Why has Malaysia failed to develop into a first world country like Singapore?

马来西亚为什么没能发展成像新加坡那样的一流国家？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Vindula Pussepitiya

First of all, if someone is under the impression that Singapore serves as a good model for Malaysia to follow they are deeply mistaken. Singapore is an offshore financial center that was created by the British for the very purpose of trade therefore as long as the country is able to maintain at least a slight advantage over its neighbors in regulations, labor force and political stability they are going to prosper. On the other hand Malaysia is not a mere city state like Singapore. It has a much larger population which at the time of independence was mostly rural therefore the development needs of a “proper country” like Malaysia is very different from a city state like Singapore or Hong Kong. Therefore in order to have a more insightful answer, the question needs to be rephrased as: “Why has Malaysia failed to develop into a first world country?”,leaving aside any references to Singapore as this assumes Singapore should act as the benchmark Malaysia needs to follow.

首先，如果有人认为新加坡是马来西亚学习的好榜样，那他们就大错特错了。新加坡是一个离岸金融中心，是英国人为了贸易而创建的，因此，只要这个国家能够在监管、劳动力和政治稳定方面保持至少比邻国有一点优势，他们就能繁荣昌盛。而马来西亚不像新加坡那样，只是一个城市国家。马来西亚人口更多，独立时基本还是农村，所以马来西亚这样的“正统国家”的发展需求与新加坡或香港这样的城市国家非常不同。如果想寻找一个更深刻的答案，要把这个问题改写为：“为什么马来西亚没能发展成为第一世界国家？”，不用提及新加坡，因为原来的问题就认定了新加坡是马来西亚效仿的目标。

Malaysia in 1965 (year of Singapore independence), had a lot more in common with South Korea or Taiwan in terms of the structure of the economy therefore these two countries present better examples that Malaysia could have followed but unfortunately none of the leaders of Malaysia took this seriously until Mahathir’s “Look East” policy. Even then the implementation of this developmental model was poor thus Malaysia benefited very little from it.

If we were to look at South Korea and Taiwan on their trajectory of economic growth which could have been more successfully followed by Malaysia, there growth was driven by 3 key policies:

1965年(也即新加坡独立那一年)的马来西亚，在经济结构方面和韩国或台湾有更多的共同点，因此这两个国家倒是马来西亚可以效仿的更好目标，但可惜的是在马哈蒂尔提出“向东看”政策之前，马来西亚的领导人都没有认真对待这一点。后来这个政策的执行情况也很差，所以马来西亚从中受益很少。

如果我们看看韩国和中国台湾的经济增长轨迹，马来西亚本可以好好效仿获得成功的，这些国家的增长是由3个关键政策推动的：

1.Land reform: Distribution of land among the rural peasantry along with the provision of fair credit, agricultural infrastructure, extension services and market arrangements. The aim here is to achieve the highest possible level of productivity from a largely rural workforce and limited capital input.

1.土地改革：为农村农民分配土地，同时提供信贷额度、农业基础设施、延伸服务和市场安排。这样做的目的是利用农村的劳动力和有限的资本投入，实现尽可能高的生产力水平。

2.Export oriented industrialization: Cajoling the most capable entrepreneurs to undertake manufacturing ventures in ways that allow their firms to proceed up the technological learning curve as soon as possible. The key detail here is to couple these ventures with export discipline, meaning government support for the enterprises should only be available as long as they are willing to export and develop foreign markets for their products. It is also important for the state to cull under-performing enterprises therefore removing losers from the market.

2.以出口为导向的工业化：说服最有能力的企业家投资制造业，让他们的公司能够尽快提高技术学习曲线。还有一点很重要，要将这些企业与出口管理结合起来，只有在企业愿意出口并为其产品开发国外市场的情况下，政府才应该对企业提供支持。同样重要的是，政府要淘汰表现不佳的企业，将其从市场中剔除。

3.Keep the financial markets on a tight leash and have capital controls thereby letting the state leverage the financial system to achieve goals 1 and 2 listed above.

3. 严格控制金融市场，实行资本管制，从而让国家利用金融体系实现上述目标1和2。

Unfortunately Malaysia did not show sufficient political will and vision to implement these 3 policies therefore could not industrialize like South Korea or Taiwan. These could have been the only avenues by which Malaysia could have attained standards of living nearing that of Singapore. To further emphasize on this point I would like to go through on how Malaysia fared on each policy.

不幸的是，马来西亚未能表现出足够的政治意愿和远见来实施这三项政策，因此无法像韩国或台湾那样顺利实现工业化。而这本来可能就是马来西亚达到新加坡生活水平的唯一途径。为了进一步强调这一点，我想详细说明一下马来西亚在每项政策上的执行情况。

1.Malaysia did not have proper land reform. The only thing that came close to it was the FELDA scheme. Even then, the model was based on the colonial structure of agriculture with little focus on making maxmum use out of the rural workforce and was more or less a welfare measure for the rural poor. This left the productivity of the rural sector at a subpar level.

