“Their experiment in forging a majority identity group out of wildly disparate parts has a lot to teach the world about the social construction of race and nationhood.”
Noah, come on. They formed a group that was inclusive so long as it excluded *a quarter of the population*. They are united by their shared hatred of the Chinese, due to their success.
Do you think forging a shared American identity around hatred of say, Jews, would be a positive development? Certainly, there is appetite for that on both ends of the political spectrum. How unifying!
People can forge a shared identity when there is a hated market-dominant minority to plunder. Some teaching!
The police, army, government and government hospitals are all 100% Malay. The Indians are relegated to agricultural plantation work. The Chinese man the business economy and tech sector; and the good private hospitals.
Well, no. I've been twice this year to fancy private hospitals. One doctor was ethnic Indian, the other ethnic Malay. I've been involved in engineering projects in KL. The civil engineers seem to be mostly indian, though it's a mix. It's true that government is pretty much Malay but the rest is more complicated. There are certainly racially aware policies but calling it racist seems off to me.
TY for the info, as I was last in Malaysia >15 yrs ago. Still, all government, military, and police jobs are still exclusively Malay. That doesn't seem racist to you?
They're a blend of austronesian; with bits of generic Southeast Asian thrown in. Plus sprinkles of Indian and Arab.
The Chinese are mostly all Nanyang; from the south of China. Mainly Hokkien, Haka, Teowchiew and Cantonese. Who came during the colonial period.
I had two 3.5 month visits to Malaysia in '89 and '93. Plus many visits to Georgetown to get my Thai visa renewed. Georgetown and Malaka were my favorite spots; as KL was just too big city busy.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
I love how Noah acts like the Great Replacement believers are the crazy ones but then publishes an article like this that confirms all their fears.
If the Bumiputera are the "POCs" of White countries then Whites are 100% correct in being worried about a growing POC population seizing power and wealth from Whites in an anti White and rent-seeking way which is what the Bumiputera have done to the Chinese.
If the Bumiputera are the Whites of White countries then Noah's being weirdly tolerant about what's basically a soft Jim Crow system.
Malaysia has a lower murder rate than Sweden...hmmm. Can *you* think of anything that might've caused Sweden's murder rate to spike within the last 10 years? I certainly can't. /s
And no, Malaysia is not a developed country. It's not poor but you can't be a developed country on the equator and have half the population living without AC. That's inhumane.
I don't think it's a metaphor at all. It's not good to look at another country and decide one group is the white people and the other group is the black people. You'll just confuse yourself.
Besides, what's going to happen in the US is the local black people are going to be replaced by higher-earning African immigrants.
I think you're missing a key part of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory - that political elites are importing more minorities to overwhelm the white population. The ethnic groups of Malaysia have all been living there for at least the last one or two hundred years. If any group was "imported" it would be the Chinese, who migrated throughout Southeast Asia during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Mass Deportation, the "solution" to the Great Replacement for the MAGA right, simply would not work for the Bumiputera because - well, where would you deport them to?
Given that political elites imported a bunch of 3rd worlders against the wishes of their native populations that part of the Great Replacement Theory is undebatably true.
The Bumiputera don't need to do mass deportation of Chinese. They enforce a system that incentivizes Chinese to emigrate. Would you prefer MAGA Whites revive Jim Crow to encourage non Whites in America to go back to where they came from vs Trump's mass deportations of illegal immigrants?
The Great Replacement (at least for the US) is a fake conspiracy theory in the sense that there was no concerted, deliberate effort by elites to import immigrants specifically for the purpose of cermenting permanent political power. The immigration situation in the United States was created by a combination of
1) Refugee and Asylum laws from the 90's being taken advantage of by more and more people, and us not reforming those laws
2) Reaction (and yes, probably overreaction) during the Biden years to the performatively harsh immigration law of the first Trump term.
Did we see a large surge in illegal immigration/refugee admissions during the Biden years? Yes. That by itself is not evidence of "the Great Replacement"
On Malyasia:
The Chinese are the economic elite in Malaysia. They can't be analogous to illegal immigrants/refugees in the US because, obviously, illegal immigrants are not the economic elite. And the Chinese in Malaysia are not recent immigrants. Like I said previously, Chinese immigration to southeast Asia mainly took place during the Ming and Qing dynasties, 1600-1900. The Malay government Incentivizing Malaysian Chinese people to emigrate is as stupid as if the US government were to incentivize Irish and Italian Americans to emigrate.
