Generation X lands the spoils - A new wave of ethnic Malays has discovered the delights of yuppiedom and, despite the critics, is dedicated in its pursuit of the good life

Eric Ellis, Kuala Lumpur

08/23/1994

THE LED Zeppelin classic Dazed and Confused booms out across Kuala Lumpur's Hard Rock Cafe and the 100-strong line queuing to get in.

But inside there is nothing dazed or confused about the way the punters are spending, consuming and partying. We are in the midst of the bumigeois, a thrusting new social class built around Malaysia's majority Malay bumiputra, the princes of the soil.

These are the people who owe their gold Visa cards to the New Economic Policy of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power promoting preferential treatment for ethnic Malays he felt were left behind by the wealthier merchant classes of Malaysia's Chinese and Indian minorities. Controversial it may be - critics, usually non-Malay, liken it to South Africa's apartheid system - but the NEP has been hugely successful in enriching Malays.

Today, Malaysia is Asia's wealthiest economy outside the four tigers and Brunei's oil-based 'Shellfare state'.

Wealth and Malay-ness are what unites the class that Kuala Lumpur's hottest new magazine Men's Review identifies as Generation X. Aged from 18 to 40, the group's members are getting noticed by advertisers, investors and politicians as a potent force.

Says Men's Review: 'It is beginning to become apparent that they are going to be the generation that will take the country into the 21st century, who will be in charge come 2020.' That is the year Mahathir has designated as Malaysia's industrialised coming of age.

Politically, Generation X are the sons and daughters of Malaysia's custodians of independence. Socially, Men's Review describes them as 'bridging the gap between baby boomers and the MTV generation, this age that blends the two, a confusing concoction of new and old values'.

Itself something of a bumigeois handbook, Men's Review self-consciously describes a typical Malaysian member as 'confidently individualistic' with a 'a broad range of education in both Malay and English' who 'likes to think he is radical, avant garde or profoundly unique'.

It goes on: 'He travels for business and pleasure frequently, is anti-sexist in theory but with entrenched old values still hovering about, has little use for contemporary politics unless for gossip, business or a way to improve the quality of life.'

If that all sounds rather shallow, that is because it probably is. Indeed, it is a lifestyle not unlike that which marked the yuppie-ascendant West of the Eighties, an intriguing parallel given Mahathir's open admiration for the yuppies' patron saint, Margaret Thatcher, and his frequent hectoring that the West is in terminal social and moral decay.

Just as Thatcherism was spurred on by a colossal bull run, Generation X talk is of shares and champagne, profits, Porsches and Paris. There is easy money to be made out there, simply by knowing a stockbroker or, better still for the Hard Rockin' crowd, being one. At the Hard Rock Cafe, or at Fire, Baze, SAQS, Musictheque or any other trendy capital nightspot - 'KL is wild and it's hot, ' says Men's Review - there are a lot of gold and platinum credit cards in evidence.

There are also a lot of expensive cocktails being drunk, all the more intriguing for a country that, although secular, still stresses its Islamic piety. Generation X'ers even have their own language.

KL's bumigeois tend to get afflicted with periodic bouts of affluenza - 'striking young people who live off inherited wealth' - cured only by spreeing through Kuala Lumpur's fashionable mall, Lot 10, or the Menara Concorde, home of Emporio Armani.

Once outfitted by Armani or DKNY or Versace's Versus, one can look positively GQ. That is as in like the cover of the US magazine of the same name that is a must for the coffee table of any socially aspiring new-collar, an even newer-monied set whose roots are in the kampung, the traditional (and now mostly rejected) Malay village.

NEW-collar have more street cred in KL than lepak, who are the wannabes hanging on the fringes of hotspots frequented by card-carrying Generation X'ers. Where the latter own imported European cars, lepak might drive a Proton with mag wheels.

But the ultimate Generation X term is canggih, a superlative which means anything of excellent quality and describes everything from new Armani jacket to new golf swing.

It is a description more than appropriate for the Malaysian economy ..for the moment at least.