Malaya, subsequently Malaysia, has experienced a tumultuous history. Its political, economic and cultural structure today could be traced from its fascinating beginnings in the 15th century during the supremacy of the empire of Malacca. All through this time, the port of Malacca, due to its strategic location in the Malay Peninsula, was a major centre of international trade between the East and West. Undoubtedly, besides attracting Indians, Chinese and Arab traders, it has also drawn the attention of the Europeans who had already colonised India and some African states. Subsequently, as documented in the annals of Malaysian history, the Malay peninsula became the colony of three European powers, namely the Portuguese who captured Malacca in 1511, followed by the Dutch who took over in 1641 and finally the British who first annexed the northern Malayan island of Penang in 1786. Except for the second world war years of 1942 until 1945 during which time the Japanese controlled Malaya, the Malay states of Malaya were a British colony until the independence of Malaya in 1957 (Gullick, 1981).
After its independence, Malaya progressed as a democratic nation with a political and economic system which it inherits from the British. In 1963, Singapore (which later separated in 1965), and the British Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya to form what is now known as Malaysia (Phua and Soo, 2004). As a developing country strategically situated in the centre of the Southeast Asian region, Malaysia has, throughout its history been a politically and economically stable country. As
implied earlier, the country comprises two geographic regions separated by the South China Sea. Peninsular Malaysia or sometimes called West Malaysia is on the Malay Peninsula which is south of the Thailand border. At its southern tip, it is linked with the republic island of Singapore by the Johor-Singapore Causeway. East Malaysia which consists of the states of Sabah and Sarawak is located on the island of Borneo which shares a land border with Kalimantan, an Indonesian territory.
Compared with other plural societies, Malaysia has an almost balanced ethnic structure made up of two dominant groups, namely the indigenous groups or Bumiputras and the immigrant groups. The former are the Malays and natives in Sabah and Sarawak who together comprise about 63 percent of the population, whilst the latter are the Chinese with about 26 percent, the Indians about 9 percent and other races make up the rest of the population. Given its multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature, cultural pluralism is inevitable in the Malaysian society (Salleh, 1994: 58).
While Islam is the country’s official religion, Malaysians also practice Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths. Besides the diversified cultural backgrounds of Malaysians, the existence of foreign workers and students in the country has also contributed to the spread of cultural exchange. Presently, the number of foreign workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and other countries in Malaysia is nearing two million (see Kunio, 2004: 93).
As Malaysia’s political, legal, economic and education systems show strong British influence, the citizens tend to be quite susceptible to Western thoughts. Furthermore, ideas continue to flow into Malaysia from Britain and other English speaking Western nations such as Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand because many Malaysians today are students of higher learning in these countries. Thus, reading material, music and television programmes from the West in particular, Britain and America are favourites among most of these young Malaysians. With English acknowledged as a primary global language, many of these young Western-oriented urban Malaysians have adopted it as their primary language. They speak English at home and to each other, and often watch American movies on Astro, the Malaysian satellite television station and feel comfortable mingling with foreigners, especially Westerners. But despite this, the majority of Malaysians probably do not want to give up their culture nor adopt English as their mother tongue. These are Malaysians who
are mostly forty years old and above and who are still closely associated with their traditions and who want to preserve their vernaculars. On this subject, it must be noted that while Malay cultural values are very much alive partly because of its intimate link with Islam, the well-established Malay medium education assures the preservation of the Malay language and culture. Also, the uninterrupted existence of the Chinese and Tamil schools signifies that the Chinese and Indian cultures continue to flourish (see Bernama, 2005).
On the economic front, despite the two major difficulties faced, one in 1985 and 1986 as a consequence to the Persian Gulf War and another, in 1997 and 1998 due to the East Asian financial crisis, Malaysia’s economy can be considered as generally stable. This is attributed to its active participation in the export manufacturing activities and its own rural development policies which led to the creation of new jobs in order to eradicate poverty and restructure the society. In fact, it practices one of the most liberal economic policies in East Asia and encourages massive FDI inflows into the country especially between the 1980s and early 1990s. Nevertheless, along with the remarkable advancements that have been accomplished in uplifting the citizens’ quality of life, there were a number of troubling events that occurred in the 1990s. Although income inequality improved during the NEP years of 1976 and 1990, it started worsening again in the early 1990s until 1998 (Rajah Rasiah, 2004:
162). The government policies of economic liberalisation and privatization of public companies, which will discussed in the following pages, have forced a wider gap in income disparity between the “new rich” and the “new poor”. In addition, the impact of the financial crisis has also deteriorated the income inequality of the population.
Nevertheless, while the issue of inequality of income is still being addressed, from 2002 until the present time, the government has been able to sustain the economic growth to a comfortable level. After an impressive 7.1 percent growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2004, its economy moderated at about 5.3 percent in 2005 (Bank Negara, 2006) whilst for 2006 the GDP made a steady increase of 5.9 percent (RTM, 2007). Its latest figure on unemployment is still below five percent whilst its comparatively high disposable incomes and stable labour conditions have kept private consumption above the five percent mark (MIER, 2006). As such,
overall population, particularly its middle class community, maintaining a decent standard of living and good purchasing power.
Because of the reliably stable economic growth, more and more rural people are moving into towns and cities resulting in growth of new urban centres. At the same time, market centres like Klang Valley, Johore Bahru and Penang island are experiencing a rapid increase in population making the Malaysian society today a predominantly urban and modern society. Abdul Rahman (2001: 84) states that Malaysia’s urban population in 1998 comprised 60 percent. Today, it would have increased to about 65 percent (Phua and Soo, 2004). This figure is certainly remarkably high compared to the projected 50 percent of the urban world population by the year 2007 (see United Nations Information Service, 2007) .
Hence, as a country that has gone through an era of colonialism that comes with various intricacies, Malaysia has proven itself to be a thriving sovereign country. Its unique multi-cultural and multi-religious set up, its strategic location on the world map coupled with its stable political system and constant economic strength are Malaysia’s accomplishments as one of Asia’s most successful countries.