KUALA LUMPUR: Khazanah Nasional Bhd is seeing more investment opportunities for investments in China's technology space.
Managing director Datuk Shahril Ridza Ridzuan said China is a world leader in multiple technologies and far ahead of Silicon Valley, particularly in some consumer and financial technologies.
"The job of investors, not just Khazanah per se, is to identify the right trends and technologies. China has become a mature economy but opportunities will always be there," he said during his presentation entitled ‘Malaysian Investments into China’ at China Conference, here today.
He said Khazanah's focus area of investment opportunities are in e-commerce, artificial intelligence and new media.
Khazanah was among the early investors in Alibaba Group, whereby the soverign wealth fund's investment in the e-commerce giant was reportedly valued more than US$1 billion, a four-fold increase of its initial US$250 million investment, ahead of Alibaba's listing in 2014.
Shahril said China's market is multiple fold times bigger than Malaysia, in demand for goods and services.
"In terms of economic diversification, it is always better to look at more than one market. Therefore, we encourage our investee companies to have dialogues with Chinese counterparts and tech providers to find out and understand what we can do to expand their existence beyond their shores," he said.
Shahril is optimistic and chose to see blessings in disguise when asked to comment on the ongoing trade friction between China and United States.
"Trade friction is worrying but we’re trying to understand its impact to our supply chain. As the Chinese always say, a crisis is also an opportunity.
“That opportunity is vast in the ability to stand as a solid trading partner and industrial base for Chinese investment as well as to promote our products there," he said.