Malaysian share capital ownership

Something interesting in the Economist this week - in an article about Malaysian Indians and the political unrest caused by Hindraf, there was a chart that showed share capital ownership per head, split by race (see image from Economist.com).

As you can see, Chinese people own RM34,000 of share capital per head - I'm guessing this to be market value - while Malays (Bumiputra in the article, but that's not really a distinction) own RM7,000 and Indians RM3,000 respectively. These are rough numbers. Assuming the numbers represent market value, I can draw the following conclusions:

• According to Wikipedia, the stock market capitalisation of Malaysia was US$350bn in October 2007, or RM1,330bn using the same exchange rate as in the graphic.
• Assume that the Chinese make up 30% of Malaysia's population (27.5m), Malays 62% and Indians 8%.
  
• If one assumes that all shares owned by Malaysians are Malaysian, this means that Malaysians own RM407bn, or 31% of Malaysia's stock market.

So who owns the rest? Aren't Bumiputras supposed to own a substantial stake in public listed companies?

OK, so maybe it's par value of stock - in which case, the Bursa Malaysia market cap is only 3 times the nominal value of stock in issue! This seems unlikely.

I have problems believing that Malaysians own substantial amounts of share capital outside Malaysia, as the government prefers to keep local capital local... after all, it's better to finance one's own growth from one's own capital. However, I'm forced to come to the conclusion that Malaysians do own substantial amounts of share capital outside Malaysia. This in turn implies that the risk-return tradeoff is much better elsewhere.

Which of course, is exactly the case. I've believed this for years - and it looks like my fellow Malaysians agree.