This is a lightly edited version of the paper ‘Counting ethnicity in Malaysia: The complexity of measuring diversity’ published in the Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, 46 (2), pp. 5–32, and reproduced here with permission of the publisher. The journal paper is a revised version of the conference paper ‘Counting and integration: the experience of Malaysia’ presented at the International Conference on Social Statistics and Ethnic Diversity: Should We Count, How Should We Count and Why?, 6–8 December 2007, Montreal, Canada. We are grateful to Charles Hirschman for his substantive comments and to Jomo K. S. and Vijay N. Nair for their feedback on an earlier version. However, the usual disclaimer applies.