Malaysia is often cited as an example of how ‘liberal muslim’ countries that are ‘capitalist’ can succeed. They couldn’t be further from the truth. Malaysia is one of the most offensive, colonialist states in not just Asia but the world, and her ‘Capitalism’ is nothing but a front for Corporatism and redistribution of wealth and capital along racial lines.
A little description is necessary first. Malaysia consists of West Malaysia and East Malaysia (Malaysian Borneo.) I hail from Sabah, East Malaysia, where my father is a successful attorney and founding member of Parti Bersatu Sabah. In 1963, this state was one of the richest in the Federation, and had a population of roughly 300,000. Now it is the poorest and has a population of roughly 2,300,000. How did this transition happen and what did the role of the Malaysian state have to do with it?
First I should identify that there is no such race as Malaysian. Malay is an ethnic group of people in Southeast Asia that are predominantly Muslim and make up a large percentage of Malaysia. Chinese, Indian, and other native peoples also populate Malaysia and throughout the history of Malaysia the Malays have tried to take from these people and give to their own racial group, using the power of the state. They are true democrats as described by Hayek - they contend that because their actions are done by a Parliament they are right, regardless of their tyrannical nature.
The New Economic Policy (ring any bells…?) in 1971 promised to give control of 30% of the economy to the Malays. It also promised to reduce poverty. As usual, Government planning benefited those special interest groups who lobbied for it but then harmed others. Poverty in Sabah and Sarawak, the East Malaysian states, has increased since independence. We will see how this was achieved later.
They are not content with economic redistribution and control. Just like Mises predicted in Liberalism, in a multiethnic country where the state controls education, forced assimilation will happen. Native languages have drastically fallen because the Malaysian state education forces children to learn Malay. In the days of my father the British administration educated everybody in English and allowed native language to foster at home. No longer the case; not content with controlling the economy and resources of the country, the Malays insist that their language be taught to people who previously would have learnt either English or their own.
The worst economic control to hit East Malaysia as a result of West Malaysian economic imperialism was Petronas. In 1974, the Malaysian state, from the direction of Kuala Lumpur, nationalised all oil in the country. Petronas has a 100% monopoly of all oil in the entire country. It gives some rights to foreign corporations, but only enough so as for people to believe it has competition.
It then proceeded to take the vast oil reserves of Sabah and Sarawak that were nationalised; i.e., stolen, and direct them to the West; 95% of East Malaysian oil money goes for the direct benefit of West Malaysia. Oil provides up to 36% of the federal budget. The Malaysian State controls the richest and most important resource Malaysia owns and has used it to develop the constituencies of Malay voters and leave the East deprivated. If the Malaysian Government continues to claim it is looking after East Malaysia, it must privatise Petronas - or at least, privatise East Malaysian oil.
Thousands of people in Sabah and Sarawak are having their traditional lifestyles destroyed by logging. As a believer in the Austrian School, I looked further than the simple anti-Capitalist argument. The Malaysian Government owns all the forestry in the country. It destroys the forests and the habitats of the people living in them to fund its subsidies; its government owned corporations; its handouts to one and a half million immigrants to Sabah who are all loyal voters of the Government. The people who have lived on that land for hundreds of years had no say when the Government took it over. It was stolen from them in an act of colonialism that is still unrivalled in a hundred years of British rule. And now it is being chopped down. What is the solution? Not environmental regulation… PRIVATISATION and LIBERALISATION of the economic system and selling off state assets to private bodies of people.
As if to add insult to injury, the Malaysian Government subsidises and controls the price of basic goods required for living, resulting in large shortages. How this Government can claim to be Capitalist is beyond any reasonable person’s thought - the economy is planned on a series of Five Year Plans!
There is a national ID database, firearms are practically outlawed, billboards with the faces of national leaders are common, it has outlawed discussion of secession in Sarawak’s Parliament, the Government has refused to allow people to leave Islam, it has unlimited preventative detention…
Malaysia wants to be a developed country by 2020. But it will never be a free country until state assets have been sold off and privatised, land has been removed from state control and placed in control of the people who have owned it and defended it for hundreds of years, and until total independence for Sabah and Sarawak, or at least, substantial devolution happens.
Sorry for this rant but I need somewhere to post this that isn’t full of commies.