That’s probably the best analogy, with the main distinction being that there was always a powerful Chinese state for the ethnic Chinese to flee to if they faced persecution in Southeast Asia
Having lived for ~7 years in equatorial SE Asia in the '90's--when AC was not common anywhere, the human body adapts to the heat. Night time is when the streets come alive.
I know there's a lot of history - the expulsion in 1965, the mirroring of the racial mix but with extreme prejudice - but Singaporeans tended to be quite down on Malaysia.
Locals in Sg, and expats, tended to reinterpret the 'Truly Asia' as 'Truly shxx Asia', with lots of the crappiness of developing (Southeast) Asia, but without the success of Sg or the exoticism and cultural bounty of Indonesia or Vietnam/Thailand. In my experience there was certainly something in this (I saw plenty of the mainland and Sarawak), although I think Sg-ers were also blind to some of what the place was achieving.
A final thought about their car industry, though: Proton! Genuinely awful cars, throughout the generations, and worth comparing in different ways with South Korean or Chinese firms.
There's more rowdiness in Australia, but Malaysians are way more worried about actual crime in my experience. Australians will quite often leave the front door unlocked when they're at home, and don't build massive fences around their houses, or hire guards at the entrances of estates.
If you want to learn more about Malaysia, read the comics of their great cartoonist Lat, especially his autobiographical books Kampung Boy and Town Boy.
Great piece. I would just say that you probably understate the tension between Malay and Chinese ethnic groups. When you say the Chinese are the elite, it's an understatement and this is (or was as I'm a bit older now) very present in social circles in KL for example.
Japan is hot this summer, and it still is. I’m here now and it is 29°C and 90% humidity, with frequent rain, but if you read your linked article it isn’t due to global climate change in the commonly used sense (that level temperature rise isn’t expected until the end of the century) it is due to a shift in the route of the jet stream causing moist tropical air farther north than usual.
That may be true, but along with the hotter summers the shifted jet stream also causes typhoons to blow out to sea, avoiding lots of damage and injury. This is happening right now with Typhoon Halong.
In the last 15 years (2010–2025), at least 5 seasons (2010, 2013, 2018, 2023, 2024) with documented jet stream northward shifts or meandering had below-average landfalls (≤2), supporting the correlation.
So, thanks to China continuing to build coal fired power plants, we in Japan have more time to enjoy beer gardens, and fewer typhoon strikes.
It’s true that MMGW can create some transient localized benefits. But those are molehills compared to the mountains of harm it creates.
Even the ”benefits” usually come with drawbacks. South Asia is also experiencing changes in typhoons, and it does save them from some of the damage and injury they tend to cause, but it is also causing an increase in droughts, hurting their agriculture industry, putting their food insecure population in peril.
I visited Penang a couple years ago, you might be interested - both from an urbanism perspective where it’s old town is pretty and walkable, from a food perspective where the hawkers did have a great flavor from my perspective as a Japan resident (umami overload!), and from an industrial perspective since that’s where a lot of the semiconductor (and professional services, and tourism) industry is in Malaysia.
Next you should goto Jakarta. Kuala Lumpur sits in between Jakarta and Singapore in terms of economic development. In Jakarta you'll rarely see any foreigners and most wealthy locals live their lives in the air-conditioned malls you mention. However, it is a fascinating place.
“Their experiment in forging a majority identity group out of wildly disparate parts has a lot to teach the world about the social construction of race and nationhood.”
Noah, come on. They formed a group that was inclusive so long as it excluded *a quarter of the population*. They are united by their shared hatred of the Chinese, due to their success.
Do you think forging a shared American identity around hatred of say, Jews, would be a positive development? Certainly, there is appetite for that on both ends of the political spectrum. How unifying!
People can forge a shared identity when there is a hated market-dominant minority to plunder. Some teaching!
Tfw Noah whitewashes a country that's actually systemically racist.
Well stated.
The police, army, government and government hospitals are all 100% Malay. The Indians are relegated to agricultural plantation work. The Chinese man the business economy and tech sector; and the good private hospitals.
