Towers and Dams

Two engineering teams, climbing toward the sky at the same time.

One team was led by a Japanese company.

The other came from South Korea.

The construction site divided the two towers between them, one for each. Construction records describe the building process as a race to the summit; later, the second tower, entrusted to the South Korean team, reached the top first. ^1,2

This was, of course, an engineering race.

But in Kuala Lumpur during the 1990s, it was also like a massive clock: as the floors multiplied layer by layer, it felt as though they were counting down the days until a nation arrived at the future.

Pouring the future into concrete#

The Twin Towers did not start from the ground up.

In March 1993, excavators first began digging downwards. Soil was hauled away truck by truck at night; each tower's raft foundation later required a continuous pour of about 13,200 cubic meters of concrete over fifty-four hours. The foundation reached deep, with its lowest point approximately 120 meters underground. ^3,9

We need to pause here.

The first completed part of the tall tower was exactly the part no one saw.

Nation-building works the same way. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, everyone sees the glass, the steel beams, and the spires; but what truly determines whether it can stand firm is the technology, financing, oversight, and talent buried underground.

The Twin Towers' design incorporated Islamic geometric patterns, while the engineering side framed it as a symbol of Malaysia's entry into the global economy. It was not merely an office building, but a public declaration: this country, once known to the world primarily for rubber, tin, and crude oil, now wanted its own skyline to do the talking. ^3,1

Furthermore, the towers did not appear in isolation.

On the same national blueprint, there was also an airport, road networks, and an administrative city yet to be fully grown.

A corridor heading south#

South of Kuala Lumpur, between the oil palm estates and villages in Sepang, another group of surveyors was drawing lines.

The old Subang Airport had limited room for expansion, prompting the government to build a new international airport. In 1994, Malaysia secured a Yen loan to advance the project; KLIA was subsequently opened in 1998, with the first phase capable of handling 25 million passengers annually. ^4,5,10

The airport brought more than just terminals.

Later related studies found that new townships, roads, schools, and service industries emerged in the surrounding areas, causing some residents who originally depended on agriculture to transition into transport, commerce, and hospitality jobs. In other words, such megaprojects were not just "for foreigners to look at"; they genuinely transformed employment and land use across an entire region. ^5,10

Between the airport and Kuala Lumpur, a new federal administrative center also needed to be placed.

In 1993, the government selected Prang Besar; the master plan took shape over the next two years, with Putrajaya designed as an "Intelligent Garden City" and integrated into the southern development corridor leading to the new airport. ^6,7

The high towers were responsible for telling the world that Malaysia had arrived.

The airport was tasked with bringing the world in.

And Putrajaya was meant to create a brand-new address for the state machinery.

If one looks only at this map, the path ahead looks like an endlessly extending road.

But if you turn the map eastward across the South China Sea, the story reveals a different kind of line.

That line represents a river that would be covered by water.

Fifteen communities on the dam map#

The Bakun project was built on the Balui River in Sarawak. The design had an installed capacity of 2,400 megawatts; the reservoir's water surface was about 695 square kilometers. What supporters saw was electricity, industry, and regional development; but the first thing the affected Orang Ulu communities saw was that ancestral lands, rivers, and longhouses had to be recalculated. ^11,12

In the mid-1990s, while Kuala Lumpur's tall towers were climbing upward, the map of Bakun had already drawn out the shape of the future water surface.

The blue color on the map is very quiet.

It won't tell you that a river is simultaneously a road, a fishing ground, a food source, and a multi-generational register of place names.

What happened later can tell us in hindsight what those lines meant back then: in 1998, fifteen communities were relocated to Sungai Asap. Local administrative data recorded the affected population at 9,428 people, coming from the Kayan, Kenyah, Lahanan/Kajang, Ukit, and Penan communities. ^11,12,13

Houses and lands can be appraised.

However, the foraging grounds by the river, the ancestral burial sites, and the mutually supportive distances within a community are difficult to cram into the same compensation table.

Studies on the residents of Sungai Asap found that the disputes were not just over compensation amounts, but also that the system primarily valued houses and land with market prices, yet struggled to compensate for the loss of social, cultural, and lifestyle fabrics. Subsequent surveys also documented issues regarding land quality, livelihood opportunities, and delayed compensations. ^11,12

This does not mean hydroelectricity has no value.

Nor does it mean every mega-project should not be built.

It merely uncovers a truth invisible from the top of the towers: In the same narrative of "national development," the benefits may be shared by many, but the most concentrated costs often fall upon a few communities first.

The prosperity was not an illusion#

Speaking of this, the easiest mistake to make is to describe all the prosperity of the 1990s as a scam.

The numbers do not support this framing.

From 1990 to 1996, Malaysia's real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average of about 9 percent annually. Manufacturing, exports, private investments, and foreign direct investments were all expanding; government finances during this period were not running deficits every year, and in the mid-1990s, they even recorded surpluses. ^8,14

The jobs were real.

The factories were real.

The highways, airports, and urban expansions were also real.

Ordinary households did not need to read economic reports to feel the changes through job advertisements, construction sites, new cars, and new housing estates.

Therefore, painting the entire era as a "movie set built on borrowed money" is no more honest than writing up every single project as a monumental triumph.

What truly deserves questioning is not whether the prosperity was real or fake.

But how the prosperity was paid for.

Where the money came in, and where it went#

High-speed development requires massive amounts of machinery, equipment, and services. Many things had to be imported from abroad, causing the outflow of foreign exchange to temporarily exceed what was brought in by exports and other current receipts.

In 1995, Malaysia's current account deficit was about 9 percent of its GDP; during the same period, money supply and private sector credit were also expanding rapidly. ^8,14,15

These phenomena are not the exact same thing.

A current account deficit indicates that the entire economy's outward payments exceed current income, requiring capital inflows to make up the difference.

Rising credit indicates that the banking system is lending more and more funds to corporations and households.

The International Monetary Fund's contemporaneous reports recorded that capital inflows from 1990 to 1993 were predominantly long-term funds, alongside an increase in short-term funds. By 1996, the government report submitted by Malaysia to the World Trade Organization still stated that the current account deficit was primarily financed by long-term capital, particularly for corporate investment financing. ^14,15

Therefore, one cannot say that the Twin Towers, KLIA, Putrajaya, and Bakun were all paid for out of the same bag of "hot money."

They each had different owners, loans, equity capital, and public arrangements.

However, when an economy gets used to high investment, high credit, and continuous capital inflows, the nature of the risk quietly shifts: the projects are still under construction, but the ledgers increasingly rely on tomorrow's growth to justify today's decisions.

What is seen, and what is unseen#

In 1995, what did the voters see#

We now know that the Asian Financial Crisis would arrive later.

The voters at that time did not know.

The evidence before their eyes was the rising Twin Towers, the new airport and administrative center under construction, and an economy enjoying high-speed growth for consecutive years. The concentrated costs of Bakun occurred in river valleys far from the peninsula's political center, and would only fully enter the wider public's view later, when the relocation actually took place. ^6,8,11,12

Looking backward from the ending, history books can easily draw all the cracks clearly.

But the people voting could only stand in the present.

In April 1995, ballot boxes were once again deployed across the country. What voters had to judge was not a crisis report written years later, but the rising skyline directly in front of them.

The answer they gave would propel Barisan Nasional to a height it would never return to again.

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Next up: "The Summit". As the ballots poured out one by one, the ruling coalition secured more than just a victory; it was a political mandate where almost no one dared to say "No". But after reaching the very top, where else is there to go?