"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n5,084.4 100.0 2,420.4 100.0 108,377.4 100.0 529,768.7 100.0 581,841.2 100.0\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nThe Gathering Storm:\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, \n\n\n\nand the Public Health Response\n\n\n\nThomas F. Babor *\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThe purpose of this article is to describe from a public health perspective the effects of alcohol \nconsumption on population rates of alcohol problems in China, Malaysia and the broader Asia Pacific region.  \nThe current situation in China and, to a lesser extent in other countries of Southeast Asia with large Chinese \nminorities, can be described as ominous. Strong pressures toward modernization of the consumer economy \nand the normalization of alcohol use portend increased drinking in the Asian region. After reviewing the \npossible contributing factors to alcohol-related epidemics, the article then evaluates the policy responses that \nare appropriate to the prevention of alcohol problems in the region. It is concluded that policies that limit \naccess to alcoholic beverages, discourage driving under the influence of alcohol, reduce the legal purchasing \nage for alcoholic beverages, limit marketing exposure and increase the price of alcohol, are likely to reduce \nthe harm linked to drinking. \n\n\n\nKey words: alcohol, public health, policy, alcohol problems \n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nIn many ways, trends in alcohol consumption in Southeast Asia are similar to the trends \nin climate change and global warming.  Both are leading to man-made epidemics of disease \nand disability. Both will lead to extreme conditions in many countries, with floods and \ntyphoons in the case of climate, and binge drinking and drink-driving fatalities in the case \nof alcohol. Both are partially attributable to the activities of large corporations, which often \nminimize the extent of the problem and oppose meaningful action. And both will require \nglobal solutions that are implemented at a national level.\n\n\n\nThe purpose of this article is to describe from a public health perspective the effects \nof alcohol consumption on population rates of alcohol problems in China, Malaysia and \n* Dr. Babor is Professor and Chairman, Department of Community Medicine and Health Care, \n University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, USA. E-mail: babor@uchc.edu\n       This is a revised version of a public talk presented at a book launch event to celebrate publication \n of the Chinese translation of Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity. The event was organized by the \n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur-Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, Malaysia, the New Era College, and IOGT \nInternational. The author is grateful to Katherine Robaina, MPH, for her assistance in the drafting \nand editing of this manuscript. \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 1-20\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor\n\n\n\nthe broader Asia Pacific region. The article then evaluates the policy responses that are \nappropriate to the prevention of alcohol problems in the region.  \n\n\n\nThis review of epidemiological and policy research is based in part on the book, Alcohol: \nNo Ordinary Commodity, which was first published in 2003 and was substantially revised \nin 2010.  It has been translated into Korean, Thai and Chinese. The book was written by \nan international group of alcohol policy experts under the sponsorship of the World Health \nOrganization.  The main theme of the book is that because of its myriad effects on health and \nwell-being, alcohol is not an ordinary commodity, and alcohol policy needs to recognize this \nfundamental fact.\n\n\n\nAlcohol Use and Misuse in Chinese Populations\n\n\n\nWith approximately 20 per cent of the world\u2019s population, China is not only the most \npopulous country, it is also the world\u2019s largest economy. In addition, there are over 50 \nmillion ethnic Chinese, most living in the Southeast Asian nations of Thailand, Malaysia, \nIndonesia, and several other Pacific Rim countries.  \n\n\n\nThe Chinese have had a long history with the production and use of alcoholic \nbeverages, especially wine.  In many Chinese societies, drinking together is an essential \npart of socializing and camaraderie. \u201cA thousand cups of wine is not too much when bosom \nfriends meet\u201d according to an old Chinese saying. Throughout history, social drinking has \nbeen governed by strictly prescribed rules of social conduct.  Those rules set expectations \nfor who may drink, when drinking is permitted, how much should be consumed on the \noccasion, how to participate in a toast, and how to behave after consuming alcohol.  \n\n\n\nIn antiquity, wine taxes and other measures prohibiting wine-making suggest that \nalcohol was not considered an ordinary commodity. Today, the production and sale of \nalcoholic beverages generate profits for farmers, manufacturers, advertisers, and investors. \nAlcohol provides employment for people in bars and restaurants and tax revenues for the \ngovernment.  Despite these benefits, there are enormous health and social costs associated \nwith the consumption of alcohol that often outweigh its economic benefits.  \n\n\n\nThe current situation in China and, to a lesser extent in other countries of Southeast \nAsia with large Chinese minorities, can be described as ominous. Strong pressures toward \nmodernization of the consumer economy and the normalization of alcohol use portend \nincreased drinking in the Asian region. The high abstinence rate (81%) and low per capita \nconsumption (1.3 litres per person) are good signs for predominantly Muslim countries \nlike Indonesia and Malaysia, where the substantial non-Muslims populations provide \ngood targets for the alcohol industry, which is interested in converting non-drinkers into \ndrinkers, and occasional drinkers into regular drinkers.  \n\n\n\nDespite low per capita consumption of commercial alcohol, unrecorded alcohol \nconsumption is increasing in Malaysia, and heavy episodic drinking is high among \n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response\n\n\n\npeople who do drink (WHO, 2014). Young persons and women are being targeted by \nalcohol marketers through the development of new products and sophisticated marketing \ntechniques (Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation, 2006).  \nThese developments are leading to alcohol problem epidemics in Thailand, Korea, and \nChina (Tang et al., 2013; Hao, Chen and Su, 2005; Cochrane, Chen, Conigrave and Hao, \n2003).    \n\n\n\nTable 1 shows indicators of alcohol consumption for China and several countries in \nSoutheast Asia. It may be noted that the per capita consumption is increasing in China, \nMalaysia and Singapore, and is either stable or declining in the remaining countries. The \ncountries with the lowest per capita consumption are predominantly Muslim (Malaysia \nand Indonesia) or Buddhist (Myanmar), nations that also have high proportions of lifetime \nabstainers. The per capita consumption of drinkers differs markedly across nations with \nChina and Thailand showing higher average levels of drinking than the other countries. \nThe prevalence of heavy episodic drinking, especially among males, is highest in Indonesia \nand China. These data suggest that by most indicators alcohol consumption and heavy \ndrinking are high in China and Thailand, and low in the predominant Muslim countries.  \nIn comparison with Europe and the Americas, alcohol consumption is lower in Asia, but \nthe trends suggest that consumption is increasing in the growing economies such as China \nand Thailand.  \n\n\n\nTable 2 shows recent statistics for alcohol-related health consequences in Asian countries \nwith large Chinese populations. The alcohol-attributable fraction is the proportion of a given \nhealth condition caused by alcohol. In China, for example, 73.0 per cent of the liver cirrhosis \nin males and 59.8 per cent in females are attributable to alcohol.  China, Thailand and the \nPhilippines lead all of the other countries in alcohol-attributable fractions for cirrhosis \nand traffic accidents, as well as prevalence rates for alcohol use disorders, such as alcohol \ndependence and harmful drinking.\n\n\n\nBeyond the aggregate statistics, little is known about the drinking patterns of ethnic \nChinese in countries with large Chinese minorities. The Chinese overseas vary widely as \nto their degree of assimilation, their interactions with the surrounding communities, and \ntheir relationship with China. Thailand has a large Chinese community and is one of the \nmost successful cases of full assimilation. On the other hand, in Malaysia, Singapore, and \nBrunei, the Chinese have maintained a distinct communal identity in the local multicultural \nsocieties.\n\n\n\nWhat Factors Account for the Gathering Storm?\n\n\n\nIn the view of public health professionals, three important mechanisms explain \nalcohol\u2019s ability to cause medical, psychological, and social harm (Babor et al., 2010; \nRoom et al., 2011). They are physical toxicity, intoxication, and dependence. Alcohol \n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor4\n\n\n\nTa\nbl\n\n\n\ne \n2.\n\n\n\n  A\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n-r\nel\n\n\n\nat\ned\n\n\n\n h\nea\n\n\n\nlth\n c\n\n\n\non\nse\n\n\n\nqu\nen\n\n\n\nce\ns i\n\n\n\nn \nA\n\n\n\nsi\nan\n\n\n\n c\nou\n\n\n\nnt\nrie\n\n\n\ns w\nith\n\n\n\n la\nrg\n\n\n\ne \nC\n\n\n\nhi\nne\n\n\n\nse\n p\n\n\n\nop\nul\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nns\n (\u2265\n\n\n\n 1\n m\n\n\n\nill\nio\n\n\n\nn)\n\n\n\nTa\nbl\n\n\n\ne \n1.\n\n\n\n  A\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n C\non\n\n\n\nsu\nm\n\n\n\npt\nio\n\n\n\nn \nin\n\n\n\n A\nsi\n\n\n\nan\n C\n\n\n\nou\nnt\n\n\n\nrie\ns w\n\n\n\nith\n L\n\n\n\nar\nge\n\n\n\n C\nhi\n\n\n\nne\nse\n\n\n\n P\nop\n\n\n\nul\nat\n\n\n\nio\nns\n\n\n\n (\u2265\n 1\n\n\n\n m\nill\n\n\n\nio\nn)\n\n\n\nSo\nur\n\n\n\nce\n: A\n\n\n\nda\npt\n\n\n\ned\n fr\n\n\n\nom\n W\n\n\n\nor\nld\n\n\n\n H\nea\n\n\n\nlth\n O\n\n\n\nrg\nan\n\n\n\niz\nat\n\n\n\nio\nn,\n\n\n\n G\nlo\n\n\n\nba\nl s\n\n\n\nta\ntu\n\n\n\ns r\nep\n\n\n\nor\nt o\n\n\n\nn \nal\n\n\n\nco\nho\n\n\n\nl a\nnd\n\n\n\n h\nea\n\n\n\nlth\n 2\n\n\n\n01\n4\n\n\n\nN\not\n\n\n\ne:\n \n\n\n\na  S\nco\n\n\n\nre\nd \n\n\n\n1-\n5,\n\n\n\n w\nith\n\n\n\n 1\n b\n\n\n\nei\nng\n\n\n\n th\ne \n\n\n\nle\nas\n\n\n\nt a\nnd\n\n\n\n 5\n b\n\n\n\nei\nng\n\n\n\n th\ne \n\n\n\nm\nos\n\n\n\nt. \nB\n\n\n\nas\ned\n\n\n\n o\nn \n\n\n\nal\nco\n\n\n\nho\nl-a\n\n\n\nttr\nib\n\n\n\nut\nab\n\n\n\nle\n y\n\n\n\nea\nrs\n\n\n\n o\nf l\n\n\n\nife\n lo\n\n\n\nst\n \n\n\n\nb  1\n2-\n\n\n\nm\non\n\n\n\nth\n p\n\n\n\nre\nva\n\n\n\nle\nnc\n\n\n\ne \nes\n\n\n\ntim\nat\n\n\n\nes\n (1\n\n\n\n5+\n)\n\n\n\n \nc  I\n\n\n\nnc\nlu\n\n\n\ndi\nng\n\n\n\n a\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n d\nep\n\n\n\nen\nde\n\n\n\nnc\ne \n\n\n\nan\nd \n\n\n\nha\nrm\n\n\n\nfu\nl u\n\n\n\nse\n o\n\n\n\nf a\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\nSo\nur\n\n\n\nce\n: A\n\n\n\nda\npt\n\n\n\ned\n fr\n\n\n\nom\n W\n\n\n\nor\nld\n\n\n\n H\nea\n\n\n\nlth\n O\n\n\n\nrg\nan\n\n\n\niz\nat\n\n\n\nio\nn,\n\n\n\n G\nlo\n\n\n\nba\nl s\n\n\n\nta\ntu\n\n\n\ns r\nep\n\n\n\nor\nt o\n\n\n\nn \nal\n\n\n\nco\nho\n\n\n\nl a\nnd\n\n\n\n h\nea\n\n\n\nlth\n 2\n\n\n\n01\n4\n\n\n\nN\not\n\n\n\ne:\n \n\n\n\na  T\nou\n\n\n\nris\nt c\n\n\n\non\nsu\n\n\n\nm\npt\n\n\n\nio\nn \n\n\n\nde\ndu\n\n\n\nct\ned\n\n\n\n w\nhe\n\n\n\nn \nat\n\n\n\n le\nas\n\n\n\nt a\ns m\n\n\n\nan\ny \n\n\n\nto\nur\n\n\n\nis\nts\n\n\n\n a\ns i\n\n\n\nnh\nab\n\n\n\nita\nnt\n\n\n\ns \n \n\n\n\nb  D\nrin\n\n\n\nke\nrs\n\n\n\n o\nnl\n\n\n\ny \n \n\n\n\nc  C\non\n\n\n\nsu\nm\n\n\n\ned\n a\n\n\n\nt l\nea\n\n\n\nst\n 6\n\n\n\n0 \ngr\n\n\n\nam\ns o\n\n\n\nr m\nor\n\n\n\ne \nof\n\n\n\n p\nur\n\n\n\ne \nal\n\n\n\nco\nho\n\n\n\nl o\nn \n\n\n\non\ne \n\n\n\noc\nca\n\n\n\nsi\non\n\n\n\n in\n th\n\n\n\ne \npa\n\n\n\nst\n 3\n\n\n\n0 \nda\n\n\n\nys\n\n\n\nC\nhi\n\n\n\nna\nM\n\n\n\nal\nay\n\n\n\nsi\na\n\n\n\nTh\nai\n\n\n\nla\nnd\n\n\n\nIn\ndo\n\n\n\nne\nsi\n\n\n\na\nSi\n\n\n\nng\nap\n\n\n\nor\ne\n\n\n\nM\nya\n\n\n\nnm\nar\n\n\n\nPh\nili\n\n\n\npp\nin\n\n\n\nes\nA\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n p\n\n\n\ner\n c\n\n\n\nap\nita\n\n\n\n (1\n5+\n\n\n\n) c\non\n\n\n\nsu\nm\n\n\n\npt\nio\n\n\n\nn \n(in\n\n\n\n li\nte\n\n\n\nrs\n), \n\n\n\n20\n08\n\n\n\n-2\n01\n\n\n\n0\nR\n\n\n\nec\nor\n\n\n\nde\nd \n\n\n\na  \n5.\n\n\n\n0\n0.\n\n\n\n3\n6.\n\n\n\n4\n0.\n\n\n\n1\n1.\n\n\n\n5\n0.\n\n\n\n1\n4.\n\n\n\n6\nU\n\n\n\nnr\nec\n\n\n\nor\nde\n\n\n\nd\n1.\n\n\n\n7\n1.\n\n\n\n0\n0.\n\n\n\n7\n0.\n\n\n\n5\n0.\n\n\n\n5\n0.\n\n\n\n6\n0.\n\n\n\n9\nC\n\n\n\nha\nng\n\n\n\ne \nfr\n\n\n\nom\n 2\n\n\n\n00\n3-\n\n\n\n20\n05\n\n\n\n\uf026\n\uf026\n\n\n\n\uf022\n\uf022\n\n\n\n\uf026\n\uf022\n\n\n\n\uf028\nTo\n\n\n\nta\nl a\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n p\n\n\n\ner\n c\n\n\n\nap\nita\n\n\n\n (1\n5+\n\n\n\n) c\non\n\n\n\nsu\nm\n\n\n\npt\nio\n\n\n\nn,\n d\n\n\n\nrin\nke\n\n\n\nrs\n o\n\n\n\nnl\ny \n\n\n\n(in\n li\n\n\n\nte\nrs\n\n\n\n), \n20\n\n\n\n10\n15\n\n\n\n.1\n10\n\n\n\n.5\n23\n\n\n\n.8\n7.\n\n\n\n1\n3.\n\n\n\n9\n8.\n\n\n\n9\n12\n\n\n\n.3\nPr\n\n\n\nev\nal\n\n\n\nen\nce\n\n\n\n o\nf h\n\n\n\nea\nvy\n\n\n\n e\npi\n\n\n\nso\ndi\n\n\n\nc \ndr\n\n\n\nin\nki\n\n\n\nng\n b,\n\n\n\nc  (\n%\n\n\n\n), \n20\n\n\n\n10\nM\n\n\n\nal\nes\n\n\n\n24\n.3\n\n\n\n3.\n4\n\n\n\n4.\n7\n\n\n\n42\n.8\n\n\n\n12\n.8\n\n\n\n1.\n5\n\n\n\n6.\n3\n\n\n\nFe\nm\n\n\n\nal\nes\n\n\n\n  2\n.5\n\n\n\n0.\n4\n\n\n\n0.\n5\n\n\n\n6.\n2\n\n\n\n1.\n3\n\n\n\n0.\n1\n\n\n\n0.\n8\n\n\n\nLi\nfe\n\n\n\ntim\ne \n\n\n\nab\nst\n\n\n\nai\nne\n\n\n\nrs\n (1\n\n\n\n5+\n) (\n\n\n\n%\n), \n\n\n\n20\n10\n\n\n\nM\nal\n\n\n\nes\n25\n\n\n\n.8\n73\n\n\n\n.1\n42\n\n\n\n.5\n74\n\n\n\n.2\n14\n\n\n\n.3\n76\n\n\n\n.5\n21\n\n\n\n.5\nFe\n\n\n\nm\nal\n\n\n\nes\n52\n\n\n\n.3\n89\n\n\n\n.2\n75\n\n\n\n.5\n90\n\n\n\n.0\n54\n\n\n\n.0\n91\n\n\n\n.1\n46\n\n\n\n.2\n\n\n\nC\nhi\n\n\n\nna\nM\n\n\n\nal\nay\n\n\n\nsi\na\n\n\n\nTh\nai\n\n\n\nla\nnd\n\n\n\nIn\ndo\n\n\n\nne\nsi\n\n\n\na\nSi\n\n\n\nng\nap\n\n\n\nor\ne\n\n\n\nM\nya\n\n\n\nnm\nar\n\n\n\nPh\nili\n\n\n\npp\nin\n\n\n\nes\nA\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n-a\n\n\n\nttr\nib\n\n\n\nut\nab\n\n\n\nle\n fr\n\n\n\nac\ntio\n\n\n\nns\n (A\n\n\n\nA\nF)\n\n\n\n (%\n), \n\n\n\n20\n12\n\n\n\nLi\nve\n\n\n\nr c\nirr\n\n\n\nho\nsi\n\n\n\ns, \nm\n\n\n\nal\nes\n\n\n\n/fe\nm\n\n\n\nal\nes\n\n\n\n \n73\n\n\n\n.0\n/5\n\n\n\n9.\n8\n\n\n\n30\n.8\n\n\n\n/2\n8.\n\n\n\n6\n67\n\n\n\n.2\n/4\n\n\n\n0.\n5\n\n\n\n16\n.0\n\n\n\n/3\n0.\n\n\n\n7\n32\n\n\n\n.2\n/3\n\n\n\n7.\n6\n\n\n\n20\n.0\n\n\n\n/2\n9.\n\n\n\n2\n66\n\n\n\n.7\n/4\n\n\n\n9.\n6\n\n\n\nR\noa\n\n\n\nd \ntra\n\n\n\nff\nic\n\n\n\n a\ncc\n\n\n\nid\nen\n\n\n\nts\n22\n\n\n\n.2\n/4\n\n\n\n.4\n1.\n\n\n\n3/\n0.\n\n\n\n1\n24\n\n\n\n.9\n/1\n\n\n\n.4\n3.\n\n\n\n6/\n0.\n\n\n\n2\n3.\n\n\n\n7/\n0.\n\n\n\n8\n0.\n\n\n\n5/\n0.\n\n\n\n0\n9.\n\n\n\n9/\n2.\n\n\n\n0\nYe\n\n\n\nar\ns o\n\n\n\nf l\nife\n\n\n\n lo\nst\n\n\n\n (Y\nLL\n\n\n\n) s\nco\n\n\n\nre\n a , \n\n\n\n20\n12\n\n\n\n4\n2\n\n\n\n5\n2\n\n\n\n2\n2\n\n\n\n3\nPr\n\n\n\nev\nal\n\n\n\nen\nce\n\n\n\n o\nf A\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n u\n\n\n\nse\n d\n\n\n\nis\nor\n\n\n\nde\nrs\n\n\n\n (%\n), \n\n\n\n20\n10\n\n\n\n b\n\n\n\nA\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n u\nse\n\n\n\n d\nis\n\n\n\nor\nde\n\n\n\nrs\n c\n\n\n\n4.\n9\n\n\n\n2.\n4\n\n\n\n5.\n0\n\n\n\n0.\n8\n\n\n\n0.\n9\n\n\n\n1.\n5\n\n\n\n4.\n6\n\n\n\nA\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n D\nep\n\n\n\nen\nde\n\n\n\nnc\ne\n\n\n\n2.\n4\n\n\n\n1.\n1\n\n\n\n1.\n8\n\n\n\n0.\n7\n\n\n\n0.\n5\n\n\n\n0.\n7\n\n\n\n2.\n9\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response\n\n\n\nis a toxic substance in terms of its direct and indirect effects on a wide range of body \norgans and systems. It contributes to as many as 200 health conditions. Acute alcohol \nintoxication impairs psychomotor functioning, speech, behaviour and decision-making, \nincreasing the chances of accidents, injuries and interpersonal problems. With chronic \ndrinking and repeated intoxication, a syndrome of interrelated behavioural, physical, and \ncognitive symptoms develops, called alcohol dependence.\n\n\n\nThe mechanisms of toxicity, intoxication, and dependence are related to the ways in \nwhich people consume alcohol, called \u201cpatterns of drinking\u201d (See Babor et al., 2010 for \nreview). Drinking patterns that lead to elevated blood alcohol levels result in problems \nassociated with acute intoxication, such as accidents, injuries, and violence. Drinking \npatterns that promote frequent and heavy alcohol consumption are associated with chronic \nhealth problems such as liver cirrhosis, cardiovascular disease, and depression. Sustained \ndrinking may also result in alcohol dependence, which impairs a person\u2019s ability to control \nthe frequency and amount of drinking. For these reasons, alcohol is not considered an \nordinary consumer substance from a public health perspective.  \n\n\n\nAccording to one theory of disease causation (Babor and Robaina, 2013), these \nmechanisms can be considered part of an epidemiological cascade of various causal factors \nthat results in alcohol-related disease, disability and mortality. Religious beliefs, culture, \neconomic development, alcohol availability, alcohol control policies and the alcoholic \nbeverage industry are all part of a complex causal chain that affect alcohol problem rates \nin different countries. These factors operate in complex ways to influence long-term trends \nin alcohol consumption as well as short-term epidemics.\n\n\n\nReligious beliefs can have profound effects on alcohol consumption rates, as reflected \nin World Health Organization (WHO) statistics demonstrating that the countries with \npredominant Muslim populations have the lowest per capita consumption rates (WHO, \n2014).  Malaysia\u2019s predominant Muslim religion and culture, for example, seem to have \na protective effect on drinking problems, but economic development and increasing \nalcohol availability are factors that may change the country\u2019s risk profile, particularly in \nMalaysia\u2019s non-Muslim Chinese and Indian populations.\n\n\n\nCultural factors also play an important role, particularly in the learned patterns of \ndrinking that are manifested in different population groups (Babor, 1986), including youth, \nwomen, and people living in wine drinking countries. These patterns range from periodic \nbinge drinking to regular consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol.\n\n\n\nRegarding economic development, it is well established that alcohol consumption \nincreases with income (Gallet, 2007) and drinking declines during economic recessions \n(Kruger and Svensson, 2008).\n\n\n\nIn addition to disposable income, the physical availability of alcohol, as determined \nby the number of sales outlets, has been implicated in the development of conditions \nthat promote regular and excessive drinking (Babor et al., 2010). Physical availability \n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor\n\n\n\nrefers to the accessibility or convenience of obtaining and consuming alcoholic beverages. \nWhen alcohol is easy to obtain, low in price, and socially acceptable, people tend to drink \nmore. In general, the greater the amount and frequency of drinking, the higher the rates of \nalcohol-related problems. Beyond physical availability, the concept can be broadened to \ninclude other mechanisms that control or facilitate access to alcohol, including economic, \nsubjective and social availability. Economic availability refers to the affordability of \nalcohol. Subjective availability refers to a person\u2019s impression of how accessible alcohol \nis to them, and it affects their willingness to expend energy to obtain alcohol as well \nas their response to alcohol marketing. Finally, social availability is the way alcohol is \naffected by the informal access to alcohol provided by a person\u2019s key social groups, such \nas family, friends, sports clubs, and business associates.\n\n\n\nWithin this model of alcohol availability, corporations involved in the production \nand distribution of wine, beer and spirits are being increasingly implicated in the creation \nof heavy drinking cultures and related disease conditions (Freudenberg, 2014). The \nnature of the alcohol industry has been changing dramatically through the globalization \nof production, trade policies and new marketing procedures to promote alcohol products \nthroughout the world (Jernigan, 2009).  The brewing, spirits and wine industries have \npromoted the development of new products (e.g., alcopops, light beer) targeted at women \nand young drinkers, marketing them to young people using sophisticated advertising \ntechniques, and they have become actively engaged in policy development in ways that \ndo not respect public health needs (Anderson, 2009; Hawkins, Holden and McCambridge, \n2012).  One of the most novel aspects of the industry\u2019s international reach is the growing \nuse of social media and traditional marketing techniques to associate alcohol with sports, \nrecreation, pleasure and Western lifestyle (Mooney, 2011; Rhoades and Jernigan, 2013; \ndeBruijn, 2011).\n\n\n\nThe Public Health Model\nThe public health model of alcohol-related problems proposes that in modern \n\n\n\neconomies alcohol epidemics are increasingly being caused by the interaction among the \nagent (alcohol), the environment (including alcohol availability and affordability), and \nthe host (e.g., the people who are vulnerable to develop alcohol-related problems). In this \nmodel, the agent is not just the substance, ethyl alcohol, but also the alcohol industry, \nwhich is responsible for promoting alcohol as an ordinary commodity.  \n\n\n\nPublic health concepts provide an important vehicle to manage the health of \npopulations in relation to the use and misuse of beverage alcohol. Public health concepts \ncan help communities and nation states design better preventative and curative services. \nUltimately, the value of approaching alcohol problems within a public health framework \nis that it draws attention to the \u201cupstream\u201d sources of the damage as opposed to attributing \nalcohol-related problems exclusively to the personal behaviour of the individual drinker. \n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response 7\n\n\n\nUpstream sources of the damage include affordable prices, easy availability, a culture of \nuniversal drinking supported by aggressive marketing and the lack of regulatory controls. \nMany of these sources of damage are attributable to the lack of appropriate government \npolicies, and they are also the result of the activities of the alcoholic beverage industry to \ninfluence government policies and to increase the sales of its products through marketing \nand design features.\n\n\n\nEvidence-based Alcohol Control Policy\nEvidence-based alcohol control policy is a way to rise above the gathering storm.  \n\n\n\nFortunately, the Pacific Rim countries in Asia can take action to prevent alcohol-related \nproblems by strengthening evidence-based policies.  One way to do this is to implement \non a national level the WHO\u2019s Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol \n(WHO, 2010), which recommends many of the policies reviewed in Alcohol: No Ordinary \nCommodity.