- 2018-11-12
Relying on Southeast Asia to save Britain?
Malaysia uses a British three-pin plug. The car drives on the left side of the road. The elites use their accented English accents to express their expertise on the career plan of Boris Johnson (the former mayor of London and the current British Foreign Secretary-Translator's Note) Insights. There is even an old concrete cricket court in Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur. In 1957, on the night of Malaysia's independence, the Union Jack fell here. The country’s prime minister, Najib Razak, is an alumnus of Malvern College and Nottingham University.
If supporters of Brexit have a plan, it will involve former colonies that are on the rise, such as Malaysia and Singapore. They should replace European countries as Britain's key trading partners. Many supporters of Brexit also imagine the "global Britain" as a trading hub that dares to act like Singapore. The Brexit theorist Daniel Hannan stated last month when he founded his pro-free trade think tank, “I’m looking at the Singapore High Commissioner (sit in the front row). Singapore’s wealth has changed from ours. Half of ours has become twice ours. What is the magic formula? Just do it. They removed their barriers."
Can Southeast Asia save Brexit? During a recent visit to the area, I asked local investors and officials what they thought. Undoubtedly, the British once dominated the business there. "When I first arrived in Kuala Lumpur in 1968, bus tickets were still printed in London," a retired businessman told me. "British firms dominate everything." That situation is over.
Today, most Malaysian elites mainly view the UK as a place to buy real estate, watch football matches, and let their children study abroad. The UK is now only Malaysia’s 17th largest trading partner.
Could this be because we have been dragged down by the European Union (EU), because the EU cannot even reach a free trade agreement with Malaysia and Singapore? But in fact, it's not. Trade between Germany and the Netherlands with Malaysia surpassed the trade between Britain and Malaysia.
Singapore’s High Commissioner Chi Hsia Foo said at a meeting in the United Kingdom in September: “You will be surprised to find that you are not our largest trading partner in the European Union.” Germany, the Netherlands and France’s trade with Singapore has exceeded that of Singapore. Trade between Britain and Singapore.
Fu Qixia said that the UK and Singapore are already holding informal trade talks. But Britain’s trade with Southeast Asia will have to soar to the sky to offset even the smallest reduction in Britain’s trade with the European Union. In 2015, the total trade between the UK and Malaysia was 16.45 billion ringgits (2.75 billion pounds), while the trade between the UK and Belgium was approximately 25 billion pounds.
Among the Malaysian businessmen I met, no one expected the trade between Britain and Malaysia to skyrocket. One investor predicted that Brexit would fail, leading Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to take control of Downing Street. "Then Britain became uninvestable, just like it was in the 1970s."
When most Malaysian businessmen talk about Brexit, they treat it more as a private issue than a business issue. The fall in the pound makes apartments and university tuition cheaper. The downside is that Britain, where anti-immigration sentiment is high, may not welcome their children at all-there are already many Malaysians who would rather study in Australia.
However, Brexit has not kept Malaysians awake at night. The fact is, they don’t need Britain anymore. "There are too many options now," said Chandran Nair, Malaysia's head of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a think tank. The British Empire is over. Overlooking the Kuala Lumpur Cricket Ground is a Chinese skyscraper.
One night, listening to the sound of Islamic proclamation, I wondered whether the British nativists who supported Brexit would really find that Malaysia was like them. Swiss investigators claimed that someone had misappropriated huge amounts of funds from a number of companies connected to a sovereign fund founded by Najib; Najib denied any wrongdoing. Are those who support Brexit really sure that he is a better partner than Jean-Claude Juncker?
As for Britain becoming a cold Singapore, everyone I talked to thought it was impossible. Fu Qixia pointed out that Singapore is much smaller than the United Kingdom and is located in a much more populous area. She also does not think that her country has low taxes and loose regulation. Singapore is strictly regulated and the corporate tax rate is 17%, exactly the same level as the UK decided to drop before the Brexit referendum.
Others also pointed out that Singapore has the world’s highest school system by certain indicators, the world’s second busiest port, and a population with a majority of immigrants — after all, it’s not like the United Kingdom. London may become Singapore, but the UK cannot.