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M. Bakri Musa

Seeing Malaysia My Way

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Location: Morgan Hill, California, United States

Malaysian-born Bakri Musa writes frequently on issues affecting his native land. His essays have appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asiaweek, International Herald Tribune, Education Quarterly, SIngapore's Straits Times, and The New Straits Times. His commentary has aired on National Public Radio's Marketplace. His regular column Seeing It My Way appears in Malaysiakini. Bakri is also a regular contributor to th eSun (Malaysia). He has previously written "The Malay Dilemma Revisited: Race Dynamics in Modern Malaysia" as well as "Malaysia in the Era of Globalization," "An Education System Worthy of Malaysia," "Seeing Malaysia My Way," and "With Love, From Malaysia." Bakri's day job (and frequently night time too!) is as a surgeon in private practice in Silicon Valley, California. He and his wife Karen live on a ranch in Morgan Hill. This website is updated twice a week on Sundays and Wednesdays at 5 PM California time.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Towards A Competitive Malaysia #18

Chapter 4: On Being Competitive (Cont’d)

Microeconomic Environment Enhancing Competitiveness

The macro environment is important, but it is only the enabling condition. It is at the micro level where the nurturing environment is crucial for enhancing productivity. When individuals and companies are productive—creating increasing output for the same input—only then will this translate into increasing prosperity for that society.

What happens at the local level are eventually reflected nationally, both in economic and non-economic spheres. I illustrate this with the tin industry. Tin has been mined as early as the fifth century in Malaysia, with the element shipped to India for making bronze religious icons. The mining process was primitive—simply panning the tin-laden earth over water—and thus could be done by illiterate and unskilled coolies. Smelting too was equally simple. It was this simplicity in both mining and smelting that attracted hordes of unskilled immigrants from China in the late 19th century.

The industry changed substantially with technology, the vastly more efficient mechanized dredges introduced in 1912. Unlike the primitive hydraulic mining that was very labor intensive (employing thousands) but cheap, these dredges were very efficient but capital intensive (expensive). Only the colonial Brits could afford them, and only they had the skills to operate and manage such sophisticated operations. The far fewer but much more skilled personnel were consequently paid considerably more than the unskilled Chinese coolies. While the coolies barely survived and could only fantasize of someday returning to China, the British miners lived in luxury, frequented their clubs, and took annual Christmas vacations back in old England. They could do that as they were like the American rice farmers discussed earlier in being very productive. One British miner could produce as much tin as a thousand Chinese coolies; he deserved to be paid considerably more.

This had ramifications beyond economics. Those coolies, now displaced from the only vocation they knew, had to leave the mines. Some returned to China, others moved to the towns and tried other endeavors like petty trading. That helped diffuse the increasingly explosive social situation in these congested mines. As could be expected, such large concentrations of human beings created social problems like prostitution, gangs, and secret societies, not to mention the horrendous public health hazards.

Even though the industry employed far fewer workers, nonetheless the country benefited immensely, first by the vastly greater amount of tin mined with the highly efficient dredges, and second, in getting rid of the social pestilence at these overcrowded mines. This is important as most leaders today are obsessed with “jobs, jobs, and jobs.” In this case, losing thousands of unskilled mining jobs was good from all aspects.

Had the colonial government been consumed with such mushy liberal concerns as being “kind” to those displaced workers, and introduced rules preventing their retrenchment, the industry would forever remain hampered and inefficient. Worse, those unskilled Chinese coolies would be perpetually trapped. Because they were forced to leave the mines, they had to venture into other activities. A generation later, their descendents had the Malaysian retail market unto themselves.

The third consequence was the saving of the environment. Hydraulic mining was highly destructive, with entire hillsides washed away and the muddy effluent silting and polluting streams and rivers, with the residue creating dangerous quicksand and other unstable areas.

The focus must be on the all-important issue of increasing productivity; everything else follows from that, including the beneficial effects on society and the environment. There will be inevitable short-term dislocations as unemployment. The solution is not to block such productivity-enhancing innovations but to deal with the dislocations separately.