1. 马来西亚没有进行适当的土地改革，只推行过类似的FELDA计划。但这种模式还是基于殖民时期的农业结构，没有尽可能地利用农村劳动力，而是一种针对农村穷人的福利措施。这使得农业部门的生产率低于平均水平。

2.Malaysia showed little interest in export oriented industrialization initially. This caused the nation to waste a lot of precious time by continuing the status quo of a colonial plantation based economy followed by some dabbling in import substitution industrialization. This caused very little industrialization in the country and instead produced a few a rent seeking ventures. Finally, Mahathir attempted some real industrialization by establishing ventures like Proton and Perwaja Steel. However, instead of pushing these projects on private firms, they were set up as government enterprises and they both had very little success. Instead of undertaking industrial ventures the most capable entrepreneurs of Malaysia ended up in sectors such as plantations, mining and real estate and at worst many simply became rentier capitalists benefiting from government sanctioned revenue farms like flour milling, casinos and mobile telephony licences. These businesses have contributed very little towards industrial development of Malaysia. When industries were eventually established in Malaysia, it was mostly foreign owned. This meant the capital and technical know-how was foreign therefore Malaysia simply rented out its cheap labor force. Malaysia gained little in the way of technological progress from this development. Instead this resulted in what is known as “technology-less industrialization” which was a phenomenon common allover southeast Asia in 1980s and 1990s.

2. 马来西亚最初对发展以出口为导向的工业化兴趣不大。这导致国家浪费了大量宝贵的时间，至今维持以殖民种植园为基础的经济现状，然后用进口替代了工业化。这导致马来西亚几乎没有工业产业，催生了一些寻租企业。

最后，马哈蒂尔通过建立Proton和Perwaja Steel等企业，尝试了一些真正的工业化进程。但政府并没有把这些项目推给私营企业，而是把它们定为政府企业，两个企业都不太成功。

马来西亚最有能力的企业家都没有投身工业，而是涉足种植园、矿业和房地产等行业。最糟糕的是，很多人都成了依赖收租收入的资本家，从政府批准的面粉加工厂、赌场和移动电话牌照等项目中受益。

这些企业对马来西亚的工业发展贡献甚微。在马来西亚建立的工厂主要都是外国企业。这意味着资本和技术都掌握在外国人手中，马来西亚只是出租其廉价劳动力。马来西亚几乎没有从这一发展中获得技术的进步。这种状况导致了所谓的“无技术工业化”，这是20世纪80年代和90年代东南亚普遍存在的现象。

3.Given that little progress was made in the first two policy areas, it’s a waste of time to discuss how capital markets were used two meet the earlier objectives. Malaysian government gave plenty of freedom to the financial markets and had few capital controls therefore the financial sector was almost never leveraged for industrialization or agricultural empowerment.

3.鉴于前两项政策收效甚微，讨论如何利用资本市场来实现早期目标纯属浪费时间。马来西亚政府给予金融市场足够的自由，几乎没有资本管制，因此金融部门几乎从没有为工业化或农业赋权。

As you can see the failure to follow through these 3 basic policy objectives have meant that Malaysia was unable to industrialize itself to reach the standards of living enjoyed by citizens of nations like Singapore. If Malaysian leadership can correct itself on these points, it is not impossible for a nation like Malaysia to become a developed country.

正如你所看到的，这三个基本政策的执行不到位意味着马来西亚没能实现工业化，没能追上新加坡等国家公民所享有的生活水平。如果马来西亚的领导层能够在这些问题上自省，马来西亚这样的国家成为发达国家也并非不可能。

Ron Yeo

PS: Please do not copy this answer and paste it onto other sites like reddit

I would say that Malaysia has even greater economic potential than Singapore, despite widespread corruption, nepotism and cronyism infecting Malaysia’s government at almost every level.

As a local Singaporean, i would characterize Malaysia as a “Second World” develo nations with small isolated pockets of First World prosperity.

请不要把这个答案复制到Reddit等其他网站。

我想说，马来西亚的经济潜力其实比新加坡还大，不过腐败、裙带关系和任人唯亲的现象在马来西亚政府上下非常普遍。

作为一个新加坡人，我认为马来西亚是一个“第二世界”的发展中国家，拥有一小块孤立的第一世界繁荣地区。

Natural reserves of oil and gas, along with agricultural commodities like palm oil, has allowed Malaysia to earn considerable foreign exchange reserves.

