday, US firm MKS Instruments announced plans to start construction of a “supercentre” factory next year in Penang, which the company said will support wafer fabrication equipment production both regionally and globally. It did not reveal the value of the investment.

“I’m rather optimistic. That’s why last week we made clear our policy position,” Anwar said of Malaysia’s National Semiconductor Strategy.

The prime minister conceded that the recent flurry of investments by