Chapter 6 traces Malaysia’s transformation from an export-led to a domestic demand-driven growth model between the 2000s and 2010s, analyzing how private consumption emerged as the primary engine of economic expansion while the country maintained its fundamentally open economy through trade diversification and strategic positioning between the United States and China. The analysis demonstrates that this structural shift was facilitated by a deliberate policy reorientation from growth prioritization to a distributional emphasis, as manifested through the implementation of minimum wage policies and cash transfer programs targeting lower-income households. Electoral competition between the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat drove this policy evolution, as opposition parties successfully championed needs-based redistribution over ethnic quotas, ultimately pressuring the government to adopt more inclusive economic measures while political reform emerged as a new axis of political competition alongside traditional ethnic and religious dimensions.