\n\n\n\nMost of these strategies and interventions have been investigated using systematic \nresearch methods in a variety of different countries. Reviews of the research evidence \nfrom hundreds of studies conclude that the most effective policies, and the ones that \nare the least expensive, are the ones that address alcohol problems upstream: regulating \nphysical availability, pricing policies that prevent the sale of cheap alcohol, and regulating \nalcohol marketing. These are the three \u201cBest Buys\u201d recommend by the WHO to reduce \nglobal impact of non-communicable diseases (WHO, 2011). In addition, drink-driving \ncountermeasures, such as laws that specify a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05% for \nimpaired driving, and regulations that require people who serve and sell alcohol to be \ntrained to provide a safer context or environment for drinking, are midstream policies that \nare also effective. The most expensive interventions are treatment and prevention. They \nmay be effective as downstream alcohol policies, but they only reach small numbers of \npeople. The following paragraphs summarize what the scientific evidence reveals about \nthe effectiveness of each of these general strategies and interventions.\n\n\n\nPricing and Taxation Policies\nPricing and taxation policies have been used for centuries to control alcohol-related \n\n\n\nproblems and to generate government revenues. They include excise taxes on the volume \nof alcohol sold, minimum prices, bans on happy hours and so-called smart taxation, which \nis designed to shift consumption towards weaker types of alcohol.\n\n\n\nIn general, people increase their drinking when prices are lowered, and decrease their \nconsumption when prices rise (Wagenaar, et al., 2009). Adolescents and problem drinkers \nare no exception to this rule (Cook and Moore, 2002). Increased alcohol taxes and prices \nare related to reductions in alcohol-related problems, including crime, traffic accidents \nand mortality rates (Wagenaar et al., 2010). Alcohol taxes are thus an attractive instrument \nof alcohol policy because they can be used both to generate direct revenue and to reduce \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor8\n\n\n\nalcohol-related harm.\nFor example, the beer and stout industry in Malaysia plays an important role in \n\n\n\ngenerating approximately RM1.4 billion each year in tax revenue for the government. Over \nthe past decade, the Malaysian Government has significantly increased the excise rate on \nbeer and stout, the preferred alcoholic beverages in that country. Between 1991 and 2006, \nthere was a 169 per cent increase in the Beer and Stout excise rate, in addition to a 15 per \ncent ad valorem duty imposed in 2005, making these taxes among the second highest in \nthe world (Confederation of Malaysian Brewers, CCMB, 2007). The tax increase caused \nbeer and stout volumes to fall as consumers switched to consumption of other forms of\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Average Annual National Production of Alcoholic Beverages and Average Annual Per \nCapita Consumption of Alcohol in China, 2001-2011 \n\n\n\nSource: Reproduced, with permission of the publisher, from Tang Yi-lang, Xiang Xiao-jun, Wang Xu-yi, \nCubells JF, Babor TF, and Wei Hao, Bull World Health Organ, 2013; 91: Page 271(Figure 1)\n\n\n\nalcohol or cut down on their drinking (CCMB, 2013). Since 2004, the consumption of \ntax paid beer and stout dropped by 14 per cent whereas wine and spirits volumes have \nincreased by 12 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively, over the same period. The significant \ndrop in beer and stout volumes caused the total alcohol market to fall by 13 per cent \nduring this period. \n\n\n\nChina provides another example of how tax policies influence alcohol consumption.  \nAlthough the government\u2019s intention was to increase liquor revenues (rather than prevent \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response 9\n\n\n\nalcohol-related problems), liquor production decreased sharply from 2001 to 2004 because \nof a tax increase. In 2006 the government discontinued differential taxation for potato and \ngrain liquor. This was followed by dramatic increases in alcohol consumption (Tang et \nal., 2013). Figure 1 illustrates that it was not only affordable prices that were followed by \nincreased consumption, but also the aggressive marketing activities of the largest alcohol \nproducers, many of them large transnational producers. These examples demonstrate the \npowerful effect that taxes can have on alcohol consumption.   \n\n\n\nThe most important downside to raising alcohol taxes is smuggling and illegal in-country \nalcohol production. Political opposition from the alcohol and hospitality industries, as well as \ntrade harmonization policies, make tax interventions difficult to implement and maintain.\n\n\n\nPhysical Availability Policies\nRestrictions on alcohol availability focus on regulating the places, times, and contexts \n\n\n\nin which consumers can obtain alcohol, and include both partial and total bans on alcohol \nsales. There is great variability in the regulation of access to alcohol. A number of countries \nhave monopolies for at least some form of retail sale (discussed in the next section), and \nmany Islamic states and some localities in other countries practise total prohibition. In \ncontrast, there is concern in many Asian countries that cheap, informal-produced alcohol \nis easily obtained and largely unregulated. Informal alcohol markets are a relatively small \npart of total consumption in most of the developed world. In countries like Malaysia and \nSouth Korea, informal retail markets can be important, accounting for as much as 25 per \ncent of total consumption.\n\n\n\nThe main assumption behind this approach to alcohol control is that restrictions on \ntime, place, and density of alcohol outlets reduce the demand for alcoholic beverages by \nincreasing the time and effort to obtain alcohol (Babor et al., 2010).  Related strategies \ninclude age restrictions on the purchase of alcohol and the promotion of alcohol-free \nenvironments such as the workplace or sports arenas. In this way, availability restrictions \nreduce total volume consumed as well as alcohol-related problems. Consistent enforcement \nof availability controls is a key ingredient of effectiveness. License suspensions and \nrevocations often provide the most direct and immediate enforcement mechanism.\n\n\n\nAlcohol availability is typically regulated in license systems by enacting limits on \npurchase age, restricting hours and days of sale, and controlling the number, location, and \ntype of retail outlets. All of these restrictions have been subject to systematic research in a \nvariety of countries.  The research shows very good evidence of effectiveness in reducing \nboth alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems (Babor et al., 2010; Room et al., \n2005).  Substantial changes in the number of alcohol outlets result in significant changes \nto alcohol consumption and related harm.  \n\n\n\nThe evidence of an association between outlet density and alcohol-related harms is \nquite consistent. A growing number of studies find higher rates of alcohol-related problems \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor10\n\n\n\nin areas with higher outlet densities, such as late night entertainment districts. A Brazilian \nstudy examined how restrictions on hours of sale affected the rates of alcohol-related \nharm (Duailibi et al., 2007).  A new law in Diadema (an industrial city near S\u00e3o Paolo in \nBrazil) mandated all on-premise alcohol outlets to close at 11p.m. Prior to the law most \nbars traded 24 hours a day. The study found a reduction of around nine murders a month \nafter the restrictions were imposed.  \n\n\n\nThis and other research suggests that dense clustering of alcohol outlets into \nentertainment districts is particularly problematic because it increases niche environments \nor the number of interactions among drinkers, thus increasing the likelihood of violent \nincidents. These districts often involve large numbers of drinkers moving from premise \nto premise throughout the night, increasing the likelihood of alcohol-related aggression. \nWhen restrictions are placed on hours of sale, they can reverse the negative effects of \nconcentrated alcohol establishments.\n\n\n\nAnother example of a successful alcohol policy based on restricting physical \navailability is the enforcement of age restrictions on drinking through laws that raise the \nminimum legal purchasing age among young drinkers (Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002).  In \n1984 the US Congress passed the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, which encouraged \nstates to adopt the age 21 purchase standard. As each of the 50 states implemented the \nstandard, the number of young people who died in a crash when an intoxicated young \ndriver was involved has declined by almost 63 per cent.\n\n\n\nMaking beverages of low alcohol content (e.g., 3% alcohol or less) more available than \nhigher-strength beverages may also be effective in reducing overall alcohol consumption \nand problems. Regulations directed toward commercial vendors of alcohol who sell to \nminors and ignore other restrictions can also be effective, but these regulations need to be \nsupported by a system of specific licenses for selling alcoholic beverages that is enforced \nthrough the power to suspend or revoke a license in the case of selling infractions (Babor \net al., 2010).\n\n\n\nIn contrast to licensing systems, a comprehensive alternative method to regulate \nalcohol availability is through government-owned retail monopolies. In a monopoly \nsystem, the state controls all or most of the retail sales of alcohol. Monopolies can lead \nto a reduction in both physical and economic availability by reducing the opportunity \nfor profit-making in the private sector, whether through sales, marketing or promotion.\nThis reduced opportunity lowers incentives and motivation for private entrepreneurship, \nthereby eliminating price competition and enabling high retail prices. State monopoly \nsystems often lead to a smaller number of outlets and limited hours of sale. State monopoly \nsystems have been established in most Nordic countries, Canada, parts of the US, some \ncentral and eastern European countries as well as the former Soviet Union, many of them \nfollowing a period of prohibition during the 1920s. However, recent political developments \nhave led to market deregulation, privatization, and a shift in priority from public health \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response 11\n\n\n\ngoals to an emphasis on revenue generation for the state.\n\n\n\nRestrictions on Marketing and Other Types of Alcohol Promotion\n\n\n\nThe marketing of alcohol has now become a global industry where transnational alcohol \nproducers and advertising agencies promote their products through television, radio, print, point-\nof-sale promotions, and the Internet. Exposure to repeated high-level alcohol promotion can \nestablish pro-drinking attitudes, facilitate the early onset of drinking and increase the amount \nconsumed by those already drinking (Gordon and Harris, 2009). Alcohol advertising reinforces \nthe perception that drinking is positive, glamorous, and relatively risk-free. Studies in neuro-\nscience, psychology and marketing conclude that adolescents may be especially attracted to \nrisky branded products that, in their view, provide immediate gratification, thrills, and/or social \nstatus (Anderson et al., 2009).  If an advertisement portrayal corresponds closely to personally-\nrelevant reference groups, children will be more likely to copy it. If children admire models in \nan advertisement, they learn to expect that imitating the models\u2019 behaviours will bring positive \nresults. Repeated exposure to visual modeling can make even marginal behaviour seem normal \nand desirable by desensitizing the observer to the possible risks (Austin et al., 2006). For these \nreasons, marketing to young people undoubtedly contributes to the on-going recruitment of \nyoung people to replace drinkers lost to the industry by attrition in mature markets and to \nexpand the drinking population in emerging markets.\n\n\n\nThe main ways to regulate alcohol marketing are by means of total bans (as done in \nNorway and France), partial bans, such as restrictions on advertising during day-time television \nbroadcasts when children are watching, and voluntary self-regulation. Self-regulation consists \nof content guidelines developed by the alcohol industry that define irresponsible advertising \npractices (e.g., cartoon characters, celebrities, young looking actors, excessive drinkers, drinking \nwhile driving), and exposure guidelines, which specify markets that should not be exposed to \nalcohol promotions (e.g., children, adolescents, pregnant women).  \n\n\n\nStudies in the European Union, Africa, Australia and the United States that self-regulation \ncodes are often circumvented (deBruijn et al., 2012; Marin Institute, 2008; Babor et al., 2009; \nDonovan et al., 2007; Jones and Donovan, 2002; Vendrame et al., 2010). In the United States, \nfor example, content guidelines over a ten year period were found to be systematically violated \nduring college basketball tournaments appealing primarily to college students, most of whom \nare below the legal alcohol purchase age. When complaints are filed through the industry\u2019s \ncompliance mechanisms, they are often denied for technical reasons (van Dalen and Kuunders, \n2006). Industry compliance with self-regulation advertising codes should be evaluated regularly \nfor both exposure and content guidelines by independent evaluators rather than the industry-\nappointed groups. The Precautionary Principle, which gives priority to the health of vulnerable \npopulations, suggests that alcohol promotion communications should be limited in the interests \nof public health (Kriebal and Tickner, 2001).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor12\n\n\n\nDrinking and Driving Countermeasures\nAlcohol is a major risk factor for traffic fatalities and injuries, especially in developing \n\n\n\ncountries with rapidly expanding ownership of motor vehicles.  A variety of legal measures \nhave been developed to deter drink-driving. Frequent, highly visible, non-selective testing \n(and selective testing if carried out with sufficient intensity) can have a sustained effect in \nreducing drink-driving and the associated crashes, injuries, and deaths (Elder et al., 2002). \nThe most effective approach is Random Breath Testing or Compulsory Breath Testing (Shults \net al., 2001). Sobriety checkpoints also increase the public perception of likelihood of \napprehension. The evidence indicates that laws setting a reasonably low level of blood alcohol \nconcentration (e.g., 0.05%) at which one may drive legally, combined with well-publicized \nenforcement, significantly reduces drink-driving and alcohol-related driving fatalities (Fell \nand Voas, 2006; Tippits et al., 2004). This is a required first step for effective drink-driving \npolicy. Several approaches reduce recidivism of drink-driving, including counselling or \ntherapy plus license suspension and ignition interlock devices that prevent a vehicle from \nbeing started until the driver passes a breath test (Elder et al., 2011). While Designated Driver \nand Safe Ride Programs, which provide alternative transportation to persons whose drinking \nhas exceeded the legal limit, may deter some people who presumably would otherwise drive \nwhile intoxicated, no overall impact on alcohol-involved accidents has been demonstrated \n(Ditter et al., 2005; Elder et al., 2005), and there is some evidence that they may inadvertently \ncontribute to heavy drinking. Effective interventions for young drivers, who are at higher \nrisk for traffic accidents, include a policy of zero tolerance (i.e., setting a blood alcohol \nconcentration level as close to 0% as possible) (Shults et al., 2001) and the use of graduated \nlicensing for novice drivers (i.e., limits on the time and other conditions of driving during \nthe first few years of licensing) (Shope, 2007). Traditional countermeasures such as driver \ntraining and school-based education programmes are either ineffective or yield mixed results \n(Ditter et al., 2005; Elder et al., 2005).\n\n\n\nModifying the Drinking Context\nAlcohol is consumed in a variety of contexts including private residences, licensed \n\n\n\npremises and other settings such as parks, beaches, cars and campsites. As described in previous \nsections of this article, licensing provides the opportunity to regulate retail alcohol sales for \nboth on and off-premise consumption. However, licensing of the environment where alcohol is \nactually consumed makes it possible to reduce harm over and above the licensing controls that \napply to off-premise alcohol sales. For example, licensed premises such as bars, pubs and clubs \nmay be subject to regulations of the training and licensing of staff, the forms of entertainment \npermitted and the maximum number of people who can be present at any time.\n\n\n\nResearch on measures to modify and regulate the drinking context shows that the training \nof bar staff can be effective in reducing alcohol-related violence and managing persons who are \nintoxicated, but such measures are only effective when there is consistent enforcement and the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response 13\n\n\n\npotential for sanctioning individuals or employers that violate the rules such as serving alcohol \nto intoxicated patrons.\n\n\n\nEducation and Persuasion Strategies\nSchool-based alcohol education programmes have been the predominant method \n\n\n\nused worldwide to prevent alcohol-related problems among young adults. School based \nalcohol education programmes are not an effective means to change drinking behaviour, \nbut they have been found to increase knowledge and change attitudes toward alcohol \n(Foxcroft and Tsertsvadze, 2011). Beyond the provision of information about alcohol\u2019s \nnegative effects, programmes that address self-esteem, general social skills, and activities \nintended to replace alcohol use (e.g., sports) are equally ineffective (Moskowitz, 1989). \nModest changes in drinking have been associated with programmes that include multiple \ncomponents (i.e., both individual-level education and family interventions), but the effects \ndisappear after the programmes are concluded (Foxcroft and Tsertsvadze, 2011). \n\n\n\nPublic service announcements (PSAs) broadcast on television and radio that \ndiscourage alcohol misuse and driving while intoxicated are sometimes sponsored by non-\ngovernmental organizations, health agencies, and the advertising industry. Despite their \ngood intentions, these messages have not been found to be effective in changing drinking \nbehaviour or preventing alcohol-related problems. Similarly, health-warning labels on \nproduct packaging, such as messages explaining that consuming alcohol during pregnancy \nmay cause birth defects, produce no change in drinking behaviour (Grube and Nygaard, \n2001), despite the fact that a significant proportion of the population reports seeing the \nwarnings. One possible reason for the lack of effectiveness is that these messages cannot \ncompete with the high quality pro-drinking messages that appear much more frequently \nas paid advertisements in the mass media.\n\n\n\nIn sum, the impact of education and persuasion programmes tends to be small at best. \nWhen positive effects are found, they do not persist.\n\n\n\nTreatment and Early Intervention Services\nThe development of specialized treatment programmes for alcoholics has become an \n\n\n\naccepted way for governments and for non-governmental organizations to help problem \ndrinkers. Participation in almost any kind of treatment is associated with significant \nreductions in alcohol use and related problems, regardless of the type of intervention \nused. There are many different therapeutic approaches to choose from. The weight of \nevidence suggests that behavioural treatments (which teach relapse prevention skills) are \nmore effective than insight-oriented therapies (which explore psychological conflicts and \nthe underlying causes of excessive drinking) (Longabaugh et al., 1983). \n\n\n\nIn addition to therapies based on counseling, behavioural skills training, and \nmotivational enhancement, several new pharmacological compounds have been developed \nto address the neurobiological basis of alcohol dependence (Kranzler and Van Kirk, 2001). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor14\n\n\n\nNaltrexone, an opioid antagonist, and acamprosate, an amino acid derivative, have been \nshown to be effective in the prevention of relapse (O\u2019Malley et al., 1992; Kranzler and \nVan Kirk, 2001). However, these pharmacological interventions should be viewed as an \nadjunct to outpatient therapy rather than stand-alone treatments.\n\n\n\nAlthough mutual help societies, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), are not \nconsidered to be formal treatment, they are often used as inexpensive substitutes, \nalternatives, and adjuncts to treatment (Humphreys, 2003). Research suggests that AA \nitself can have an incremental effect when combined with formal treatment, and that AA \nparticipation alone may be as effective as formal treatment is (Babor and Del Boca, 2002; \nHumphreys, 2003; Walsh et al., 1991). \n\n\n\nIn contrast to treatment provided to alcoholics in specialized settings, brief \ninterventions consist of one to three sessions of counseling or advice delivered in general \nmedical settings to non-alcoholic heavy drinkers. Numerous randomized controlled trials \nindicate that clinically significant changes in drinking behaviour and related problems can \nfollow from brief interventions (Kahan, Wilson and Becker, 1995; Moyer et al., 2002). In \nChina, for instance, brief interventions have proved to be effective, although studies have \nfocused on mixed samples of heavy and hazardous drinkers (Liu et al., 2011; Li et al., \n2006; Li et al., 2010.). \n\n\n\nWhen treatment and early intervention are available to large segments of the \npopulation, there is some evidence that these services can reduce the rates of alcohol \nproblems in a society (Smart and Mann, 2000). Nevertheless, specialized services (other \nthan mutual help organizations) tend to be expensive and may not be cost-effective in \ndeveloping countries unless they are integrated with the primary care system.\n\n\n\nConclusions and Implications\n\n\n\nAfter years of research on alcohol control policies in many countries, several conclusions \ncan be drawn about the most effective measures to prevent, reduce and manage alcohol-\nrelated harm.\n\n\n\nFirst, alcohol problems can be minimized or prevented using a coordinated, systematic \npolicy response.  Policies that limit access to alcoholic beverages, discourage driving under \nthe influence of alcohol, reduce the legal purchasing age for alcoholic beverages, limit \nmarketing exposure and increase the price of alcohol, are likely to reduce the harm linked to \ndrinking.\n\n\n\nIn most countries, regulation of affordability, physical availability, and alcohol \npromotions are the most cost-effective strategies, but enforcement of drink driving laws and \nprovision of treatment and early intervention are also needed. According to WHO (Chisolm \net al., 2006), effective interventions produce a favourable health return for cost incurred in \npolicy implementation.