Few people are as unconvinced of their economic achievements as Malaysians. Returning to Kuala Lumpur after 10 years to speak at the Khazanah Megatrends Forum, I kept hearing the same refrain that Malaysia could have done better, that it fell behind Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, that it is stuck in the middle-income trap.

The frustration is understandable. But it rests on a peculiar choice of benchmark. Measured against the East Asian tigers, Malaysia can look like an underperformer. Measured against the rest of the developing world, its economic transformation is remarkable.

It’s a cheap comparison because unlike Taiwan, South Korea or Singapore, Malaysia was not able to align geopolitically with the US as closely. Famous examples include Singapore, where 20% of GDP was due to the British Military base or Thailand/Korea during the Vietnam war. Yes there are always things to learn from reality, including the experience of the “Asian tigers”, but the contextual conditions also matter.

At the country’s independence, tin and rubber accounted for over 80% of exports. Most economies that start from such a position never leave it. Across Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, the commodity dependence of the 1960s is, in many cases, the same commodity dependence of today.

Malaysia, by contrast, now exports high-tech goods. It also did something even rarer: it built sophisticated industries around its natural resources. Palm oil became oleochemicals, latex became medical gloves, and oil and gas became a diverse petrochemical industry.

But let’s remember that the odds were stacked against Malaysia and few were betting on the country. The lack of technical expertise back in the 1970s led an international oil company executive to condescendingly remark that “Malaysians wouldn’t know an olefine from a chocolate bar”.

Now Malaysia has an integrated O&G company, established oleochemical supply chain and also chocolate processing industry. Ironically proving the naysayers wrong decades after.

None of this progress happened by accident. Nor was it the product of a smooth, linear plan and supportive international partners. Having studied how Malaysia upgraded, I would draw two lessons.

Lesson two: Success may depend on remaining dissatisfied

My second reflection is a hypothesis rather than a finding: Malaysia’s reluctance to declare success may itself be one of its assets for the future.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons for frustration. Economic transformation does not mean that everyone benefits equally, and export sophistication says little about wages, housing costs or the quality of public services. But a society that keeps measuring itself against the best performers in the class remains, by definition, in the race.

Meanwhile, countries that believe they have arrived tend to stop climbing. I have witnessed it firsthand in Chile, a country that in many respects has not experienced structural change to the same extent as Malaysia but features similar income levels, and where a think tank director (who later became finance minister) told me: “Chile has grown faster than the rest of the Latin American region over the past 50 years, so where is the problem?” This echoed the perception made 100 years earlier by Ortega y Gasset, who found in Latin America a “tendency to use reality as a mirror for self-contemplation, rather than as a subject for critical analysis and progress”, before arguing that “human history is the product of discontent”.

Having said that, dissatisfaction has a dark alter ego: cynicism. In other words, the idea that nothing will ever change. Expectations are shaped by lived experience, political debate and the countries a society chooses as its reference points. But the relationship between collective aspirations and development outcomes deserves far more attention from economists than it has received. When does discontent drive improvement, and when does it curdle into resignation? The difference probably lies less in the level of discontent than in whether people believe improvement is possible, and whether institutions can turn that expectation into action (Malaysia Boleh!).

The next round

Malaysia has unfinished business in its economic transformation but it now faces a new round of punches: semiconductor supply chains reshaped by geopolitical rivalry, the energy demands of artificial intelligence and data centres, and tightening trade protectionism from the US and European Union (sometimes disguised in the form of carbon taxes and environmental regulations, which is nothing Malaysia has not seen before).

But history suggests that Malaysia is well equipped to absorb the coming shocks, provided it keeps the two habits that served it so well: adapting its strategy when hit and refusing to believe it has done enough.

The rest of the developing world has much to learn from Malaysia. Malaysians, meanwhile, are entitled to demand more of their country. Perhaps the most Malaysian thing is the refusal to fall into complacency. Long may that continue, up to a point.

Australia could become the first country to prosecute AI companies for failing to take reasonable steps to prevent harmful conduct by their models.

The federal government has announced it would consider a new criminal offence for tech companies over AI harm and an AI safety watchdog empowered to issue significant fines, as part of its response to September’s OpenAI Medicare statistics hack.

