Kuala Lampur, Aug. 30 -- Malaysia has spent decades building national wealth. The harder question, as the country marks its 69th National Day, is who actually owns it.

Political independence in 1957 gave Malaysians the right to determine their own future. Economic independence asks something further: whether ordinary households have a genuine stake in the prosperity that future produces.

Few Malaysian institutions have tried to answer that question as directly, or at as large a scale, as Permodalan Nasional Berhad.

PNB was established on March 17, 1978 as an instrument of the New Economic Policy, at a time when corporate ownership in Malaysia was heavily concentrated and largely out of reach for most households. Its mandate was to enha...