The Strait of Malacca: an Inland Sea, by Nathalie Fau, Nathalie Fau, geographer, lecturer at the University of Paris 7

Author :	Nathalie Fau
Article date : 01-02-2011

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Transport and flows in the Strait of Malacca (© 2011 / N. Fau)

Distribution of the proximity networks and transnational reorganisation (© 2011 / N. Fau)

The Strait of Malacca is a major axis in worldwide maritime traffic and a vital artery of intraregional commerce. It is located at the juncture of the transoceanic merchandise shipping lines between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, intra-Asian lines and east-west circumterrestrial maritime routes. Often considered solely as a narrowing of the maritime region in which navigating conditions frequently become difficult, the Strait of Malacca is rarely considered a separate territory structured by longitudinal as well as latitudinal flow. The originality of the Strait of Malacca is precisely the fact that it is both a zone of major exchange and transit in international commerce, in which the nations situated along its coasts have always been deeply integrated, and a region in itself, shaped, despite the borders that separate the opposing coasts, by a tight web of commercial and cultural relations between the two coasts.

The north-south configuration Strait, which is 1,000 kilometers in length, has led to a geographical organization comprised of two zones of cross-border cooperation, known since the beginning of the 1990’s by the generic term “growth triangle”. The southern triangle, or SIJORI and later known as IMS-GT, is a zone of cross-border cooperation bringing together Singapore, the states of Johor, Melaka, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia and the provinces of Riau, the Riau Islands, West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, South Sumatra in Indonesia. The northern triangle or IMT-GT includes all of the provinces of the island of Sumatra, all of the Malaysian peninsular states except Johor and Pahang, and 14 regions in southern Thailand.

The growth triangles of the Strait of Malacca (© 2011 / N. Fau)

The southern growth triangle
(© 2011 / N. Fau)

These two zones basically function according to the same logic: the principles of international labor division are applied on a sub-regional scale. They take advantage of the geo-economic hiatus resulting from the national borders. The way they operate depends on the existence of economic gradients (the cost of labor, the level of industrialization and development of the service sector), demographics (the availability of labor) and politics (protectionism or free trade) between the countries bordering the Strait. In the IMT-GT for example, the structures of the main elements of production vary considerably between the three partners: the northern part of the Malaysian peninsula disposes of a per capita revenue three times greater than those of northern Sumatra and of southern Thailand. Although the south of Thailand and the north of Sumatra appear in many respects to be under-industrialised in comparison with the Malaysian region, their available property is, on the other hand, a considerable advantage for their future development. Within this framework, Penang has woven even tighter economic ties to its two neighbours. Throughout the 1990’s the flow between Penang and Medan grew considerably: the industrial zones of the city of Medan have welcomed Malaysian companies specializing in the agricultural industry (fish-freezing factories and fruit canneries), the manufacturing of wicker furniture or plantation-wood furniture (Hevea in particular). The businessmen, who had decided to relocate their production units to Medan and northern Sumatra, did not do so for the low manual labor costs as much as their abundant and under-used natural resources.

The development of the “growth triangles” led the border nations to take into account the diversity of maritime shipping in the Strait rather than merely passing legislation on the security of international maritime shipping. The traffic separation scheme of 1^st December 1998 is thus the first legal text to establish maritime zones reserved for coastal traffic and for transversal shipping. This scheme guarantees greater security for inshore navigation and for fishermen by separating the international transit from inshore and transversal shipping. There is considerable transversal shipping linking the two sides of the Strait of Malacca: small capacity cargo ships, outrigger fishing boats, ferries and even sampans making daily runs from Medan or Tanjung Balai to Penang and Port Klang, from Dumai to Malacca and to Port Klang, and from the islands of the Riau Archipelago to Singapore.

Since the reopening of the borders in the Strait of Malacca, numerous ports have emerged and the number of passageways across the Strait has increased. The policies of the Indonesian and Malaysian governments have contributed to this growth, in particular by favoring the development of small ports specialized in “barter trade” (commerce based on compensation or exchange). In each of these ports, the coastal populations are allowed to carry out commercial transactions valuing up to 600 ringgit (130 Euros; the mean monthly salary being 120$ in Indonesia and 850$ in Malaysia) per crossing, without customs duties or administrative authorization. The goal is to allow the coastal populations, which are often isolated from the big cities of the interior, to supply themselves with basic goods and farming tools. As a result of the economic crisis, activity in these small ports is expanding rapidly, to such an extent that the local authorities have asked their respective governments to raise the value of duty-free transactions to 6,000 ringgits (1,300 Euros).

