It didn’t quite work. This was published in 1995. Today, Malaysia’s population is about 33 million.
Mahatir’s idea was to dilute the Chinese presence through a huge increase in the population. Malaysia has only twenty million inhabitants; Mahatir wants seventy million by the year 2020.
From A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East by Tiziano Terzani