The Malay language writing system is alphabetic and orthographically transparent. This study aimed to determine whether phonological processing skills predict Malay word-level literacy acquisition in Chinese children from a national-type Chinese primary school in Malaysia. A correlational study among 113 Year 1 Chinese children who are non-native speakers of Malay found that phonological awareness was the only significant predictor of Malay word-level literacy acquisition. The prominent role of phonological awareness among the non-native speakers further supports phonological processing deficit as an etiology of word-level literacy difficulties across languages. We conclude that since the non-native speakers rely exclusively on phonological decoding for word-level acquisition, the effect of a phonological deficit would be detrimental. Therefore, the Malay reading-related assessment battery in this study, now validated for both native and non-native speakers can be adapted as a universal early screening tool for detecting Malaysian children at-risk of dyslexia.