Well, no. I've been twice this year to fancy private hospitals. One doctor was ethnic Indian, the other ethnic Malay. I've been involved in engineering projects in KL. The civil engineers seem to be mostly indian, though it's a mix. It's true that government is pretty much Malay but the rest is more complicated. There are certainly racially aware policies but calling it racist seems off to me.
TY for the info, as I was last in Malaysia >15 yrs ago. Still, all government, military, and police jobs are still exclusively Malay. That doesn't seem racist to you?
I thought Malays were racially austronesians? Like not East Asian like the Chinese minority but more like the Indonesian or Philippine majority race
They're a blend of austronesian; with bits of generic Southeast Asian thrown in. Plus sprinkles of Indian and Arab.
The Chinese are mostly all Nanyang; from the south of China. Mainly Hokkien, Haka, Teowchiew and Cantonese. Who came during the colonial period.
I had two 3.5 month visits to Malaysia in '89 and '93. Plus many visits to Georgetown to get my Thai visa renewed. Georgetown and Malaka were my favorite spots; as KL was just too big city busy.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
Yeah they are, a mix of Austronesian and Austro-Asians. The latter were probably there first, then Austronesians from Taiwan arrived and admixed in, bringing their language which became Malay.
I love how Noah acts like the Great Replacement believers are the crazy ones but then publishes an article like this that confirms all their fears.
If the Bumiputera are the "POCs" of White countries then Whites are 100% correct in being worried about a growing POC population seizing power and wealth from Whites in an anti White and rent-seeking way which is what the Bumiputera have done to the Chinese.
If the Bumiputera are the Whites of White countries then Noah's being weirdly tolerant about what's basically a soft Jim Crow system.
Malaysia has a lower murder rate than Sweden...hmmm. Can *you* think of anything that might've caused Sweden's murder rate to spike within the last 10 years? I certainly can't. /s
And no, Malaysia is not a developed country. It's not poor but you can't be a developed country on the equator and have half the population living without AC. That's inhumane.
I don't think it's a metaphor at all. It's not good to look at another country and decide one group is the white people and the other group is the black people. You'll just confuse yourself.
Besides, what's going to happen in the US is the local black people are going to be replaced by higher-earning African immigrants.
I think you're missing a key part of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory - that political elites are importing more minorities to overwhelm the white population. The ethnic groups of Malaysia have all been living there for at least the last one or two hundred years. If any group was "imported" it would be the Chinese, who migrated throughout Southeast Asia during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Mass Deportation, the "solution" to the Great Replacement for the MAGA right, simply would not work for the Bumiputera because - well, where would you deport them to?
Given that political elites imported a bunch of 3rd worlders against the wishes of their native populations that part of the Great Replacement Theory is undebatably true.
The Bumiputera don't need to do mass deportation of Chinese. They enforce a system that incentivizes Chinese to emigrate. Would you prefer MAGA Whites revive Jim Crow to encourage non Whites in America to go back to where they came from vs Trump's mass deportations of illegal immigrants?
The Great Replacement (at least for the US) is a fake conspiracy theory in the sense that there was no concerted, deliberate effort by elites to import immigrants specifically for the purpose of cermenting permanent political power. The immigration situation in the United States was created by a combination of
1) Refugee and Asylum laws from the 90's being taken advantage of by more and more people, and us not reforming those laws
2) Reaction (and yes, probably overreaction) during the Biden years to the performatively harsh immigration law of the first Trump term.
Did we see a large surge in illegal immigration/refugee admissions during the Biden years? Yes. That by itself is not evidence of "the Great Replacement"
On Malyasia:
The Chinese are the economic elite in Malaysia. They can't be analogous to illegal immigrants/refugees in the US because, obviously, illegal immigrants are not the economic elite. And the Chinese in Malaysia are not recent immigrants. Like I said previously, Chinese immigration to southeast Asia mainly took place during the Ming and Qing dynasties, 1600-1900. The Malay government Incentivizing Malaysian Chinese people to emigrate is as stupid as if the US government were to incentivize Irish and Italian Americans to emigrate.
Chinese in Malaysia: the closest analogy is probably the Jews in Eastern Europe.
That’s probably the best analogy, with the main distinction being that there was always a powerful Chinese state for the ethnic Chinese to flee to if they faced persecution in Southeast Asia
Just about that, I saw a Vietnamese meme that all other Southeast Asian countries are ruled by Chinese, but Vietnam would always be Vietnamese, lol.
