Malaysia - A unique melting pot

The unique thing about Malaysia is that this a country long time ago have decided on the integration approach. The approach is that the immigrants who have been granted the citizenship can still retain their identity from their home country. Therefore their kids can go to their special schools learning their home country's language, and even use syllabus from their home country and also retain their name based on their original country's name. As for Indonesia, the country longtime ago adapted the assimilation approach. The immigrants who have been granted citizenship must use Indonesian name, go to Indonesian school and learn Indonesian language.

Therefore, today you can see that if you go to Indonesia, you can only see one single Indonesian culture that is only unique to that country. The same thing if you go other asean country such as Thailand and Korea. If you go to these countries cultural performance night, you can only see one cultural performance. But, this is not the case in Malaysia. If you go to a Malaysia cultural performance, you are shown a chinese culture performance that is similar to China, the Indian culture that is similar to India and also even portugese culture! The only unique thing and not similar to any other country is the Malay cultural performance. So, it is indeed a unique country since assimilation did not take place and therefore you have a bit of China, a bit of India and with the background of Malay and also Sabah & Sarawak culture in our society. It is best to say that we have a Rojak society.. And it is the best Rojak society in the world

What do Wars, NEM and ETP have in common

As we all know, the Government have announced the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and the New Economic Model (NEM) as the way forward for Malaysia to transform itself from a middle income economy to high income economy within a short time period of 10 years. All in all, I think the ETP is like a quickwin project where the endgame is to get investments in from the private and foreign and finally to stimulate the economy to a degree that can increase the income of the nation. In the same time, Malaysia must maintain at least a 6% growth until 2020 to reach a capita income of USD15,000. Ok.. Enough of the facts...

Let's now look at Korea and Singapore. They do not have their ETPs and NEMs or vision 2020 but how can they escape their middle income status long time ago? I think that the nation can have the very best plan or policy in place but if they do not have the people with them, it will be a failure. Singapore as you all know is a very small nation. Their progress into a developed nation is simply because they MUST progress or else they will be bullied by their neighbouring countries. That simple DRIVE that they have probably have the people there united and support the government in anything that would drive the country forward. They MUST obey and implement everything fast. The fear of being bullied is greater since the nation is small.

Now let's look at Korea. The main drive of them progressing is not just because they wanted to become a developed nation but also the main drive is the FEAR of their neighboring country North Korea. They MUST develop and capable in defending themselves from the attack of North Korea without the aid of the US and therefore they develop themselves with the necessary industries such as automotive, iron and steel, shipbuildings, chemical, electronics. These industries are necessary for WARS. Therefore they created the platform for a developed nation out of FEAR from being attacked. The people of Korea rallied upon their leader to make things happen since they also do not want to be invaded by another country.

So, what's the moral story here? Probably the best motivation of a country to progress is simply FEAR. Fear of something that would happen if they do not developed and therefore the people would work with the government in making things happen. Only with unity, a ship can move forward. But to make people unite, there must be a common ground. A common ground where the people will accept and will do whatever it takes to make it happen.