Imagine the consequences had those dredges been introduced a few decades earlier. For one, it would have obviated the need for bringing in hundreds of thousands of coolies from China, and the subsequent social and economic history of Malaysia would be far different. For another, the country would have been spared the devastating environmental degradations from hydraulic mining.

The microenvironment in which our mines, companies and other enterprises operate must be conducive to enhancing their productivity. We must not hamper productivity-enhancing innovations in the name of some dubious “do good” goals. If having those dredges meant having to bring in massive amounts of foreign capital and investments, so be it. In the long run, that would be far better than having massive migrations of people and the consequent social upheavals.

Next: Porter’s Business Competitive Index (BCI)

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

List of racial discriminations in Malaysia, practiced by government as well as government agencies. This list is an open secret. Best verified by government itself because it got the statistics.

This list is not in the order of importance, that means the first one on the list is not the most important and the last one on the list does not mean least important.

This list is a common knowledge to a lot of Malaysians, especially those non-malays (Chinese, Ibans, Kadazans, Orang Asli, Tamils, etc) who were being racially discriminated.

Figures in this list are estimates only and please take it as a guide only. Government of Malaysia has the most correct figures. Is government of Malaysia too ashamed to publish their racist acts by publishing racial statistics?

This list cover a period of about 50 years since independence (1957).

List of racial discriminations (Malaysia):

(1) Out of all the 5 major banks, only one bank is multi-racial, the rest are controlled by malays

(2) 99% of Petronas directors are malays

(3) 3% of Petronas employees are Chinese

(4) 99% of 2000 Petronas gasoline stations are owned by malays

(5) 100% all contractors working under Petronas projects must be bumis status

(6) 0% of non-malay staffs is legally required in malay companies. But there must be 30% malay staffs in Chinese companies

(7) 5% of all new intake for government army, nurses, polices, is non-malays

(8) 2% is the present Chinese staff in Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF), drop from 40% in 1960

(9) 2% is the percentage of non-malay government servants in Putrajaya. But malays make up 98%

(10) 7% is the percentage of Chinese government servants in the whole government (in 2004), drop from 30% in 1960

(11) 95% of government contracts are given to malays

(12) 100% all business licensees are controlled by malay government e.g. Approved Permits, Taxi Permits, etc

(13) 80% of the Chinese rice millers in Kedah had to be sold to malay controlled Bernas in 1980s. Otherwise, life is make difficult for Chinese rice millers

(14) 100 big companies set up, managed and owned by Chinese Malaysians were taken over by government, and later managed by malays since 1970s e.g. MISC, UMBC, UTC, etc

(15) At least 10 Chinese owned bus companies (throughout Malaysia, throughout 40 years) had to be sold to MARA or other malay transport companies due to rejection by malay authority to Chinese application for bus routes and rejection for their application for new buses

(16) 2 Chinese taxi drivers were barred from driving in Johor Larkin bus station. There are about 30 taxi drivers and 3 are Chinese in October 2004. Spoiling taxi club properties was the reason given

(17) 0 non-malays are allowed to get shop lots in the new Muar bus station (November 2004)

(18) 8000 billion ringgit is the total amount the government channeled to malay pockets through ASB, ASN, MARA, privatisation of government agencies, Tabung Haji etc, through NEP over 34 years period

(19) 48 Chinese primary schools closed down since 1968 - 2000

(20) 144 Indian primary schools closed down since 1968 - 2000

(21) 2637 malay primary schools built since 1968 - 2000

(22) 2.5% is government budget for Chinese primary schools. Indian schools got only 1%, malay schools got 96.5%

(23) While a Chinese parent with RM1000 salary (monthly) cannot get school-text-book-loan, a malay parent with RM2000 salary is eligible

(24) 10 all public universities vice chancellors are malays

(25) 5% - the government universities lecturers of non-malay origins had been reduced from about 70% in 1965 to only 5% in 2004

(26) Only 5% is given to non-malays for government scholarships over 40 years

(27) 0 Chinese or Indians were sent to Japan and Korea under “Look East Policy”

(28) 128 STPM Chinese top students could not get into the course that they aspired e.g. Medicine (in 2004)