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response 15\n\n\n\nAlcohol policy priorities should be informed by the epidemiological data and scientific \nevidence. Designing effective alcohol policies for a nation or for a community should start \nwith an assessment of the policy responses that are already in place. To that end, Table 3 \nshows alcohol policies for seven countries in the Pacific Rim of Southeast Asia, drawing on \ndata from an extensive WHO survey (WHO, 2014). Key informants in each country provided \ninformation about the nature and enforcement of selected alcohol policies. \n\n\n\nBased on the country-level information provided in the WHO survey, eight policy \nareas were selected that could be evaluated in terms of the effectiveness findings described \nabove. Because data were sometimes lacking on the extent to which these policies are \nimplemented and enforced, it is not possible to say whether the policies actually are \neffective in a given country. Nevertheless, the table does provide a way to evaluate the \npotential impact of a country\u2019s policies, and to compare one country with another. As such, \nthe ratings constitute a \u201creport card\u201d for each country in terms of key alcohol policies. \n\n\n\nThe countries differ markedly in the extent to which they have adopted national \nalcohol policies and in the types of policies adopted.  Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia \nhave adopted the highest-impact policies overall, whereas China and Singapore show the \nlowest use of potentially effective alcohol policies. \n\n\n\nAlthough all seven countries levy excise taxes on beer, wine and spirits, the amount \nof taxation differs across countries. Most countries report no regulations on hours of \nsale and density of outlets, and none have restrictions on days of sale. The maximum \nblood alcohol concentration for drinking drivers in all countries is consistent with WHO \nrecommendations, but these limits are not consistently enforced. Moreover, most countries \nshow weak controls on alcohol marketing and warning labels on alcohol packaging is \nvirtually nonexistent.  \n\n\n\nBased on the survey information, it is clear that almost all the countries listed in \nTable 3 could improve their alcohol policies in a way that would increase the likelihood of \npreventing alcohol-related problems. For example, Random Breath Testing is an effective \nway to prevent alcohol-related automobile accidents and injuries. However, most countries \nin the region lack the resources or expertise to conduct Random Breath Testing. Similarly, \nmost countries have the capacity to impose taxes on the production and sale of alcoholic \nbeverages, but the relative price of alcohol in many of these countries is low in comparison \nto other countries in the world, where alcohol is considerably more expensive. One \nexception is Malaysia, which has one of the highest excise rates. Advertising restrictions \nare another area where alcohol controls are relatively weak in China and Southeast Asia. \nTwo of the countries report no controls on alcohol advertising, and four of the others report \nminimal restrictions governing the marketing of alcohol. Only one country (Thailand) \nbans advertising entirely on television and radio, but even here only partial restrictions \napply to print media and billboards. Age limits on the purchase of alcoholic beverages are \nspecified in all countries with the exception of China, however most countries (Malaysia, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor\n\n\n\nTa\nbl\n\n\n\ne \n3.\n\n\n\n  S\nel\n\n\n\nec\nte\n\n\n\nd \nN\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nna\nl A\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n P\n\n\n\nol\nic\n\n\n\nie\ns i\n\n\n\nn \nA\n\n\n\nsi\nan\n\n\n\n C\nou\n\n\n\nnt\nrie\n\n\n\ns w\nith\n\n\n\n L\nar\n\n\n\nge\n C\n\n\n\nhi\nne\n\n\n\nse\n P\n\n\n\nop\nul\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nns\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\nPo\nlic\n\n\n\nie\ns\n\n\n\nC\nou\n\n\n\nnt\nrie\n\n\n\ns\nC\n\n\n\nhi\nna\n\n\n\nM\nal\n\n\n\nay\nsi\n\n\n\na\nTh\n\n\n\nai\nla\n\n\n\nnd\nIn\n\n\n\ndo\nne\n\n\n\nsi\na\n\n\n\nSi\nng\n\n\n\nap\nor\n\n\n\ne\nM\n\n\n\nya\nnm\n\n\n\nar\nPh\n\n\n\nili\npp\n\n\n\nin\nes\n\n\n\nEx\nci\n\n\n\nse\n ta\n\n\n\nx \non\n\n\n\n:\n   \n\n\n\n  B\nee\n\n\n\nr\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n   \n  W\n\n\n\nin\ne\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\n   \n\n\n\n  S\npi\n\n\n\nrit\ns \n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nN\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nna\nl l\n\n\n\neg\nal\n\n\n\n m\nin\n\n\n\nim\num\n\n\n\n a\nge\n\n\n\n: \n   \n\n\n\n  O\nff-\n\n\n\npr\nem\n\n\n\nis\ne\n\n\n\n-\n18\n\n\n\n20\n21\n\n\n\n18\n18\n\n\n\n18\n   \n\n\n\n  O\nn-\n\n\n\npr\nem\n\n\n\nis\ne\n\n\n\n-\n18\n\n\n\n20\n-\n\n\n\n18\n18\n\n\n\n18\nR\n\n\n\nes\ntri\n\n\n\nct\nio\n\n\n\nns\n fo\n\n\n\nr:\n   \n\n\n\n  H\nou\n\n\n\nrs\n-\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n   \n  D\n\n\n\nay\ns\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\n-\n   \n\n\n\n  P\nla\n\n\n\nce\ns\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\n   \n\n\n\n  D\nen\n\n\n\nsi\nty\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n-\nN\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nna\nl m\n\n\n\nax\nim\n\n\n\num\n le\n\n\n\nga\nl b\n\n\n\nlo\nod\n\n\n\n a\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n c\non\n\n\n\nce\nnt\n\n\n\nra\ntio\n\n\n\nn \nw\n\n\n\nhe\nn \n\n\n\ndr\niv\n\n\n\nin\ng \n\n\n\na \nve\n\n\n\nhi\ncl\n\n\n\ne \n0.\n\n\n\n02\n0.\n\n\n\n08\n0.\n\n\n\n05\nZe\n\n\n\nro\n \n\n\n\nto\nle\n\n\n\nra\nnc\n\n\n\ne\n0.\n\n\n\n08\n0.\n\n\n\n05\n0.\n\n\n\n05\n\n\n\nLe\nga\n\n\n\nlly\n b\n\n\n\nin\ndi\n\n\n\nng\n re\n\n\n\ngu\nla\n\n\n\ntio\nns\n\n\n\n o\nn:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  A\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n a\ndv\n\n\n\ner\ntis\n\n\n\nin\ng \n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n-\n   \n\n\n\n  P\nro\n\n\n\ndu\nct\n\n\n\n p\nla\n\n\n\nce\nm\n\n\n\nen\nt \n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n-\n   \n\n\n\n  A\nlc\n\n\n\noh\nol\n\n\n\n sp\non\n\n\n\nso\nrs\n\n\n\nhi\np \n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n-\n   \n\n\n\n  S\nal\n\n\n\nes\n p\n\n\n\nro\nm\n\n\n\not\nio\n\n\n\nn \n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\nLe\nga\n\n\n\nlly\n re\n\n\n\nqu\nire\n\n\n\nd \nhe\n\n\n\nal\nth\n\n\n\n w\nar\n\n\n\nni\nng\n\n\n\n la\nbe\n\n\n\nls\n o\n\n\n\nn:\n \n\n\n\n   \n  A\n\n\n\nlc\noh\n\n\n\nol\n a\n\n\n\ndv\ner\n\n\n\ntis\nem\n\n\n\nen\nts\n\n\n\n \n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\n   \n  C\n\n\n\non\nta\n\n\n\nin\ner\n\n\n\ns \n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nN\nat\n\n\n\nio\nna\n\n\n\nl g\nov\n\n\n\ner\nnm\n\n\n\nen\nt s\n\n\n\nup\npo\n\n\n\nrt \nfo\n\n\n\nr c\nom\n\n\n\nm\nun\n\n\n\nity\n a\n\n\n\nct\nio\n\n\n\nn\n-\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\nN\nat\n\n\n\nio\nna\n\n\n\nl m\non\n\n\n\nito\nrin\n\n\n\ng \nsy\n\n\n\nst\nem\n\n\n\n(s\n)\n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\nx\nx\n\n\n\n-\nW\n\n\n\nrit\nte\n\n\n\nn \nna\n\n\n\ntio\nna\n\n\n\nl p\nol\n\n\n\nic\ny \n\n\n\n-\nx\n\n\n\nx\n-\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\n-\nN\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nna\nl P\n\n\n\nol\nic\n\n\n\ny \nSc\n\n\n\nor\ne \n\n\n\n(o\nut\n\n\n\n o\nf 2\n\n\n\n1)\n5\n\n\n\n14\n18\n\n\n\n15\n10\n\n\n\n14\n10\n\n\n\nSo\nur\n\n\n\nce\n:  \n\n\n\nW\nor\n\n\n\nld\n H\n\n\n\nea\nlth\n\n\n\n O\nrg\n\n\n\nan\niz\n\n\n\nat\nio\n\n\n\nn,\n 2\n\n\n\n01\n4\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlcohol Abuse among the Chinese in Asia, and the Public Health Response\n\n\n\nPhilippines, Singapore and Myanmar) allow purchases by those 18 years old.\nThe research summarized in this article has the following policy implications \n\n\n\nfor China and other countries with large Chinese populations. First, countries with \npredominant Muslim populations should continue to be a model for other nations in \nAsia in the implementation of reasonably restrictive alcohol control policies.  Second, \ncountries should resist pressures from the alcoholic beverage industry, particularly the \ntransnational producers that own local brands, to dismantle or weaken effective upstream \npolicies such as excise taxes and advertising bans.  Third, countries should focus on youth \nand other high intensity drinkers through targeted interventions such as drink-driving \ncountermeasures, age restrictions, and early intervention in health care settings. 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Alcohol marketing and young people: an analysis of the \ncurrent debate on regulation, Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 23(6).  \n\n\n\nVENDRAME, A., PINKSY, I., SILVA, R. and BABOR, T.F. 2010. Assessment of self-regulatory code \nviolations in Brazilian television beer advertisements, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, \n\n\n\n19\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBabor20\n\n\n\n71(3): 445\u2013 451.\nWALSH, D.C., HINGSON, R.W., MERRIGAN, D.M., LEVENSON, S.M., CUPPLES, L.A., HEEREN, \n\n\n\nT. et al.  1991.  A randomized trial of treatment options for alcohol-abusing workers, N Engl J Med, \n325:775\u2013781. \n\n\n\nWAGENAAR, A.C., TOBLER, A.L. and KOMRO, K.A. 2010. Effects of alcohol tax price policies on \nmorbidity and mortality: a systematic review, American Journal of Public Health, 100: 2270\u2013\n2278.\n\n\n\nWAGENAAR, A.C., SALOIS, M.J. and KOMOR, K.A. 2009. Effects of beverage alcohol price and tax \nlevels on drinking: a meta analysis of 1003 estimates from 112 studies, Addiction, 104.\n\n\n\nWAGENAAR, A.C. and TOOMEY, T.L. 2002. Effects of minimum drinking age laws: review and \nanalyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000, Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Suppl. 14): 206\u2013225. \n\n\n\nWorld Health Organization 2010. Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol, Geneva: World \nHealth Organization.\n\n\n\n----2011. From Burden to \u201cBest Buys\u201d: Reducing the Economic Impact of Non-Communicable Diseases \nin Low- and Middle-Income Countries.\n\n\n\n----2014. Global Status Report: Alcohol Policy, Geneva: WHO.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 49-67\n\n\n\nHistorical Institutional Analysis of Ethnic \nFinancial Institutions: \n\n\n\nA Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak\n\n\n\nCHEN Tsung-Yuan*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper examines the development of Chinese banks in Sarawak from the perspective of \nhistorical institutionalism, and explains its implications in terms of \u201cethnic economy\u201d theory. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese banks in Sarawak are small and medium in size and mainly catering for the local \nChinese business community. They are conservative family business concerns and adopt a policy of \nstable growth. As such, they are unable to cope with changes and requirements to withstand competition \nin the industry.\n\n\n\nThe study argues that the small size of Chinese banks in Sarawak and their difficulties in coping \nwith competition have not allowed them to meet the needs of the emerging multinational business \nsector. In consequence, they are the targets of mergers and acquisitions under a policy directed by \nthe government. This process and the resultant rigid banking rules and regulations have in turn raised \nproblems for local Chinese businesses in their attempts to set up new ventures or to maintain existing \nones. \n\n\n\nKey words:  Sarawak Chinese banks, ethnic economy, ethnic financial institutions.\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nIt is a common rule that banks and financial institutions are reluctant to serve \u201csmall\u201d \ncustomers or the disadvantaged groups out of concerns of risks and uncertain returns. The \nsmall Chinese businessmen in need of modest initial capital find a way to overcome this \nthrough the support of banks owned by persons of their own dialect origin. This is a proven \nadvantage when dealings are based on \u201cenforceable trust\u201d. It is this trust that becomes an \nimportant social capital within a given dialect community (Zhou, 2004). \n\n\n\nIn the context of Sarawak, the banks of the Chinese minority have played an essential \nrole in the economic success of different dialect groups of the community. As in other places, \n\n\n\n*  Dr. CHEN Tsung-Yuan is attached to the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, National Cheng \nChi University of Taiwan. E-mail: kurtchen1979@yahoo.com.tw\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n50          Chen\n\n\n\nthe Chinese in Sarawak rely heavily on their own capital and social relationships to nurture \nbusinesses and to manage risks. This habit of self-reliance is further strengthened by the \nexistence of banks and financial institutions organized by the major dialect groups.1 \n\n\n\nThe banking system of Malaya was introduced by the British during the colonial period \nand became relatively well developed after the Second World War. Almost all local banks \nwere started and operated by Chinese families or business associates. The inception of the \nNew Economic Policy (NEP) in 1970 in favour of the Bumiputras2 and the mergers and \nacquisitions of financial institutions from the 1990s have decimated the number of Chinese \nbanks in Malaysia and reduced the proportion of Chinese equity holding (Chin, 2004). \n\n\n\nThe Chinese banks in Sarawak are of moderate size and serve mainly the local economy \nand Chinese community. They are conservative and their operation policy is to maintain \nstability. As such, they are unprepared for changing conditions or to withstand growing \ncompetition from larger and more aggressive banks. The eventual exit of Chinese banks from \nthe financial sector in Sarawak is their inability to respond to an emerging trend that favours \nlarge capitalization and a diverse range of sophisticated services to satisfy the needs of the \nchanging domestic and international business environments. Hock Hua Bank and Wah Tat \nBank are typical examples. Both were well-established and enjoyed a steady growth in their \nbusiness but were eventually taken over respectively by Public Bank and Hong Leong Banks \nin 2000 in line with the government policy of merging local banks. A study of this process of \nchange may help us to understand the economic behaviour of Chinese business in Malaysia. \n\n\n\nThis study adopts an institutionalism approach to analyse the development of the Chinese \nbanks in Sarawak and to show that the changing fortune of the Chinese is attributable not to \ncultural or ethnic causes but rather to complex historical factors and social developments. \nThe brief literature review with intent to formulate an organizing framework is followed \nby a discussion of the development of the Chinese banks in Sarawak. The next section is an \naccount based on a questionnaire survey to examine the socio-economic interactions between \nChinese banks and Chinese business.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese Ethnic Economy: A Historical Institutional Analysis of  \nChinese Banks in Sarawak\n\n\n\nThe first Chinese bank in Sarawak was established in 1905. By 1965, six different banks \nwere established in the two largest towns of Kuching and Sibu by the Hokkien (Fujian), \nFoochow (Fuzhou) and Cantonese (Guangfu) business leaders. However, none has managed \nto survive to this day (Table 1). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          51\n\n\n\nTable 1. Chinese Banks in Sarawak\n\n\n\nBank\nDialect \ngroup\n\n\n\nYear \nestablished Liquidation or acquisition Headquarters\n\n\n\nKwong Lee Bank Cantonese 1905 1982 \u2013 Acquired by a banker-cum-\nindustrialist from Peninsular Malaysia \nand renamed MUI Bank\n\n\n\nKuching\n\n\n\nSarawak Chinese \nBank\n\n\n\nHokkien 1913 1935 \u2013 a victim of the Great \nDepression of the late 1920s and early \n1930s\n\n\n\nKuching\n\n\n\nBian Chiang Bank Hokkien 1924 1975 \u2013 the Wee family withdrew \nand the Bank was renamed Bank of \nCommerce\n\n\n\nKuching\n\n\n\nWah Tat Bank Hokkien 1929 2000 \u2013 Merged with Hong Leong \nBank\n\n\n\nSibu\n\n\n\nHock Hua Bank Foochow 1952 2000 \u2013 Merged with Public Bank Sibu\nKong Ming Bank Foochow 1965 1992 \u2013 Acquired by EON Bank Sibu\n\n\n\nSource: Annual reports of the various banks\n\n\n\nQuestions as to why Sarawak Chinese banks have disappeared from the industry and \nthe impact on the Chinese business community are relevant issues that still await further \ninvestigation. Several studies on these issues have been carried out elsewhere in Southeast \nAsia and different explanations have been put forward based on cultural, social, political, and \ngeographical perspectives (see Table 2).\n\n\n\nTable 2. Explaining Chinese Ethnic Economy in Southeast Asia\nLocal Global\n\n\n\nHigh \nChineseness\n\n\n\nType I\n(Culturalist theory)\n\u2022 Local adaptation of the Chinese \n\n\n\nculture\n\u2022 Descriptions on the migration \n\n\n\nhistory or case studies on immigrant \ncommunities\n\n\n\nCultural explanation to the ethnic \neconomy\n\n\n\nType III\n(Networking theory)\n\u2022 Transnationalism or Cosmopolitanism\n\u2022 Chinese culture is an ideology without \n\n\n\nborders, and is reflected in its ethnic-\ncentric social networking practices\n\n\n\nSocial explanation to the ethnic economy\n\n\n\nLow \nChineseness\n\n\n\nType II\n(Structuralist theory)\n\u2022 Political-commercial alliance\n\u2022 How a minority ethnic group is \n\n\n\nable to grow under discriminative \nenvironments and policies\n\n\n\nPolitical explanation to the ethnic \neconomy\n\n\n\nType IV\n(Globalization theory)\n\u2022 Impacts of a globalized economy\n\u2022 Investigating the reconfiguration of \n\n\n\noverseas Chinese economies and \nchanges in organizational governance \n\n\n\nGeographical explanation to the ethnic \neconomy\n\n\n\nSource: Summarized by author \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n52          Chen\n\n\n\nThe most common attempts to explain the development of the Chinese ethnic economy \nin Southeast Asia are by means of the cultural and structuralist theories. The culturalists try \nto explain variations of economic performance among ethnic groups through their distinct \ncharacteristics, including social values and moral teachings of each group. Some scholars \nclaim that Confucian ideas adopted by the Chinese such as the Golden Mean, sincerity, \nhonesty, mutual respect and trusts are conducive to economic development. The argument \nis that \u201ctransaction costs\u201d could be reduced between parties as they seek mutual benefit. \nThe networking and social relationships or guanxi valued so much by Chinese society also \nfacilitate commercial activities and intensify economic interactions as a whole. It is this \nidea that leads to the concepts of the \u201cChinese Economic Area\u201d and \u201cChinese Cross Border \nNetworks\u201d (Redding, 1990; Kotkin, 1992; Weidenbaum and Hughes, 1996).\n\n\n\nIn contrast, the structuralists argue that the idea of a \u201cChinese Network\u201d is nothing but \nan unrealistic assumption. Terence Gomez (1999) points out that culturalist theories and the \nconcept of the Chinese network lack theoretical backing. He cites the argument of Francis \nFukuyama (1995) that trust among the Chinese people rarely extends outside their family. The \nequal inheritance system commonly practised by the Chinese also provokes competition that \nis not beneficial to long-term business development. In fact, it is the cross-ethnic networks \ninstead of the cross-Chinese dialect networks that are important. In Malaysia, the co-operation \nbetween the Malays and Chinese in politics and business has become increasingly common \nand influential. This type of cross-ethnic alliance that is largely based on rent seeking is \nchanging the nature of ethnic economic development. In view of the business re-alignment of \nethnic groups in response to new official policies, the Chinese network should be interpreted \nas a response to this external environment. \n\n\n\nThe Asian financial crisis in 1997 was a watershed in the development of Chinese \nbusiness. The crisis has compelled a re-examination of the substantive relation between \n\u201cculture\u201d and \u201cChineseness\u201d and economic development. The ideas spelt out by structuralist \nscholars have once again gained momentum (Gomez, 1999; Chan and Ng, 2000; Li, 2000). \nHowever, these ideas have largely overlooked the role of Chinese banking establishments, \ntheir history and the trajectories of development of individual banks as well as their influence \non Chinese business.\n\n\n\nThis intellectual stand-off neither facilitates the integration of ideas nor helps us to \nunderstand the complicated development of recent Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia. \nCurrent conclusions do not explain the true development of an ethnic economy but a more \nintegrated approach may yield some insights on the subject. \n\n\n\nAn integrated approach has been proposed in some recent studies in which the theory of \ninstitutionalism may provide a dynamic \u201cstructuration\u201d that may resolve the debate. \u5218\u5b8f/Liu \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          53\n\n\n\nHong (2003: 196-197) argues that institutionalism is an interpretation that considers culture \nand structure as two interacting forces within a society, emphasizing that the institutional \nframework may provide structure to our daily lifestyle while reducing uncertainties. Yen \nChing-Hwang (2008: 137-138) further points out that the development of commercial \nactivities by Chinese enterprises in Southeast Asia was all closely associated with certain \npolitical environments. Chinese businessmen were able to respond sensitively to the changing \nbusiness situations and acted accordingly, and they applied different tactics to compete. This \nsituation can be interpreted more comprehensively under existing historical and cultural \ncontexts.\n\n\n\nThe distinct historical encounters experienced by Chinese immigrants gave rise to the \nemergence of different dialect communities and their local networking relationships. The \n\u201chistory\u201d of an ethnic group is a record of its past as well as an account of the course of its \ninteractions with other groups and external environments. The study of historical facts may \nallow us to analyse and explain the different social structures within each country and region, \nand the forms of organizations they correspond to.\n\n\n\nIn summary, the key to advancing beyond a partial understanding and explanation lies in \nstudying corporate behaviour under different historical scenarios through which we may learn \nhow such macro-economic factors really affect an ethnic economy. For a better understanding \nof the development of Sarawak Chinese economy, this study proposes an integrated analytical \nframework based on the historical institutionalism approach (Figure 1). As far as Sarawak \nChinese banks are concerned, an examination of the history of their development may reveal \nthe trends and strategies through which the Chinese community seeks to advance and to \nrespond to changes in the economy of the state.