KUALA LUMPUR — The crisis surrounding the missing Malaysian Flight 370 is looking to intensive as Senior Malaysian officials are growing increasingly frustrated and privately incensed at what they see as excessive pressure from China.

The search for the jet, which vanished in early March, is testing ties between the two countries in a year that their governments had earlier declared “China-Malaysia Friendship Year” to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations.

Two-thirds of the 227 passengers aboard the flight were Chinese, and some of their family members have led a wave of criticism of Malaysia—with the Chinese government’s tacit support—putting Kuala Lumpur on the defensive.

Many of the passengers’ relatives do not believe the official account that the plane was lost at sea and accuse Malaysia of hiding what really happened. Some of the Chinese residents have taken part in protests in that would have been impossible if directed at their own government, including marching in the streets of Beijing carrying signs with slogans such as: “Malaysia Airlines, You Owe Us Answers!”Publicly, Malaysia has tried to placate angry relatives by sending high-level officials to meet with them. But privately, Malaysia is upset that China has allowed such an aggressive approach. Officials see it as hypocritical for China to be demanding that another government be more transparent.

“There is a growing feeling on the Malaysian side that this is a cynical ploy to exploit families in order to deflect attention from China’s domestic political concerns,” said one person close to the investigation in Malaysia.

The Chinese families have been through an emotional wringer and don’t see it that way. The actions of Chinese relatives have been “purely initiated by family members ourselves,” said Steven Wang, who joined last week’s protest. His mother was on Flight 370.

Ei Sun Oh, a Malaysian and senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said that if the majority of passengers had been U.S. citizens, Americans “would voice dissatisfaction, but they would go to court and sue Malaysia left and right.” Beijing appears to be eager to distract attention from its own limited capacity to find the airplane by allowing protests to take place, he said. “What the Chinese government fears the most is its own population turning its anger against them.” Roderic Wye, associate fellow at the U.K. think tank Chatham House, says that China is also trying to manage its reputation on the international stage. “It is a matter of considerable pride for the Chinese government to show that it can stand up and protect its citizens overseas,” Mr. Wye said. “They haven’t been able to show that.”

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Hong Lei, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that finding Flight 370 is the priority. “The Chinese side will continue to cooperate closely and communicate with the Malaysian side,” he said, adding that China had spared no effort to assist in the search.

On Tuesday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pressed Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott during a telephone call that the Australian-led search operation “should not be relaxed, much less abandoned,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Huang Huikang, China’s ambassador to Malaysia, said in a briefing to local media Wednesday that China’s government felt “gratitude” for the Southeast Asian country’s efforts but said that Malaysia had shown inadequacy in some operations and in coordinating different departments, as well as releasing contradictory and inconsistent information.“But it is a very big disaster and nothing is perfect,” Mr. Huang said. “We can’t pass all the responsibilities to the Malaysian government. … I personally feel that the Malaysian government has put in its greatest efforts.”

The Malaysians have been meeting the families constantly. On Wednesday morning, representatives from 18 Chinese families met with a high-level Malaysian group of officials including technical experts and police, led by department of civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman. The families had arrived Sunday to demand that Malaysia tell them the truth about the aircraft’s fate.

Flight 370 has not been seen since the early hours of March 8 when it lost contact with air traffic controllers on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Officials believe it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles off course. Mystery still surrounds why it went off course and investigators have focused on the crew, but no motive has been found for what Malaysian authorities have termed “deliberate action” in flying the plane and cutting off its communication systems. China is keen to show itself as a superpower but has been unable to match the technology provided by the U.S. and other nations to search for the missing aircraft, although it has sent several ships and planes and provided satellite imagery.

A Chinese military analyst, Wang Xiaoxuan, director of the Naval Research Institute of the People’s Liberation Army, wrote an editorial Wednesday in the China Daily newspaper that said the search has highlighted his country’s “lack of professional equipment,” including undersea probes and satellite tracking.

“There is certainly pressure on the Chinese government,” Mr. Wye said, “and it does help to a certain extent if [Beijing] can shift some of that pressure away from the Chinese government to the Malaysians.”

Despite the spat, however, the long-term impact is likely to be small, say analysts. “The foundation of the bilateral relationship stays the same,” said Huang Jing, director of Centre on Asia and Globalisation at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, who added that the countries have strong economic ties. However, he said, “the situation will remain tense as long as the plane is missing.”

– WALLSTREET JOURNAL