And Vietnam actually incentivized its Chinese population to leave in 1978, during its tension with China at that time.
Having lived for ~7 years in equatorial SE Asia in the '90's--when AC was not common anywhere, the human body adapts to the heat. Night time is when the streets come alive.
I know there's a lot of history - the expulsion in 1965, the mirroring of the racial mix but with extreme prejudice - but Singaporeans tended to be quite down on Malaysia.
Locals in Sg, and expats, tended to reinterpret the 'Truly Asia' as 'Truly shxx Asia', with lots of the crappiness of developing (Southeast) Asia, but without the success of Sg or the exoticism and cultural bounty of Indonesia or Vietnam/Thailand. In my experience there was certainly something in this (I saw plenty of the mainland and Sarawak), although I think Sg-ers were also blind to some of what the place was achieving.
A final thought about their car industry, though: Proton! Genuinely awful cars, throughout the generations, and worth comparing in different ways with South Korean or Chinese firms.
Having spent time in both Singapore and Maylaysia, between the two I would choose Malaysia to live.
Agree with Malaysia and crime. Moved from Malaysia to Australia and I noticed more public aggression in Australia.
Australia isn't unsafe but you have to be careful more.
There's more rowdiness in Australia, but Malaysians are way more worried about actual crime in my experience. Australians will quite often leave the front door unlocked when they're at home, and don't build massive fences around their houses, or hire guards at the entrances of estates.
If you want to learn more about Malaysia, read the comics of their great cartoonist Lat, especially his autobiographical books Kampung Boy and Town Boy.
“which is why Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965.”
Did you misspell was kicked out here? The leaders of Singapore did not want to go.
Great piece. I would just say that you probably understate the tension between Malay and Chinese ethnic groups. When you say the Chinese are the elite, it's an understatement and this is (or was as I'm a bit older now) very present in social circles in KL for example.
You probably didn’t get a chance to try Peranakan/Nyonya food while you were there, but I highly recommend it if you return. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan_cuisine
Japan is hot this summer, and it still is. I’m here now and it is 29°C and 90% humidity, with frequent rain, but if you read your linked article it isn’t due to global climate change in the commonly used sense (that level temperature rise isn’t expected until the end of the century) it is due to a shift in the route of the jet stream causing moist tropical air farther north than usual.
The stability of the jet stream breaks down because of global warming.
That may be true, but along with the hotter summers the shifted jet stream also causes typhoons to blow out to sea, avoiding lots of damage and injury. This is happening right now with Typhoon Halong.
In the last 15 years (2010–2025), at least 5 seasons (2010, 2013, 2018, 2023, 2024) with documented jet stream northward shifts or meandering had below-average landfalls (≤2), supporting the correlation.
So, thanks to China continuing to build coal fired power plants, we in Japan have more time to enjoy beer gardens, and fewer typhoon strikes.
It’s true that MMGW can create some transient localized benefits. But those are molehills compared to the mountains of harm it creates.
Even the ”benefits” usually come with drawbacks. South Asia is also experiencing changes in typhoons, and it does save them from some of the damage and injury they tend to cause, but it is also causing an increase in droughts, hurting their agriculture industry, putting their food insecure population in peril.
That's hopeful!
The explicit segregation of Muslim and non Muslim spaces in Malaysia often feels super weird.
I visited Penang a couple years ago, you might be interested - both from an urbanism perspective where it’s old town is pretty and walkable, from a food perspective where the hawkers did have a great flavor from my perspective as a Japan resident (umami overload!), and from an industrial perspective since that’s where a lot of the semiconductor (and professional services, and tourism) industry is in Malaysia.
There's quite a large Indian contingent in Malaysia - didn't you see that?
Next you should goto Jakarta. Kuala Lumpur sits in between Jakarta and Singapore in terms of economic development. In Jakarta you'll rarely see any foreigners and most wealthy locals live their lives in the air-conditioned malls you mention. However, it is a fascinating place.
And with a worse anti Chinese problem. The pogram from the 60’s are still remembered by the Chinese residents.
A drip feed of AC into each article - has he invested in AC - should he declare this ? 🤫
Glad you got to experience more of my neighbourhood!