Response to Research on Malaysia

Before doing this research, I had no idea where Malaysia was except for the fact that it was somewhere in or around the Asian continent.  I was close, but it was definitely not where I thought it was.  Looking at a map, it is right above Australia, reminding me how close Australia is to Asia.  The country has mixed ethnic groups; 50% are Malay, 23% are Chinese, 11% are indigenous, and 7.8% are other.  I always find it interesting about how satellite countries around China and Russia are almost always mixed.  Malaysia is also covered in 2/3 jungle and rain forest.  While logging and deforestation have lowered that number overtime, they are working on restoring what has been taken.  When I spent some time in Kyrgyzstan, which is in between Russia and China, I noticed that there were two distinct ethnic groups, Chinese and Russian.  The interesting thing was that the Chinese looking people spoke Russian, and some of the Russian looking people spoke Chinese.  I always found that interesting and imagine that Malaysia is the same way with its large Chinese population. 

When looking at their Government, I saw that it was modeled after the British Parliamentary system.  I had to reread this part because at first I thought that it might still be a British ruled state, like Hong Kong was.  After rereading, I noticed that it was not ruled over by Britain, but instead Malaysia adopted their parliament system as their own.  It seems that they made a few changes, but operate much the same.  Instead of having a static King or Queen, the “King” is elected every five years and as of about twenty years ago, the Malaysian King’s role is largely ceremonial with Parliament being the real leaders.  Like Britain today, the Monarchs no longer have power over the Parliament like they used to hundreds of years before.  The role of Kings and Queens in both the countries is ceremonial.  I think this shows that Malaysia is a progressive state that is changing its government’s structure with the world as it changes and grows.

After reading the next bit of information, I was clued into why I maybe don’t hear all too much about Malaysia.  When it comes to world vies, they are a little different than the US as Malaysia tends to pick sides in conflicts that the US does not choose.  Not that it’s a bad thing, but just interesting.  Malaysia does not recognize Israel as a state and has publicly called for them to answer for war crimes in international court.  They are still a member of the UN, but with much different viewpoints.  Their different viewpoints also are contributed to by the fear of Muslim war.  While Muslim wars are not an issue in their country, Malaysia fears that with the growing amount of tension to the north of them that the war will eventually spill over to their country, and they do not want that.  Because of this they have been bolstering their military, as a preemptive caution.    I found that to be very interesting because over in the US, we don’t fear Muslim expansion or Muslim wars.  Over by Asia and Africa, it is a growing concern as Muslim involved conflicts are spreading and becoming more serious to bordering countries.  It is tough because Muslims do not operate in one country, but instead are spread across many, which gives Malaysia a good reason to be worried.