Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad will embark on a five-day visit to China starting Friday, barely three months after his return to power. Given some of the pre-election rhetoric targeting China's Malaysian investments, some are wondering whether he will seek to continue to build on the strong ties forged under the previous administration. Rian Maelzer reports from Kuala Lumpur.

During Najib Razak's time in office, China-Malaysia economic, strategic and even people-to-people ties reached new heights. But in the run-up to May's general election, the man who would become the new Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, repeatedly criticized several China-backed ventures, and recently froze work on three projects worth billions of dollars. Still, most analysts don't believe there will be a major cooling of ties, let alone strategic realignment under Mahathir 2.0.

KEITH LEONG SENIOR ANALYST, KRA GROUP "He repeatedly stressed before and during the election campaign that he's not against Chinese FDI. This government is not ideologically opposed to China. Mahathir in his first tenure as PM was a believer in East Asian integration that clearly is not going to happen without China. I think Malaysia will try to pursue the balancing act it always has with China with the US."

Relations with China, in fact, took a big step forward during Mahathir's first stint as prime minister.

MAJID ABDUL KHAN FORMER MALAYSIAN AMBASSADOR TO CHINA "Mahathir made this pioneering visit to China in 1985 where actually he was convinced of China open door policy. China was ready to engage with the world. He brought a large size of Malaysian business delegation and some of these business people later on were quite successful."

RIAN MAELZER KUALA LUMPUR "Under Najib, China became Malaysia's number one trading partner, and more recently, its number one foreign investor too. Meanwhile, Malaysia's overlapping territorial claim with China in the South China Sea got pushed very much to the background."

Some suspect Mahathir will be more vocal than his predecessor was on the issue.

MAJID ABDUL KHAN FORMER MALAYSIAN AMBASSADOR TO CHINA "Dr. Mahathir, always voices what he feels. And I think on the sovereignty side of it Mahathir could be more forceful on the issue but still in the context of dialogue in the context of peaceful discussions."

And the former ambassador believes that Mahathir's visit to China coming so soon after he has returned to power will help ensure the long-standing and important bilateral ties remain firmly on track. RM, CGTN, KL.