\n\n\n\nEthnic solidarity Sarawak Chinese \nbanks\n\n\n\nGovernment \npolicies\n\n\n\nEconomic \nglobalization\n\n\n\nMerged or  \nclosed\n\n\n\nEthnic ownership economy\n\n\n\nEthnic control economy\n\n\n\nFamily control\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Illustrating the Rise and Fall of Chinese Banks in Sarawak: The Historical Institutionalism \nApproach\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n54          Chen\n\n\n\nThe analytical outline shown in Figure 1 indicates the manner in which Chinese banks in \nSarawak, having survived the vicissitudes of business in the twentieth century, finally exited \nfrom the financial market in the year 2000, thanks to government policies and economic \nglobalization as well as their distinctive family and ethnic-based operation. These factors \ninteract at different intervals to influence the performance of Chinese banks. In the case of \nSarawak, family and ethnic ties among the Chinese had contributed to the initial growth of \nbanks. As these banks grew in size and encountered changes in the political and economic \nenvironments, the early advantages of these banks began to work against their favour and \nhampered business growth. This was most apparent during the 1997 financial crisis when \nthe Malaysia authorities decreed that small banks merged with the larger ones to adapt to \nglobal financial market needs, a move that led to the eventual demise of the Chinese banks \nin Sarawak. \n\n\n\nSarawak Chinese Banks: From Rise to Demise\n\n\n\nThe Chinese banks in Sarawak evolved from traditional forms of financial institutions \ncommon among the Chinese overseas and played a critical role in the accumulation of capital. \nThese banks had served small businesses that were denied access to sources of finance from \nEuropean-owned commercial banks. They had served the community well when the Sarawak \neconomy was based on petty trade and the production of commodities. Following the advent \nof globalization and structural transformation of the economy under a Bumiputra-dominated \ngovernment, the weakness of these banks was exposed and their long-term prospects were \ncompromised.\n\n\n\nPioneer Stage of Development (1903-1945)\nThe period between 1903 and 1945 was the pioneer stage in the development of Chinese \n\n\n\nbanks in Southeast Asia. A total of 15 Chinese banks were founded in Singapore, Malaya \nand Sarawak, 13 in Thailand, and five in Indonesia. Although the larger ones had branches \nin other parts of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong or South China, their early path of development \nwas unsteady and banking scandals were not uncommon (Brown, 1994: 160).\n\n\n\nThe first Chinese bank in Singapore, Kwong Yik Bank, was established in 1903. The \nSarawak Chinese soon followed two years later with Kwong Lee Bank. In the Malay States, \nthe Kwong Yik (Selangor) Banking Corporation was set up in 1913 (Lee, 1990: 38). In the \ndays when few banks existed, the people had kept their savings in their own possession or \nentrusted them to the local Chinese shopkeepers or remittance houses. The larger towns had \nprivate remittance houses to help the early Chinese communities to remit money to China. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          55\n\n\n\nOut of these remittance houses had evolved the earliest Chinese banks to meet the expanding \nneeds of the trading and commercial class (\u5b89\u7115\u7136/An Huan Ran, 1998: 307). A distinctive \nfeature of the early Chinese banks was their association with the various dialect groups (see\n\u5434\u4e3b\u60e0/Wu Ju Huei, 1983: 168-169). The founders of Ban Hin Lee Bank were Hokkien \nbusinessmen while the Kwong Yik (Selangor) Bank were Cantonese. Some also operated \nremittance houses and pawn shops. These pioneer dialect-based banks had run on the basis of \npersonal trust rather than on pledges secured on collateral. \n\n\n\nAs ethnic financial institutions, these early Chinese banks played an essential role in the \nformation and accumulation of Chinese capital in Sarawak in the past. They thrived on the \nbasis of trust and cultural affinities operating in the context of the ethnic economy.3 Intense \nsocial and economic interactions within the Chinese community and personal trust provided \nthe business platform by which these banks would service the various needs of business \nproprietors, petty traders, and others. \n\n\n\nThe economic history of Sarawak witnessed the existence of six locally registered \nChinese banks. The Kwong Lee Bank that began operation in 1905 was set up by Cantonese \nbusinessmen from Singapore and followed a policy of cautious lending and charging high \ninterest rates that worked out at a monthly compound rate of 4 per cent, or approximately \n52 per cent per annum. As it collected interest payments in advance, the bank effectively \nprovided little assistance to capital accumulations among local Chinese businessmen (\u8521\u589e\n\n\n\n\u806a/Chua Chen Choon, 2004: 261). The Sarawak Chinese Bank was the next to appear in 1913 \nbut ceased operation in 1935. This bank left hardly any records or any trace of its existence. \nOf much significance to the Chinese economy was the Bian Chiang Bank founded by Wee \nKheng Chiang and his business associates in 1924. Wee was the leading local businessman \nof his day and was the driving force behind the bank. Capitalized on $100,000 of which four-\nfifths were held by Wee, the business focus of the bank was on credit lending and currency \nexchange. Loans were granted for genuine businesses and banking relationships were based \non personal credibility with almost no pledge of collateral security. Taking of deposits then \nwas not a core business function as private persons would hardly accept the idea of keeping \ntheir savings in the bank. The scope of business of Bian Chiang Bank was consequently rather \nlimited (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 60; see also Lam, 2012).\n\n\n\nAlthough the early Chinese banks grew and contributed to the economic development \nand capital accumulation of the Chinese community, they were neither tightly supervised \nnor managed according to stringent administrative rules. The collapse of the share market in \nWall Street in October 1929 that brought about the Great Depression affected the prices of \nSoutheast Asian commodities. Heavy losses suffered by Chinese merchants dragged down \nthe business volume of the Chinese banks. By the early 1930s, Chinese banks operating \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n56          Chen\n\n\n\nin Malaya, Singapore and Sarawak had taken steps to reduce inefficiencies commonly \nassociated with Chinese family businesses. Reforms were introduced that led to the adoption \nof corporate structures and modern business management (Brown, 1994: 170). However, \nhardly had the situation improved when the Second World War broke out to deal yet another \nblow to the economy.\n\n\n\nThe brutal Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia, though brief, was destructive. Damages \nsuffered by the Chinese banks were immense. In Singapore and Malaya, the Japanese military \ngovernment installed the Yokohama Specie Bank and the Bank of Taiwan as official local \nbanks. Chinese banks were strictly regulated and their assets were confiscated. Although \nthe Overseas Chinese Bank, the Sze Hai Tong Bank, the United Overseas Bank and many \nothers were allowed to operate, their funds were controlled by the Yokohama Specie Bank. \nIn addition, the Japanese military authority arranged trusted personnel to supervise local \nbanking activities and to closely monitor their operations (\u9ec4\u6c49\u68ee/Wong Hon Sum, 1996: \n113; Kratoska, 1998: 214-222).\n\n\n\nThe Japanese army occupied Sarawak and soon seized all the three Chinese banks in \noperation then. The business activities of Bian Chiang Bank, Kwong Lee Bank, and Wah \nTat Bank were suspended by the Japanese and the Yokohama Specie Bank was appointed \nto terminate their operation. They were later merged to become Kyoei Bank. This new bank \ndid not possess tangible assets and the currencies issued by the Japanese military authority \nbecame valueless after the war. The assets of the Chinese banks that had been built up before \nthe war vaporized and were completely lost (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 60-61). When \nthe Japanese were finally driven out of the state, the future of local banks was bleak as they \nattempted to revamp their business almost from scratch.\n\n\n\nThe Banking Industry from 1945 to 1997 \nFrom the end of the Japanese Occupation to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, \n\n\n\nSarawak\u2019s banking industry experienced dramatic changes in the institutional and economic \nenvironments. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 raised rubber prices to record levels \nand energized Chinese business and the banking industry. However, as rubber was a global \ncommodity subjected to wide fluctuations in prices, the stimulus of high demand for rubber \nto the local economy was short-lived (Law, 1962) .\n\n\n\nThe end of the Korean War saw the rise of the timber logging industry as a major \neconomic activity in Sarawak as it replaced rubber as the primary export. The hefty financial \ninvestments of the logging business were largely drawn from Hock Hua Bank. The prosperity \nof the timber business then had reportedly enabled the Foochow community to accumulate \ngreat wealth, and Hock Hua Bank and other financial institutions helped to propel the new \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          57\n\n\n\nphase of development of Sarawak (\u7530\u82f1\u6210/Chan Eng Seng, 1999; \u9648\u742e\u6e0a/Chen Tsung Yuan, \n2006).\n\n\n\nThe period of the mid-1950s and early 1960s saw the formation of political parties. \nIt was the British colonial government that encouraged political consciousness possibly to \ngroom Sarawakians for independence through merger with the Federation of Malaya (Leigh, \n1974: 40-56; \u9ec4\u5efa\u6df3/Huang Jiann Chen, 1999: 741-742). This period also coincided with the \nbeginning of the timber industry. Chinese merchants who were engaged in political activities \nor the timber industry were able to build up close ties with the government and gained \naccess to business opportunities and licences. These developments contributed directly to \nthe business of Chinese banks (Ross, 2002: 132-137; Porritt, 1997: 372). As a result, a new \ngeneration of bankers, among them Ling Beng Siew and Wee Hood Teck, was able to reach \nout to local \u201chigh society\u201d (personal communication, Then Jyou Kiong, 13 June 2012).\n\n\n\nSarawak joined Malaysia in 1963 and its banks came within the purview of Bank \nNegara Malaysia (Central Bank). Sarawak Chinese banks continued to grow and a new bank \nwas established4 in the midst of political uncertainties in the 1960s and a time when foreign \nbanks were beginning to dominate the financial sector of the country. By 1966, foreign banks \nwere responsible for 70 per cent of the cash deposits and total loans of commercial banks \n(Lee, 1990: 272-273). After the communal riots of 13 May 1969, the NEP was introduced to \npromote the economic interests of the Bumiputra communities. The operations of foreign and \ndomestic banks were regulated and a quota system was implemented by which 30 per cent of \nthe capital share of banks was to be allotted to Bumiputra interests. \n\n\n\nFollowing the financial crisis of the 1980s, the government initiated reforms in financial \nsupervision. The passing of the Banking and Financial Institutions Act of 1989 (BAFIA) \nmarked a critical turning point in the country\u2019s banking industry. This act empowers the \nMinistry of Finance as an approval authority and Bank Negara to authorize mergers, share \nacquisitions, and act on major decisions affecting the banking industry (Bank Negara \nMalaysia, 1989: 51-52). The reforms set in motion a wave of bank mergers that changed the \nface of the financial landscape of Malaysia.\n\n\n\nOver the years, official involvement in the banking industry through the instrument of \ninstitutional shareholding held by state-owned trusts and pension funds, central and municipal \ngovernment trust funds has shifted control and ownership of many local banks away from \ntheir Chinese founders. Chinese dominance has since been decimated by an officially \norchestrated programme of takeovers of small local banks by a few designated key financial \ninstitutions. This process and the injection of government funds through government-linked \nsubsidiaries and Malay corporations have effectively transferred control of the banking sector \nto Bumiputra interests. At the same time, a Malay financial elite has emerged to take control \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n58          Chen\n\n\n\nof the ownership and management of several formerly Chinese-owned banks (Lee, 1990: \n158-159; see also Haggard, 2000). Between 1970 and 1990, eight out of the ten largest local \nbanks, formerly dominated by Chinese and foreign capitals, have been absorbed by Bumiputra \nor state-owned companies (Gomez and Jomo, 1999: 62). While a few large foreign banks \nwere spared from the restructuring exercise, they nevertheless accounted for only one-tenth \nof bank branches and one-fifth of national bank assets in 1995. \n\n\n\nThe prospects of many local banks had hinged on how well their management handled \nissues of politics. But the majority had no choice but to merge with larger banks (Brown, \n2006: 115). The pressure under this new trend of development of the financial sector was \nsuch that the prospects awaiting the small Chinese banks in Sarawak were almost certainly \nbleak. A banker stated that they \u201chad no choice but to reach out to our Iban and Malay \nfriends to take up shares in order to fulfil the quota and to protect our management\u201d (personal \ncommunication, former manager of Hock Hua Bank, Kuching, 18 July 2008).\n\n\n\nThe Chinese banks in Sarawak were conservative in their management and localized \nin operation. At the same time that they benefited from their dealings with influential people \nwith government connections, they had also to learn how to return their favour. They were \nalso reluctant to venture into Kuala Lumpur partly because of their belief that serving the \nneeds of politicians might compromise their profits. They therefore preferred to give out petty \nloans to many customers rather than large loans to a few. This was because small bad loans \nwere manageable while a single large one might drag the bank into insolvency (personal \ncommunication, former CEO of Hock Hua Bank, Sibu, 16 July 2009). The nature of family \nbusiness management also afforded few opportunities for expansion and development. The \nlimited scope and size of business, coupled with officially enforced control measures, almost \ncertainly spelt trouble for the small Chinese banks in Sarawak. As it was increasingly difficult \nto obtain new banking licences since the 1970s, the small family banks became targets for \ntakeover bids by those with powerful connections with ruling elites. \n\n\n\nThe 1970s and 1980s saw the disappearance of three Sarawak Chinese banks. Bian \nChiang Bank, founded by the Wee family, ceased operation in 1975. It had been managed by \nthe third son of the founder and a Malaysian citizen, but control rested with a Singaporean son \nwho was the Chairman of United Overseas Bank of Singapore and a non-citizen. In the early \n1970s the Central Bank of Malaysia directed the Bank to restructure its board of directors to \ncomply with the official rule for Malaysian control of local banks. Despite the wealth of the \nWee family, attempts to safeguard family interests were ruled out by a technicality and control \nof the Bank was taken over by a Bumiputra group of companies in 1975. Kwong Lee Bank \nwas owned and managed by the Lim family until 1982 when it was acquired by a Chinese \ntycoon of the MUI Industry Group in Kuala Lumpur. The bank was renamed MUI Bank and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          59\n\n\n\nlater became Hong Leong Bank. Kong Min Bank was sold to National Proton Car Distributor \nin 1992 to become EON Bank. As the transfer of ownership required official blessings, \nthe transferees were almost certainly individuals or groups with political connections (see \nGomez, 1999:101-112)\n\n\n\nMerger of Banks in the Aftermath of 1997 Asian Financial Crisis\nAt the end of 1996, there were 36 commercial banks (20 local and 16 foreign), 39 \n\n\n\nfinance companies, and 12 investment banks in Malaysia. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 \nprompted the government to merge small banks with designated major ones to eliminate \nthe structural weakness of the banking sector. In 1998 the 39 financial companies in the \ncountry were to be merged and reduced to eight in number; a year later, another 58 financial \ninstitutions were to be merged into six major banks; and in early 2000, these banks were to \nbe combined to form ten conglomerates (\u9648\u5c1a\u61cb/Chen Shang Mao, 2003: 145-148). By the \nend of 2000, when the first phase of mergers was completed, each bank had a share capital \nof more than RM2 billion, and their combined assets stood at more than RM25 billion. The \nmerger of 54 banks into ten banking conglomerates which began in 2003 further consolidated \nthe assets of these banks (\u6797\u6dd1\u60e0/Lin Shu Hui, 2006: 21).\n\n\n\nThe phases of mergers had significant impacts on Chinese banks. Among other measures, \nthe raising of capital requirements by the government effectively reduced the number of \nChinese banks to two. These are Public Bank and Hong Leong Bank which still remain under \nChinese control. Interestingly, these two Chinese banks have managed to ride a \u201cgolden age\u201d \nof rapid growth in the face of pro-Bumiputra policies. Even before the Asian financial crisis \nin 1997, they have been able to gain government support through well-established political \nrelationships and to enjoy significant growth through maintaining majority share ownership \nand management control. Nevertheless, it is apparent that both are progressively losing their \n\u201cChinese\u201d character. The share held by the founder of Public Bank has dropped from 60 \nper cent in 1988 to 40 per cent in 1997 and the Bumiputra share has increased accordingly \n(Brown, 2006: 120-121). As the only option for those banks that fail to accumulate the \nrequired capital sum after 2000 is to cease operation or be absorbed by the larger banks, it \nis inevitable that Bumiputra interests will consolidate their dominance of the industry at the \nexpense of Chinese interests and usher in the dramatic decline of the latter. \n\n\n\nThe history of development of Chinese banks in Sarawak is being re-written by official \nfinancial policies and the external environment. This history is marked by the fading away of \nthe once dominant Chinese-owned banks from Malaysia\u2019s banking industry. Chinese banks \nin Sarawak have moved from an \u201cethnic ownership economy\u201d towards an \u201cethnic control \neconomy\u201d5, characterized by increased internal division and competition and towards greater \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n60          Chen\n\n\n\nconvergence of interests with other ethnic groups for mutual benefit. Changing circumstances \nare leading the Chinese business community to seek opportunities beyond the usual intra-ethnic \nties to develop inter-ethnic co-operation for purposes of political expediency. Collaborations \nwith various influential parties have resulted in wealth accumulations among a small group \nof Chinese capitalists, but few have been able to increase their involvement in the banking \nand financial sector. The discussion that follows will examine the feelings and attitudes of the \nChinese business community towards the mergers and acquisitions of the Chinese banks in \nSarawak, and the effects of this process on their business.\n\n\n\nChinese Banks and Chinese Business in Sarawak\n\n\n\nA study was carried out between April and July 2010 based on a random sampling \nof Chinese business persons aged 30 and above who have had experience in dealings with \nChinese banks in Sarawak. The purpose was to find out the performance of the Chinese \nbanks and its working relationships with the local Chinese business community, and the \nconsequences of their withdrawal from the market. \n\n\n\nA questionnaire was distributed to 150 selected respondents in the major towns \nof Kuching, Sibu and Miri via surface mail, fax, and interview. A total of 37 completed \nquestionnaires or 25 per cent was returned (15 from Kuching, 13 from Sibu, and 9 from Miri).\n\n\n\nThe respondents were employers, proprietors and senior managerial personnel of \nselected Chinese business enterprises, comprising ten Foochows (Fuzhou), nine Hakkas \n(Kejia), six Hokkiens (Fuzian or Minnan), five Teochews (Chaozhou), three Henghuas \n(Xinghua), three Cantonese (Guangfu), and one (Kinmen or Jinmen). The most \u201csenior\u201d \nbusiness person among the respondents started his business in 1952 and the most \u201cjunior\u201d in \n2003. They were engaged in an array of businesses dealing with frozen food warehousing, \nsale of liquor, construction, shipbuilding, departmental stores, real estate, entertainment, \nelectrical engineering, advertising, motorcycles and fittings, food processing, stationery and \nnewspapers, import and export trade, lumber, plantations, home appliances and the service \nsector. Most of their businesses were registered under limited liability companies (19), \nfollowed by sole proprietorship (8), partnership (6), and private companies (4). The majority \nwere small and medium in size while a couple were listed companies. Their workforce varied \nfrom a handful to more than 300 employees and their annual turnovers ranged from less than \nRM0.25 million to more than RM5 million. \n\n\n\nThe Sarawak Chinese business community showed an overwhelming preference in their \ndealings with local Chinese banks (Table 3). Large business companies tended to deal with \nforeign banks. In general, few would patronize Bumiputra-owned and government-controlled \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          61\n\n\n\nbanks. The interdependence between Chinese banks and Chinese business community was \nclear. \n\n\n\nOf the 37 respondents, 31 patronized Chinese banks in Sarawak whereas six new ones \ndid not. Fifteen of them chose to deal with Hock Hua Bank, five each with Wah Tat Bank and \nBian Chiang Bank, four with Kong Ming Bank and two with Kwong Lee Bank, in a clear \nindication that long-established ties and mutual support were important considerations for \nthe Chinese business community. The top rank of Hock Hua Bank was due to strong dialect \nloyalties. This bank served the Foochows from its early days and provided solid support to \ntheir business enterprises. Equally important was the use of the local Chinese dialects in \ntransactions for easy communication and promotion of business ties. Other considerations \nwere friendly service, low interest rates, convenient location, and personal ties with the bank \nstaff. The client companies relied on the banks to service their savings and deposits, the \nissuance and clearance of cheques, and applications for loans, credit and overdraft facilities, \namong others. \n\n\n\nChinese banks also provided a familiar, friendly and efficient \u201cface\u201d and treating all \nas equals in which distinctions of class were absent. Transaction procedures were simple \nand unlike those in foreign banks that were complicated and cumbersome. An important \nconsideration for their business was that these banks were helpful and sensitive to the needs \nof their Chinese clients. A great advantage of the Chinese banks was that they knew their \nclients better than other banks. The managers were friendly and had more authority to make \ndecisions. To many Chinese customers, the ease of getting loans from banks was a major \nattraction. Many Chinese businesses valued the extension of mortgage loans from local \nChinese banks on easy terms and conditions of repayment. \n\n\n\nYet, the Chinese banks of Sarawak were too small to satisfy the needs of the large \nmodern business enterprise. They lacked the capital resources to advance major loans. Other \nshortcomings included the limited range of services such as the inability to extend credit \nlimits and the offer of certain preferential treatments. \n\n\n\nIn summary, the scale and types of Chinese-owned companies had a major influence on \ntheir dealings with local Chinese banks. Those small and medium sized companies having \nlimited needs and demands tended to deal with local Chinese banks, whereas the larger \nChinese enterprises having diverse and more demanding needs dealt more regularly with \nforeign and Bumiputra-controlled banks. The Chinese banks were further constrained by the \ndifficulty in setting up new branches. Over time, foreign and Bumiputra-controlled banks \nhave cornered increasingly large shares of the market.