China and Malaysia are marking this year's 50th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations by looking forward to a "more splendid" future.
Both sides are optimistic about more prosperous economic ties, closer political relations and more expansive people-to-people exchanges, experts and senior officials said.
On May 31, 1974, Malaysia became the first founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to establish diplomatic relations with China. It was later among the first countries to join the Belt and Road Initiative and is an important Maritime Silk Road country.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Malaysia's King Sultan Ibrahim exchanged congratulations on the anniversary.
China and Malaysia are neighbours with a millennium-old friendship, friends whose hearts are connected, and partners for win-win cooperation, Xi said. Last year the two sides reached an important consensus on jointly building a China-Malaysia community with a shared future, he said.
Xi expressed readiness to work with Sultan Ibrahim to guide the building of the China-Malaysia community with a shared future for new accomplishments, to bring more benefits to the two peoples, make greater contributions to regional prosperity and stability, and jointly usher in another 50 years of brilliant China-Malaysia relations.
Sultan Ibrahim said Malaysia and China have always respected and trusted each other, and ties between the two have continued to develop. Malaysia will always work with China to bring prosperity and to deliver benefits to the people, he said.
During his visit to Malaysia this month, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said no matter how the international landscape has evolved, the two countries have always treated each other with sincerity, pursued win-win cooperation and engaged in exchanges and mutual learning, making the China-Malaysia relationship a front-runner and a prime example of China's relations with countries in the region.
China is expected to remain Malaysia's biggest trade partner, and a mutual visa-free policy adopted in December has been seen to spur tourism in both countries. Chinese companies such as Huawei, Alibaba and BYD have also invested heavily in Malaysia, boosting digital and green industries in Southeast Asia's third-biggest economy.
China's Ambassador to Malaysia Ouyang Yujing said Malaysia and China are "good neighbours, close friends, trustworthy partners and weal-and-woe sharing brothers whose friendship dates back thousands of years".
Ouyang was alluding to the centuries-old barter trade between China and Malaysia that started with the 15th-century Chinese explorer and diplomat Admiral Zheng He.
He led a fleet that journeyed across Asia and Africa, sailing through the Strait of Malacca. He visited Malacca five times and sparked Chinese-Malaysian trade that continues today.
Ouyang said that economic and trade collaboration between the two countries has greatly progressed, and the value of trade between the two was a record US$200 billion in 2022.
Since the visa-free entry policy came into force the number of Chinese tourists to Malaysia has risen to more than 270,000 a month.
Mohamed Iqbal Rawther, deputy chairman of the KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific in Kuala Lumpur, welcomed the visa-free policy, saying it gives people more opportunities to meet and understand each other.
Zhao Hai, director of international political studies at the National Institute for Global Strategy, part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said young people "need to learn from history, how we interact with each other, how people travel back and forth, bringing the two people's culture and customs closer to each other".
"I think there's a very rich historical interaction that we need to explore, to understand, and then, based on that, we can move forward and encourage more interaction with the new generation."
Janice Jiang, Leslie Liu, Lulu Liu, Nora Zheng, Cao Desheng and Xinhua contributed to this story.