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narrator: the region of southeast asia and south pacific contains the fourth most populous country in the world and the largest islamic country in the world. they are, in fact, one and the same: indonesia. a fragmentary state spread across an archipelago of 13,000 islands, indonesia's motto is "unity in diversity." lately, it does not seem so unified. east timor recently broke away. rebel forces on aceh and irian jaya threaten the same. while most of indonesia is islamic, the island of bali is mostly hindu. is this why radical muslims recently bombed a popular nightclub here? or it is because the tropical paradise was a mecca for western tourists? in the current war against terrorism, we explore the geographical roots

of the tourist economy that crashed after the violent attack in 2002; whether the influx of visitors will threaten the local indigenous culture; and how bali's distinct culture fits into the complex diversity of indonesia. these balinese fishermen still use the methods passed down from their grandfathers. but life around them is changing. it's a lot greener than i thought it'd be. yeah! look at all those coconut trees. some of those roadside stalls look interesting. yeah, might do those tomorrow.

still haven't worked out the money though. ( people clamoring, airport announcements ) narror: bali has bn a ismecca for more t50 years ( people clamoring, they come from around the world. touristsng money and jobs, but they also bring with them different cultural values. tourist: ...with the headdress. they're hindu ladies. what's the religion here? uh, they're muslims. narrator: maintaining a strong sense of identity has been a challenge for bali as it embraces economic d. there seem to be an awful lot of tourist buses, too. yeah, i've seen a lot of tourists

in those four-wheel drives, too. tourist: yeah? ty comefr australia, because it's so near. and they like the sun, the beach, the beer and so on. people who are retired who come awhere for the peace and quiet.s also, a of amecans come here. narrator: peothe balinese depend who come awheron the tourist economy,et.s but some worry that balinese culture will be overwhelme by eerna. bali is one of the islands in the world's largest archipelago which forms thcountry of indonesia. more than 200 million people live here, and they speak more than 300 different languages.

overcoming the barriers of language and the geographical isolation of island living has been a big problem for the indonesian government. woman: well, it's spatially, of course, a country that's in so many thousands of islands over such a large area, it's hard to integrate that into one economy. until there was a satellite in orbit over indonesia, for example, all the people in the country couldn't hear the president of their country at the same time. there's no way to connect those islands and communication until then. it's part of why they have preserved their diversity, because there's different kinds of people and religions on the different islands and the different regionalizations, and while they maintain some separateness, it was very much easier to practice the unity in diversity that's their national motto,

because they were spatially apart and they were in different territories and they didn't conflict with each other in everyday life. narrator: but the government has sponsored a large-scale migration out of the major population centers to less developed areas. the one thing that has happened with the migration and the change is that millions of people have been moved out of java, out of madura to occupy and to change the rain forest and the swamp into productive land for export-- into oil palm and into agriculture-- and as they have done this, they have moved muslims from sulawesi into the spice islands. they have moved people from madura into parts of kalimantan that were animous and hill tribe, and this... and moved indonesian, javanese officials into government and hotel and tourist industry in bali.

and so it's only in the last few... couple decades that the ethnic and religious thing has been really scrambled into one nation, which on one level will help integration in the long term, but right now means that people are losing their land to people of different religions; that people are losing their business and their jobs to people of different languages. and so it's bringing the ethnic groups into day-to-day conflict in a way that they haven't been in the past. narrator: more than half of indonesia's population lives on the relatively small island of java. the capital city jakarta is the political and economic center of indonesia. the island of bali is about 600 miles to the east of jakarta. bali is just 90 miles long and 50 miles wide, but has a population of two and a half million.

bali is unique in the predominantly muslim nation of indonesia. the main religion here is hindu. bali is indonesia's premier tourist destination, and that creates otr conflicts. bali is inman:sia's we have two properties in bali. we have out 1,30employees. sheraton is focusing on developing the local indonesians to manage our chain of hotels. we have five hotels now. we plan to have about ten. don't just practice your english in the class. narrator: manager tony sardjano is not a hindu. nor is he a native balinese. he is at the cutting edge of a strategy

to develop the indonesian economy through tourism. sardjano: i used to live in jakarta, the capital city of indonesia. i saw that bali was fast developing. its the east ofasarofndonesia.soame reouyeo to on uphe hotel here om scratch. rrator as parofelopmelatcd in jakar, resorts like nusa dua have changed the balinese landscape. sardjano: in the pt, the ld o bey rr. there would be fishermens living here, but hardly anythg. so what we did was, e governand they buifi, six,evs

