Tan Sri Nazir Razak
Chairman of ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) Malaysia
Datuk Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim Sikh Abdul Majid
CEO of Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA)
Tan Sri Datuk Wira Azman bin Haji Mokhtar
Chairman of Malaysia International Islamic Finance Centre (MIFC) Leadership Council
Tan Sri Andrew Sheng
Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Capital Market Research
Tan Sri Abdul Farid Alias
Chairman of Bursa Malaysia
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning and Salam Malaysia Madani,
I am honoured to speak to distinguished business leaders here at this event.
As Malaysia chairs ASEAN this year and as leaders of this region congregate in Kuala Lumpur for the 46th ASEAN Summit and related Summits, I would like to reiterate the importance of creating an ASEAN-wide market.
Over the last 80 years, ASEAN, as well as China, manufactured for the United States market while GCC countries export oil to the United States and the world.
Asian society grew rich by seeing the United States as the final destination of export and the consumer of the last resort. But today, the United States is walling itself up and is hoping for less import from around the world.
In the old order, Asian countries compete in a race to the bottom, suppressing wages and damaging the environment, all in the name of chasing lower costs as part of an export-led industrialisation strategy in order to export to the United States.
We are now forced into a new era and what do we do?
Bringing ASEAN, GCC and China together is an interesting initiative that requires us to rewire how we see each other, what we think about each other and what do we trade with each other.
In this new global order, ASEAN, GCC and China are all moving into a new direction, growing technologies, and our societies have developed in multifaceted ways. We have reached a stage where we can do a lot more than just low-end outsourced manufacturing or reliance on a single source of natural resources.
For example, the GCC countries do not just want to be oil producers. They are investing heavily in the AI and semiconductor sectors, as well as investing heavily in diversifying their market.
In China’s case, they built a middle-class society in the span of 20 years. It is a very impressive feat that started around 2001 when China first joined WTO. China had around 100 million middle-class population. Today, by any measurement, China has at least 400 million people considered middle-class.
What do I mean by middle-class?
Middle-class means having a population with disposable income sufficient for them to make discretionary choices to consume.
As the world transitions into a new order, I hope all of you – the movers and shakers of the world, of ASEAN, GCC and China – who gather in Kuala Lumpur today, seize the moment in history and create new paradigms.
When we move away from a one-dimensional and unipolar trade relation, complementarity is the key. In a world that has no single consumer of the last resort, countries have to both produce and consume, therefore requiring widespread prosperities and middle class across the world to be able to consume.
ASEAN is the bridge and the connector in this new multipolar world. We need to make that connection not just with GCC and China but also hopefully with the EU and other regions, so that we can create a multipolar world that complements each other in trade and technology, that builds and thrives on each other’s middle class and markets.
In such a context, Kuala Lumpur may well be positioned as the new regional headquarters for the multipolar world and I hope you see the potential the way I see it.
Thank you very much.