Malaysians need to change attitude, become producers – PM

BEIJING: Malaysians need to change their attitude towards locally produced goods and become producers, not merely consumers, in order to further develop the country, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The Prime Minister said Malaysians typically wanted to buy good quality products but these products must come from other countries.

“If the product were locally made with a local (brand) name, they would be quite reluctant to buy,” he said during a luncheon with the Malaysian business community here yesterday.

This kind of attitude had resulted in Malaysia becoming merely a consumer nation, Dr Mahathir said.

He pointed out that the people in China also wanted to buy good quality products but then they learned how to produce them.

“The Chinese here want to learn and produce the best quality goods themselves, and because of that, they have become the factory for the whole world,” said Dr Mahathir, who is on the third day of his five-day official visit to China.

The Prime Minister said China grew and outstripped Malaysia very quickly because its people had a different attitude.

“Malaysia wants to consume, China wants to produce and in the end the producer wins. The consumers simply send money out of the country,” he added.

Dr Mahathir said Malaysians had a lot to learn, as they produced too few things.

Citing an example, he said Malaysians were keen to buy and use drones but they were not keen to make and sell them.

Dr Mahathir, who witnessed a drone demonstration by a local company here yesterday, said the manufacturer could not have had drones 30 years ago and yet, in a few years, had built the capacity to produce.

Now 70 per cent of the drones used in the world were sourced from China, he noted.

Sharing his experience visiting Da Jiang Innovations Enterprise yesterday morning, Dr Mahathir said the company came up with new products using the latest technology from time to time.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister visited local car manufacturer, Geely, and told Malaysian businessmen that the company started out small but in a short period had been able to sell 30 million cars a year, more than the whole of Europe and America combined.

Dr Mahathir, who visited the Alibaba Group headquarters yesterday, told yesterday audience that he had never thought there was anyone who could think and make use of present technology for beneficial purposes.

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma “could sell billions of ringgit of anything just in one hour or one day. That's how he has made use of modern technology,” he added.