“The law needs to get ahead of, and in some cases make sure that it catches up with, what is a very fast-changing world,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters yesterday.

AI companies Anthropic, Google and Meta, which were not given a substantial forewarning of the government’s response, did not respond to requests for comment.

An OpenAI spokesperson told the ABC that the company was reviewing the government’s proposals.

If Albo gets Whitlamed over this

When Mr Albanese disclosed the Medicare hack in September, he said the government would seek urgent advice on whether any offence had occurred and whether the incident should be referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

Yesterday, he did not answer questions about whether he believed OpenAI had committed a crime.

Mr Albanese said the government had accepted all the recommendations of the review into the incident. One of those was to consider “options to reform the criminal law to improve AI safety”.

An option to be considered is the creation of a “failure to prevent” offence for AI companies behind models that engage in harmful conduct and do not take reasonable steps to prevent the harm.

The other was to consider criminal penalties for egregious breaches of AI safety standards.

The Albanese government has signposted its desire to lead the world on regulating AI, with the prime minister describing it as a “first mover in this space”.

While other countries have pursued distinct criminal offences for AI harm, one centring on a failure to take reasonable steps to prevent harm would be the first of its kind at a national level.

Italy recently introduced a criminal offence for high-risk AI uses that do not have required technical safeguards or human oversight where a failure would be a serious threat to people or national security.

No company or individual has been prosecuted under the law to date.

It remains unclear whether Australia’s OpenAI incident would reach the threshold of harmful conduct, but Mr Albanese yesterday described it as “minor in terms of direct implications”.

For multiple days, thousands of workers in Bangladesh, mostly from garment factories, protested for a raise in their minimum monthly wages and against the rising prices of essential commodities, defying the state’s oppressive measures.

On Tuesday, November 3, news reports indicated fresh clashes between workers and security forces at various places in the capital, Dhaka, with the agitating workers trying to block highways and other roads.

The protests broke out despite the Home Minister of the country Salahuddin Ahmed warning the workers to return to work on Monday after claiming their demands had been addressed by the government through the formation of a “wage board.”

Meanwhile, the authorities unleashed violence and repression on workers with police resorting to baton charges and firing tear gas at various places injuring several of them. The police have also arrested protesters after accusing them of indulging in arson and violence.

Workers are demanding a revision in their minimum monthly wages to at least 30,000 Bangladeshi Taka (around $240) from its present 12,500 (around $100) claiming the present wages are highly inadequate to live a decent life in the context of the rising prices of essential commodities, including food and fuel.

Several unions and progressive organizations, including the Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), however, have demanded an even higher wage of Taka 37,125 (around $300) along with measures to curb the rising prices of essential commodities.

The protests began in Dhaka in the last week of October and continued throughout the weekend. After the government failed to respond to their demands, workers blocked several roads in the city including some highways on Saturday and Sunday.

Dozens of factories in Gazipur and other industrial areas of Dhaka declared holidays on Monday and Tuesday in an attempt to avoid gatherings. The government has also increased the deployment of security forces at all major points in the city to prevent agitating workers from blocking roads and taking out other militant actions. Decent living wages

Workers in Bangladesh argue that the minimum wages in the country have not been revised for years now despite the rise in profits for the companies, higher revenues from garment exports, and rising prices of the essential commodities.

Bangladesh is the world’s second largest exporter of garments, after China, with around 80% of all its export value coming from the sector alone.

According to various studies, the wages of garment sector workers in Bangladesh remain lowest among all the major exporting countries. Workers in the garment sector are also among the lowest paid workers in the country.

Bangladesh has seen a consistent increase in inflation in the last four years which, in the absence of a corresponding rise in wages, has actually led to a drop in the real wages. Just for an example, the official inflation rate in September was over 8%. This has created a severe cost of living crisis for most of the workers in the country.

The recent high inflation in the prices of the essential commodities in the country is partially attributed to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran and continued disruptions in the transportation of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

Bangladesh imports nearly half of its oil and gas needs from the Gulf. The US-Israeli aggression and Iranian retaliation has disrupted these imports, leading to severe shortages of cooking gas and oil also affecting the prices of other commodities, including food.

