Textbook on the economic development of Malaysia - covers exports and economic growth, the balance of payments, agricultural policy, industrial development and industrial planning, import substitution, unemployment and employment creation, income distribution and fiscal policy, human resources, etc. Annotated bibliographys, diagrams, graphs, maps, references and statistical tables.
This book examines the various economic, political and developmental policy challenges that Malaysia faces in its shift from a middle income to high-income economy. It covers subjects such as technology, education and skills, the promotion of entrpreneurship, social, monetary policy and governance issues.
This book brings together a set of incisive essays that interrogate Malaysian history and social relations which began during pre-colonial times, and extended to colonial and post-colonial Malaysia. It addresses economic misinterpretations of the role of markets in the way colonial industrialisation evolved, the nature of exploitation of workers, and the participation of local actors in shaping a wide range of socioeconomic and political processes. In doing so, it takes the lead from the innovative historian, Shaharil Talib Robert who argued that the recrafting of history should go beyond the use of conventional methodologies and analytic techniques. It is in that tradition that the chapters offer a semblance of causality, contingency, contradictions, and connections. With that, the analysis in each chapter utilises approaches appropriate for the topics chosen, which include history, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, and international relations. The collection of chapters also offer novel interpretations to contest and fill gaps that have not been addressed in past works. The book is essential reading for history students, and those interested in Malaysian history in particular.
This book attempts to understand economic developments in Malaysia in the early and mid-Eighties, focusing on growth, balance of payments, fiscal and debt trends. They are all seen against global trends, earlier developments in the Malaysian economy and other changes in Malaysian society.
Does the industrial development of a country entail the democratization of its political system? Malaysia in the World Economy examines this theme with regards to Malaysia in the period between 1824 and 2011. Capitalism was first introduced into Malaysia through colonialism specifically to supply Britain with much-needed raw materials for its industrial development. Aside from economic exploitation, colonial rule had also produced a highly unequal and socially distant multicultural society, whose multifaceted divisions kept the colonial rulers in supreme authority. After independence, Britain ensured that Malaysia became a staunch western ally by structuring in a capitalist system specifically helmed by western-educated elites through what appeared to be “formal” democratic institutions. In such a system, the Malaysian ruling elites have been able to “manage” the country’s democratic processes to its advantage as well as preempt or suppress serious internal challenges to its power, often in the name of national stability. As a result, an increasingly unpopular National Front political coalition has remained in power in the country since 1957. Meanwhile, Malaysia’s marginal position in the world economy, which has maintained its economic subordination to the developed countries of the west and Japan, has reproduced the internal social inequities inherited from colonial rule and channeled the largest returns of economic growths into the hands of the country’s foreign investors as well as local elites associated with the ruling machinery. Over the years however, the state has lost some of its political legitimacy in the face of widening social disparities, increased ethnic polarization, and prevalent corruption. This has been made possible by extensive exposures of these issues via new social media and communications technology. Hence, informational globalization may have begun to empower Malaysians in a new struggle for political reform, thereby reconfiguring the balance of power between the state and civil society. Unlike other past research, Malaysia in the World Economy combines both macro- and micro-theoretical approaches in critically analyzing the relationship between capitalist development and democratization in Malaysia within a comparative-historical and world-systemic context.
This book brings together fourteen articles by prominent critics of Malaysian Anglophone literature from five different countries: Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US. It investigates the thematic and stylistic trends in the literary products of selected writers of the tradition in the genres of drama, fiction, and poetry, from its beginnings to the present, focusing mainly on the postcolonial themes of ethnicity, gender, diaspora, and nationalism, which are central to the creativity and imagination of these writers. The book explores the works of not just the established writers of the tradition but also those who have received little critical attention to date but who are equally gifted, such as Adibah Amin, Edward Dorall, Rehaman Rashid, and Huzir Suleiman. The chapters collectively address the challenges and achievements of writers in the English language in a country where English is widely used in daily life and yet marginalised in the creative domain to elevate the status of writings in the national language, i.e., Bahasa Malaysia. The book will demonstrate that in spite of such recurrent neglect of the medium, Malaysia has produced a number of outstanding writers in the language, who are comparable in creativity and craftsmanship to writers of other Anglophone traditions. The book will be of interest to readers and researchers of Malaysian literature, postcolonial literatures, minority literatures, gender studies, and Southeast Asian studies.
"Malaysia is a prosperous, modern Islamic nation in which three main ethnic groups - Malay, Chinese and Indian - coexist peacefully, while maintaining their unique cultural identities. Yet this stable society is founded upon a form of affirmative action th"
The victory of the Pakatan Harapan (PH), or the Alliance of Hope on May 9, 2018 in the Malaysian 14th General Election (GE14) was not just stunning, but historic. Moreover, the second comeback of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad as the seventh Prime Minister of Malaysia was indeed impressive. The results of the GE14 were clearly against the tide as many political pundits and analysts had predicted a win for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition with differences only in matters of margins. Similar to Malaysia’s 13th General Election (GE13), which was held on May 5, 2013, the main issue in the GE14 was also about the economy. The rise in cost of living was perhaps the mother of all issues which caused the downfall of the BN government for the first time since independence. Other crucial economic issues centered on alleged corruption practices and manifested through the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) saga. As a new federal power for 22 months, the PH government had a daunting task not just to address economic issues mentioned above, but also the other alleged economic problems which they had highlighted in their election manifesto. On top of that, the PH government had the responsibility to maintain, if not to improve further what the BN government had done to the Malaysian economy in the past, of which World Bank economists described as a success story, “a very strong economy” and “growing towards a high-income.” Post-GE14, what is the state of the Malaysian economy and its direction? What are lessons that can be learned from the PH economic management? And with the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government succeeding the federal power in March 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, what are the pressing issues and what needs to be done moving forward especially in the context of the economic challenges arising from the pandemic and post-Covid-19 era? These are some critical questions which this book is trying to address. The book essentially argues for the need to give greater focus to economic issues above anything else by envisioning a new national vision and engineering a new wave of economic structural reforms primarily based on insights from the vast Malaysian economic history lessons
