This chapter begins with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s decision to privatize his country’s rice parastatal, rather than liberalize the rice trade. In the late 1990s, Mahathir formed a new entity, called Bernas, whose shares were traded on the country’s stock exchange. Through dense patronage networks, and despite Bernas’s “public” status, amplified capital accumulation remained closely tied to the state and its ruling party, UMNO. After Mahathir retired in 2003, the party-state complex went a step further to allow the country’s richest non-Chinese businessman, Syed Mokhtar Albukhary, to delist Bernas by purchasing its shares to become the principal owner. As a result, this one tycoon has since controlled some seventy percent of the country’s rice supply. The political opposition cried foul, and when it shockingly won the 2018 elections, it studied ways to reform this arrangement. But the coalition government was toppled by a party coup in 2020 and the more pro-Malay regime that succeeded it swiftly reached a new accord, extending Syed Mokhtar’s rice import monopoly permit to 2031. Malaysia thus stands as instructive case of near-miss institutional change.