(Original title: Ibrahim elected as Malaysia’s 17th head of state)
Johor Sultan Ibrahim Picture source: Oriental Daily
On the 27th local time, the Conference of Rulers of Malaysia announced that Sultan Ibrahim of Johor was elected as the 17th head of state of Malaysia. The current term of Abdullah, the 16th Head of State, will expire on January 30, 2024.
Further reading:
When submitting the budget to Parliament, the Prime Minister of Malaysia suddenly talked about Mencius’ thoughts.
Nowadays, it is not surprising when Anwar talks about Mencius in the Malaysian Parliament.
The Malaysian Parliament will meet on October 13 to hear the government’s 2024 budget proposal.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar
This is the second time Anwar has proposed a budget since he became the Prime Minister of Malaysia in late 2022.
As expected, it reached a new high——
The total expenditure is as high as 393.8 billion ringgit (1 ringgit is equivalent to 0.21 US dollars).
Anwar said that the Malaysian government expects revenue of 307.6 billion ringgit next year. It is obvious that Malaysia will still be in a state of fiscal deficit. Fortunately, according to Anwar, next year’s fiscal deficit will be slightly reduced, from this year’s expected 5% to 4.3%.
1
Why is Malaysia’s fiscal deficit likely to decrease?
At present, this country, which has the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio among Southeast Asian countries, will raise some taxes. for example–
Increase service tax from 6% to 8%;
Introduce luxury goods tax.
On August 31, actors performed at the celebration of the 66th anniversary of Malaysia’s independence in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
Increasing taxation will naturally serve the purpose of increasing government revenue.
Uncle Hai would like to say that tax changes in Malaysia are indeed adjusted frequently. For example, consumption tax will return to zero starting from June 1, 2018. Originally, from April 1, 2015 to May 30, 2018, the consumption tax rate was 6%.
In other words, for a long time, it has not agreed to blindly increase the tax rate to increase government revenue.
Now, Anwar’s proposed increase in service tax and luxury goods tax seems to be asking the wealthy class to tax more. What kind of concept does this reflect?
2
In fact, Anwar made it quite clear!
He suddenly spoke in Chinese. Note, he said it in Chinese——
The four words “benevolence”, “righteousness”, “wisdom” and “propriety”.
This summarizes Mencius’ thoughts in his mind.
Mencius believed that “those who are benevolent will be invincible if taxes are thin”. Picture: “Mencius Origins” by The Commercial Press, page 45, “Mencius: Chapters and Sentences of King Hui of Liang”
Anwar cited the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius and used Confucianism to explain the fine-tuning of tax policies he hopes to achieve. In Uncle Hai’s view, it makes sense.
When Mencius met King Hui of Liang, he mentioned that “the king treats the people with benevolence, saves punishments, collects taxes lightly, and cultivates deeply and makes farming easy”, and he can eventually reach the state of “the benevolent man is invincible”. But it should also be noted that Mencius did not mention “no taxation” to King Hui of Liang.
In Mr. Huang Ruiyun’s commentary “The Origins of Mencius” recently published by the Commercial Press, Mr. Huang Ruiyun commented on this that Mencius believed that “benevolent government must ‘control the people’s property'”, which is “somewhat close to what later generations of politicians proposed” ‘Land to the tiller’, the value of theory is self-evident.”
Huang Ruiyun believes that in Chinese history, “Whenever this problem is solved better, it will be relatively stable. If it is not solved or even the contradiction is acute, the world will be in chaos.”
Photo of Mr. Huang Ruiyun in “The Origins of Mencius” by The Commercial Press
It can be seen from this that Anwar had a certain understanding of Mencius anyway, so he said the four words “benevolence”, “righteousness”, “wisdom” and “propriety” in Chinese.
Of course, it should also be noted that the reason why Anwar mentioned Mencius’s teachings is not only to draw on the ideas of ancient Chinese sages to serve the current administration of Malaysia, but also to do with the existence of the Chinese community in Malaysia. In fact, in the Malaysian Parliament, Anwar also mentioned that this budget will specifically allocate 100 million ringgit to the Chinese New Villages in Malaysia to improve the infrastructure and social service facilities of the Chinese New Villages.
At the same time, Uncle Hai believes that Anwar suddenly spoke in Chinese for a paragraph in the National Assembly because he hopes to get closer to the Malaysian Chinese members of the National Assembly. For Anwar, mentioning Mencius has a high probability of achieving this goal. At least it can win the favor of some Chinese congressmen.
On September 27, people participated in the mooncake making activity at the Mid-Autumn Festival party held in Tanjung Kining, Malacca, Malaysia. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
It is also important to note that Malaysia does have a diverse culture. In his speech at the time, Anwar also mentioned a Tamil proverb to express his determination to maintain healthy finances.
3
There is no doubt that the positive side of Confucius and Mencius is not only a representative of China’s excellent traditional culture, but has also attracted the attention of many parts of the world.
Some people say that modern society cannot be governed solely by the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Uncle Hai personally agrees with this. Otherwise, China will have to carry out various explorations for more than a hundred years – introducing “Mr. Germany” and “Mr. Sai”, and then introduce Marxism-Leninism later?
However, as traditional Chinese culture and representatives of the excellent traditional culture of mankind, the thoughts of Confucius and Mencius certainly have positive significance in contemporary times. These ideas were refracted to the West during the European Enlightenment era. The French thinker Voltaire praised Mencius’s proposition that “the people are the most valuable and the king is the least important”.
Nowadays, it is not surprising when Anwar talks about Mencius in the Malaysian Parliament.
Source of this article: CCTV News Client Editor: Sun Gaoheng_NB31148
#Ibrahim #elected #Malaysias #17th #state
2023-10-27 05:36:52
