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Malaysia Incorporated: Ethics on Trial
Author(s) -
Aziz Tunku Abdul
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8500.00123
Subject(s) - nothing , prosperity , commodity , independence (probability theory) , language change , government (linguistics) , economics , inheritance (genetic algorithm) , colonialism , earnings , political economy , economy , debt , politics , political science , market economy , law , economic growth , art , philosophy , statistics , linguistics , biochemistry , mathematics , literature , chemistry , epistemology , gene , accounting , finance
It is logical to begin by considering briefly the influence of Malaysia’s post‐1957 social, economic and political factors in the evolution and development of the close and intimate relationships between government and business that have become the hallmark of the Malaysian economic equation. In 1957 when Malaya 1 achieved independence from Britain, it inherited a form of government based on the Westminster model which, with a few local adaptations, remains very much in place. Of equal significance is the inheritance of an economy based on the traditional British colonial mercantile interests centred on the export of rubber and tin. The nation boasted the most efficient plantation economy in the world, so efficient, in fact, that Malayan foreign exchange earnings helped Britain enormously to repay much of its war debt to the USA. It was not for nothing that Malaya was known as Britain’s Dollar Arsenal. Economic prosperity, by the standards of Asia, was not new to the country. It was, however, commodity‐based and opportunities for corruption were nothing like those that presented themselves in the 1970s.