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Malaysia a symbol of ethnic harmony
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-07-10 10:04
KUALA LUMPUR: Twin Towers rising like sentinels in the heart of Kuala Lumpur
- that was the first picture of Malaysia to come into our minds when we were
invited to this country.
A group of
Malaysian women dressed in ethnic costumes welcome visitors in front of a
building built in traditonal Malaysian style. [file
photo] | And yes, when the car took us from the airport to downtown Kuala Lumpur, the
Petronas Twin Towers were, not at all surprisingly, the first thing in this
beautiful yet bustling metropolis to catch our eyes.
But what really excited us was that our hotel - the Mandarin Oriental - was
right next door to the buildings. From the windows of our rooms, the
glass-and-steel structures shone under a clear blue sky.
We couldn't resist rushing into the 88-storey towers, which soar 452 metres
above street level, even before we had unpacked our luggage.
Costing a whopping US$1.2 billion, they were completed in 1997 and were the
tallest in the world until 2003, when a higher building was completed in Taiwan.
"The towers helped Malaysian people build up their confidence," said Tan Sri
Dr Noordin Sopiee, chairman and CEO of the Institute of Strategic and
International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia. "What foreigners can do, we can do."
Towers of confidence
It was at the foot of the towers, that we, in our first ever visit to
Malaysia, started our journey of understanding into this country.
The Petronas Twin
Tower dominate the skyline of Kuala Lumpur. [China
Daily] | We were invited by ISIS Malaysia, a non-profit organization established in
1983, to participate in its international visitors' programme, a programme held
regularly to enable foreign people to learn more about this country by
communicating with senior officials.
According to Sopiee, lack of confidence was a serious problem for Malaysia in
the initial stages of its independence.
At the time, the multi-ethnic state was politically unstable, saddled with
chronic and wide income, economic and development gaps, with few unifying
features. It had been devastated by a civil war and race riots, had a feeble
economic growth rate of only 3.5 per cent, an uneducated population, and no
experience in democracy or self-rule.
"We once relied heavily on things like the Twin Towers - something the
tallest, or the biggest, or fastest in the world - to help us develop
self-confidence," Sopiee recalled. "We were once psychologically and culturally
crippled."
Today, however, after 47 years of struggle, although Malaysia still faces
some challenges, dramatic changes have taken place in the political, economic
and social landscape.
Malaysia has evolved from a rubber and tin economy to become one of the
world's most industrialized states, with a 7 per cent economic growth rate, 90
per cent of its exports manufactured goods, and no racial riots since 1968.
Moreover, the country is especially proud of its fast recovery from the Asian
financial crisis - its GDP grew 7.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year
and is expected to hit 6 to 6.5 per cent for the whole year. The banking sector,
devastated by the crisis, has also been consolidated. In the disposal of bad
bank loans, a recovery rate of as high as 57 per cent was achieved, compared
with some 20 per cent in China.
And its efforts to build a harmonious home for 27 ethnic groups, mainly
Malay, Chinese and Indian, have paid off. Malay people account for 58 per cent
of the country's total population, Chinese around 25 per cent and Indian 7 per
cent, with other small groups making up the remaining 10 per cent.
In this nation of different religions - Islamism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism,
Christianity, Sikhism and Jainism - all the festivals of the different ethnic
groups are respected. Several languages, mainly Malay, English and Chinese, are
spoken.
"We feel pretty secure here now," said Siew Nyoke Chow, director and group
editor-in-chief of the Chinese language Sin Chew Daily. "Malaysia has done a
good job in this respect (unifying different ethnic groups)."
An often cited example of the harmonious relationship between different
ethnic groups is the fact that many Malay people send their children to Chinese
schools.
Nara Jantan, ISIS's senior public affairs and conference organizer, is one of
them. She sent her daughter and son to Chinese primary schools.
"They are bilingual at home - we speak English and Malay. They can learn the
third language - Chinese - in primary school. That's good for them," said the
happy mother.
Actually, it is now very common for Malaysian people to speak several
languages. We were surprised to find that most of the people we encountered
during our 10-day stay spoke fluent English, even including ordinary taxi
drivers and sales people in shopping centres.
To promote English education, the Malaysian Government even requires that
mathematics and science courses to be taught in English in primary schools.
"Although Malay is the official language, most people speak English in
offices," said Philip Mathews, ISIS Malaysia's co-director of the centre for
international dialogue.
The centre's other co-director, Dr Stephen Leong, is even good at telling
jokes both in Chinese and English.
But what surprised us even more is the fact that many Malaysian people can
speak not only Mandarin Chinese, but also Cantonese and other Chinese local
dialects.
Dato' Dr Ng Yen Yen, deputy finance minister, is one of them. When she tried
to communicate with us in Cantonese, we could only reply, "Sorry, we can only
speak Mandarin."
She said different cultures, different religions and different languages make
Malaysia a typical Asian country, and that's what "Malaysia - Truly Asia" - the
tourism advertisement often seen on CNN - means. Malaysia has spent millions of
ringgit to promote this concept.
The deputy finance minister herself is an earnest advocator of the idea.
She wore a special dress when she met us, with the collar and buttons in
Chinese qipao style, a Malaysian batik skirt, and a yellow Indian style shawl.
"With this dress, I can attend any gathering of Malay or Chinese people, and
with the shawl, I can enter into any Indian temple," She said, adding that she
had designed the golden dress herself.
