Wee Kek Koon

Reflections | China’s Great Wall, Trump’s ‘build the wall’ mantra and a Malaysian state’s wall ambitions

People from Kelantan in Malaysia go to Thailand for pleasure. Migrants enter the US from Mexico. Why leaders dream of walls to stop them

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A section of the Great Wall of China north of Beijing. Like the incomplete border wall between the United States and Mexico, the Great Wall was built in sections that were later joined together to make a single barrier. Photo: AFP

Wee Kek Koon

Published: 8:15am, 30 Nov 2024

One of the touchstones of Donald Trump’s first presidency was his vow to “build the wall” to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States from Mexico.

In fact, walls already exist along the US-Mexico border, but they are not continuous. What Trump, who will become US president again in January 2025, appeared to promise was a single, uninterrupted barrier running the length of the 3,145-kilometre border.

Recently in Asia, a border wall was also proposed, albeit on a less ambitious scale and for different reasons.

Officials in Kelantan, a state in the northeast of Peninsular Malaysia, want to build a 99-kilometre wall along the riverine border the state shares with Thailand’s Narathiwat province.

People leave Su-ngai Kolok in southern Thailand for Kelantan in Malaysia, where authorities want to build a border wall. Photo: AFP

The purpose of this wall, according to Kelantan state authorities, would be to combat smuggling and other cross-border crime, and to mitigate flooding. The plan has been submitted to Malaysia’s federal government, which says it will study the proposal.