(29) 10% place for non-bumi students for MARA science schools beginning from year 2003, but only 7% are filled. Before that it was 100% malays

(30) 50 cases whereby Chinese and Indian Malaysians, are beaten up in the National Service program in 2003

(31) 25% is Malaysian Chinese population in 2004, drop from 45% in 1957

(32) 7% is the present Malaysian Indians population (2004), a drop from 12% in 1957

(33) 2 million Chinese Malaysians had emigrated to overseas since 40 years ago

(34) 0.5 million Indian Malaysians had emigrated to overseas

(35) 3 million Indonesians had migrated into Malaysia and became Malaysian citizens with bumis status

(36) 600000 are the Chinese and Indian Malaysians with red IC and were rejected repeatedly when applying for citizenship for 40 years. Perhaps 60% of them had already passed away due to old age. This shows racism of how easily Indonesians got their citizenship compare with the Chinese and Indians

(37) 5% - 15% discount for a malay to buy a house, regardless whether the malay is poor or rich

(38) 2% is what Chinese new villages get compare with 98% of what malay villages got for rural development budget

(39) 50 road names (at least) had been changed from Chinese names to other names

(40) 1 Dewan Gan Boon Leong (in Malacca) was altered to other name (e.g. Dewan Serbaguna or sort) when it was being officially used for a few days. Government try to shun Chinese names. This racism happened in around year 2000 or sort

(41) 0 churches/temples were built for each housing estate. But every housing estate got at least one mosque/surau built

(42) 3000 mosques/surau were built in all housing estates throughout Malaysia since 1970. No churches, no temples are required to be built in housing estates

(43) 1 Catholic church in Shah Alam took 20 years to apply to be constructed. But told by malay authority that it must look like a factory and not look like a church. Still not yet approved in 2004

(44) 1 publishing of Bible in Iban language banned (in 2002)

(45) 0 of the government TV stations (RTM1, RTM2, TV3) are directors of non-malay origins

(46) 30 government produced TV dramas and films always showed that the bad guys had Chinese face, and the good guys had malay face. You can check it out since 1970s. Recent years, this tendency becomes less

(47) 10 times, at least, malays (especially Umno) had threatened to massacre the Chinese Malaysians using May 13 since 1969

(48) 20 constituencies won by DAP would not get funds from the government to develop. Or these Chinese majority constituencies would be the last to be developed

(49) 100 constituencies (parliaments and states) had been racistly re-delineated so Chinese voters were diluted that Chinese candidates, particularly DAP candidates lost in election since 1970s

(50) Only 3 out of 12 human rights items are ratified by Malaysia government since 1960

(51) 0 - elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (UN Human Rights) is not ratified by Malaysia government since 1960s

(52) 20 reported cases whereby malay ambulance attendances treated Chinese patients inhumanely, and malay government hospital staffs purposely delay attending to Chinese patients in 2003. Unreported cases may be 200

(53) 50 cases each year whereby Chinese, especially Chinese youths being beaten up by malay youths in public places. We may check at police reports provided the police took the report, otherwise there will be no record

(54) 20 cases every year whereby Chinese drivers who accidentally knocked down malays were seriously assaulted or killed by malays

(55) 12% is what ASB/ASN got per annum while banks fixed deposit is only about 3.5% per annum

There are hundreds more racial discriminations in Malaysia to add to this list of “colossal” racism. It is hope that the victims of racism will write in to expose racism.

Malaysia government should publish statistics showing how much malays had benefited from the “special rights” of malays and at the same time tell the statistics of how much other minority races are being discriminated.

Hence, the responsibility lies in the Malaysia government itself to publish unadulterated statistics of racial discrimination.

If the Malaysia government hides the statistics above, then there must be some evil doings, immoral doings, shameful doings and sinful doings, like the Nazi, going on onto the non-malays of Malaysia.

Civilized nation, unlike evil Nazi, must publish statistics to show its treatment on its minority races. This is what Malaysia must publish……….

We are asking for the publication of the statistics showing how “implementation of special rights of malays” had inflicted colossal racial discrimination onto non-malays.

3:50 PM  

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