sardjano: the local people still live now they are working with us. as cooks, waiters, stewards, security guards and so on. narrator: the jobs given to locals are often at the lower pay levels. then agmeade:he work may there's not an awful lot of other ways to make a living. there's intensive wet rice farming-- with all its very hard labor-- and there's some local fishing, although the international fisheries and the japanese trawlers have really hurt that. narrator: seventy percent of the locals now rely on tourism for their income. and with the new jobs comes the requirement to learn at least some english. if you met a guest in the corridor here, and he asks you, "where is the laundry?" what would you say? how would you answer him? sardjano: most of these young people

come from the villages around the hotels. at our hotel, for instance, 60% of the staff are fromhe island of bali itself. that's why they are mostly hindu. the other 40% come from java and other parts of indonesia. that's why they are mostly muslims or christian. excellent. your english is very good. you should be working in the front office. ( teaching staff in local language ) narrator: the mix of cultures within the workforce at the hotels results from a government policy encouraging people to move away from the country's cities-- suffering crowded development-- to the new tourist areas. but that strategy presents its own problems. sardjano: the tourism industry also has some negative aspts. with the westerners coming,

then they come and they bring their western lifestyle. if you ask an indonesian "what comes to your mind when you think of bali?" then very innocentlyhey will y,drugs, sprostitutes." narrator: kuta is the olst tourist area in bali. critics say 's tourism gone mad, resulting in overcrowding, overdevelopment and environmental damage. surfers first came here looking for the dream wave. they delighted in the relaxed lifestyle and the unique culture. now its hard to find the gentle, highly rigio balineseay of life they foundo attractive. but attempts are being made to balance tourism

fe and the natural enviroent in places throughout indonesia. bali, the town of ud recognized the problems of tourism from the beginning. man:e problem tha, it's we... morists,sce aim mo balinese ow man:e problem tha, and also, obviously, it's so many different kind of tourist coming, they all will bring different expectation from what we... we can offer. atce it's his job to protect the local culture. restrictions have been placed on activities tstreet peddlersesty are not allowed here. there are no large modern neon signs.

tourists are welcome in the temples, mustsseherding ocal custom. the prince believes the banese traditiowillurvive raka: but one thing, as long as we can hold on to our concept, to own principle, then we be able to take what best for us and to offer what best to others. like bees and flowers-- they take each other, but they giving each other at the same time. and that's what make, i think, bali still survive-- cause thofne that kind of power that we still have. meade: a constant onslaught of tourists, millions and millions a year-- this isn't new. this w going and when all the surfers... when other people in asia were throwing the hippies out

and were cutting their hair at airports and... bali was adopting them. people have been coming into bali as tourism for a long time and it comes closer to bali converting them to their culture than losing theirs to the foreigners. but it's out of scale now. i mean, how many millions can you absorb as tourists? and what oer jobs that aren't dead-end hotel jobs can there be? so the economidevelopment issues, i think, are very serious. but i personally can't see the threat to balinese culture. they have figured that one out. narrator: malaysia is a country which is part peninsula and part island. the peninsula is home to e capital city, ala lumpur,

anis of this physically andn culturally diverse socie malaysia, which has had remarkable economic growth over the past 40 years, is also home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups. approximately 60% of the population is malay; 30%, ethnic chinese; and just under ten percent are of indian descent. let's look at how malaysia has worked to achieve a balance between the different ethnic groups with its mticultural society as it moves through the 21st century. malaysia is at the crossroads of maritime trade

one hundred years ago, d ariait was even reo. under british colonial rule, cultural exchangesetween many of the wod's peoples flourished on this peninsula. about 180 miles south of kuala lumpur, the nation's capital, lies the village of rengit in the southwest part of the state of johor. nagata junji is a geographer who is studying how different ethnic groups mingle in malaysia. ethnic makeup varies by region. this village is about 80% malay and 20% chinese. ( women laughing ) the village was settled about 90 years ago, mostly by malays.

nagata wants to find out how the malays and chinese have interacted over the years and how their society has become structured to ease relations between the two groups. five times a day, the sound of the koran, the islamic bible, echoes throughout the village. islam is a major influence on the lives of the malay people. nagata visits one malay farming family. sohot bin kamin is the son of malay settlers. he and his wife live here with their five children and four grandchildren.

