The Failed Promise of Malaysia’s New Economic Policy

The affirmative action program should have embraced entrepreneurship, not cronyism

By: Murray Hunter

In 1971, still smarting from disastrous race riots in 1969 that are believed to have taken the lives of hundreds of people on both sides, Malaysia’s government implemented a revolutionary affirmative action program for its ethnic Malay majority to attempt to bring them up to the commanding economic heights occupied by the minority ethni…