ASEAN, Asian peers and global benchmarks, with year, denominator, coverage and rank direction kept attached.
MALAYSIA TODAY · COMPARABLE SNAPSHOTS
#3/11 in ASEAN · current US$
#2/10 among ranked ASEAN economies
#5/11 in ASEAN
#5/7 among ASEAN participants · OECD avg 482
LENS 01 · ASEAN
These stories use one publisher, one measure and one reference period within each race. Missing participation is shown as missing, never as last place.
All 11 ASEAN members on one World Bank measure and one reference year.
Watch the ASEAN race →WIPO GII ranks for the ten ASEAN economies included in the 2026 index.
Watch the ASEAN race →All 11 ASEAN members frozen to FIFA's official 20 July 2026 update.
Watch the ASEAN race →Seven ASEAN education systems with published OECD PISA 2025 science scores.
Watch the ASEAN race →V2 · DIGITAL · SAFETY · TECH TRADE
V2 expands beyond headline rankings. Every card states how many ASEAN members actually share the same reference year, and selected peer sets are labelled as selected peers rather than regional ranks.
#1/9 among ASEAN members with a verified 2024 value
#2/8 among ASEAN members with verified 2024 values
10 ASEAN members compared · world benchmark 5/100k
selected 5-country ASEAN peer set · WHO modelled estimate
Nine ASEAN members with verified 2024 World Bank/ITU values; older Myanmar and Timor-Leste observations are excluded.
Open comparison →Eight ASEAN members with verified 2024 UN Comtrade/World Bank export values.
Open comparison →Ten ASEAN members with verified same-year UNODC/World Bank homicide-rate values.
Open comparison →A selected five-country ASEAN peer benchmark using WHO modelled 2021 mortality rates.
Open comparison →V3 · HEALTH · OLYMPICS · BADMINTON
V3 adds population health and sport. Olympic medal count is shown separately from the official gold-first medal-table ordering, and the badminton view is a Paris 2024 medal snapshot rather than a current BWF ranking.
11 ASEAN members · rounded whole-year World Bank/UN values
Malaysia · 2 bronze · total-medal view, not official medal-table rank
Malaysia · both bronze · ASEAN-leading total badminton medal count at that Games
years · rounded 2024 values from Myanmar to Singapore
All 11 ASEAN members on the same 2024 World Bank/UN life-expectancy measure.
Open comparison →Final Paris 2024 medal totals across all 11 ASEAN members, with gold/silver/bronze stored separately.
Open comparison →Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia were ASEAN's badminton medal-winning nations at Paris 2024.
Open comparison →V4 · ENVIRONMENT · ASEAN
PulseKita does not collapse emissions and forest cover into a single environmental score. Both comparisons use full ASEAN coverage with one source year per metric.
#3/11 when ordered high → low · world benchmark 4.7 t
#4/11 when ordered high → low
V5 · DEMOGRAPHICS · URBANISATION
Both comparisons use full 11-country ASEAN coverage for 2025. Urbanisation is ranked by the published share; ageing preserves rounded ties rather than forcing a false exact ranking.
#2/11 in ASEAN · world 58% · East Asia & Pacific 65%
rounded value · tied with Indonesia and Myanmar · world 10%
All 11 ASEAN members on the same World Bank/UN 2025 urban-population share.
Open comparison →All 11 ASEAN members on the same 2025 World Bank/UN age-structure measure, with rounded ties preserved.
Open comparison →V6 · TRADE POWER · ASEAN
V6 keeps trade scale, balance and export mix separate: total goods exports, merchandise trade balance, manufactured-export value, manufactures share and ICT-goods export share. Source years stay fixed inside each story, and Malaysia's semiconductor figure is shown as national context rather than used to manufacture a regional semiconductor ranking.
World Bank/IMF balance-of-payments goods exports with a source-backed 2024 fallback; older Myanmar data is not carried forward.
Open trade comparison →ASEANstats merchandise exports and imports. The chart uses export coverage while keeping the US-dollar surplus or deficit in the story notes.
Open trade comparison →World Bank current-US-dollar manufactures exports for ASEAN members with a verified 2024 observation.
Open trade comparison →World Bank/UN Comtrade manufactures exports as a share of merchandise exports, using verified 2024 observations only.