The elegant government minister with her three-in-one dress and bright smile
deeply impressed our group of 15 international journalists and researchers.
But she was not the only charming women we met during our stay in Malaysia.
Women's advancement
ISIS organized about a dozen interviews for us with senior officials, several
of whom were women. In addition to Dato' Dr Ng Yen Yen, we also met Datuk
Latifah Merican Cheong, assistant governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia,
Dato' Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, minister of women and family development. A
female executive spoke to us about the operations of Petronas, Malaysia's
national petroleum corporation, and a lady briefed us on the development of the
nation's Multimedia Super Corridor.
Cheong, who supervises the central bank's foreign exchange control
department, was the first high-ranking woman official we met.
Her eloquent oral presentation on Malaysia's economy and banking sector and
to-the-point style when answering questions made us reassess our view and take
note of the role of women in Malaysia's social and political arena.
We were later told that three ministries in this country are headed by women
- the ministries of women and family development, international trade and
industry, and youth and sports. And there are quite a few women deputy ministers
as well.
Women architects and engineers are also active, many have participated in the
design of Kuala Lumpur's famous skyscrapers. In universities, female students
account for over 60 per cent of the total enrolment.
However, Dato' Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, the minister of women and family
development, believes that much still remains to be done to uplift women's
status.
She admitted that there is still a need to educate men to fully accept gender
equality, and said the concept must be taught in the home, and that women must
show that they are "strong."
Her ministry has been holding seminars and training sessions to help women
become economically independent.
But another problem now is that many well-educated, successful career women
choose to stay home after they get married and have children, she said, adding
that her ministry is working to promote job opportunities to allow women to work
from their homes.
With her well-cared-for face and stylish dress, this woman minister had a
hard time convincing us that she was 51.
"I will be a grandmother soon," said the mother of three children, smiling.
But when asked for her opinion on the possibility of Malaysia having a woman
prime minister, she became serious.
"It won't be too long before that happens," she said.
Women organizations are also active in Malaysia. Sisters in Islam is one of
them. It is a group of Muslim women studying and researching the status of women
in Islam.
Unlike many Chinese women organizations which extend helping hands directly
to women suffering from domestic violence and other unfair treatment, Sisters in
Islam is mainly engaged in training and studying.
They have also gone to the courts to question discriminatory laws and they
often write letters to the editors of newspapers to comment on cases of gender
discrimination.
"It has been a long journey to where we are now," said Dato Seri Shahrizat
Abdul Jalil. "But we have made great strides and no one can prevent us from
reaching our goals."
That's true even for the whole of Malaysia, a country which has already bade
farewell to poverty, racial riots, and political instability and moved onto a
fast development track after decades of hard work.
Challenges
But it still faces new challenges - such as how to ensure the quality and
speed of such development in the future.
Back in the 1990s, the Malaysian Government began to seriously consider how
the approaching Information Age would affect Malaysia and how the country,
currently manufacturing and export-oriented, must move to develop a
knowledge-based economy.
Their answer was the initiation of the country's Multimedia Super Corridor
(MSC) in 1996.
"We aimed to cultivate a knowledge-rich society in Malaysia and take the
country into the Information Age," said Sharifah Hendon Syed Hassan, with the
Multimedia Development Corp, the developer of MSC.
The MSC is the nation's answer to the question of how to jumpstart the
development of technology in the country. Physically, it is a 15-kilometre by
50-kilometre area reaching from Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) to the Kuala
Lumpur International Airport.
The MSC is devoted to creating the best possible environment for multimedia
companies wanting to create, distribute and employ multimedia products and
services.
Several key areas such as e-government, multi-purpose cards and borderless
marketing have been identified to spearhead the development of MSC, the official
said.
Another ambitious plan is to build Putrajaya, the new administrative centre
for the Federal Government of Malaysia which is about 40 minutes drive from
KLCC.
Like all the big cities worldwide, Kuala Lumpur is a crowded city, with
narrow streets full of private cars - mostly Protons made in Malaysia, shopping
centres jam-packed with visitors from all over the world, and row upon row of
skyscrapers.
To ease pressures in the overcrowded city and leave more downtown space for
commercial activities, the Malaysian Government decided in the mid 1990s to
build Putrajaya.
Named after Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Putrajaya has been dubbed
Malaysia's first Intelligent Garden City. It is both the new nerve centre of the
nation and an ideal place to live, work, conduct business and engage in sports
and recreational activities.
This landmark complex stretches over 453 hectares. More than 70 per cent of
Putrajaya is devoted to greenery and water with 13 different gardens.
Putrajaya Holdings, a company established to take charge of development of
the new area, started construction of Putrajaya in 1996 and completed Phase 1 in
2000 with the delivery of infrastructure and key government buildings including
the blue-domed Prime Minister's office and the red Putra Mosque - one of the
largest in the nation. It is now in phase 2 of its development, which is
expected to be completed in 2005.
Walking along the wide, flower-dotted roads in Putrajaya, appreciating all
the brand-new buildings in different styles, or watching birds flying over the
man-made lakes, we could not help admiring Malaysian people for building such a
miracle in only five years.
If we agree that the Petronas Twin Towers were the source of confidence for
Malaysian people in the 1990s, the MSC and Putrajaya will no doubt become the
pride of the nation in the 21st century.
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