( speaking malay ) translator: my father came here from java. i remember him telling me how they cleared the jungle, built the roads all by themselves and planted their crops. they didn't have much to eat, and rice wasn't available, so they mostly ate potatoes. narrator: most farmers in this area grow oil palms. sowo however, even with this income, he barely kes enough to feed his family. sohot sells the oil palms that he harvests to a broker who lives in the same village.

sia yong tee, an ethnic chinese, is also a second-generation son of settlers. ( conversing in malay ) ( translated ): could i ask you what tay's pri is for palm oil? ( translated ): two hundred-plus ringgit per ton. how much do you think is here? more than a ton and a half, i'd say. narrator: sia became an oil palm broker he and his family handle 30d 400 to of oil palm a m. narrator: sithe family income is nowker he aconsiderably moredle

than that of the average malay farming household. twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, sia lights incense for the spirits of his ancestors. his late father came here from china in the middle 1920s. sia says his roots run deep in this village. ( speaking malay ) translator: i hope that my sons will continue with the family business. i think that oil palm cultivation will increase, and i hope that they will stay with it for a long time. narrator: in 1969, the capital, kuala lumpur, erupted in race riots after an election. malays were pitted against ethnic chinese as rural malays expressed their resentment over the rising economic might of the urb chinese.

after the riots, the government instituted social policies aimed at reducing the economic gap between the different ethnic groups. "bumiputera," or "malays first," is at the heart of this policy. it places controls on education and employment and extends across the entire range of social relations. after the race riots in the '60s, the government decided that they had to break that identification. they had to bring malays into the city, into the growing manufacturing, into the future of the country and build one malaysia that way, that if they just left them as the poor farmers out in the countryside, it was going to be nothing but trouble. and so their policies made malay the national language. they saved the university positions for the malays; they made the schools in malay; they put all the... the banking was for malay.

companies had to be malay, and then they might hire chinese subcontractors to do the actual printing. but the printing/publishing companies had to be malay. and so the chinese who had been wealthy-- a lot of them left to canada and to singapore. for the chinese who remained, however-- they stayed in an economy that was growing in prosperity, a country that was growing. and it's not as though their land or their money or anything was taken from them; it's the shift in the opportunities. it's like affirmative action where the people need... in the affirmative action have the military and have the power and have the government to do it-- kind of affirmative action with teeth... fangs. and it succeeded in the sense that malaysia... in my time, malaysia has gone from being only 30% urban-- and the malays were almost entirely rural-- to being a clear majority urban, when... almost 70% overall,

and a majority of malays now live in the city. so this is quite a transformation. naator: e efcts of the social changes extend even to the life of farm families. sohot's children are moving away from agriculture and into other occupations. sohot's only son, amerul, graduated this year from a trade school, anfactory producesing in assembles electrical partse. fosiorean and japanese manufacturs factories such as this one are being builall over malaysia. relationships are changing

as malays and non-malays sit down next to one another on the assembly line. ( speaking chinese ) translator: yes, we who manage the factory are chinese malaysians, but sometimes we are not ready to understand other malay cultures. so in this factory, we set up a special counseling room where malay workers can visit and talk about whatever is on their mind-- if they have problems on the job, or if they have ideas about their work. we would like to make the best of use of their voices for the management of our company. narrator: but bridging the cultural gulf between malay and non-malay is no small task. meade: we're not talking little differences here. i mean, chinese civilization, indian civilization, malay civilization; different alphabets, different literatures, different philosophies. they all have their different national holidays; they all have their different marital patterns.

you can have three wives if you're malay. you can't have three wives if you're an indian. if you're christian, you can't, but if you're muslim, you can. different holidays. muslims have to fast. they'll go in and take malays out of restaurants during ramadan if they're not fasting. but that doesn't mean that the europeans or the chinese or the indians have to fast. it's a truly plural society. ( speaking malay ) translator: rather than one ethnic group taking on the culture of another, we have people maintaining their own customs and lifestyles while living together. another important thing is that, for instance, the old framework of the chinese being the merchants and the malays being the farmers is changing. malays are aggressively moving into employment outside of the agricultural sector.

i think that big changes are on the horizon, and these changes will hold great importance for the future. narrator: today, malaysia has set its sights on entering the ranks of fby the year 2020.s under the banner of "vision 2020," it is pursuing long-term ofeconomic development. meade: malaysia's current vision is a cyber country. they want to take cybernetics, information, the future of the computer age away from singapore and to build a whole corridor in the city of theost advanced electronic state in the world. narrator: for now, malaysia has taken steps to becoming an economic tiger in southeast asia. its success will be revealed in how malaysia continues to develop as a stable multicultural society.

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