Malaysia (Malay: Malaysia) is a country in Southeast Asia. The country consists of the Malacca Peninsula and the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, also known as East Malaysia. The country is about 8 times the size of the Netherlands and has 32 million inhabitants. The capital is Kuala Lumpur.

Geography

According to ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia and consists mainly of two parts, one part on the Malacca Peninsula and one part on the island of Borneo, separated by the South China Sea. The mainland portion of the Malacca Peninsula borders Thailand to the north and Singapore to the south. The part on Borneo has a long border with Indonesia and a short border with Brunei. Both parts of Malaysia are more than 600 kilometers apart, the maximum distance from west to east is more than 2,100 kilometers, although a considerable part of that distance is open sea.

The western part of the Malacca Peninsula is the most developed, where almost all major cities are located. This part of Malaysia measures almost 750 kilometers along the longitudinal axis and up to 330 kilometers between the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. On the other side of the Strait of Malacca is the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The peninsula is quite mountainous, mainly dominated by the Titiwangsa Mountains, with the 2,183 meter high Mount Korbu being the highest point. Large parts of the peninsula are covered with tropical rainforest. The western side of the peninsula also has lowlands.

The eastern part of the island of Borneo consists of the states of Sarawak and Sabah. The coastal region is relatively flat, sometimes even with pronounced lowlands, the interior consists of inaccessible jungle. There are no really big cities on Borneo, but there are some cities with a regional character. The interior is mountainous, the highest mountain range is the Crocker Range with the 4,095 meter high Mount Kinabalu as the highest point of both Borneo and Malaysia. To the east is Bombalai Hill, Malaysia’s only active volcano.

Malaysia has an equatorial climate and is hot and humid all year round. The average maximum temperature in Kuala Lumpur is between 31 and 33°C all year round. Most parts of Malaysia have about 2500mm of precipitation per year, with peaks in March-April and October-December, but Malaysia doesn’t have a real dry season, June is the driest month, but still records 130mm of precipitation. In the higher mountains, the equatorial climate is somewhat tempered. Snow sometimes falls at the highest point of Mount Kinabalu.

Demographics

Malaysia had only 6 million inhabitants in 1950, but is growing rapidly, with 23 million inhabitants in 2000 and 31 million in 2016. Of these, 22.5 million live in the peninsula and 5.7 million in Borneo. See Malaysia population density. By far the largest city is the capital Kuala Lumpur with 1.8 million inhabitants, but has a vast agglomeration of 7.2 million inhabitants, almost a quarter of the Malaysian population. There are several large cities along the west coast of the Malacca Peninsula. Kuala Lumpur is located somewhat inland, but there are also a number of medium-sized cities on the coast. In the northwest is George Town, which has an agglomeration of 2.4 million inhabitants. Opposite Singapore is the city of Johor Bahru, which has an agglomeration of 1.6 million inhabitants. There are only two larger towns in Borneo, Kota Kinabalu in Sabah and Kuching in Sarawak.

The country has a diverse population. The largest group are of Austronesian descent and make up a majority of the population. There are also relatively large groups of Chinese and Indian descent. The national language is Malay, a form of Malay that has many similarities with Indonesian and is fairly interchangeable. Malaysian is written in the Latin alphabet, although there is also an Arabic alphabet called Jawi. Latin became the official script in 1967, but Jawi is not banned. English is widely spoken in Malaysia, Malaysia is considered to be the top of Asian countries where English is spoken. It was long the administrative language and today many media and government publications are in English. Many residents also speak their regional language as their mother tongue, with Malay as a second language and English as a secondary language. Many Malaysians speak the 3 languages ​​fluently.

Economy

Malaysia is considered one of the great economic successes of Asia from the mid-20th century. Until the 1970s, the economy was mainly based on agriculture and mining, but then quickly became more diverse. The capital Kuala Lumpur developed as one of the most important cities in Asia. The country exports a diverse range of products, such as electronics, palm oil, rubber and oil. However, the importance of the oil industry is relatively small. The economy is made possible by modern infrastructure, although Borneo’s economy is clearly less developed than the Malacca Peninsula due to its low population density and more limited infrastructure.

History

Malaysia was formed from several kingdoms that came under British rule from the 18th century onwards. During World War II, Malaysia was occupied by Japan. The Malay Peninsula was unified under the Malaysian Union in 1946. Shortly thereafter, a guerrilla war against the British administration, known as the Malayan Emergency, began. This was mainly a communist group. In 1957 Malaysia became independent, initially only the part on the peninsula of Malacca, in 1963 the states of Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo also joined Malaysia. In 1965 Singapore becameexpelled from the Malaysian federation. The 1960s were turbulent in Malaysia, with a confrontation with Indonesia, internal struggles against the communists and the expulsion of Singapore. From the 1980s, the country began to modernize rapidly, in the 1990s, Kuala Lumpur was modernized with new skyscrapers, including the Petronas Towers, which were the tallest towers in the world between 1998 and 2004, as well as the construction of numerous highways in Kuala Lumpur and the north-south highway across the peninsula. However, the country was badly hit by the Asian financial crisis of 1997, but was also the first to recover.