Country case report

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MALAYSIAN COUNTRY CASE REPORT
Impacts of globalization
Malaysia which is a small country is located in eastern Asia and it stands to benefit a lot from the globalization process. The country was initially an advocate of Marxist ideology due to its ideological support to the communism and socialism culture. Malaysia has been rated among the most globalized nations since gaining its independence.
The country is known for its long history of openness to trade, ideas and movement of people from different regions of the world. International flow is not therefore a new thing to Malaysia and did not begin with globalization. Malaysian nationalism and political integration is a combination of cultural, economic, political and social factors.
Globalization has had enormous economic benefits for countries that have embraced it. These economic benefits include increased trade, enhanced international flow of capital, formation of regional trading blocks and formation of international agreements such as world trade organization to oversee trading world activities.
Malaysia came up with vision 2020 in 1991 which aimed at pushing the country into positions of industrialized countries by the year 2020, which prompted its movement into global capitalism. Globalization became a state project tasked with role of propelling the country towards achieving its 2020 vision.
As a Muslim dominated nation, Malaysia was worried about the intrusion of western cultures into their country but still showed its commitment to the concept of globalization. With the collapse of communism after disintegration of U.S.S.R, the only viable option that remained was free enterprise system which Malaysia pursued.
Though globalization was initially seen as being equivalent to westernization in Muslim dominated nations, Malaysia included, this has not been the case. A study by Heinrich Boll Foundation, (24) has shown that globalization and modernization are not equivalent to westernization.
There were growing sentiments against globalization by the people of Malaysia for fear of bringing western values into the country as pointed out by Embong, (101). However, economic growth takes an upper hand in everything and globalization brings in economic growth and development.
The government therefore favored globalization to help in realizing vision 2020 and economic growth. For instance, industries were privatized to bring in foreign firms in areas of electronics. Every attempt to block globalization however led to a clash between the government and Malay businessmen/investors.
The country pursued both progressive and conservative policies of capitalist globalization and political Islam in 1990s. The reason was to pursue economic development and vision 2020 while at the same time maintaining national identity, (Long 17).
In the cultural and social sector, globalization has allowed over the years, the diffusion of sports across counties (Bairner 85), which has led to cultural exchange among nations. Malaysia has so far benefited to a greater extent from the process of globalization. It has offered Malaysian firms an opportunity to penetrate world markets.
There were many questions as to whether globalization was good or bad for the Malaysia and several views were raised in support and against globalization. However, whether bad or good, globalization is happening in Malaysia just like it is, in many other countries. Globalization has so far yielded both negative and positive effects on Malaysia.
Locking the country out from the rest of the world has led to down fall and extinction of many countries, and Malaysia did not wish to go this way and instead adopted the concept of globalization albeit in small scale until 1997 when it went full blast.
Malaysian businesses require global market for their growth since the local market is too small, with a population of less than 27.5 million people. The Malaysia population needs capital goods such as factory equipment and farm machineries which they don’t produce locally. Globalization has offered a greater opportunity to import capital goods.
The Malaysian economic development model is similar to East Asian nations. The country has been open to foreign trade which has led to rapid economic growth for the past three decades leading to general reduction in poverty levels among its citizens. According To the UNDP, (6) report, Malaysian poverty index had fallen from 50 percent in early nineties to less 7.5 percent in 1999.
Manufactured exports have significantly grown over the past three decades in electronics, making the country one of the leading exporters of electronics and semi- conductor goods in the world. FDI increased drastically, being attracted by availability of labor, government incentives, developed infrastructure and stable exchange and inflation rates.
Globalization has enabled Malaysia firms to specialize in areas of production where th...