Malaysia’s Image Problem Is That It Really Hasn’t One
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — His nation has an image problem and should fight to put itself on the world map, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed said Monday.
He told a meeting of potential U.S. investors that his country was a blank in the international media and people said: “Malaysia. Now where on earth is that?”
“The Malaysian problem is how to overcome this anonymity,” he said.
One of the reasons the multi-racial Southeast Asian nation has such a low profile was that it had won independence from Britain only in 1957 and came into being “without the usual big bang, so quietly that no one noticed.”
“There was no protracted war of national liberation or East-West proxy fight. Consequently we cannot even be notorious like Vietnam,” he said.
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