Asia's New Wealthy Flex Their Muscles

Eric Ellis, Kuala Lumpur 

CUTE girl in little black dress, male hipster in Armani shirt, Mexican beer with lime, plenty of Quentin Tarantino references ... where are we? London's Bond St? New York's Tribeca? Oxford St, Sydney? Chapel St, Melbourne?

No. Smack in the middle of the emerging Asian middle class - in this case the pages of two trendy magazines defining what's hot and what's not for the youthful and newly moneyed of Kuala Lumpur.

Men's Review and Monsieur are mainstream magazines that could have been published anywhere in the developed world. They run features, in English, on Malaysia's groovy clubs, cafes and restaurants, gay and lesbian community, up-and-coming local designers, and fashion spreads catering to the masses of Asia's Versace-obsessed.

Pitching to an upper-income bracket of Malays, Chinese and Indians, these magazines of just two years and three months old respectively offer a lifestyle readily available in today's Malaysia.

It's a Malaysia where readers drive BMWs and Mercedes, ride Harleys, punch data into laptop computers, drink tequila sunrises in Hard Rock Cafes (in a predominantly Muslim country), visit Paris and pay for it all on platinum Visa cards and large salaries. And it's a lifestyle not so much aspirational as actual. Malaysia sits neatly in the middle of emerging Asia -geographically and economically - with a national per capita income three times higher than its more populous ASEAN neighbours but a quarter that of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

Combined with the freshly minted middle classes of India and China, and to a lesser degree the Indo-Chinese States, Asia can now boast as many as 200 million people with annual incomes or buying power at least equal to the OECD average of around $US10,000 ($13,300).

That equals 10 Australias ready to be sold to, with a voracious demand for consumer durables in keeping with a regional economy growing by an average 7 per cent and expected to do so for at least another 10-15 years.

"In its collective taste, Asia is about where Australia was about 15 years, ago," says Melbourne-born Mr Jeff Orr, Creative Director at BBDO Malaysia.

"Generally, these are people who are just tasting lasagne for the first time, or taking their first resort holiday. But their appetite is astounding."

Asian wealth has traditionally been concentrated at the top - in Thailand and Indonesia often with the military elite, in India with the landed upper castes, in China with the senior Communist Party apparatchiks and in Malaysia with the Malay nobles and the imported Chinese community.

But a decade or so of liberal economic reform has seen wealth trickle down to create a new generation of consumers, owning a television, a motorbike, a Valentino T-shirt for the first time.

Unlike its fellow ASEAN States - except tiny Singapore - Malaysia's new wealth has been relatively liberally spread around, thanks in large part to the New Economic Policy of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, which has economically enfranchised the ethnic Malay majority to the level of the minority Chinese and Indian communities.

Today, 14 years after Dr Mahathir took office, Malaysia can boast a broad middle class of as much as 60 per cent of the population, earning a national average of $US3,500 a year, translating to an effective purchasing power of $US8,500 a year, according to Australian market research group Frank Small and Associates.

"These are people with virtually identical aspirations as the average Australian," says Frank Small's Malaysian managing director, Mr John Smurthwaite.

"And they now have the means to achieve them, if not more so. Malaysia does now have an economy that grows by at least 8 per cent every year."

But with consumer demand and aspiration comes problems and middle-class angst.

In Kuala Lumpur, divorce is on the rise, as reportedly is petty crime. Traffic jams have become chronic. Leafy neighbourhoods employ security firms to watch for snowdroppers - often migrant Javanese kampung construction workers, imported to build the new middle-class' shopping temples, offices, hotels and apartments, souveniring a drying Calvin Klein T-shirt in their first taste of the Big Smoke.

Men's Review magazine is testing the boundaries of cultural acceptability in Dr Mahathir's Mecca of Asian Values.

A recent feature article in this Malaysian G.Q sociologically assessed KL's club scene, using a character called "Hot Babe Number One" on the look-out for "someone decent enough, very good looking, with a big dick and a massive wallet". This sort of talk in Kuala Lumpur, home of the arch-moralist Dr Mahathir who lectures the West about its decay and Asia's moral supremacy?

"Dr M has told me that he's heard about us," says the magazine's Monash-educated publisher Ms Faridah Stephens, a native of Sabah State.

"I'm not sure whether he would approve, but we are still in business and getting stronger," she says.

Ms Stephens, whose father was a leading Sabah politician and one-time Malaysian High Commissioner to Canberra, said her magazine would not have existed five years ago.

The basis of its readership is overwhelmingly male and earning between $US600 and $US2,000 a month, half Chinese and 35 per cent Malay.

The readership profile breaks down further to reveal a rich seam of consumers ripe for the type of goods Australians would define as luxurious.

Some 20 per cent of Men's Review readers spend more than $US150 a month on clothes, nearly 80 per cent spend $US100 a month on grooming products, 75 per cent have a credit card, 71 per cent travel abroad for leisure and 90 per cent play and spend money on sport.

It's a profile not that dissimilar to the modern Australian yuppy and one that did not exist five, nay, two years ago and it's happening across the region