The WPB issued a press release on Monday in support of agitating workers and condemning the “brutal suppression by law enforcement agencies and hired thugs” on them.

Prothom Alo, a prominent local daily, reported on Tuesday that, along with the security forces, workers of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were also involved in repressive activities.

The WPB also condemned the attempts by certain sections of the ruling establishment and the media to vilify protests by calling them a “conspiracy.” It expressed hope that the BNP-led right-wing government would understand the gravity of the situation and immediately address the demands raised by the workers.

Nationwide mobilizations against austerity have continued in France following the massive strike on November 5, with additional protests announced for November 10, 14, 17, and 19.

Hundreds of thousands persist in resisting the cuts-based policies envisioned by President Emmanuel Macron and the government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. They are demanding that authorities finally table concrete proposals to address the concerns that ignited the protests in October. Read more: 1.6 million join general strike in France against austerity

Until now, the Lecornu administration has only offered measures amounting to “crumbs,” according to student organizations and trade unions involved. The latest in this series was a pledge to increase the minimum wage by 1.6%, announced at a meeting with unions and employers on Monday, November 9.

“This small increase is not the government’s generosity,” the student union Union Étudiante wrote. “It’s a first step forward made possible by the mobilization of workers, students, trade unions, and everyone who has taken to the streets.” A minimum wage increase worth three metro tickets

While government officials claim the increase would help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis plaguing the working class, most trade unions and progressive groups in France have voiced strong disagreement.

After factoring in the inflation adjustment already set to kick in from January, the net amount of the government’s promised increase could amount to as little as €7 to €8 net monthly. Trade unions had demanded at least a €100 increase.

The government’s offer represents “nothing in the face of precarity,” Union Étudiante emphasized – considering it is just enough to purchase three public transport tickets in Paris or a sandwich in a bakery. “It’s an insult to everyone forced to choose between eating, seeking care, paying rent, and financing their studies,” the student group stated.

“Given the level of the measures announced, the social conference held today at Matignon [the prime minister’s residence] obviously does not put an end to the mobilization,” wrote the General Confederation of Labor (CGT). “On the contrary, it opens a new stage in the balance of power needed to win real progress.”

The trade union organization Solidaires similarly criticized the government for failing to offer concrete solutions to the mounting anger, including on student demands for more investment in public education. “The number of additional teachers is insufficient, the funding needed to ensure decent study conditions is nowhere to be seen, and promises on the Parcoursup system remain vague,” they wrote.

Student unions that met prime minister Lecornu on Monday shared similar impressions. In addition to noting no significant breakthroughs, students walked out of a discussion on reforming the higher education recruitment platform Parcoursup over the participation of the far right – which has repeatedly dismissed the protesters’ grievances.

Most recently, Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen opposed imposing a minimum wage increase, arguing it would lead to job losses and echo workplace measures from the USSR. She had previously admitted she would not break with the neoliberalism championed by Macron if elected president in 2027.

In contrast, the program of left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who is increasingly shaping up to be the only true electoral alternative to Le Pen – pledges to increase the net minimum wage by approximately €200 to €1,700 immediately upon being elected.

The move would benefit over 2 million workers in France – approximately 60% of whom are women – who were pushed into ultra-precarious working conditions by Macronist policies, wrote media outlet L’Insoumission.

“How can we not raise the minimum wage to €1,700 when the wealth of the country’s 500 richest families has doubled since 2017? Billionaires have never made such enormous profits. Macron has turned France into a tax haven for billionaires.”

The minimum wage increase promised by the left is among a host of other measures included under the umbrella of an “emergency social decree” intended to address the cost-of-living crisis. Other measures include freezing prices and profit margins, as well as other moves to ensure salaries keep pace with prices.

Students and education trade unions are once again taking action on Tuesday, November 10. On Saturday, November 14, a new round of general mobilizations was announced, while trade unions are circulating a new call to “generalize strike actions” on November 17. Two days later, more protests are expected, boosted by the participation of retirees’ organizations.