Malaysian PM Mahathir accepts failure of the boom he launched 30 years ago

While Vision 2020 was always more rhetoric than reality, it did serve to harness Malaysia to the climate of the times

Mahathir Mohamad has walked away from one of the big intellectual drivers of his decades at Malaysia's helm: The idea that the former commodity-dependent backwater could be transformed into a fully developed country by 2020. It's vital for the Southeast Asian nation’s future that the right lessons be learned from this letdown.

The prime minister conceded last weekend that Vision 2020, his demanding scheme to propel Malaysia to an industrial powerhouse, has failed. Launched in 1991, the plan became shorthand for the rapid development that characterized much of Asia during that decade. Mahathir effectively just closed the book on an economic