\n\n\n\nChinese businessmen are generally supportive of bank mergers as they believe that the \nnew banks have strong capital and liquidity and can provide bigger loans with acceptable \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n62          Chen\n\n\n\ninterest rates. As lifting of control over the opening of bank branches will stimulate competition \namong the banks, the business community expects to benefit from better terms on loans and \nrepayments (Table 3). \n\n\n\nTable 3. Opinions of Chinese Businessmen on Mergers of Chinese Banks in Sarawak\n\n\n\nOpinions\nStrongly \n\n\n\nagree\nAgree Acceptable Disagree Strongly \n\n\n\ndisagree\nTotal\n\n\n\nNo. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %\nLarger amount of \n\n\n\nloans\n3 8.1 12 32.4 13 35.2 5 13.5 4 10.8 37 100\n\n\n\nFlexible terms and \nconditions for \ncollaterals \n\n\n\n2 5.4 7 18.9 14 37.8 10 27.1 4 10.8 37 100\n\n\n\nFlexible means for \nretirement of \nloans \n\n\n\n2 5.4 9 24.3 12 32.4 10 27.1 4 10.8 37 100\n\n\n\nMore efficient \nservices \n\n\n\n5 13.5 14 37.8 11 29.7 3 8.1 4 10.8 37 100\n\n\n\nHowever, their optimism is tinged with the anxiety over collateral arrangements or \ntougher terms and conditions on loan repayment than before. The reduction in the number \nof banks may limit the freedom of choice or transactions may become more complicating. \nThe local bank staff may lack authority and have little leeway in making important decisions. \nSmall businesses may find it difficult to obtain financing and overdrafts from the big banks. \nChinese small and medium business may have problems in getting the loans they need due to \nthe quota system enforced under the NEP. \n\n\n\nIn short, there is an anxiety in the Chinese business community over the \u201cwithdrawal\u201d \nof Chinese banks from the market, as there is now little room for negotiations on financial \ndealings with big banks. The merger of banks does not necessarily promote co-operation \nbetween the Chinese and the Bumiputra business communities. Small and medium-sized \nChinese businesses may find foreign banks unapproachable and unacceptable for their \nstringent procedural requirements.\n\n\n\nAlmost all respondents expressed a positive attitude towards the contributions of the \nChinese banks to the economic development of Sarawak. However, the almost complete \nexit of Chinese banks from the market has aroused anxieties among most of them. Leaving \naside the difference of opinion between big and small businesses, the common stand is the \npreference for the system of the past by which banks operated by dialect groups to serve their \nrespective communities (Table 4). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          63\n\n\n\nTable 4. Opinions on the Role of Chinese Banks in Sarawak\n\n\n\nOpinions\nStrongly \n\n\n\nagree\nAgree Acceptable Disagree Strongly \n\n\n\ndisagree\nTotal\n\n\n\nNo. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %\nWillingness to help \n\n\n\nChinese business \n14 37.8 16 43.3 7 18.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 37 100\n\n\n\nWithdrawal of \nChinese banks is \nunfavourable to \nthe development \nof Chinese \nbusiness\n\n\n\n3 8.1 13 35.2 7 18.9 14 37.8 0.0 0.0 37 100\n\n\n\nWithdrawal of \nChinese banks is \nunfavourable to \nmy company\n\n\n\n3 8.1 9 24.3 6 16.2 18 48.7 1 2.7 37 100\n\n\n\nChinese banks have \ntaken better care \nof customers of \nthe same dialect \n\n\n\n3 8.1 14 37.8 8 21.7 12 32.4 0 0 37 100\n\n\n\nOn the pretext of coping with global competition, the small banks in Malaysia, many \nof which were founded and operated by the Chinese, have been forced to merge with a \nfew designated major banks that operate from their headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. Size of \noperation is equated with organizational efficiency and competitiveness but at the expense of \nclose social relations and personal loyalties of local enterprises that are the hallmark of small \nChinese banks. As professional managers in their headquarters rely on statistical analysis \nin making decisions, the approval of loan applications by Chinese businesses in Sarawak is \nlikely to be more difficult than before. The limited scope of operation of the small Chinese \nbanks and their failure to withstand global competition had indeed rendered them ineffective \nin servicing the needs of the few Chinese enterprises that are emerging as multinational \ncorporations. To these corporations, the impact of the takeover of the local Chinese banks \nis at best marginal or even viewed as a positive development. In contrast, it is the smaller \nChinese companies that have much to lose from the merger of the small banks on which they \nhave relied upon for support in a mutual win-win situation. It is this business community that \nhas found it increasingly difficult to set up new businesses and in sustaining their operations. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nThe Chinese banks in Sarawak were small and medium-sized family concerns that \nwere set up to serve local businesses of similar ethnic origin. Even though these banks have \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n64          Chen\n\n\n\ncontributed to the economy, they have been swept aside by the tide of history arising from \nchanging political and economic circumstances. The major factors that had hampered the \nadjustment of the Sarawak Chinese banks to changes were conservative family management \nand a reluctance to expand outside the state for fear of dilution of their interests.\n\n\n\nIn retrospect, the rise and fall of the Chinese banks in Sarawak passed through three \nphases. The first was the pre-war period when Chinese banks contributed to the development \nof local business and economy. The second was the post-war period to 1997 when Chinese \nbanks benefited initially from the brief boom in rubber export in the early 1950s and \ndevelopment of the export economy prior to merger with Malaysia. Joining Malaysia in 1963 \nand the introduction of the NEP in 1970 led to increased state interference in the economy \nand subsequent decline of Chinese banks when a few passed out of control of the founding \nfamilies. The final stage was triggered by the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the adoption \nof the policy of the amalgamation of financial institutions to face international competition. \nThe result was the takeover of all the Chinese banks in Sarawak by designated banks. This \neventuality has come about partly because of the inherent weakness of Chinese family \nbusiness and its management. \n\n\n\nOne may understand the development of the economy of the Chinese in Sarawak as \nthe transformation of one type of social economic order to another, a manifestation of which \nis the disengagement of Chinese capital in the banking industry largely as a result of the \nsubordinate political position of the community. The absorption of Chinese banks in Sarawak \ncannot be understood simply as a case of economic incompetence of these banks but rather \nthat of ethnic politics. As a minority, the Chinese are under-represented in politics and have \nlittle power in decision making. Two Chinese-owned banks have survived the merger and \nacquisition exercise to remain as symbols of ethnic presence in the banking industry. However, \nthey no longer possess the authentic identity of Chinese financial institutions of the past.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1 These banks were identified by the dialect origins of the owners and some were staffed and \npatronized entirely by people of the same dialect group. The senior management of these banks \nworked closely with each other; their directors were related by family, some even by marriage \n(see\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1/Shi Cang Jin, 2005: 53). \n\n\n\n2 The term comes from Sanskrit, which means \u201csons of the soil\u201d. The May 13 Incident was \nofficially attributed to the uneven distribution of wealth and the stereotypical image of the \nChinese \u201ccontrol\u201d of the Malaysian economy. The Government declared a state of emergency \nand promulgated \u201cNew Economic Policy\u201d in 1970 aimed at the elimination of poverty and the \nre-structuring of society to promote national unity. A programme of preferential treatment for \nthe Bumiputra was introduced purportedly to allow them to catch up with the non-Bumiputra \n(Chinese and Indians) (Malaysia Government, 1971). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          65\n\n\n\n3 Language barriers and other problems made it difficult for Chinese merchants to deal with \nWestern banks.\n\n\n\n4 Kong Ming Bank was established in Sibu on 16 January 1965 with a registered capital of RM5 \nmillion and paid-up capital of RM2 million. Its management consisted of Ling Beng Siew, \nhis younger brothers including Chairman Ling Beng Sung, Director-cum-Manager Ling Beng \nHui, Directors Ling Beng King and others. Family feuds led to prolonged litigations among the \nsiblings, the resignation of Ling Beng Shew from the board of directors, and the subsequent \ndecline of the bank.\n\n\n\n5 \u201cEthnic ownership economy\u201d is determined based on industry ownership and emphasizes the \ndominance of a certain ethnic group in the industry; \u201cethnic control economy\u201d refers mainly to \nthe participation, not ownership, of certain ethnic groups in the economy (Light 2005: 651).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nBank Negara Malaysia 1989. Money and Banking in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: Bank Negara Malaysia.\nBROWN, Rajeswary 1994. Capital and Entrepreneurship in South-East Asia, New York: St. Martin\u2019s \n\n\n\nPress.\n----- 2006. The Rise of the Corporate Economy in Southeast Asia, New York: Routledge.\nCHAN Kwok Bun and NG Beoy Kui 2000. Myths and misperceptions of ethnic Chinese capitalism. 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In Southeast Asian Society \nand Economies at the Beginning of New Millennium, edited by Guo Liang, Xiamen: Xiamen \nUniversity Press: 373-395).\n\n\n\n\u5b89\u7115\u71361998.\u3008\u72ec\u7acb\u524d\u534e\u4eba\u7ecf\u6d4e\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u6797\u6c34\u6aba\u3001\u4f55\u542f\u826f\u3001\u4f55\u56fd\u5fe0\u3001\u8d56\u89c2\u798f\u5408\u7f16\uff0c\u300a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\n\u534e\u4eba\u53f2\u65b0\u7f16\uff08\u7b2c\u4e8c\u518c\uff09\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u4e2d\u534e\u5927\u4f1a\u5802\u603b\u4f1a\uff1a289-324 (AN Huan Ran \n1998. Malaysian Chinese economy before independence. In A New History of Malaysian Chinese \nVolume 2, edited by Lim Chooi Kwa, Ho Khai Leong, and Hou Kok Chung, Kuala Lumpur: The \nFederation of Chinese Association Malaysia: 289-324).\n\n\n\n\u5434\u4e3b\u60e0,\u8521\u8302\u4e30\u8bd11983.\u300a\u534e\u4fa8\u672c\u8d28\u7684\u5206\u6790\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u9ece\u660e (WU Ju Huei, translated by Tasi Mao \nFeng 1983. An Analysis of the Nature of Overseas Chinese, Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise).\n\n\n\n\u9648\u5c1a\u61cb2003.\u300a\u53f0\u6e7e\u3001\u6cf0\u56fd\u4e0e\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u91d1\u878d\u6539\u9769\u7684\u653f\u6cbb\u5206\u6790\uff1a\u5236\u5ea6\u900f\u660e\u5316\u4e0e\u95ee\u8d23\u300b\uff0c\u653f\u6cbb\u5927\n\u5b66\u653f\u6cbb\u7cfb\u535a\u58eb\u8bba\u6587 (CHEN Shang Mao 2003. The Politics of Financial Reform in Taiwan, \nThailand, and Malaysia: Institutional Transparency and Accountability, unpublished Ph. D. \nthesis, Chengchi University).\n\n\n\n\u9648\u742e\u6e0a2006.\u3008\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u4eba\u8d44\u672c\u53d1\u5c55\u63a2\u6790\u2014\u2014\u4ee5\u798f\u5dde\u4e0e\u5ba2\u5bb6\u4e24\u4e2a\u65cf\u7fa4\u4e3a\u4e2d\u5fc3\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u6de1\u6c5f\u53f2\u5b66\u300b\uff0c \n\u7b2c\u5341\u4e03\u671f\uff1a295-320 (CHEN Tsung Yuan 2006. Preliminary discussion in the development of \nChinese capital in Sarawak: case study on Foochow and Hakka ethnic groups, Tamkang History \nReview, 17: 295-320).\n\n\n\n----- 2010.\u3008\u65cf\u88d4\u7ecf\u6d4e\u7684\u53d1\u5c55\u4e0e\u5c40\u9650\uff1a\u798f\u534e\u94f6\u884c\u4e2a\u6848\u7814\u7a76\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6587\u5b66\u5386\u53f2\u4e0e\u7ecf\u6d4e\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\n\u65cf\u793e\u4f1a\u53d1\u5c55\u63a2\u601d\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a (CHEN Tsung Yuan 2010. Development \nand limitations of Ethnic Economy: case study of Hock Hua Bank. In Literature, History and \nEconomics: Reflections on Social Development of the Chinese Community in Sarawak, Sibu: \nSarawak Chinese Cultural Association).\n\n\n\n----- 2011.\u3008\u63a2\u7d22\u7802\u534e\u793e\u4f1a\u7684\u7ecf\u6d4e\u6587\u5316\uff1a\u5386\u53f2\u5236\u5ea6\u5206\u6790\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u9648\u742e\u6e0a\u3001\u5434\u8bf0\u8d50\u5408\u7f16\uff0c\u300a\u4f20\u627f\n\u4e0e\u521b\u65b0:\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u4eba\u793e\u4f1a\u8bba\u8ff0\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a\uff1a19-34 (Chen Tsung Yuan \n2011. The economic culture of Sarawak Chinese community: historical institutional analysis. \nIn Discourses on Sarawak Chinese Community: Inheritance and Development, edited by Chen \nTsung Yuan and Goh Kaw Sze, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association: 19-34).\n\n\n\n\u6797\u6dd1\u60e02006.\u3008\u4e1c\u76df\u4e94\u56fd\u94f6\u884c\u4e1a\u56fd\u9645\u7ade\u4e89\u529b\u7814\u7a76\u3009\uff0c\u53a6\u95e8\u5927\u5b66\u5357\u6d0b\u7814\u7a76\u9662\u7855\u58eb\u8bba\u6587(LIN Shu Hui \n2006. A Study of International Competitiveness in ASEAN-5\u2019s Banking Industry, unpublished \nM.A. thesis, Xiamen University).\n\n\n\n\u6797\u715c\u58022005.\u300a\u9ec4\u5e86\u660c\u4f20\u300b\uff0c\u53e4\u664b\uff1a\u9ec4\u4f5b\u5fb7\u7236\u5b50\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8(Lam Chee Kheung 2005. Biography of \nWee Kheng Chiang. Kuching: Wee Hood Teck and Son Co., Ltd).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEthnic Financial Institutions: A Study of the Chinese Banks in Sarawak          67\n\n\n\n\u9ec4\u6c49\u68ee\u7f16\u84571996.\u300a\u65e5\u6cbb\u4e0b\u7684\u9a6c\u6765\u4e9a\uff08\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff09\u53ca\u5176\u8d27\u5e01\u300b\uff0c\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff1a\u96c6\u85cf\u658b (WONG Hon Sum \n1996. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya (Singapore) and Its Currency. Singapore).\n\n\n\n\u9ec4\u5efa\u6df31999.\u300a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u4eba\u53f2\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u4e1c\u5927(HUANG Jiann Chen 1999. A History of the \nChinese Settlement of Sarawak. Taipei: The Grand East Book Co., Ltd).\n\n\n\n\u8521\u589e\u806a2004.\u300a\u5386\u53f2\u7684\u601d\u7d22\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u4eba\u53f2\u8bba\u96c6\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u7559\u53f0\u540c\u5b66\u4f1a\u8bd7\u5deb\u5206\u4f1a(CHUA \nChen Choon 2004. Thinking of History: Essays on History of Sarawak Chinese, Sibu: Sibu \nDivision of Sarawak Taiwan Graduates Association).\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nSpecial Issue\nRethinking Chinese Entrepreneurship and Business \n\n\n\nin Southeast Asia: An Introduction\nChang-Yau Hoon* and Ying-Kit Chan**\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Chang-Yau Hoon and Ying-Kit Chan (2023). Rethinking Chinese Entrepre-\nneurship and Business in Southeast Asia: An Introduction. Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n12(1): 1\u20134. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0001\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0001\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 1\u20134\n\n\n\n Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia have begun to attract scholarly attention since the \n1980s for their minority status vis-\u00e0-vis native entrepreneurs (Wu, 1983), business success (Mackie, \n1992), role in Southeast Asia capitalist transformation (McVey, 1992) and the so-called \u201cbamboo \nnetworks\u201d (Weidenbaum & Hughes, 1996). Much of this scholarship has contributed to the myth \nthat the economic success of these ethnic Chinese capitalists was primarily attributable to a set of \nexclusive and monolithic cultural values and work ethics. However, the Asian Financial Crisis of \n1998\u20131999 and the resultant domino collapse of many ethnic Chinese enterprises presented a brutal \nconfrontation of the (self-)Orientalised and essentialised notions of Chinese culture and ethnic \nnetwork in the success of Southeast Asian Chinese capitalists. \n In the aftermath of the economic crisis, scholars such as Gomez & Hsiao (2001) criticized \nthe generalisation of the experience of Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurs and advocated for \na critical consideration of the diversity of these capitals, including their histories, cultures (clans, \nlanguages/dialects and heritage), level of assimilation into host society, mode of capital accumulation \nand entrepreneurial dynamism. In a similar fashion, Wee & Chan (2006) rejected the primordialist/\nculturalist view of an \u201ceconomic miracle\u201d created by diasporic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Instead \nof purporting an ethnically-based Chinese capitalism, they proposed an analysis of the cultural \neconomy of regionalisation and constructions of Chineseness, taking into account the specific \nhistorical, geographical, economic, political and socio-cultural contexts. Another contribution that \naims to demystify the business success of Southeast Asian capitalists was Menkhoff and Solvay\u2019s \n(2002) edited book, Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks, which deployed rich \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nempirical research data to assess the role, characteristics and challenges of Chinese entrepreneurship \nand business networks in Southeast Asia. As with Wee & Chan (2006), this volume rejects the \nsimplistic explanatory framework based on culture and ethnicity, and contends that Chinese network \ncapitalism is contingent upon time, place, institutional frameworks, market forces and political \neconomy.\n Indeed, ethnic Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia is not static but is subject to contextual \nchange and transformations, which cannot be sufficiently explained by any set of cultural \nnorms. Renewed studies on this phenomenon reveal that ethnic Chinese capitalism contains an \ninterpenetration of ethnic elements and a variety of non-ethnic capitalist practices and organising \nprinciples (Yeung, 2006). Perhaps a more effective approach to studying Chinese entrepreneurs in \nthe region is to delve into individual case studies rather than taking the category of \u201cSoutheast Asian \nChinese capitalists\u201d as a unit of analysis. Jakobsen\u2019s (2015) work on Chinese entrepreneurship in \nMalaysia is particularly successful in this regard. Examining the agentic experience of Chinese \nMalaysian entrepreneurs navigating the treacherous waters of the discriminatory affirmative action \npolicy, Jakobsen examined inter-ethnic business practices within the wider context of the relationship \nbetween local, national and global economies. \n In more recent years, with the rise of China and the development of the ASEAN Economic \nCommunity, the focus on Chinese capitalism has shifted from ethnic, cultural and/or area-specific \nfocus to a regional perspective on the bilateral economic and trade relationship between China \nand ASEAN. As China\u2019s largest trade partner, ASEAN has actively engaged China in multilateral \norganisations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, ASEAN+3, \nASEAN-China Dialogue, and China-ASEAN Free Trade Area. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) \u2013 \na colossal global infrastructure development project \u2013 announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 is \nfated to play an important role in driving the economy of Southeast Asia. The new developments on \nChina\u2019s BRI in Southeast Asia have raised questions on the changing geopolitical dynamics in the \nregion with encroaching Chinese economic interests. In light of this, the interests on Southeast Asian \nChinese capitalism have shifted to their creative responses to the BRI, including its facilitating role \nand strategies to cope with the emerging force of new mainland Chinese capitalism in the region \n(Santasombat, 2019; Chan & Hoon, 2023).\n This special issue bears two key themes. First, despite China\u2019s rise as a regional or even global \npower, the relationship between China and Southeast Asia is not dominated by the former, and the \nspecial issue restores agency to Southeast Asia by exploring how ideas, institutions, and individuals \nthere interpret, accommodate, and even capitalise on China\u2019s increasing presence in the region. Kaili \nZhao and Chang-Yau Hoon explore how Brunei has benefited economically from China\u2019s rise despite \nongoing challenges of their co-operation, including the negative press and labour controversies \nsurrounding Chinese investments in the country. Aranya Siriphon and Jiangyu Li examine how the \n\n\n\nHoon & Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n\u201ctransnational entrepreneurial practices\u201d of emigrant Chinese businesses in Chiang Mai, Thailand, \nenabled them to take advantage and yet break free of the Chinese state\u2019s control in their dealings \nwith Chinese, Thai, and other counterparts. By explaining how Chinese film businesses in postwar \nThailand imported films from Hong Kong and co-operated with major production companies such \nas Shaw Brothers Studio, Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt demonstrates that Sino-Thai businesses could \ncircumvent the isolationism of Maoist China and popularise Chinese-language films during the \npolitically contentious Cold War period. \n The second theme of this special issue is the role of religion in Chinese entrepreneurship. \nSyuan-yuan Chiou analyses how a Chinese gang leader of dubious origins became a famous Muslim \npreacher who built his business empire of Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia, while Ying-kit \nChan studies the growth of the Tangs department store in Singapore through the life of its Christian \nfounder C. K. Tang, who appeared less inspired by the so-called Confucian values to which Chinese \nmerchants of his time had professedly subscribed. Jui-Aik Tan, Kian-Aun Law, and Yet-Mee Lim \nargue that Confucian values have assumed a religious dimension as supposedly professional and \nrational managers of Chinese businesses identify them with positive performance. Amid the global \neconomic and geopolitical shifts taking place now, it is hoped that this special issue will inspire a \nrethinking of Chinese entrepreneurship and business in Southeast Asia to consider the agentic role \nof Chinese capitalists and the role of non-Chinese religion or values in shaping Chinese capitalism. \n\n\n\n* Dr. Chang-Yau Hoon [\u4e91\u660c\u8000] is Professor, Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti \n     Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam. Email: changyau.hoon@ubd.edu.bn\n** Dr. Ying-Kit Chan [\u9648\u82f1\u6770] is Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, National \n     University of Singapore. Email: chscyk@nus.edu.sg\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nChan, Y.