In 1970 three-quarters of Malaysians living below the poverty line were Malays, the majority of Malays were still rural workers, and Malays were still largely excluded from the modern economy. The government's response was the New Economic Policy of 1971, which was to be implemented through a series of four five-year plans from 1971 to 1990.^[95] The plan had two objectives: the elimination of poverty, particularly rural poverty, and the elimination of the identification between race and prosperity.https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6e/65/42/6e65426bd6f5a09ffea0acc58edce4de.jpg This latter policy was understood to mean a decisive shift in economic power from the Chinese to the Malays, who until then made up only 5% of the professional class.^[96]

To provide jobs for all these new Malay graduates, the government created several agencies for intervention in the economy. The most important of these were PERNAS (National Corporation Ltd.), PETRONAS (National Petroleum Ltd.), and HICOM (Heavy Industry Corporation of Malaysia), which not only directly employed many Malays but also invested in growing areas of the economy to create new technical and administrative jobs which were preferentially allocated to Malays. As a result, the share of Malay equity in the economy rose from 1.5% in 1969 to 20.3% in 1990.