by Tan Aik Keong (AK)
Following Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Malaysia, ties between the two countries have moved into a deeper phase. Beyond trade and economics, technology and innovation are increasingly becoming a new engine of China-Malaysia collaboration. In recent years, several Malaysian tech companies have struck strategic partnerships with Chinese tech giants, lifting local technical capability while opening new doors for international expansion. Three case studies below show what that collaboration actually looks like in practice.
1. Agmo EV and Alibaba Cloud: a super-app architecture for smart mobility
Agmo EV, the electric-vehicle platform under local tech company Agmo, has gone deep on a partnership with Alibaba Cloud, using its mature super-app architecture — the same architecture that powers hundreds of millions of users on platforms like Taobao and DingTalk in China — to build a highly scalable, modular smart-mobility ecosystem. Agmo is applying it locally to EV-specific use cases: charging-station navigation, real-time battery monitoring, and integrated payments.
Alibaba Cloud's super-app framework brings strong elastic scaling, a microservices architecture and high security, helping Agmo launch multiple service modules quickly while keeping performance and stability high. The partnership has lifted the user experience while substantially cutting development and operational cost, accelerating Agmo EV's expansion across Malaysia and the wider ASEAN market.
Agmo is also co-hosting Malaysia's first Alibaba Cloud AI Hackathon, aimed at pushing the local developer community to explore frontier AI applications, particularly Alibaba's newly released Qwen large language model. Through the hackathon, Agmo hopes to build local understanding of, and real deployment paths for, advanced Chinese AI models, accelerating the broader AI application ecosystem in Malaysia.
2. MyEG's Zetrix blockchain: a cross-border digital identity system with CAICT and Bubi
MyEG, Malaysia's e-government services platform, has partnered through its Zetrix blockchain platform with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and Chinese blockchain company Bubi, to jointly advance a cross-border data and identity-verification system. The collaboration connects to China's national-level blockchain infrastructure, the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) "Spark Chain," enabling trusted synchronisation of electronic contracts, logistics tracking and other data between China and Malaysia.
As a regional public chain, Zetrix — combined with China's robust technical standards and governance framework — is helping push standardisation forward in Malaysia's blockchain industry, while giving local companies a convenient "digital passport" into the Chinese market.
3. Aonic and DJI: upgrading agricultural technology
Aonic, a Malaysian drone-focused tech company, has partnered with DJI, the world's leading Chinese drone manufacturer, to bring agricultural drone technology into Malaysia's farming sector. By combining DJI's high-precision drones with its own data-analysis platform, Aonic enables automated farmland inspection, precision fertilisation and pest-and-disease prediction, meaningfully lifting agricultural productivity and efficiency.
This partnership is injecting fresh momentum into Malaysia's agricultural modernisation, and has drawn interest from governments and agribusinesses across Southeast Asia, helping drive regional agricultural digital transformation.
Closing: a "golden decade" for China-Malaysia tech collaboration
Technology is core to national competitiveness. As Belt and Road and RCEP cooperation deepens, the complementary strengths between China and Malaysia in tech will only become more pronounced. China's lead in foundational technology and platform capability, combined with Malaysia's strength in local operations and application context, is producing one regionally competitive tech solution after another.
From super-app architecture, to blockchain infrastructure, to smart hardware applications, these case studies show Malaysian tech companies standing at the front edge of a genuinely global wave of innovation — with China as one of its most capable technology partners.
Part of the AK AI Corner column. Originally published in Oriental Daily (东方日报) on Apr 19, 2025.