-K. & Hoon, C.-Y. (2023). Southeast Asia in China: Historical entanglement and \n contemporary engagements. Lexington Books. \nGomez, T. E. & Hsiao, Michael H.-H. (Eds.). (2001). Chinese business in Southeast Asia: Contesting \n cultural explanations, researching entrepreneurship. Routledge. \nJakobsen, M. (2015). Ethnic Chinese entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Routledge.  \nMackie, J. A. C. (1992). Overseas Chinese entrepreneurship. Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, \n 6, 41\u201364.\nMcVey, R. (Ed.). (1992), Southeast Asian capitalists. Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications. \nMenkhoff, T. & Gerke, S. (2002). Chinese entrepreneurship and Asian business networks.Routledge.\n\n\n\nRethinking Chinese Entrepreneurship and Business in Southeast Asia\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nWee, V. & Chan, Y.-W. (2006). Ethnicity and capital: Changing relations between China and \n Southeast Asia, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 36(3), 328\u2013349\nWeidenbaum, M. L. & Samuel, H. (1996). The bamboo network: How expatriate Chinese \n entrepreneurs are creating a new economic superpower in Asia. The Free Press. \nWu, Y.-L. (1983). Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. The American Economic Review 73(2), \n 112\u2013117. \nYeung, H. W.-C. (2006). Change and continuity in Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese business. Asia \n Pacific Journal of Management 23, 229\u2013254. \nSantasombat, Y. (2019). The sociology of Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia: Challenges and \n prospects. Pelgrave Macmillan. \n\n\n\nHoon & Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s: \nIndustry, Market and Network1\n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt*\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt (2023). Chinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to \n1970s: Industry, Market and Network. Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies 12(1): 83\u201394. http://doi.\norg/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0006\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0006\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 83\u201394\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n This article provides a historical analysis of the Chinese cinema business in Bangkok during \nthe 1950s-1970s. By examining the dynamics of the industry, market, and network, it offers a \ncomprehensive picture of Thai film history that includes the role of foreign production studios. In \nparticular, it focuses on the heyday of Chinese films in Bangkok during this time period, highlighting \nthe crucial factors that contributed to their success.\n The article reveals that most Chinese films in Bangkok were imported from Hong Kong, \nwith some relying on co-productions with local Thai studios to gain greater access to the local \ncinema market. One noteworthy example is the Shaw Brothers studio, which managed to secure \ndistribution networks and a loyal Thai audience. To conclude, it states the importance of industry, \nmarket, and network dynamics in shaping the success of Chinese cinema in Bangkok during the \n1950s-the 1970s, and highlights the ways in which foreign production studios have contributed to \nthe broader history of Thai film during this time period. \n \n\n\n\n Keywords: Chinese cinema; Hong Kong cinema; Teochew-dialect cinema; Shaw Brothers; \n                    Thai film history; distribution network\n\n\n\n Introduction\n\n\n\n In 1937, Yang Wenying, a primary school principal from Shantou (in the Guangdong Province \nof China) published in Shanghai a small book entitled Xianluo Zaji (Notes on Siam)2  after his return \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n84\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nfrom a short trip to Thailand. During his visit, he observed that cinema, along with Teochew opera, \nwas one of the most important and popular forms of entertainment within the Chinese community \nof Bangkok. Yang noticed that in the early 1930s there were more than ten cinema theatres in \nBangkok, some of which showed only Western films and others only Chinese ones. Yang (1937) \nconcluded that \u201cthis was evidence that the cinema industry was well developed in Southeast Asia, \neven more so than in China\u201d (p. 86). During the mid-20th century, cinema remained a popular form \nof entertainment in Bangkok, while Teochew opera gradually declined in popularity. In the late \n1960s, it was estimated that over two thirds of the population in Bangkok attended motion picture \nshows at least once a week. Therefore, it can be said that cinema was a staple of everyday life in the \ncity, including for the Chinese community\u2014Thailand\u2019s largest minority (Blanchard, 1958). \n As Yang remarked, Thailand\u2019s cinema industry was dominated by foreign productions, \nespecially Western and Chinese ones, while Thai films accounted for only a small percentage (U.S. \nInformation Service, 1963). Anulom Chanrungmaneekul (2018) notes that low growth and the \ninability to compete with Hollywood films in terms of audience success were persistent problems \nthroughout the 120 years of existence of the Thai film industry. Ingawanij (2018) argues that Thai \ncinema\u2019s history was not only about Thai film production, but also about the cinematic practice \nin the country. Instead, it is important to consider how cinematic encounter and experience shape \nthe narrative of Thai cinema's history. This means looking beyond the content of domestically \nproduced films and instead exploring the broader context in which they were created, distributed, \nand consumed. According to Ingawanij, constructing a narrative that is central to the cinematic \nencounter and experience involves examining the ways in which films were made, marketed, and \nexhibited, as well as how audiences engaged with them. In this light, Chinese cinema industry \nplayed an important role in the history of Thai film. And yet, the topic of Chinese cinema in Thailand \nhas been rarely explored, despite the growing academic interest in transnational Chinese cinema, \nespecially in Southeast Asia (see Chung, 2007; Yung, 2008; Taylor, 2011; Zhang, 2021).\n The present article situates Chinese cinema within the context of Thailand, centring on Bangkok \nduring the 1950s\u2013- the 1970s. It examines Chinese cinema business from a historical perspective, \nattempting to draw a broader picture of Thai film history that includes non-Thai spoken films and \nforeign production studios. The article is divided into three sections: the first provides an overview \nof the Chinese film industry in Thailand after 1949 to contextualize the considerable influx of Hong \nKong productions; the second addresses the development of Chinese cinema for the Thai market, \nwith a focus on Hong Kong\u2019s collaborations with local Thai studios; finally, the last section presents \nthe case study of the Shaw Brothers studio and analyses how it achieved commercial success in \nThailand by securing distribution networks. \n Nevertheless, it is important to note that the industry and cinema culture have undergone significant \nchanges since the late 20th century, with the decline of both the Shaw Brothers and the cinema industry. \nThis article is confined to the period of mid-20th century when the drastic changes have yet to begin.  \n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n85\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nThe Chinese Film Industry in Thailand after 1949\n\n\n\nFilms from Mainland China\n The establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was a turning point in the \nrelations between Thailand and China\u2014or, as the Thai government of that time preferred to refer \nto as, communist China or Red China. Thailand sided with the US and, as a result, distanced itself \nfrom the PRC. This isolation was based on political and diplomatic factors rather than cultural \naspects. At least until 1958, Thailand\u2019s cinema industry still welcomed a significant number of \nChinese films from the PRC. Such films, popular among Chinese audiences in Thailand, came from \nwell-known production studios in the PRC, such as Changchun and Kunlun (Li, 1965).3  In other \nwords, most Chinese films from the PRC, after being examined by the Thai Police department, \nwere allowed to be screened in Thailand. \n However, some Chinese films from the PRC were banned from Thai cinema theatres because \nof censorship. Some were not granted approval from the very beginning, while a few others were \nwithdrawn from screening because of controversy after their release. As of September 1957, it was \nestimated that fifteen Chinese films from the PRC were approved, four were banned and three were \nstill pending approval (NA MI, [1]mor.tor.3.1.4.24/4).\n With the intensification of anti-communist feelings in the Thai government, Chinese films from \nthe PRC began to be examined more seriously. A telegraph from 1957 from the Thai ambassador \nto Washington DC reported that the US government expressed concern about recent events in \nThailand, such as a cultural group\u2019s visit to China (Ibid.), the emergence of anti-US sentiments, \nas well as the fact that communist propaganda films were too easily available to the public. The \nRepublic of China (ROC) ambassador to Thailand also argued that the surge of Chinese communist \nfilms in Bangkok and of leftist propaganda in Thailand were part of a communist scheme to vie for \nsupport from the local Chinese community. The ambassador enclosed a list of thirty-one Chinese \ncommunist films shown in Bangkok since August 1957 (Ibid.). These films included Changchun \nstudio\u2019s Slapping of the Princess, Liu Chiao-erh; Changcheng\u2019s The Exhilarant Songs and Dances, \nThe Miraculous Brush; and Kunkun\u2019s The Roaming Adventure of Sanmao. 4\n\n\n\n In October 1958, the Thai government announced a ban on the import to Thailand of all films \nand publications originating from communist China (NA MI, [1]mor.tor.3.1.4.24/6). It is unclear \nwhy this official ban began only in 1958 and not earlier, in 1949. One possible explanation is \nthat in 1958 Thailand was being ruled by the military and that, under increasing pressure to seek \ninternational support, it intensified its anti-communist policies to show that it would lean to the side \nof the U.S. Nevertheless, this decision provided a great opportunity for more Hong Kong-produced \nChinese films to be imported into the Thai market, especially in Bangkok.\n\n\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n86\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nThe Growth of Hong Kong Cinema  \n Teo (2009) notes that the development of cinema in Hong Kong cannot be dissociated from \nthe one in mainland China, especially after the Chinese civil war of 1946\u201349 boosted the migration \nof Chinese filmmakers from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Moreover, the size and location of Hong \nKong had a deep impact on its film industry from the very beginning (Chi, 2012): Hong Kong is \nso small in both geographic and demographic terms that its films were exclusively export-oriented \nto overseas markets, especially Chinese-speaking communities. As a British colony situated on \nthe southeast coast of China, it was a gateway of Asia\u2019s international trade. The maturity of its \ncinematic production and circulation attracted the investment of Chinese filmmakers, including the \nproduction of films in dialect targeted at specific speech groups. \n The emergence of the Hong Kong film industry in Bangkok is important with respect to the \nadvent of Teochew-dialect cinema (Chaoyu Pian) during the 1950s. As nationals from Teochew-\nspeaking areas of southern China were the predominant ethnic Chinese group in Bangkok (Skinner, \n1957), one may assume that the Teochew dialect was, to some extent, the lingua franca of the \nChinese community in the city. To meet the high demand for Teochew-dialect cinema, the Chinese \nin Bangkok would invest in Teochew-dialect filmmaking in Hong Kong, where the film industry \nwas already thriving and mature. In 1955, a group of Teochew businessmen established Tuojiang \nFilm Company to produce Teochew-dialect films (Hong Kong Filmography Vol.4, 2003; Ng, 2013). \nThe production being unexpensive and highly profitable, it was suitable for studios and distributors \nthat had limited capital. This encouraged Chinese businessmen from Singapore, Vietnam, and \nThailand to import Teochew-dialect films from Hong Kong and sell them on the Southeast Asian \nmarket (Sin Sian Yit Pao, 1959, December 6).\n What was perhaps paradoxical about Teochew-dialect cinema production in Hong Kong was \nthat it did not circulate in Hong Kong, where Teochew was not a lingua franca, but was targeted \nat Teochew-speaking Chinese communities overseas. It was ironically regarded as \u201cHong Kong \ncinema that had never been screened in Hong Kong,\u201d and was available only in Southeast Asia, \nmainly in Thailand and Singapore (Hong Kong Filmography Vol.4, 2003). Instances of Teochew-\ndialect cinema5 include The Story of Wang Jinlong (19 September 1955), starring Xia Fan, a famous \nactress of Teochew cinema; The Return of Shi Pinggui Part I (4 January 1957); The Return of \nShi Pinggui Part II (14 March 1957); The Tragic Story of Zhao Niang (17 May 1957); and He \nWenxiu Meets His Wife in the Nunnery (3 August 1959), also starring Xia Fan. These films were \nreportedly very popular among Chinese audiences in Thailand, where Xia Fan toured and gave \nsinging performances to promote the films in which she starred.\n Despite its success in the previous decade, in the 1960s Teochew-dialect cinema began to \ndecline. With the rapid change and expansion of modern cinema, its low-budget productions seemed \nrough and unsophisticated (Wittayakon Publishing House, 1966). Thus, the popularity of Teochew-\n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n87\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ndialect cinema\u2019 gradually declined with the rise of modern Chinese productions by the major film \nstudios of Hong Kong, which will be discussed in the next section. \n\n\n\nOpening Access to the Market: Collaboration with Local Studios\n\n\n\n The reasons why the Hong Kong film industry had such a wide access to the international \nmarket lie in a combination of political and business factors. According to Teo (2009), Shanghai \nfilmmakers who migrated to Hong Kong were aligned according to the same the left-right divide \nthat prevailed on the mainland. While left-wing studios began to make films along their ideological \nlines, they were outshined by the sudden rise of right-wing studios aligned with anti-communist \nideology, and became less prominent during the second half of the 1950s (Teo, 2009). In the same \nperiod, right-wing studios such as Shaw Brothers and Motion Picture and General Investment \n(MP&GI)6 became a dominant force of the Hong Kong and Southeast-Asian film industry. This \ntransformation reflected the fact that the Hong Kong film industry was moving in the direction of \na more conventional, refined, and glamorous production that would not risk political censorship in \nthe new markets (Teo, 2009).\n Academics have long paid attention to Shaw Brothers, one of Hong Kong\u2019s most representative \nstudios (Fu, 2008). Chung (2007) demonstrates that Shaw Brothers films were tailored to the \npolitical censorship policies of different markets, producing for instance \u201cmilder\u201d versions to \npass the strict censorship of Southeast Asia. Davis (2011), on the other hand, argues that existing \nhistorical accounts tend to overstate the studio\u2019s diasporic qualities, especially compared to other \nfirms. Nevertheless, Zhang (2021) notes that anti-communist alignment is the reason for the right-\nwing affinity between Hong Kong and Bangkok: in Thailand, the development of the Shaw Brothers\u2019 \nbusiness and film production was not dissociated from the political line, which complied with the \nThai government\u2019s anti-communist policy (Rong, 2009).7 In an effort to enter and entertain the Thai \nmarket, Hong Kong studios began a process of adaptation and collaboration with Bangkok\u2019s elite, \nleading to a variety of co-productions during the 1950s and 1970s. \n\n\n\nHong Kong-Thai Co-Production\n Hong Kong\u2019s co-productions with Bangkok go back as far as the 1930s. As early as December \n1933, the Cantonese film Love Redeemed was claimed to have been produced by the United Film \nProduction Company of Bangkok, although it is uncertain whether the film was a Hong Kong-\nThailand co-production or a Hong Kong-China co-production shot in Thailand (Kar & Bren, \n2004). In the 1960s\u201370s, the practice of co-operation and collaboration between Hong Kong and \nThai studios became more common. When Taiwan announced new currency controls in 1955, it \ndrastically limited the funding of Hong Kong films. As a result of this currency reform, Hong Kong\u2019s \nMandarin cinema went into crisis, independent production shrank, and filmmakers despaired. The \n\n\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n88\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nonly resource was to open up to co-productions in the Philippines, Korea, and Thailand\u2014a favoured \ndestination for film industry professionals seeking work outside Hong Kong. In addition to the large \nand promising market of its Chinese community, Thailand could boast a bustling film industry \nand its government was eager to assist foreign filmmakers in nurturing local film production. This \ncooperation was particularly evident in the co-productions between the Thai company Aswin \nPictures and the Hong Kong production studios. \n Aswin Pictures was established by His Royal Highness Prince Bhanubandhu Yugala, a \nprominent producer and director and a half-cousin of His Majesty King Bhumibol of Thailand. \nIt was not unusual for a member of the royal elite to become involved with Thai filmmaking. As \nearly as in the 19th century, the advent of cinema in Thailand was initiated by a small number of \ncommercially-oriented playhouses established by Thai elites. Members of the royal elite, therefore, \nhave historically played a significant role in the creation of the local film industry and, at various \npoints, were actively involved in the running of the cinema business (Barm\u00e9, 2002). \n In December 1961, Aswin Pictures of Thailand co-produced with China United Film Company \nof Hong Kong the Thai-language film The Boat House (Ruen Phae in Thai), directed by H.R.H \nPrince Bhanubandhu (Hong Kong Filmography Vol.5, 2005). The story of The Boat House is \ndramatic, universal, and apolitical: three best friends, Chen (So Asanachinda), Kaew (Chaiya \nSuriyan), and Rin (Chin Feng) fall in love with the same girl, Phen (Maria Chang or Ye Kwong). \nThey live together in a boat house rented from Phen\u2019s father. As the three friends grow up and find \ntheir way in life, Chen graduates with honours and becomes a police officer, while Rin becomes a \nsinger and Kaew a boxer. Phen\u2019s father intends for Phen to marry Chen, but she is in love with Kaew \nand, on a stormy night, she gives herself to him. Unfortunately, the twists and turns of life force \nPhen to marry another wealthy man. The best friends meet again when Chen, a newly appointed \npolice officer, is ordered to arrest Kaew, whose fellow bandit has killed their best friend Rin. \n The movie was released to great critical success in the local newspapers. Film reviews \npraising The Boat House were also published in Sin Sian Yit Pao (1962, January 19), a popular \nChinese paper in Bangkok. At the fifth Golden Doll awards8 of Thailand, in 1962, The Boat House \nwon five awards, including best picture, best actor, and best supporting actor. The Boat House \nbecame a landmark of Thai cinema and was remade several times both as a movie and as a TV \nseries. Furthermore, the eponymous theme song, sung by the character Rin became a classic in the \ninterpretation of legendary Thai artist Charin Nanthanakorn.\n The success of The Boat House boosted Aswin Pictures\u2019s confidence in cooperating with Hong \nKong production studios. A few years later, in 1964, Aswin Pictures co-produced a new film with \nShaw Brothers, titled The Crocodile River in the Chinese version and Champoon in Thai. The \ntwo versions of the film were different in terms of both narratives and casting. In the Thai version \nChampoon, the lead character was played by Thai actor Maen Thiraphon, while the lead actress \n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n89\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nwas Shaw star Julie Shih Yen. In the Chinese version, all of the characters were played by Shaw \nstars such as Paul Chang Chong, Liu Liang-hua, and Li Ting. The cast was chosen by H.R.H Prince \nBhanubandhu, who directed the Thai version, and Lo Wei from Shaw Brothers studio, who directed \nthe Chinese version respectively (Sin Sian Yit Pao, 1963, October 19).\n The story of Champoon was adapted from the short novel by Thep Mahapaoraya, a prominent \nmodern Thai writer. The tragic story begins when Champoon, a girl from a Chinese family in southern \nThailand, falls in love with Amnoey, a Thai man from Bangkok. Champoon\u2019s father dislikes Amnoey \nbecause he is Thai. Although Champoon insists that she has never been intimate with Amnoey, her \nfather does not believe her and ties her up with an iron chain on the second floor of their house. Worse, \nher stepmother takes away her clothes and leaves her naked, so that she cannot run away. Champoon \nfinally manages to escape and run to Amnoey. However, when she arrives to his house, she sees him \nmaking love to a Filipino girl. Heartbroken, Champoon turns away from Amnoey and eventually ends \nher life, walking into the river to be swallowed by crocodiles.\n Hong Kong film magnate Run Run Shaw, head of Shaw Brothers, flew to Bangkok for the \ngala premiere of the Thai version at the Chalermket Theatre in Bangkok on 18 August 1964. \nTheir Majesties King Bhumipol and Queen Sirikit attended the performance, a joint production \nof Shaw studio\u2019s and Thailand\u2019s Aswin Pictures, starring Julie Shih Yen (Southern Screen 78, \n1964). Southern Screen, a movie magazine published by Shaw Brothers to promote the company\u2019s \nprojects, reported that Shaw star Julie Shih Yen was thrilled that the Thai king and queen had come \nto watch the production and had congratulated her on her performance (Southern Screen 80, 1964).