Approach Employed towards the Indigenous Business People in Malaysia and Indonesia - Essay Example

The paper "Approach Employed towards the Indigenous Business People in Malaysia and Indonesia" is a brilliant example of an essay on business. The political regime in Malaysia is composed of a multi-party system. Its political process is "consociationalism" meaning, the interests of the community are resolved within the grand coalition framework. Over the recent years, there has been increased media coverage in politics making it transparent to the citizens. Malaysia is a multi-cultural nation whose population comprises three main groups namely ethnic Indian, ethnic Chinese and Bumiputera. Of the three groups, the Bumiputera are the indigenous people. 

During the period of British rule in Malaysia, the ethnic Chinese grew to be the dominant ethnic group in Malaysia’s business sector. This brought tension between them and the Bumiputera after independence. This led to the adoption of a new economic policy in an attempt to equalize power between the Chinese minorities who were dominant in business with the Bumiputeras. This economic policy was instituted by Mahathir bin Mohamed, Malaysia’s Prime Minister in 1981 (Gomez and Jomo 1997).

Gomez and Jomo (1997) explain that the new business policy was meant to equalize business power between the Bumiputera, and the ethnic Chinese. Through this policy, Mahathir gave preferences to Bumiputera, the indigenous Malaysian over the ethnic Chinese. For example, it required that companies that exceeded a certain size should have a Bumiputera partner. Though the policy did not last long, it brought long-lasting harmonious existence in the business sector between the two groups.

On the other hand, ethnic Chinese comprise just a small percentage of the Indonesian population. Despite this, they also control a bigger share of the wealth of the nation (Victor 1992).  This greatly disadvantaged the indigenous Indonesian business people given the existing economic policies that did not fight for them. For example, during the time of the reign of Suharto, he favored the economic aspects of Chinese.

Suharto’s favor towards the economic aspects of the Chinese caused the Chinese business community to be advantaged over the indigenous business community for a long time. As a result of this, the indigenous people held sentiments towards this (BBC News). We can, therefore, say that Suharto failed to accord equal opportunities for the indigenous business as compared to Malaysia’s Mahathir. This situation led to hatred towards the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Recently, there has been violence in Indonesia that targets the ethnic Chinese population.

Conclusion

Mahathir towards the indigenous business people in Malaysia entailed the equalization of business power between the indigenous Bumiputeras and the ethnic Chinese. Contrastingly, Suharto’s approach did not offer such equal opportunities for business to the indigenous business people. As a result of the two contrasting approaches, Malaysia has become an example of interethnic harmony during the period of economic crisis as opposed to Indonesia where thousands of ethnic were massacred during 1997, anti-Chinese riots. Such hatred emerges from the sentiments held by the people towards being disadvantaged economically in their own country.