But unlike many other countries that have suffered from the resource curse, and despite widespread and massive corruption within Malaysia’s government, Malaysia’s government has used its revenue from natural resources to do 2 very important things:

石油和天然气储备，以及棕榈油等农产品，使马来西亚获得了可观的外汇储备。

但和其他许多遭受资源诅咒的国家不同，虽然马来西亚政府腐败严重，但马来西亚政府利用自然资源带来的收入做了两件非常重要的事情：

1.Build national infrastructure like the North–South Expressway , the Petronas Twin Towers, Putrajaya, and Multimedia Super Corridor

2.Diversify the economy away from natural resources into value adding economic activities, like low-level electronics assembly.

1. 建设南北高速公路、马来西亚石油双塔、布城、多媒体超级走廊等基础设施

2. 促进经济多样化，从依赖自然资源转向附加值生产等经济活动，如低端电子组装。

Malaysia actually has a considerable economy in electronics assembly.

There are small isolated pockets of First World prosperity, like gated private residential compunds, private hospitals for the wealthy, private schools for the rich and expatriates. This are symptoms of an country that is fundamentally unequal at almost every level.

马来西亚在电子产品组装方面实力不俗。

马来西亚还有一些孤立的第一世界的繁荣地区，比如封闭的私人住宅小区、富人的私人医院、富人和外籍人士的私立学校。这是一个几乎在所有层面都存在极度不平等的国家。

I may be criticized for this, but I actually believe that the Bumiputra policy, while highly discriminatory and very unfair, has actually been stabilizing on a social level but only for a very limited period of time, and that it should be continued only if necessary. The Bumiputra policy, admittedly a highly discriminatory policy, has actually resulted in the creation of a sizable middle class that has reasonably good incomes, with enough to spend on consumer items.

可能我的回答会招徕批评，但我确实认为马来西亚的土著政策，虽然非常不公平，但已经在社会层面上稳定下来了，不过时间很短，必要时才应该继续下去。诚然，土著政策是一项高度歧视的政策，但它也培育了一个规模可观的中产阶级，这些人拥有相当不错的收入，有足够的钱来购买消费品。

it will only be this Middle class that has the highest potential to propel Malaysia right into the First World. Without the Bumiputra policy, Malaysia could have turned out like the Philippines, a obligarchy where a few rich families decide the destinies of millions of poor.

Right now, Malaysia’s economy is unable to undertake significant higher value-adding economic activities because of an extremely poor primary system in the public schools.

只有中产阶级才最有潜力推动马来西亚跻身第一世界。如果没有土著政策，马来西亚可能会沦为菲律宾那样，由少数富裕家庭决定数百万穷人的命运。

目前，马来西亚的经济无法进行高附加值经济活动，因为公立学校的初级教育非常糟糕。

The private schools won’t do anything for the economy; the key lies in the public schools that the vast majority of middle-class children go to. There need to be stronger focus on maths and science. But I am very pessimistic on the state of public education - or any kind of improvements - in Malaysia. It is also not helped that Malaysia’s government is riddled with corruption, with a heavily politicized civil service.

私立学校对经济发展没有任何帮助；绝大多数中产阶级子女就读的公立学校才是关键。我们需要提高对数学和科学的重视。但我对马来西亚的公共教育现状——即便有任何形式的改善——都感到非常悲观。马来西亚政府腐败丛生，公 务员一心搞政治，这些都对解决国家当前问题没有任何助益。

The infrastructure also needs to be built on as well. Build more and more airports, increase passenger capacity, build more highways and expressways to link all the cities and towns together.

马来西亚也需要建设基础设施。修建更多机场，增加客运能力，修建更多公路和高速公路，把所有的城镇都连通起来。

Afiq Aziz

The most major reason is because the country is not run by merit. Too much preferences were given to the biggest ethnic group which is the Malays. And the Malays have been too pampered by the government. You would’nt believe how lazy they are.

Malaysia is also corrupted. Unlike Singapore. Politicians live like Kings and Queens of ancient Egypt. Rosmah the wife of the PM, is well known to have a very bad shopaholic addiction and Najib is well known for swindling the tax payers money and next thing you know, hey, we have collected 50 billion dollars of debt.

最主要的原因是这个国家不是以仁治国。政府给了最大的族群马来人太多政策倾斜。马来人被政府惯坏了。你都无法想象他们到底有多懒。

马来西亚也非常腐 败。跟新加坡不一样，政客的生活还像古埃及的国王和王后。众所周知，总理的妻子罗斯玛嗜酒成瘾，纳吉布也因骗取纳税人的钱而臭名昭著，接下来的事你们就都知道了，我们已经背负了500亿美元的巨额债务。

继续阅读：马来西亚   新加坡

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