\n Run Run Shaw was invited for an audience His Majesty the King Bhumipol the next day and \nhad a cordial talk about the cinema industry. His Majesty greatly enjoyed The Crocodile River and \nexpressed hope that co-operation between the Hong Kong and Thai movie industries would be \nstrengthened (Southern Screen 78, 1964). The audience with the king was made possible by H.R.H \nPrince Bhanubandhu, whom the king respected and who was in good terms with Run Run Shaw \nand Shaw Brothers distributors in Bangkok (Rong, 2009). \n\n\n\nFeaturing Stars\n The collaboration between Thailand and Hong Kong has led to many other co-productions \nsince the mid-1950s. Several Thai stars featured in Hong Kong films to attract local Thai audiences. \nFor instance, Mit Chaibancha and Petchara Chaowarat, the golden couple of the Thai film history, \nstarred in the Thai version of the martial arts film, Flyer and Magic Sword (1971), and played with \nChinese leading actress Fan Lin in the Chinese version. Thai actress Phanawa Chanachit, or Wang \nPing,9  also known as \u201cthe pearl of Asia\u201d, was frequently cast in Hong Kong films such as Duel of \nFists (Quan ji, 1971), where she appeared alongside Shaw star David Chiang. Concurrently, Thai \nfilmmakers sought to internationalise their films by including foreign movie stars into Thai films: \n\n\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n90\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nHong Kong stars began touring Thailand for live appearances and filming, such as Ku Mi in \u2018Iron \nFist\u2019 (Mat lek in Thai) and Yu Chien in The Treasure of the River Kwai (Sombat maenam kwae in \nThai) (Liu, 2004). Some Thai film critics noted that Hong Kong actresses were good in action films \nand to some extent willing to feature in sensuous settings (Liu, 2004). Hence Hong Kong female \nstars featuring in Thai films were popular with Thai audiences.\n\n\n\nSecuring Distribution Networks\n\n\n\n The rise of Chinese cinema from Hong Kong in the Thai audience market peaked with the \nShaw Brothers studio, whose business success was largely due to its excellent networks in terms of \nboth distribution and promotion. While visiting the Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong in 1976, \nthe influential Thai literary and cultural figure Rong Wongsawan (2009) interviewed Run Run Shaw \nabout his business model. Rong noted that the studio\u2019s prominence in the Hong Kong entertainment \nindustry was the fact that 141 cinema theatres were contracted to play only Shaw-distributed films, \nwhile other studios would have only around one hundred contracted cinemas (Ibid.). Securing the \ncinema theatre market through distribution and promotion networks was also crucial to the dominant \nstatus of Shaw Brothers in the Thai market. \n\n\n\nContract System and Distribution Networks in the Movie Market\nAs an important film market in Southeast Asia during the 1950s-the 1970s, Bangkok attracted \nfilm distributors from all over the world (including America, India, China, and Japan) who wished \nto expand their distribution networks and cinema lines in Bangkok, where each cinema theatre \nindependently screened its own genre. Moreover, the Yaowarat area, known as the hub of the Chinese \ncommunity in Thailand, had many standalone cinema theatres. In the late 1950s, Sriyaowarat was \nthe main venue for Teochew-dialect cinema in Bangkok, while Chalermburi and Chalermlakhon \nmainly showed Mandarin films and was doing so even in the earlier 1950s, when Western films \nseemed to dominate the Thai market. Texas was the cinema for Indian films, and Capital (or Tokyo) \nfor Japanese ones. Nevertheless, Western films remained the most popular, with good records of box \noffice success, and were shown in many cinemas in the area nearby Yaowarat such as King, Sinfa, \nChalermkhet, and Grand (Shanren, 1965).\n However, the situation of film distribution in Bangkok began to change in the 1960s, when \na new system was implemented. When a film distributor signed up with a production studio and \na cinema, the film would be released in first-run cinemas, second-run cinemas, and then third-\nrun cinemas respectively (Sin Sian Yit Pao, 1961, January 22). The implementation of this new \ndistribution system led to intense competition among cinema lines to secure filming rights (Sin Sian \nYit Pao, 1969, July 24). \n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n91\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n The new distribution system also enabled the rise of Chinese cinema when Juntun pictures \nsigned up with Shaw Brothers in 1964 to develop the Chinese cinema market in Thailand. Shaw \nBrothers was then entering a new era of colour films and aspired to access the global market to \ncounter rapidly increasing production costs (Song, 1969). \n At first it was very risky for Juntun Pictures to distribute Hong Kong-produced films because \nWestern films were dominating the market in Thailand and colour film made Shaw\u2019s productions \nquite costly. However, the venture was also a rewarding one, in that the import of Shaw\u2019s films \nhelped Juntun Pictures establish and expand its cinema lines. In the late 1960s, Juntun Pictures\u2019 \ndistribution system included a cinema line consisting of New Odeon (a major cinema), Thiankuothian, \nKrungkasem, Broadway, Chalermrat, Jinghua, and Sinfa, which made Juntun Pictures the largest \ndistributor of Hong Kong\u2019s Mandarin cinema in Thailand. The second distributor was Yaowarat \nPictures, whose cinema line included Sriyaowarat and Sriratchawong, which mainly distributed \nCathay\u2019s productions. The third distributor was Siam Rama Pictures: first it cooperated with Juntun \nPictures to show Shaw\u2019s films, then it shifted to Yaowarat Pictures to show Cathay\u2019s films, and \nfinally operated independently. Yaowarat Pictures put an advertisement in magazines Hong Kong \nto call for cooperation with Chinese production and distribution (Qingyu, 1969). When Chinese \ncinema was hugely popular in Thailand, Capital, a studio that showed Japanese films and Queen \nIndian films, also expanded its distribution to Chinese films.\n Among these cinema theatres, New Odeon was the domain of the Shaw Brothers in Bangkok \nand the sole agent of Southern Screen, a monthly English-Chinese magazine published by the \nShaw Brothers from 1957 to the mid-1980s to share upcoming films, movie star profiles, gossip, \nand news originating from the Shaw Brothers studio with fans around the world. From volume 153 \n(November 1970) to volume 192 (February 1974), Southern Screen was also published in Thai\u2014 a \ncalculated move to expand its market in Bangkok to a non-Chinese audience. This strategic attempt \nto achieve what Yung (2008) calls \u201cthinking and going global, acting and selling local\u201d enabled \nShaw films to stand out in the local market. \n In financial terms, Shaw\u2019s Mandarin films were consistently successful. For example, Madam \nWhite Snake grossed a record 800,000 baht within just a couple of months (Shanren, 1965); The \nLove Eternal, also known as Liang-Zhu, made more than 700,000 baht; General Hua Mulan made \n1,000,000 baht; and The Shepherd Girl more than 1,200,000 baht . Shaw\u2019s martial arts films soon \nachieved unprecedented box office success, with films such as One Armed Swordsman, The Golden \nSwallow, Killer Darts, Dragon Inn, and The Golden Sword (Qingyu, 1969). By the late 1970s, the \ngenre had not lost its popularity in Bangkok, and a number of Shaw\u2019s martial arts films earned \nmillions upon their release: these include The Brave Archer, exceeding 3 million baht; Clans of \nIntrigue; Killer Clans; Executioners from Shaolin; The Jade Tiger; and The New Shaolin Boxers, \neach of them grossing 2 million baht (Lin, 1978). Even in the post-Shaw Brothers era, Bruce Lee\u2019s \n\n\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n92\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nfilms continued to have a significant impact on the cinema industry across Southeast Asia including \nBangkok (Teo, 2009).\n However, the rise of Chinese cinema, along with Hollywood films, is said to have contributed \nto the downfall of the Thai film industry. According to Aunalom Chanrungmaneekul (2018), as \nChinese films became increasingly popular in Thailand from the mid 1960s, some cinema theatres \nin Bangkok chose to screen Chinese films instead of Thai ones. Even in the countryside, distribution \nagents of Chinese films opted for cinema theatres, in addition to outdoor movie, weakening the \nvisibility of Thai films (Ibid.). If this could be explained as the result of a demand-supply imbalance \nin the Thai audience market, it also emphasized the important role of the distribution networks \nthat had long dominated cinema theatres. Indeed, distribution networks and cinema theatres play a \ncrucial role in choosing the films we see in cinemas today.\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n This article has provided a historical analysis of the Chinese cinema business in Bangkok \nduring the 1950s-the 1970s through an examination of the industry, market, and network dynamics. \nIn terms of industry, it has been demonstrated that Hong Kong production studios were the primary \nsource of Chinese films imported into Thailand during this period, with the Shaw Brothers studio \nemerging as a dominant force in the industry. In terms of market, co-productions with local Thai \nstudios were also an important strategy for reaching local audiences. Also, in terms of network, the \nShaw Brothers' ability to sign up with a large number of cinema theatres for exclusive distribution \nof their productions helped to solidify their position in the market. Therefore, it is crucial to \nunderstand the complex interplay between industry, market, and network dynamics in shaping the \nheyday of Chinese films in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s. While this analysis is limited to the \nperiod between the 1950s and1970s, it provides a valuable foundation for future research into the \nevolving dynamics of the Chinese cinema business in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. \n\n\n\n* Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt is Assistant Professor in History, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat \n   University. Email: kornphanat@gmail.com.\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAunalom Chanrungmaneekul (2018). 120 years of Thai film business: Perspectives of economic \n history and Thai society. Thailand Research Fund. (in Thai).\nBarm\u00e9, S. (2002). Woman, man, Bangkok: Love, sex and popular culture in Thailand. Roman & \n Littlefield.\nBlanchard, W. (1958). Thailand: Its people, its society, its culture, Country Survey Series. HRAF \n Press.\n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n93\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nChi, R. (2012). Hong Kong cinema before 1980. In Y. J. Zhang (Ed.), A companion to Chinese \n cinema (pp. 75\u201394). Blackwell.\nChung, Stephanie P.-Y. (2007). Moguls of the Chinese cinema: The story of the Shaw Brothers in \n Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, 1924\u20132002. Modern Asian Studies, 41(4), 665\u2013682.\nDavis, D. W. (2011). Questioning diaspora: mobility, mutation, and historiography of the Shaw \n Brothers film studio. Chinese Journal of Communication, 4(1), 40\u201359.\nFu, P.-S. (2008). Introduction: The Shaw Brothers diasporic cinema. In P. S. Fu (Ed.), China forever: \n The Shaw Brothers and diasporic cinema (pp. 1\u201325). University of Illinois Press.\nHong Kong Filmography Vol.4 (1953\u20131959) (2003). Hong Kong Film Archive.\nHong Kong Filmography Vol.5 (1960\u20131964) (2005). Hong Kong Film Archive.\nIngawanij, M. A. (2018). Itinerant cinematic practices in and around Thailand during the Cold War. \n Southeast of Now: Directions in contemporary and modern art in Asia, 2(1), 9\u201341.\nKar, L. & Bren, F. (2004). Hong Kong cinema: A cross-cultural view. Scarecrow Press.\nLi, Y.-Q. [\u674e\u7389\u9752] (1965, January 1). \u56fd\u7247\u5728\u66fc\u8c37\uff1a\u68c0\u8ba8\u4e0e\u5c55\u671b [Mandarin cinema in Bangkok: \n Review and outlook]. Sin Sian Yit Pao.\nLin, G.-H. [\u6797\u5149\u8f89] (1978, January 1). \u56de\u987e1977\u5c55\u671b1978\u5a31\u4e50\u4e1a [Looking back to 1977, Looking \n ahead to 1978\u2019s entertainment business]. Sin Sian Yit Pao. \nLiu, Z.-T. [\u5218\u632f\u5ef7] (2017, June 20). \u6cf0\u56fd\u7535\u5f71\u9b45\u529b\u65cb\u98ce [The Thai cinema fever], \u4e9a\u6d32\u5468\u520a\n\n\n\n\t [Asiaweek], Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://express.cetin.net.cn:8080/cetin2/servlet/\n cetin/action/HtmlDocumentAction?baseid=1&docno=170395.\nNational Archives Ministry of Interior of Thailand (NA MI).  Examination on Chinese Communist \n films propagated in Thailand, File mor.tor.3.1.4.24/4.\nNational Archives Ministry of Interior of Thailand (NA MI). Embassy of the Federated Malay States \n inquiring some statements on the ban of all cinematography and publications from Communist \n China into Thailand, File mor.tor.3.1.4.24/6.\nNg, M. [\u5433\u541b\u7389] (Ed.) (2013). \u9999\u6e2f\u6f6e\u8a9e\u96fb\u5f71\u5c0b\u8de1 [The Chaozhou-dialect films of Hong Kong]. \n Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive.\nQingyu [\u6674\u96e8] (1969, January 1). \u56fd\u7247\u5728\u66fc\u8c37\u524d\u9014\u56db\u9762 [Mandarin cinema promising in Bangkok] \n Sin Sian Yit Pao.\nRong Wongsawan (2009). Unbelievably great. Bangkok: Freeformbooks. (In Thai).\nShanren [\u5584\u4eba] (1965, January 1). \u66fc\u8c37\u7684\u5a31\u4e50\u4e8b\u4e1a [Bangkok\u2019s entertainment business]. Sin Sian \n Yit Pao.\nSkinner, G. W. (1957). Chinese society in Thailand: An analytical history. Cornell University Press.\nSong, H.-L. [\u5b8b\u6d77\u51cc] (1969, January 1). \u68c0\u8ba8\u4e0e\u5c55\u671b\uff1a\u66fc\u8c37\u7684\u897f\u7247\u9662\u4e0e\u56fd\u7247\u9662 [Review and \n outlook: Western cinema and Mandarin cinema in Bangkok]. Sin Sian Yit Pao.\nSouthern Screen (1964). Number 78.\nSouthern Screen (1964). Number 80.\n\n\n\nChinese Cinema in Bangkok from 1950s to 1970s\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n94\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nTaylor, J. E. (2011). Rethinking transnational Chinese cinemas: The Amoy-dialect film industry \n in Cold War Asia. Routledge.\nTeo, S. (2009). Hong Kong cinema: The extra dimensions. British Film Institute.\nU.S. Information Service (1963). Communication fact book Thailand. USIS Research and Reference Service.\nWittayakon Publishing House (1966). \u6cf0\u56fd\u534e\u4fa8\u5927\u8bcd\u5178 [Encyclopaedia of Overseas Chinese in \n Thailand]. Wittayakon.\nYang, W.-Y. [\u6768\u6587\u745b] (1937). \u66b9\u7f57\u6742\u8bb0 [Notes on Siam]. Commercial Press (Shangwu Yinshuguan).\nYung, S.-S. (2008). Territorialization and the entertainment industry of the Shaw Brothers in \n Southeast Asia. In P. S. Fu (Ed.), China forever: The Shaw Brothers and diasporic cinema (pp. \n 133\u201353). University of Illinois Press.\nZhang, B.-Y. (2021). Chinese theatre troupes in Southeast Asia touring diaspora, 1900s\u20131970s.  \n Routledge. \n\n\n\nNotes\nThis article is part of the author\u2019s dissertation The Urban Culture of Chinese Society in Bangkok: \nCinemas, Broadcast and Literature, 1950s\u20131970s, submitted to the National University of \nSingapore in 2012. The revision of the article is based on a paper presented at the International \nConference on the History of Hong Kong \u201cInterpreting History through Culture and Literature\u201d \non 10-11 April 2015. I thank the anonymous reviewers as well as the editors for their constructive \ncomments in improving the manuscript. Any errors of fact and analysis, however, are my sole \nresponsibility. \nThailand was known as Siam until June 23, 1939, when it was officially named as Thailand. It was \ncalled Siam again from 1945 until 11 May 1949 and has been renamed Thailand until the present.\nIn 1947, A Spring River Flows East, a film from the Shanghai\u2019s Kunlun Studio, stormed the box \noffice in Bangkok. \nUnless otherwise stated, the article maintains all names and their spellings used in original \ndocuments. Chinese and Thai names transliterated by the author are italicised.\nThe names are translated to English by the author.\nMP&GI (Motion Picture and General Investment), Shaw Brother\u2019s primary competitor, was \nreconstructed and re-named \u201cCathay\u201d (Guotai) in 1965 after the death of its founder\u2014 Loke \nWan-tho \u2014in a plane crash in 1964. \nRong Wongsawanveteran, a veteran Thai journalist, used to work on advertising the Chinese \nfilms for the New Odeon, a principal distributor of Shaw\u2019s productions.\nThe Golden Doll Award was also known as Phra Suratsawadi, one of the most prestigious \nawards in Thai film circles. \nPhanawa was from a Chinese family in Bangkok and was able to communicate in Chinese, thus \nmaking a career in Hong Kong\u2019s film industry possible.\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3 \n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\nKornphanat Tungkeunkunt\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n404 Not Found\n\n\n\nnginx\n"
"\n\nThe Role of Parents in Heritage Language \nMaintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDING Seong Lin*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n       This present study intends to explore the role of parents in heritage language maintenance \namong selected Chinese Hakka communities. Field studies were conducted among three age groups \nspanning three to four generations in Sabah and Sarawak, East Malaysia. The data seem to suggest \nthat changes in family language use started with the parents, when they chose to speak non-heritage \nlanguage to their children. This eventually not only affected the language use of their children, but \nalso their language proficiency in the heritage language which is Hakka. Evidence indicates that \nparents indeed play a crucial role in family language practices, and have an impact on the \nmaintenance of heritage language. The preference for and actual use of Mandarin are prevalent \namong the younger generation. The findings confirm the general trend in Malaysian Chinese \nsociety today that current generation has a tendency to reduce the use of their heritage language and \nadopt Mandarin as their primary language of communication, including in the family domain. \nHowever, many young irregular (or infrequent) semi-speakers of Hakka claim the dialect as their \nmother tongue and continue to speak the dialect, albeit imperfectly. This also demonstrates that \nMandarin has yet to become overwhelmingly dominant among the Hakkas.\n\n\n\nKey words: Hakka, heritage language, inter-generational speakers, semi-speakers, Sabah and Sarawak\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\n        The role of the family in language maintenance and language shift has been a central \ntopic in sociolinguistics since the 1990s. Although these terms are not easily defined, there is \nnevertheless a common understanding that language maintenance is used to describe a situation \nin which individual speakers or a speech community continue to use their language in some \nor all spheres of life, in the midst of a competing dominant language, as the main or even sole \nlanguage in these spheres; and language shift is used to imply a shift from the dominant use of \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 15-27\n\n\n\n*  Dr. DING Seong Lin (\u9648\u6e58\u7433) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Malaysian Languages and Applied  \n    Linguistics, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. E-mail: slding@um.edu.my\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\none language to that of another language by these speakers or the speech community (Pauwels, \n2005b). In his seminal paper, Fishman (1991) posits a model of Reversing Language Shift, \nin which the family remains as the domain for heritage language use; 1 and where supportive \npolicies and educational provisions will only be of value if the family initiates mother tongue \nacquisition and provides a practice ground for its continued use. In other words, Fishman insists \non the power of the family, and places inter-generational mother tongue transmission at the very \ncentre, as language which is not transmitted cannot be maintained. Likewise, Hayden\u2019s study \n(1966) shows that one can still rely upon the home for the maintenance of the mother tongue. \nGarc\u00eda (2003) suggests that the use of the mother tongue in the family and friendship networks \nand its trans-generational transmission are still of crucial importance. Various studies also \nsupport the view that the family is the last domain for language maintenance (Appel and \nMuysken, 1987; Coulmas, 2005; Fasold, 1984; Fishman, 1972). The important role played by \nthe family in the context of bilingualism has also been highlighted in several studies (Alba et \nal., 2002; Fishman, 1996; Scanlan, 2011; Spielman, 2001; Wong Fillmore, 2000). In fact, in the \ncontext of globalization, Fishman\u2019s study (2001a) supports the conclusion that although mother \ntongue as the threatened language may share some of the functions of the non-threatened \nlanguage, the informal domains of intimacy, especially the home, must be reserved solely for \nthe threatened language. In other words, the possible destruction of inter-generational \ntransmission of the threatened language in the family must be shielded from the invasion of \nthe non-threatened dominant language. Similarly, Pauwels (2005a) views the role of the family, \nparticularly the extended family, as a very significant support in the inter-generational \nmaintenance of the mother tongue. Although several studies have been completed on the \nsubject of Language Maintenance and Shift among the Chinese communities in Malaysia \n(see, for example, \u6d2a\u4e3d\u82ac/Ang Lay Hoon, 2008 and 2010; Ang and Shik, 2013; \u9648\u6e58\u7433\u3001\u8f9c\u79cb\n\n\n\n\u83b9/Ding Seong Lin and Koh Qiu Ying, 2015; \u90ed\u7199/Guo Xi, 2003; Kow, 2003; \u9ece\u5353\u5bb9/Li Zhuo \nRong, 2012; \u6797\u51ac\u6885/Lin Dong Mei, 2010; Puah and Ting, 2015; Ting and Puah, 2015),  the role \nof the family (and parents) on heritage language maintenance can be further explored. \n       This study examines the language practices of Chinese Hakka families. The focus of \nattention is placed on identifying the key factors that determine the successful, as well as \nunsuccessful, heritage language maintenance in the family. The heritage language in question \nis Hakka. This is a major Chinese dialect in Malaysia, next to Hokkien and Cantonese in the \nnumber of speakers. In this study, the words \u201clanguage\u201d and \u201cdialect\u201d as applied to Hakka are \nused interchangeably. Since active use of the heritage language appears to be crucial for \nlanguage maintenance and proficiency, inquiries were made concerning both preference for \nand the use of the mother tongue compared with Mandarin in various situations. Consideration \nis given to the \u201cactual use\u201d of Hakka, and their \u201cpreference in using\u201d Hakka if they are given \na choice in daily communication. These ideas of \u201cuse\u201d and \u201cpreference\u201d are related to those of \n\u201cconstraints\u201d and \u201cfacilitation\u201d (which will be explained further in the analysis). Insights from \nthe case study and their implications on heritage language maintenance will be discussed. \n\n\n\n1716\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\n       The target groups in this study comprise three age groups spanning the generations from \ngrandparents, parents, and children. Field research was conducted among selected Hakka \ncommunities in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia. The respondents are the \ndescendants of Hakka immigrants into these states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth \ncenturies. While it is rather uncommon to find immigrant communities that exhibit stable \nbilingualism beyond the third generation (Garc\u00eda, 2003), this is not the case among the Hakkas \nin East Malaysia. While Mandarin is the medium of instruction in Chinese primary schools, \nHakka is still widely spoken in the Hakka community. Three towns in Sabah, namely, Inanam, \nMenggatal and Telipok which are situated near the state capital of Kota Kinabalu, and the \ndistrict of Bau near the state capital of Kuching in Sarawak, are selected for the present study. \nDominated by the Hakkas, both these localities consequently exhibit a greater degree of dialect \nhomogeneity than other parts of these two states. \n\n\n\nBackground\n\n\n\n        The Chinese form the second largest community in the multi-ethnic population of \nMalaysia. Numbering 6.4 million in 2010, the community made up 24.6 per cent of Malaysian \ncitizens, and 22.6 per cent of the total population which includes substantial numbers of foreign \nworkers (DSM, 2011: 15). Each ethnic community in turn comprises several regional-cum-\nlinguistic groups. Among the Chinese, there are seven primary linguistic or dialect groups, \nnamely, the Hokkien (Fujian in Mandarin), Hakka (Kejia), Cantonese (Guangfu), Teochew \n(Chaozhou), Foochow (Fuzhou), Hainanese (Hainan), and Kwangsai (Guangxi). According to \nunpublished data of 2000 from the Department of Statistics, the Hakka population stood at just \nmore than a million, ranking joint second with the Cantonese and following behind the Hokkien \n(see \u6587\u5e73\u5f3a/Voon Phin Keong, forthcoming). Although Malaysian Chinese of diverse linguistic \norigins share the same script and many are proficient in Mandarin, they do speak distinctly \ndifferent, sometimes mutually untelligible dialects. \n      Chinese dialect communities tend to show distinct regional patterns of distribution that \nreflect their different migration histories. The Hakka presence is particularly evident in Sabah \nwhile the Foochows are overwhelmingly concentrated in the district of Sibu in Sarawak. The \ndominance of the Hakkas in Sabah may be attributed to the work of the Basel mission which \nacted as a recruiting agent for the North Borneo government from the 1880s though it was \nnot until 1910 that the inflow grew considerably in volume (\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765/Chong Tet Loi, 2002: \n10; Jones, 2007: 41-42). The Hakkas of Sarawak originated from two sources. One was West \nKalimantan to which the Hakkas had been attracted by its gold fields from the 1760s, and the \nother was south China which supplied substantial numbers of Hakka and Foochow immigrants \nfrom the 1900s. The expansion of Dutch influence into West Kalimantan and the subsequent \ncolonial oppression forced large outflows of the Hakkas across the border into the Bau district \nof Sarawak (Jackson, 1968: 57).  