Open trade comparison →UNCTAD/World Bank ICT-goods share, including electronic components, plus a separate Malaysia-only MATRADE semiconductor anchor.
Open trade comparison →A supporting export-value measure only — useful context, but not treated as a semiconductor ranking.
Open trade comparison →V7 · INVESTMENT & INDUSTRIAL POWER · ASEAN
V7 separates investment flow from industrial output. The ASEAN races use comparable FDI and manufacturing measures. Malaysia-only MIDA figures sit beside them as national context, not as regional rankings.
all approved investments · MIDA Investment Performance Report 2024
manufacturing approved investment · Malaysia only · not FDI inflow
46 projects · 21,722 employment opportunities
cumulative approved projects reported by MIDA · not a one-year flow
Official Invest ASEAN / UNCTAD inward FDI flows across all 11 ASEAN members, using the latest 2025 table.
Open investment comparison →World Bank current-US-dollar manufacturing value added, with older observations never carried forward into the 2024 comparison.
Open investment comparison →World Bank manufacturing value added as a share of GDP, separating industrial depth from absolute industrial scale.
Open investment comparison →Context sources: MIDA reports RM378.5b total approved investment and RM120.5b manufacturing approvals in 2024; its 2024 semiconductor report records RM48.1b across 46 projects and 21,722 employment opportunities. MIDA later reported RM184.7b of approved data-centre and cloud-related projects across 2021–2024. These figures overlap different scopes and periods, so PulseKita does not add them together.
V8 · PRODUCTIVITY & WORKFORCE POWER · ASEAN
V8 looks at the people side of economic capacity: output per employed person, the share of jobs in industry and labour-force participation. These are different questions, so PulseKita does not collapse them into one competitiveness score.
World Bank constant-PPP output per employed person, kept separate from wages and household income.
Open workforce comparison →ILO modelled employment in industry as a share of total employment; broader than manufacturing alone.
Open workforce comparison →ILO modelled share of the population aged 15+ that is working or actively seeking work.
Open workforce comparison →Reading rule: GDP per person employed is not wages; industry employment includes more than manufacturing; labour-force participation includes unemployed people actively seeking work. Higher values are not treated as automatic evidence of better jobs or living standards.
V9 · ENERGY & INFRASTRUCTURE POWER · ASEAN
V9 separates electricity demand, renewable share and energy intensity. These measures answer different questions, so higher is not always better and source years stay visible rather than being blended.
Suruhanjaya Tenaga MyEnergyStats · Peninsular Malaysia only
28 May 2025 · highest recorded demand
current MyEnergyStats system-generation context · not an ASEAN comparison
IEA electric-power consumption per capita via the World Bank, fixed to the latest comparable year shown for Malaysia.
Open energy comparison →IEA renewable energy in total final energy consumption; not renewable electricity generation or installed capacity.
Open energy comparison →Tracking SDG 7 primary-energy intensity per PPP-adjusted GDP, ordered lower first and not treated as a complete efficiency score.
Open energy comparison →Grid context source: Suruhanjaya Tenaga MyEnergyStats. The 2025 capacity, demand and reserve-margin figures above refer to Peninsular Malaysia and are deliberately kept separate from the ASEAN indicator races.
V10 · LOGISTICS & CONNECTIVITY POWER · ASEAN
V10 separates logistics quality from physical freight volume. LPI is survey-based; port throughput measures containers handled; air freight measures registered-carrier freight activity. PulseKita does not merge them into one logistics score.
World Bank 2023 LPI scores for the eight participating ASEAN economies; non-participants are shown as missing.
Open logistics comparison →UNCTAD container traffic in TEU via the World Bank, using 2024 observations only and never treating missing values as zero.
Open logistics comparison →ICAO registered-carrier freight activity in million ton-km, kept separate from airport cargo throughput.
Open logistics comparison →2023 LPI participation is eight ASEAN economies. Brunei Darussalam, Myanmar and Timor-Leste are not assigned scores. Port and air-freight stories use only observations from their stated source year.
