For some reason, the term Asian Tiger has been making the rounds for the past couple of days.
First the second finance minister, Amir Hamzah said that Malaysia looks set to clinch the Asian Tiger title again in the near future, but then right after he said it, Tengku Razaleigh came out to say that Malaysia was never an Asian Tiger in the first place, before Zaid Ibrahim pitched his two cents worth to say that it is tough for Malaysia to regain the title Asian Tiger again.
So which is it? Were we an Asian Tiger or were we not? If we were, are we set to regain back the title or are we not?
Well, first of all, let us first understand what the term Asian Tiger means.
Asian tiger is an unofficial, seasonal, and most likely obsolete term that was used in the 90s to refer to certain economies that displayed incredible transformational powers.
It is unofficial, because unlike the BRICS nation or the G7, there is no official grouping called the Asian Tiger grouping.
It was seasonal and obsolete, because the term was only in currency during the 90s. In the advent of the Asian Financial crisis of 1997, which impacted all of the Asian Tigers, the term has also become obsolete. Only people like Amir Hamzah , Tengku Razeleigh , Zaid Ibrahim and Mahathir, as far as I know, are still using it today. Nobody else in the rest of the world does.
The term Asian Tiger is also not a substantive term, meaning that you don’t have to meet any discrete criteria to be called an Asian Tiger. You don’t, for example, have to reach a minimum GDP per capita or a median income in order to be called an Asian Tiger, although a high economic growth rate is something that an Asian Tiger is usually associated with.
To be an Asian Tiger, the most important thing that a nation has to show is its transformational powers. In other words, if the last time people saw your country, it was a backwater third world economy, but the next time they saw your country, it had transformed into a first world country, with tall skyscrapers and wide highways, your country might be referred to as an Asian Tiger.
Originally, the west applied the term Asian Tiger to only four nations or territories which displayed such a transformational power. These four were Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.
Later on however, when more Asian countries like Malaysia started to display such transformational powers, they included these additional countries in the same breath as the Asian Tigers, without actually denoting these additional countries as an Asian Tiger.
So although in one sense, Tengku Razeleigh is right in saying that Malaysia was never a part of the original 4 Asian Tigers, in another sense, Amir Hamzah is also right in claiming that Malaysia used to be an Asian Tiger, because in the 90s, we were actually spoken about in the papers and the news in the same breath as the Asian Tigers.
So when did we lose the title of an Asian Tiger or its equivalent?
Well, I suppose the incident that caused us to not only lose the title, but made the entire term obsolete, was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was a highly traumatic event not only for Malaysia, but all of the Asian Tigers and its equivalent. In Malaysia, it was not only the cause of a longstanding feud to develop between Mahathir and Anwar, it also shattered Malaysia’s dream of being a developed nation by 2020, caused a massive depreciation of the Malaysian Ringgit that we still haven’t been able to recover from even until today and stripped us off the label of Asian Tiger or its equivalent.
For all of the Asian Tigers and its equivalent nations as a group, it caused the term Asian Tiger and its equivalent to become redundant in 1997. Before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, the papers and the media frequently used the term Asian Tiger. In the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, nobody uses the term anymore. As a matter fact, other than some people like Mahathir, Amir Hamzah, Tengku Razaleigh and Zaid Ibrahim, I haven’t heard anybody else use these terms in the last 10 or 20 years.
Finally, is Amir Hamzah right in saying that we are on the cusp of regaining the title of an Asian Tiger or Zaid Ibrahim right in saying that it is probably going to be hard for us to regain the title?
Well, I think the one that is right is most likely Zaid Ibrahim.
I don’t think we can regain the title Asian Tiger or its equivalent because the term itself has been retired. No one is going to call us an Asian Tiger, simply because no one uses that term anymore.
Also, I don’t think we can regain the title Asian Tiger or its equivalent, because the chief prowess that a country needs to display in order to be labelled an Asian Tiger is its transformational power.
We could be called an Asian Tiger in the 90s because in the 80s, we were a developing economy that had the potential to suddenly and drastically transform itself into an almost first world economy within a decade or so.
We could quickly transform ourselves back then because we knew what we wanted to transform into. We saw the development in developed countries like the west or Japan, admired them for their development and resolved to transform into becoming like them in the quickest manner possible.
Today, we are a middle-income nation who already have tall skyscrapers and wide and long highways, just like the west and Japan. We can’t quickly transform ourselves into becoming more like them, because we already are somewhat like them.
Today, there is no country in the world that we highly admire, so there is no country in the world that we can transform ourselves into becoming either.
Today, we actually have to find our own way forward, instead of trying to emulate any particular nation.
Because of that, wanting to be an Asian Tiger, or its equivalent, is probably an ambition that is no longer fitting for us.
When we were teenagers, wanting to buy a high-powered motorcycle might have been a valid dream. When we are in your 40s, to have the same dream is a sign of a midlife crisis.
In the same way, to want to be an Asian Tiger was probably valid in the late 80s and 90s. To still want to be one today however, begs the question, what is wrong with us?
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia
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