SHRINKING POPULATION AND ECONOMY OF THE CHINESE AND THE REAL FUTURE OF THE VERNACULAR MANDARIN AND ALSO TAMIL SCHOOLS IN MALAYSIA.

by Mansor Puteh

I find your column to be very entertaining; you seem to be oblivious to what is happening in the country and also on the real status of the vernacular Mandarin schools here.

I am surprised that you are able to get a column in the NST which is supposed to be Umno and Melayu-owned.

I don't think the Chinese and Tamil newspapers will ever allow a Melayu to write a column in their papers extolling the virtues of the sekolah kebangsaan.

The truth is the Chinese and Tamils who study in the sekolah kebangsaan are better behaved. They also look pleasant, and who are easy to deal with.

No Chinese and Tamil with the sekolah kebangsaan background is known to be chauvinistic in their attitude.

And no Chinese and Tamil or Indian in America, the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand or even France would ever want to or be able to send their children to the vernacular Mandarin or Tamil schools, where their communities could demand and expect to get land and financial aid from the respective governments.

Despite having the Pancasila, the Indonesian government will never give an inch of land or a rupiah for the establishment of the Mandarin or Tamil school in Indonesia.

This proves that the Melayu are liberal for allowing your column to be published in the NST.

But the trick here is to allow you to express certain slanted views on the matter concerning vernacular education, until it becomes apparent that it has failed even the Chinese and Tamil communities including the Melayu who studied there.

Sixty thousand Bumiputera students are enrolled in the Mandarin schools. Lie!

Only 12,000 are Melayu, with the others calling themselves Sino-Bumiputera where the students' fathers are Chinese married to Sarawak and Sabah natives.

There is no such thing as Sino-Bumiputera; they are Chinese.

And of the many Melayu who had studied in the Mandarin school, so few had gone on to go to university.

A high-ranking RTM official told me they could not get even one Melayu to read the Mandarin news, because none is good with reading. I told him it would be fun to see a tudung-clad Melayu woman reading Mandarin news as much as the Tamil news.

Maybe RTM did not make an effort to get Melayu women to read Mandarin and Tamil news because that could cause an uproar amongst the Chinese and Tamil communities, like there are no Chinese and Tamil-Muslims in the country.

I am afraid the Mandarin and Tamil schools are the main reasons why many of the Chinese and Tamils are backward, economically.

How could they develop themselves if they stop schooling early?

Wong Chun Wai of the Star wrote about this matter too but he did not go very far in it.

Here are some facts that you should consider.

Most of the Chinese and Tamils who are involved in illegal and criminal activities are those with vernacular background; they who could not find jobs in the government and private sectors, and who had to create new job opportunities for themselves to be involved in.

The same with the late Lim Goh Tong who was not educated, who spoke simple bazaar Melayu and no English; he too had to get involved in the gambling business.

It was a major mistake made by Tunku Abdul Rahman to allow him to operate the casino in Genting Highlands as this one core activity had allowed the Chinese to expand their economy in Malaysia, which is largely based on those activities which Muslims consider to be haram.

Millions of Chinese are also indirectly involved in such businesses, especially illegal money-lending or 'ahlong', bars, massage, prostitution and other entertainment centers, after it became untenable for them to solicit funds from traders and small businessmen by extortion as what the early gang or triads had done in the country right up to the break of the 13 May, 1969 incident, all of which involve a certain degree of corruption to allow these actions to go virtually unnoticed.

In fact many of the factories operated by the Chinese in Selangor and in the other states have been known to be illegal despite them having been around for more than a decade.

How could all this go unnoticed if there is no corruption involved by their owners?

But the real problems faced by the Chinese in Malaysia today - the New Malaysian-Chinese Dilemma today is how they are displacing themselves living in ghettos created by the British, which includes the schools which sprouted in those communities called 'kampung baru Cina'.

Also, more and more Chinese are realizing how there were many Chinese who had rejected China, and this is causing some consternation amongst the Chinese political and educational leaders and more so the chauvinists.

The fast shrinking population of the Chinese is another cause of alarm for them so in another decade all the Chinese communities will be 'surrounded' by the Melayu who are encroaching their turf and businesses so much so that young Chinese will start to be happy serving as amah and drivers for the Melayu as what happened in the past.

Even Tunku Abdul Rahman had Chinese cooks and amah and gardeners at The Residency when he was prime minister, and he adopted Chinese babies.

My grant-aunt and few sisters-in-law were all former Chinese who were given to Melayu couples because their parents did not trust the Chinese to be able to look after them.

The new Malaysian-Chinese Dilemma is also mostly about how the Chinese realize that they do not belong in any race as the term Chinese is not a race as such; it is just a description of the people and citizens of China as much as the Indians who are citizens of India.

There are no Chinese or Indian languages.

But the Melayu exists as a race as there is the Melayu language.

And more and more Chinese and Tamils or Indians are starting to realize that they will forever be classified as 'pendatang' or outsider. Pendatang is not immigran.

A pendatang is someone who is outside of the Nusantara or Dunia Melayu.

Indonesians and other Melayu in Southeast Asia are not pendatang in Malaysia; they are perantau or saudara kita. They are not like the Chinese and Indians who are orang lain or orang asing.

Therefore it is good that the NST is kind enough to allow you to have a column. The trick, I believe is to allow your stilted views on Chinese education show their true color as the population of the Chinese in the country shrinks further, as much as the economy of the Chinese is.

So by 2050, there will be 80% Melayu and Muslims in Malaysia and just 15% Chinese and about 5% Indians.