Kee-Cheok Cheong

TNE – Trans-national education or tensions between national and external? A case study of Malaysia

Transnational education, primarily at the tertiary level, has been growing rapidly, bringing with it high hopes and expectations of benefits to institutions in the countries of origin and destination. However, these potential benefits come with a set of challenges that must be overcome. These challenges include the need to reconcile the often-conflicting objectives of the stakeholders involved, bridge learning traditions/styles and cultural divides, and harmonise cross-national standards. These challenges are on display in transnational higher education involving UK and Malaysian institutions, which have not only had a long history but also host a large number of students. In the Malaysian case, education policies that are designed to serve affirmative action complicate this collaboration.

Diffusion of Catching-up Industrialization Strategies: The Dynamics of East Asia's Policy Learning Process

Abstract This paper provides an overview of catch-up industrialization strategies in East Asia over the past few decades, articulating a theoretical-conceptual change from Akamatsus Flying Geese Model to a leapfrogging and path-creating catching-up model. Within this intellectual context, this study explores the economic, political and institutional conditions for effective implementation of catch-up strategies (management of state-created learning rents) in South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia. It proposes a new analytical grid that summarizes the current research on Chinas catch-up industrialization, explicitly acknowledging Chinas arguably unique multi-pronged mixed-mode model. The strategic models discussed in this paper may provide policy lessons for other developing economies in Asia aspiring to follow the path of technology upgrading.

Huawei and ZTE in Malaysia: The Localisation of Chinese Transnational Enterprises

ABSTRACT While much research has been undertaken on firms’ internationalisation, much less has been written on internationalisation’s other side, localisation. Yet with the rise of emerging economies, especially Chinese transnational corporations, localisation has become an increasingly significant. This article examines the localisation experience of two Chinese telecommunications enterprises – Huawei and ZTE – in Malaysia. By holding these factors constant (the ceteris paribus assumption), several dimensions of localisation are revealed. They are product, workforce, technology, organisation and management. Firm-specific factors matter both in accounting for inter-firm similarities and differences in the manner they localised. Enterprise ownership is also important in explaining firm performance and host countries’ perception of these firms. Leadership styles of these enterprises’ founders also matter. Together, these factors affect the differential pace of firms’ internationalisation and localisation.

Employing the ‘unemployable’: employer perceptions of Malaysian graduates

Malaysia has made significant progress in advancing access to education over the last two decades, having achieved the education goals of the UNs Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, this has not been accompanied by quality improvement, with reports of ‘unemployable’ graduates a frequent refrain. This paper reports on a study of Malaysian employers’ perceptions of the countrys graduates that finds a much more nuanced picture. While employers view Malaysian graduates as far from ideal, these graduates come with several strengths such as familiarity with local conditions, willingness to work hard, and lower hiring costs relative to foreign graduates. Not all Malaysian located graduates are ranked alike qualitatively; those enrolled in transnational private education are rated better than those from public universities. Major policy implications arising from this state of affairs are discussed.

Surviving Financial Crises: The Chinese Overseas in Malaysia and Singapore

Abstract Most studies of financial crises focus on the impact on states, and the states’ responses. Few, if any, have focused on how these crises affect communities within the state which do not have control of the state apparatus. These groups, left out of decision-making processes and calculations by the state, suffer the most. In pre-war British Malaya and Malaysia, these groups were the Chinese overseas, Indians and some Malay minorities. A study of the impacts of the Great Depression and the Asian Financial Crisis on the Chinese overseas may help to illustrate how such groups, left on their own, coped with such crises. A study of the Chinese overseas is not insignificant because the community wielded considerable economic influence in the 1930s and in 1997. This paper argues that despite the obvious differences in circumstances, there are common threads to the narratives of both crises. These include the roles played by exchange rates and banking institutions which the Malayan Chinese helped to establish in the two countries.

Technology Catch-up with Chinese Characteristics: What Can Southeast Asia Learn from China?

Abstract China’s technological progress is as spectacular as the growth of its economy since 1978. Technology indicators place China just behind the United States, which has a much higher per capita income. China’s progress is material to Southeast Asia because its per capita income, being similar to that of the Association of South East Asian Nation’s, will have considerable relevance for this region; and China’s technological advance will probably intensify competition between its products and Southeast Asian exports. Yet China possesses features that are arguably unique, the most important being its size and the role of the state. The strategies discussed here—technology alliances with foreign firms, learning by exporting through participation in global supply chains, indigenous innovation aided by the state’s heavy hand, forward engineering through institutionalized commercialization of university- and research institute-based research and development, technology acquisition through mergers and acquisitions, and cost innovation through novel methods of cutting costs—all leverage China’s specific characteristics. Even without these characteristics, Southeast Asian countries, early in the catch-up process, can emulate China’s initial strategies such as technology outsourcing. For more developed Southeast Asia, China’s methods to strengthen technological capacity are important lessons.

Southeast Asia and the Asian and Global Financial Crises

Abstract Despite the deleterious impact of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, which seriously undermined mainstream economists’ claims that the world economy has matured enough to prevent the return of a global depression, policymakers are still grappling with unchartered territory to insulate their economies from debilitating regional and global contagions. This article provides the introduction to a special issue targeted at dissecting the experience of the Southeast Asian market economies in confronting comparatively the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the global financial crisis of 2008–09.

The internationalisation of family firms: case histories of two Chinese overseas family firms

Internationalisation is an important part of the business history of both non-family and family firms. The discourse regarding both is based on the mainstream microeconomic theories of the firm. This article, through examining the case histories of two successful Chinese overseas family firms, shows that explanations of internationalisation need often to venture beyond the confines of existing theories, especially where contextual factors are influential in shaping decision-making. The experiences of these firms point to the role of the state as a major contextual factor. The case history approach is the most relevant in this and other instances where context matters.

Developers and Speculators: Housing, Ethnic Chinese Business and the Asian Financial Crisis in Malaysia

Abstract Housing has played a central role in both the Asian and global financial crises, a decade apart. While there are major differences with respect to these roles, there are also similarities, the most obvious being the links with the banking system. The impact of these crises on the housing sector has been extensively researched, but findings have been overwhelmingly based on aggregate or sector data. Using firm-level data from Malaysia on the Asian financial crisis, this article argues that such findings can yield a distorted picture of what actually occurred in real estate markets where contextual factors played a major role. A study of ethnic Chinese businesses, which dominated the Malaysian housing sector, show that the severe impact was primarily on businesses that were over-leveraged and/or that speculated on housing in the expectation of reaping quick returns. They were small compared to the large property businesses that, though affected, survived. Non-residential real estate continued unaffected, fuelled by manufacturing to meet healthy export demand. This, and a political/economic environment accentuated by affirmative action which drove ethnic Chinese businesses toward real estate development, speaks powerfully to the importance of context in understanding specific housing markets during crises.

Employment as a journey or a destination? Interpreting graduates’ and employers’ perceptions – a Malaysia case study

As human capital came to the fore in the discourse on economic growth, so too has the concepts of employment prospects and employability attributes as students transit to the labor market. This paper examines three issues in this transition in the context of Malaysia. These are, first, how important is employment prospects a consideration when students choose institutions to join and programs to pursue? Second, what is their understanding of the attributes needed for employability? Third, how well do students’ understanding of both concepts accord with how employers understand them? Using a combination of survey and face-to-face interviews, this study confirmed the considerable importance of both concepts in students’ study decisions. Their understanding was broadly congruent with that of employers. These findings have implications for students’ learning experiences, for the education system, and for policy-makers hoping for the human capital needed to make the leap from a middle-income to a high-income nation.