V11 · DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE POWER · ASEAN
V11 separates fixed broadband, secure-server density and mobile subscription density. These measures capture different layers of the digital stack and are not combined into a single readiness score.
subscriptions per 100 people · ITU / World Bank
per 1 million people · Netcraft / World Bank
per 100 people · can exceed 100 because people may hold multiple subscriptions
ITU fixed-broadband subscriptions per 100 people; subscriptions are not treated as unique people or households.
Open digital comparison →Netcraft publicly trusted TLS/SSL certificates per million people; not a direct measure of data-centre capacity.
Open digital comparison →ITU mobile-cellular subscriptions per 100 people, with values above 100 explicitly treated as multiple subscriptions rather than penetration above 100%.
Open digital comparison →Reading rule: subscriptions are not unique people, secure-server counts are not data-centre megawatts, and mobile subscription rates above 100 reflect multiple SIMs or accounts. PulseKita keeps these concepts separate.
V12 · INNOVATION & KNOWLEDGE POWER · ASEAN
V12 separates innovation inputs, research capacity and invention output: R&D expenditure, researchers per million people and resident patent applications per million people. Sparse source coverage stays visible instead of being hidden behind a synthetic innovation score.
of GDP · UNESCO UIS / World Bank
per 1 million people · full-time-equivalent researchers
raw resident applications before population normalisation · WIPO / World Bank
UNESCO UIS research-and-development spending as a share of GDP, fixed to Malaysia's latest 2022 observation.
Open knowledge comparison →UNESCO full-time-equivalent researchers per million people, keeping sparse same-year coverage visible.
Open knowledge comparison →WIPO resident patent applications normalised by population so large countries do not automatically dominate.
Open knowledge comparison →Reading rule: R&D spending is an input, researcher density is capacity, and patent applications are only one invention-output signal. The patent race is normalised by population; patent quality, grants and commercial value are not inferred from application counts.
V13 · EDUCATION & TALENT PIPELINE · ASEAN
V13 separates participation, parity and accumulated degree attainment. These measures describe different stages of the talent pipeline and are not merged into one human-capital score.
female-to-male gross enrolment ratio · 1.00 is parity · UNESCO / World Bank
PulseKita keeps the older UNESCO graduate-field series out of the current ASEAN ranking until newer comparable coverage is available.
UNESCO gross tertiary enrolment ratio, with gross-rate caveats kept visible instead of treating it as degree completion.
Open talent comparison →UNESCO tertiary GPI transformed to absolute distance from 1.00 parity, so lower means closer rather than treating a higher GPI as automatically better.
Open talent comparison →UNESCO cumulative attainment among adults aged 25+, separated from current enrolment and graduate-flow measures.
Open talent comparison →Reading rule: gross tertiary enrolment can exceed 100, gender parity is measured relative to 1.00, and adult Bachelor's attainment is a stock accumulated over many years. None of these measures alone describes graduate employability, field-of-study fit or job quality.
LENS 02 · SELECTED ASIA PEERS
Until PulseKita has complete Asia coverage for a metric, this section deliberately says "selected peers". It does not manufacture an Asian rank from a partial list.
Korea, Rep. · US$36,227
Japan · US$35,951
China · US$13,862
Malaysia · US$13,125
India · US$2,703
East Asia & Pacific average · US$14,077
East Asia & Pacific is an aggregate benchmark, not a country.Korea, Rep. · world #4
Singapore · world #5
China · world #10
Malaysia · world #34
India · world #38
Viet Nam · world #43
Thailand · world #44
Indonesia · world #55
Selected peer set only · lower rank is betterLENS 03 · WORLD
Malaysia US$13,125 vs world average US$14,406
versus East Asia & Pacific average US$14,077
among 139 GII 2026 economies
score-point gap · Malaysia 419 vs OECD 482
NEXT INTERNATIONAL LANES
PulseKita will only add the race when same-definition coverage is strong enough.
Not yet ranked in PulseKita V1 because ASEANstats notes that Malaysia data from 2024 refer to total visitor arrivals including tourists and excursionists, while coverage/definitions differ for some members.
Open ASEANstats source ↗Next sport layer: federation-backed current badminton rankings and Olympic history across multiple Games, once the ranking feed can be frozen to a verified publication date.
Next international laneINTERNATIONAL RULE
Malaysia can improve while its rank falls if others improve faster. Every international story keeps those concepts separate.
