Mahathir made a great move to industrialise Malaysia by setting up Proton car factory. The startup might be modest but it was a good start, a step in the right direction. From assembly, it could grow bigger into manufacturing and design of cars. But he forgot that manufacturing cars is not simply wishful thinking. Just wish for it and it would happen. Car manufacturing needs a pool of real engineers, good engineers. Not half past six engineers.
This is the part that stalled the progress of Proton. It could not advance further into a real car manufacturer. It could not even produce an engine to call its own. The magic stopped there.
When Proton was set up, China did not have a car manufacturing base in China. China was thus behind Malaysia in car manufacturing. China only started to go into car manufacturing at least 20 years after Malaysia. EV manufacturing in China started about 10 years ago. And today, China is the world leader in EV manufacturing. And Proton was sold to Geely, a Chinese EV manufacturer and producing Chinese designed and manufactured EVs. Proton's name is safe or else it would be lying in some corner of the museum.
What went wrong? Manufacturing car is not making teh tarik when anyone can do. Just called him an engineer and put him in charge and eureka, a car is made. China planned its industrialisation carefully by understanding the basic needs. A pool of top engineers! China is well known for producing top STEM engineers in bulk, by mass production. China sent its best students to the best universities in the West to study science and engineering and most of them came up tops in their cohorts. This is the base that China depended on for its industrial and modernisation programme.
How is this compare to what Mahathir did? Mahathir spent a lot of govt fund to send scholars to the West as well for tertiary education. The difference stopped there. The Mahathir scholars were not the best in their cohorts. And many went to study non engineering or science subjects and did not return as top engineers. Also, many went for religious studies to become religious teachers.
Mahathir did not have a pool of top engineers to form his industrialisation base. It was a failed start. The rest is history. Public fund spent with good intention but he took it too lightly, that any tertiary education would do. When hard sciences and engineering are concerned, there is no tolerance for short changed and thinking of getting excellence in the result. It is GIGO through and through.
Because of all the top STEM graduates, China is also leading the world in high speed trains, space exploration, 5G/6G, AI, quantum physics, mobile phones, and soon high performance chips.
Talking about top engineers, lead me to think about our GEP. After millions of tax money spend to support so many gifted students over the years, wondering what have become of all this "gifted" people?? Have any of them actually become top engineers/lawyer/doctor/scientist/ top businessmen or even ministers to contribute back to society?
ReplyDelete"Gifted" and paid for by Society and when now professionals are greedy and bite more than they can swallowed.
DeleteSo many frauds and conning and cheatings and claims of hundreds of thousands and even millions to live their decandnece lifestyles.
Until got caught so many of them.
Even Minister?
Maybe replaced by foreign talents and working overseas or as gig workers.
ReplyDeleteAll the top brains migrated due to the institutionalised racism. Singapore was and is still the top benefactor of this brain drain. And this will not stop.
ReplyDeleteMalaysia Boleh! Mahathr 'Euri-car', LOL.
ReplyDeleteMahathir does not want Chinese talents. Just look at his stance on Forest City. He practically killed off the project.
ReplyDeleteBut then, the Malays are afraid of Chinese eating their lunch. PAP was in Malaysia for a stretch, and they became nervous of LKY touting for a Malaysian Malaysia.
Malaysia's talent strategy is racially and religious based. As one MY taxi driver told me if one is a non muslim, getting a licence to doing anything even if one
ReplyDeleteis talented, he'll behind the queue of one who is but less qualified.
So sad that hundreds of millions were lost in the failed Forest City Project because of one man, Mahathir. This failure has created a total distrust of working with the Malaysian government.
ReplyDeleteWho would be silly enough to start another project and trust the Malaysian government? This is the price Malaysia is paying for the recklessness and selfishness of one retard.
Trust in Malaysian government is gone forever. Anything they said, anything they promised can be changed by an ultra anytime, changing laws etc etc to kill a project.
In the end he got screwed by Mitsubishi, a Japanese car maker. They were supposed to transfer technology under their Proton joint venture. Ten years later, Malaysia's only input was tires and anything to do with interior seats etc, no technology was transferred. Desperate they look for a South Korean car manufacturer to tie up, which I think also failed. The last I heard was with some tie -up with Geely of China.
ReplyDeleteThe most laughable joke going around was why go to so much trouble and providing huge subsidies. Follow Red Dot. Just issue a piece of paper and extract a huge fee without even having to move a finger. Oops, sorry there is a need to print the paper.