Make no mistake. Jack Ma’s itinerary in Malaysia Monday carried a lot more significance than opening Alibaba’s first Southeast Asian office.

Since Malaysia’s shock election result on May 9, several Chinese investments and ventures in the country have come under scrutiny, and come in for some criticism from the country’s new leadership.

Most involve costly infrastructure projects. But there were concerns that Alibaba’s expanding involvement in Malaysia might also meet with resistance.

Last year, Alibaba announced the first expansion of its Electronic World Trade Platform or eWTP outside of China, aiming to boost the e-commerce capabilities of Malaysian SMEs. It announced it would make Malaysia its fulfillment hub for ASEAN through its e-trading subsidiary Lazada. It’s involved in helping Kuala Lumpur city hall to ease traffic congestion using Big Data Analytics and artificial intelligence. And Alibaba Cloud set up a data center in the country to power the eWTP.

Surely these initiatives couldn’t really have been in jeopardy. People at Malaysia’s ICT agency MDEC, which is partnering with Alibaba on several projects, told me they were feeling distinctly edgy until Monday’s meeting between Jack Ma and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Ma and Mahathir seem like natural allies. Some 20 years ago, Mahathir created an initiative called the Multimedia Super Corridor that aimed to make Malaysia a global ICT hub.

Ma said he read about the MSC back then “and thought, this is an ingenious idea,” which inspired him to look to take his business global. “This morning I thanked the Prime Minister for his great inspiration of the MSC,” he told an audience gathered for Alibaba’s office opening.

Ma said he found plenty of common ground with the 92-year-old prime minister.

“We believe in the Internet, we believe in technology, we believe in young people and I’m very touched and moved by his passion in supporting the village guys, the poor, rural people. We both are interested in how we can use technology to empower the rural farmers, how we can make them more productive.”

At previous Alibaba events, then, Prime Minister Najib Razak was in attendance. And while Mahathir didn’t attend, his new Minister of Finance Minister and the Minister of Multimedia and Communication both did, along with other senior officials.

“We are of course very happy to have Jack Ma here,” said Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng. "We want to welcome Alibaba’s continued commitment to Malaysia and I appreciate your eagerness to work with the new federal government to help spur new investment, create new jobs and economic opportunities.”

It was an unmistakably positive signal; not just about Alibaba, but about Chinese investment in Malaysia.

Chinese Ambassador Bai Tian had only been in the role a few months when the unexpected change of government happened. 

After the May 9 election, “The appalling truth is that thanks to the change of government I find that I had to redo everything I did all over again. I have no choice but to knock on a few doors, paying courtesy calls to the senior officials in the new government and get acquainted with them.”

He said he, like, Ma came away reassured from his meeting with Mahathir. “(Mahathir) said Malaysia can learn a lot from China including successful experience and good practices for development, and science and technology.”

Alibaba, with its advanced use of big data analytics, AI and the cloud, strives to be an ideal partner to help Malaysian SMEs to tap into technology to improve their productivity and competitiveness, as well as to boost the capabilities of Malaysia’s workforce.

Questions still loom over the fate of some big-ticket China-funded or -led projects in Malaysia. But the warmth of the welcome Jack Ma received affirms that the new government is keen to keep its doors open to Chinese foreign investment as well as joint ventures and collaborations.