Transnational shipping does not only exist when and where the political powers favor it; it also develops in the framework of a strategy of circumvention of the nations and their borders. Relegated to an informal, hidden and illegal sphere, this flow possesses its own hubs, its own logic and traces a geographic map distinct from that of the official circuits. On the east coast of Sumatra, the principal hubs of illegal flows are the port city of Tanjung Balai and the Riau islands (Batam, Bintan and Karinum). The contraband shipping uses the same circuits and the same fruit and vegetable boats as the circuits used for illegal migration. The participants in the contraband activities are, by no means, adventurers operating at night in order to escape oversight; they are businessmen engaged in, to borrow the expression used by the local population, “legal contraband”, and they benefit from the support (in exchange for remuneration) of customs officials and the army. For the smugglers of Riau, these activities are not illegal, but are simply the pursuit of their role as intermediaries, the reflection of commercial continuity against a backdrop of political change. These two “gray zones” operate in tandem and cover each other’s activities: the smugglers of Tanjung Balai state the Riau islands as their final destination and vice-versa. This system takes advantage of a legislative weakness about which the customs officials complain regularly. These two zones share the shipment of contraband. Tanjung Balai is specialized in the contraband oriented towards Malaysia and in particular towards Port Klang, whereas Bintan and Batam are integrated in far more widespread illicit networks, which have developed on the scale of East Asia and are based in the City-State of Singapore. Singapore serves all the more easily as a turntable because the shipments escaping the customs taxation of Indonesia are not qualified as illicit in the City-State, which is a duty-free port. According to this liberal logic, it is the banning itself that has created the contraband.

Throughout the duration of the Suharto government, the cultural flow that unites the two sides of the Strait in a tight web has been deliberately cut off, and sometimes even forbidden: any reference to a Malay world that went against the principle of territoriality of the new nation-states was, in the eyes of the central government, the dross of an ancient and outdated past. At present, however, as a result of a move towards decentralisation in Indonesia, this Malay world is taking shape once again in the region of the Strait of Malacca and is giving rise to a re-emergence of the concept of serumpun. The concept of “serumpun” from “bangsa serumpun”, meaning “people of the same ethnic stock” or “ blood brotherhood’ based on ethno-cultural affinity, is often mentioned as being the special bond, which is the basis of relations between Malaysia and Indonesia. Transnational organisations play an important role in reviving awareness of the unity of the Malay world. The term “transnational organisation” refers to organisations that have arisen out of local initiatives and that co-operate with Malay communities located in other countries without resorting to the intervention by the central government. It therefore consists of co-operative efforts between local Malay figures living in different countries.

Transnational groups increased significantly in the 1990’s. Among the last regional initiatives, we should mention the creation of the Dunia Melayu Dunia Islam (Malay Muslim World) in 2000 in Malacca. The president of the DMDI is the prime minister of the Malacca state. The goal of the DMDI is to group the various Malay communities into a single Rumpun Melayu and to promote cooperative links. These initiatives do not merely represent a revival of collective memory, but rather the creation of networks to promote economic co-operation between Malays. Malay businessmen from Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia thus met to establish an economic forum that took the form of a Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the serumpun Malays (Dewan Perniagaan dan Perusahaan Melayu Serumpun) These meetings aim to facilitate the exchange of technological and commercial information with the goal of creating circumstances that favour the creation of transnational enterprises. As a result of the political changes, the historic networks are being reorganized according to new procedures.

Considering the Strait as an inland sea allows us to go beyond the uniquely land-based territorial logic, which places the coastline at the periphery of the nation, and which assigns to it the function of a boundary. Before we consider the strait, and more generally the maritime zone, as a breaking point, they should first be considered as a link. In the Malay World, the sea has never been seen as an obstacle.

Nathalie Fau, geographer, geography lecturer at the University of Paris 7,
SEDET (Developping Societies, Transdisciplinary studies)

To learn more:

This study on the Strait of Malacca is currently (as of February 2011) being done in the frame of the TRANSITER programme of the ANR (TRANSITER: Transnational dynamics and territorial reorganisation / ANR: French National Agency for Research) : http://transiter.univ-paris-diderot.fr/index.php

1- On the Malaysian identity
N.Fau, 2009, « Etre malais de part et d’autre du détroit de Malacca, approche transfrontalière », Aséanie 23, juin 2009, p.107-144.

2- On the position of Singapore in the Strait of Malacca:
N. Fau 2010, “Singapore’s strategy of regionalization”, Making the global city : Singapore from Srivijaya to the twenty first century, J.L. Margolin, Karl Hack and Karine Delaye (eds.), National University of Singapore Publishing, p 75-98.

3. On contraband in the Strait of Malacca:
N. FAU, 2003 Le nord de Sumatra : une périphérie indonésienne sur le détroit de Malacca, un espace partagé entre intégration nationale et recompositions transnationales, thèse sous la direction de M. Charrras, 732p.