The Malaysian Economy: Past Successes, Future Challenges

This paper was originally prepared for a conference on “Malaysia and Sino-Malaysian Relations”, Institute of Malaysian Studies, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Xiamen University, China, April 5-7, 2005. I am most grateful to Professor Liao Shaolian for the invitation and hospitality, and to conference participants for helpful comments. I also received very useful comments from Colin Barlow, and from participants at a Malaysia Forum seminar at ANU on September 8, 2005 which he organized. I am also indebted to my ANU colleague Prema-Chandra Athukorala, who has written extensively on Malaysia, and who kindly allowed me to reproduce Figure 1 and Tables 2 and 3 from Athukorala (2003). These data were updated by James Ang of ANU, to whom I am most grateful. Finally, Professor Chu Yun-Peng, Academia Sinica, Taipei, kindly allowed me to reproduce Table 1 from the introductory chapter to our forthcoming co-edited volume, Chu and Hill (eds, 2006).
This paper was revised and completed in September 2005.