As for the Foochows, the heavy concentration in Sibu was the \n\n\n\n1716\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\nresult of the initial work of a Foochow recruiting agent contracted by the Brooke government \nin 1901.2  \n       In 1960, the Chinese population of Sabah (then known as British North Borneo) numbered \n104,542 persons, of whom 55 per cent or 57,338 persons were Hakkas. In Sarawak, out of \n229,154 Chinese in 1960, 70,221 were Hakkas and 70,125 were Foochows, each comprising 31 \nper cent of the Chinese (Jones, 1962a: Table 4; 1962b: Table 4). In 2000, there were 148,000 \nHakkas in Sabah and 162,000 in Sarawak, comprising 58.0 and 31.5 per cent respectively of the \nChinese communities in these states. The relative position of the Hakkas in these territories has \nchanged little since then (DSM, 2003 and 2010). \n       Until the mid-twentieth century, a resident of East Malaysia could follow a lifestyle by \nliving as a member of a virtually mono-dialectal community in a multiethnic society. This was \nparticularly true among the Chinese whose different \u201cdialect\u201d groups had their own identifiable \nsettlements in various parts of the country. Like all other Chinese communities in Malaysia, \nthe Hakkas of Sabah and Sarawak are highly conscious of the importance of preserving their \ndialect identity. The manner by which this objective is achieved is by speaking their dialect \nand forming their own clan associations (see\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765/Chong Tet Loi, 2002; \u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1/Shi Cangjin, \n2005).3\n\n\n\n       The Chinese seem to be more versatile linguistically than other ethnic groups in Malaysia. \nMany grow up learning and using two or more different languages, and at the same time speak \ntwo or more dialects.  This remains true in the case of the Hakkas in East Malaysia.\n         The problem of language maintenance and language shift arises, nonetheless, from \nthe very fact that the use of two or more languages within one community is usually dependent \non one language serving a function while the other does not. This functional separation is \nmost often seen along the lines of a \u201cHigh language\u201d, and a \u201cLow language\u201d (Fishman, 2000).4 \n\n\n\nHence, if two languages could be used interchangeably on all occasions by all speakers, one \nwould be superfluous and ultimately dropped from the repertoire of languages serving the \ncommunity. In other words, it is the fulfillment of separate functions by different languages \nwhich permits persistent bilingualism (or multilingualism) within the community (Fishman, \n1972). As Mandarin is used widely in schools, business and religious places, and in the family, \nthe question of Hakka language maintenance becomes an issue of critical importance to the \ncommunity.  \n\n\n\nMethodology\n\n\n\n       This study is based on a survey conducted intermittently between 2013 and 2015 involving \n946 Hakka individuals in the three towns in Sabah and the Bau district of Sarawak. Interviews \nwere conducted at the respondents\u2019 houses or shops, and some at schools, churches and \ntemples. Denscombe\u2019s (1998) sampling process based on recommendations and referrals made \nby informants and respondents was adopted during different stages of the fieldwork.\n\n\n\n1918\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\n       Three cohorts based on the periods of birth in the years of 1922 to 1961, 1962 to 1989, and \n1990 to 2001 were identified. The first cohort comprised persons approximately 55 to 94 years \nof age (the grandparent generation); the second cohort between 27 and 54 years of age (the \nparent generation); and the third cohort between 15 and 26 years of age (the third generation).\nThe year 1990 is chosen as a point of demarcation of the youngest generation because it marked \nthe beginning of free and unrestricted travel among Malaysians to visit, travel, work or study \nin China. Since then, China\u2019s political, economic and cultural impacts are felt throughout the \nworld, and the use of Mandarin among the Chinese overseas has become increasingly \ncommon. \n        A questionnaire consisting of 60 questions was used to gather information on family \nbackground; social and educational strata; frequency and preference of Hakka use in \ndifferent domains; and a person\u2019s Hakka speaking ability. Questionnaires can be filled either \nin Chinese or English. In addition, a 30-50 minute semi-structured interview was conducted \nwith selected parents (the majority of whom in the 1962-1989 cohort) from 52 families to \nfurther explore their language use patterns. All interviews were conducted in Mandarin. \n\n\n\n \nAnalysis\n\n\n\n       The questionnaire solicits information on the frequency of Hakka use compared with \nMandarin use among family members and non-family members. Five different categories of \nlanguage practices, ranging on a continuum from \u201cAlmost always in Hakka\u201d to \u201cAlmost always \nin Mandarin/English\u201d were devised to measure the frequency of language use and the \npreference for using Hakka with 13 types of interlocutors among the parent and grandparent \ngenerations. Members of the 1990-2001 cohort were too young to answer questions on spouses \nand children or grandchildren. The findings suggest that Hakka is still the dominant language \ncompared with Mandarin. However, while parents and grandparents speak to each other in \nHakka, many parents opt to speak to their children in Mandarin. Across the generations, the \nprogressive decline in the number of frequent Hakka users is evident (Table 1).   \n      The data seem to suggest that changes in family language use started among the parents. \nWhile there are speakers in every age group who would prefer to use languages other than Hakka \nin various domains, a significant change in favour of Mandarin occurs when respondents of \nthe 1962-1989 cohort comment on preference and use in conversations with their children and \ngrandchildren. Only 33 per cent of the respondents from this cohort chose to speak \u201calmost \nalways in Hakka\u201d or \u201cmore Hakka than Mandarin /English\u201d with their children, compared with \nthe much higher proportion of 74 per cent for the older generation. This drastic drop appears to \nconform to the language practice of the younger generation where Mandarin (and/or English) \nis preferred and used, as in the case among the 1990-2001 cohort. These figures confirm the \ngeneral trend in Malaysian Chinese society today that the younger generation tended to use \n\n\n\n1918\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\nheritage language less frequently and adopted Mandarin as their primary language of \ncommunication, even in the family domain. \n\n\n\nTable 1. The \u201cPreference\u201d and \u201cHigh Use\u201d of Hakka in Communication among \nDifferent Age Cohorts in Sabah and Sarawak, 2013-2015\n\n\n\n1: Almost always in Hakka              2: More Mandarin/English than Hakka\n\n\n\n2120\n\n\n\n2\n26(9.6%)\n26(10.0%)\n\n\n\n34(11.0%)\n22(7.1%)\n\n\n\n27(8.7%)\n19(6.2%)\n\n\n\n25(8.0%)\n19(6.3%)\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\n34(10.8%)\n39(12.4%)\n\n\n\n24(7.6%)\n22(7.0%)\n\n\n\n19(6.0%)\n17(5.4%)\n\n\n\n15(4.8%)\n17(5.4%)\n\n\n\n14(4.7%)\n10(3.5%)\n\n\n\n19(6.4%)\n19(6.5%)\n\n\n\n2\n     5(2.1%)\n     5(2.1%)\n\n\n\n     8(3.2%)\n     7(2.8%)\n\n\n\n     6(2.3%)\n     5(1.9%)\n\n\n\n   10(3.8%)\n   15(5.8%)\n\n\n\n   10(3.9%)\n   10(4.0%)\n\n\n\n   16(6.2%)\n   23(8.9%)\n\n\n\n   10(4.7%)\n   11(7.6%)\n\n\n\n   21(7.9%)\n   24(9.1%)\n\n\n\n  25(9.5%)\n   35(13.3%) \n   22(8.3%)\n   41(15.6%)\n\n\n\n   17(6.5%)\n   31(12.0%)\n\n\n\n   28(10.7%)\n   36(13.8%)\n\n\n\n   17(6.6%)\n   25(9.9%)\n\n\n\nInterlocutor\n1\n\n\n\n229(95.4%)\n228(96.2%)\n\n\n\n239(94.5%)\n245(96.5%)\n\n\n\n247(95.7%)\n249(96.9%)\n\n\n\n235(90.4%)\n229(88.8%)\n\n\n\n219(85.5%)\n209(82.6%)\n\n\n\n187(72.5%)\n168(65.1%)\n\n\n\n119(55.9%)\n55(37.9%)\n\n\n\n222(83.8%)\n219(82.6%)\n\n\n\n195(73.9%)\n184(70.0%)\n\n\n\n188(71.2%)\n163(62.0%)\n\n\n\n171(65.5%)\n143(55.2%)\n\n\n\n118(45.2%)\n75(28.7%)\n\n\n\n169(65.8%)\n159(62.8%)\n\n\n\n1922-1961 Cohort\nNumber (%)\n\n\n\n1\n261(85.6%)\n265(88.9%)\n\n\n\n276(79.3%)\n290(83.8%)\n\n\n\n285(80.1%)\n305(85.9%)\n\n\n\n262(74.9%)\n270(77.1%)\n\n\n\n180(60.4%)\n150(60.5%)\n\n\n\n95(32.5%)\n44(19.0%)\n\n\n\n71(39.9%)\n9(52.9%)\n\n\n\n230(64.6%)\n234(65.9%)\n\n\n\n166(46.2%)\n169(47.1%)\n\n\n\n137(38.3%)\n123(34.4%)\n\n\n\n130(36.2%)\n111(30.9%)\n\n\n\n78(21.8%)\n45(12.7%)\n\n\n\n141(40.4%)\n135(38.8%)\n\n\n\n2\n  9(3.0%)\n18(6.0%)\n\n\n\n12(3.4%)\n22(6.4%)\n\n\n\n17(4.8%)\n22(6.2%)\n\n\n\n27(7.7%)\n33(9.4%)\n\n\n\n18(6.0%)\n18(7.3%)\n\n\n\n27(9.2%)\n32(13.9%)\n\n\n\n16(9.0%)\n  0(0.0%)\n\n\n\n37(10.4%)\n46(13.0%)\n\n\n\n43(12.0%)\n55(15.3%)\n\n\n\n38(10.6%)\n52(14.5%)\n\n\n\n33(9.2%)\n52(14.5%)\n\n\n\n24(6.7%)\n37(10.5%)\n\n\n\n34(9.7%)\n42(12.1%)\n\n\n\n1962-1989 Cohort\nNumber (%)\n\n\n\n1\n151(55.7%)\n161(62.2%)\n\n\n\n135(43.5%)\n147(47.6%)\n\n\n\n131(42.4%)\n139(45.4%)\n\n\n\n109(35.0%)\n121(39.9%)\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\nNA\n\n\n\n   99(31.5%)\n 104(33.0%) \n   51(16.1%)\n   38(12.0%)\n\n\n\n   42(13.3%)\n   29(9.2%)\n\n\n\n   36(11.4%)\n   24(7.6%)\n\n\n\n   25(8.4%)\n   13(4.5%)\n\n\n\n   42(14.1%)\n   34(11.6%)\n\n\n\n1990-2001Cohort \nNumber (%)\n\n\n\nGrandparents\n\n\n\nFather    \n\n\n\nMother\n\n\n\nSiblings\n\n\n\nSpouse\n\n\n\nOwn children                \n\n\n\nOwn \n   grandchildren\n\n\n\nClose relatives              \n\n\n\nFriends\n\n\n\nAcquaintances\n\n\n\nSchool mates/\n   Colleagues  \n\n\n\nSales persons\n\n\n\nMembers of   \n   religious groups\n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse   \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse  \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse   \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse\n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse   \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse  \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse   \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse\n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse \n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse\n\n\n\nPrefer\nUse\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\n       Based on the study by Hayden (1966), another table is devised on the direction of differences \nbetween frequencies of preference and frequencies of use (Table 2). \n\n\n\nTable 2. The Direction of Differences between Expressions of \n\u201cPreference\u201d for and \u201cUse\u201d of Hakka \n\n\n\n+  the percentage of use is higher than the percentage of preference\n -   the percentage of actual use is lower than the percentage of preference\n0   the percentages of both use and preference are identical\n\n\n\n     By using signs to denote the actual use of Hakka compared with the preference for the \nlanguage, an index of Hakka constraint and facilitation may be devised. More precisely, if the \npercentage of actual use is lower than the percentage of preference (as indicated by the sign -), \nthe use of the heritage language could be seen as being \u201cconstrained\u201d, and thus indicating some \nnegative factors coming into play in the society, and resulting in Hakka being used less often \nthan the speakers would prefer to. The use of heritage language may be said to be \u201cfacilitated\u201d \nif the percentage of use is higher than the percentage of preference (as indicated by the sign \n+), suggesting that some facilitating factors have brought about a greater use of Hakka than \nexpected or preferred. Identical percentages of both use and preference would indicate some \nform of \u201cagreement\u201d (as indicated by the sign 0). \n       The data indicate that the use of Hakka was constrained more frequently than it was \nfacilitated for the old generation. In other words, the preference for the heritage language might \nbe so strong as to cause respondents of this generation to want to use it on more occasions than \n\n\n\n2120\n\n\n\nGrandparents\nFather\nMother\nSiblings\nSpouse\nOwn children\nOwn grandchildren\nClose relatives\nFriends\nAcquaintances\nSchool mates/Colleagues\nSales persons\nMembers of religious groups\n\n\n\nAgreement: Percentage (0)\nConstraint: Percentage (-)\nFacilitation: Percentage (+)          \n\n\n\nInterlocutor\n\n\n\n+\n+\n+\n+\n-\n-\n-\n0\n-\n-\n-\n-\n+\n\n\n\n           7.7\n         53.8\n         38.5\n\n\n\n100.0\n\n\n\n1922-1961\nCohort\n\n\n\n+\n+\n+\n+\n+\n-\n+\n+\n+\n0\n0\n-\n+\n\n\n\n  15.4\n  15.4\n  69.2\n100.0\n\n\n\n+\n+\n+\n+\n\n\n\nNA\nNA\nNA\n+\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n\n\n\n     0.0\n   50.0\n   50.0\n 100.0\n\n\n\n1962-1989\nCohort\n\n\n\n1990-2001\nCohort\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\nwas practical. This was in contrast with those born between 1962 and 1989, who used Hakka \non more occasions than they would like to. Apparently, the 1962-1989 cohort was more likely \nto use non-heritage languages compared with the older generation. As such, though there were \nsome facilitating factors that had prompted them to use Hakka more than they intended to, the \ninitial preference of using less Hakka might lead to a less favourable effect on Hakka language \nmaintenance.\n       While considerable facilitation appears in the case of the 1962-1989 cohort, particularly in \nconnection with family members, there is one exception, i.e. using Hakka with their own \nchildren. In other words, in addition to their children, parents use Hakka more frequently than \nthey would like to in their communication with family members, close relatives and friends, \neven with other members of religious groups that they belong to. This is perhaps the so-called \n\u201cinternalized preferences\u201d, as suggested by Hayden (1966) in his study \u2013 not so much for \nEnglish in this case, but for Mandarin. It is particularly obvious for the parents when constraint \noccurs not because of the strong preference, as in the situation of the old generation, but due to \nthe extremely low usage of Hakka between parents and children for this cohort. \n        Among the young respondents, the results show an agreement between their preference and \nuse of Hakka. Interestingly, the facilitation within the family domain indicates that this young \ngeneration uses more Hakka than they wish to with family members; while the constraint found \noutside the family domain reveals low preferences for speaking in Hakka within the Hakka \ncommunities in the two areas of study.\n        The parents\u2019 choice of language practice and their preference may eventually affect \nthe ability of their eldest child to speak Hakka (see Table 3). Clearly, the child\u2019s proficiency \nin Hakka increases with the frequency of Hakka being used among the parents. Among parents \nwho used Hakka frequently, 63.3 per cent of the children possessed good to very good ability to \nspeak the dialect. The corresponding proportion of 17.7 per cent is significantly lower among \nthose whose parents used Hakka infrequently. Again, the impact of parents\u2019 language use on \ntheir children\u2019s language ability has diminished over time. Among the older cohort who used \nthe dialect frequently, 81.8 per cent of their children were able to speak it well. However, the \ncorresponding proportion has dropped to 38.6 per cent for those in the 1962-1989 cohort.\n\n\n\nDiscussion and Conclusion\n\n\n\n     The present study suggests that parents\u2019 decisions play a major role in the language \npractices in the family and consequently have a strong influence on children\u2019s language use and \nproficiency. As Huffines (1980) posits, the perceptions held by the respondents of the languages \nin their repertoires and their ability to use them are of major concern if these languages are to \nbe transmitted to the next generation. The findings agree with those of Dorian (1981) who \ndescribes the typical phenomenon that bilingual speakers use their minority language, and \nresent disloyalty towards it, but do not teach it to their children. \n\n\n\n2322\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\nTable 3.  Association between the Frequency of Hakka use by Parents and the\nHakka Speaking Ability of the Eldest Child\n\n\n\nNote: Chi-square statistic (p-value) for test of association is 25.64 (0.001), 57.40 (0.000), and 115.19 (0.000), \n           respectively, for the 1922-1961 cohort, 1962-1989 cohort, and both cohorts together.\n\n\n\n        The overall results show the facilitation within the family domain for all birth cohorts. \nHowever, this facilitation does not tell the entire story. With the low preference of speaking \nHakka (and even lower percentage of actual usage) with one\u2019s own child/children for the 1962-\n1989 cohort, and the generally low usage and even lower preference amongst the younger \ngeneration, the results indicate that the former used less Hakka than they would prefer, and \nthe latter used more Hakka than they preferred. Given the overwhelming usage of Mandarin \nwithin the family, the seemingly \u201cfacilitation\u201d of Hakka may well not necessarily be a good \nsign for heritage language maintenance, especially by the younger generation among whom \nthe percentage of frequent Hakka users was already low, while the desire to use Hakka could \nbe even lower.  \n     In Fishman\u2019s words (2000), different languages should have different functions, and for \nmost respondents in the present study, Hakka had limited functional domains. Hakka \nwas commonly used within one\u2019s intimate domain, primarily in the family and with friends, \nand also in religious activities among the older generations in East Malaysia. As Hakka is not \na medium of instruction in schools, some parents expressed the concern that speaking Hakka \nmight affect their children\u2019s academic performance. In effect, it was this concern that might \nhave caused the gradual decrease in the number of Hakka language users. \n\n\n\n2322\n\n\n\n1922-1961 Cohort\nLow use\nModerate use\nHigh use\nTotal\n1962-1989 Cohort\nLow use\nModerate use\nHigh use\nTotal\nBoth Cohorts\nLow use\nModerate use\nHigh use\nTotal\n\n\n\nHakka use by Parents\nHakka speaking ability of eldest child\n\n\n\n0.0%\n4.8%\n\n\n\n31.8%\n29.2%\n\n\n\n6.7%\n4.0%\n\n\n\n14.5%\n11.7%\n\n\n\n5.9%\n4.2%\n\n\n\n24.4%\n20.7%\n\n\n\nVery good\n\n\n\n50.0%\n33.3%\n50.0%\n48.6%\n\n\n\n6.7%\n18.0%\n24.1%\n21.6%\n\n\n\n11.8%\n22.5%\n38.9%\n35.4%\n\n\n\nGood\n\n\n\n50.0%\n38.1%\n12.7%\n15.2%\n\n\n\n26.7%\n16.0%\n34.3%\n29.9%\n\n\n\n29.4%\n22.5%\n22.0%\n22.4%\n\n\n\nModerate\n\n\n\n0.0%\n19.0%\n4.5%\n5.8%\n\n\n\n6.7%\n44.0%\n23.5%\n26.8%\n\n\n\n5.9%\n36.6%\n12.7%\n16.0%\n\n\n\nLittle\n\n\n\n0.0%\n4.8%\n1.0%\n1.2%\n\n\n\n53.3%\n18.0%\n3.6%\n\n\n\n10.0%\n\n\n\n47.1%\n14.1%\n2.1%\n5.5%\n\n\n\nNone\n\n\n\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n\n\n\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n\n\n\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n100.0%\n\n\n\nTotal\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\n     The study by Li et al. (1997: 45) lends support to Fishman\u2019s (1991) proposition that \nlanguage shift is very rarely \u201cacross the board\u201d; instead, it is \u201cdifferential\u201d, being more rapid \nand far-reaching in some domains and sub-populations than in others. The present study shows \nthat language shift is indeed happening more rapidly in domains other than that of the family. \nNevertheless, language shift might also take place \u201cacross the board\u201d if parents were to \ncontinue their current language practices at home. \n     Moreover, many parents during the interviews speak of communication accommodation \nwithin the family (see Giles and Noels, 1997). While these accommodations had resulted in the \n\u201cbetter communication\u201d between the older and younger generations, it might also have led to \nthe decline in proficiency in Hakka. This reminds us of the issue of the \u201csemi-speaker\u201d raised \nby Dorian (1973, 1977, and 1981) in her discussions on the death of East Sutherland Gaelic \nwhich is a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Thus, the issue brings up the question of what it means to \nhave only partial or imperfect knowledge or competence in a language as in the case of the \nsemi-speakers. \n      From the study, it is clear that the use of Hakka in communication is in a state of flux. On \nthe one hand, although many Hakkas claim to have strong feelings for and value their mother \ntongue to a great extent, they do not try hard enough to safeguard its survival. In other words, \nHakka is not often used between the generations. The concern is that, without drawing on \ntheir multilingual repertoire, most Hakka speakers from the young cohort would be unable to \ngenerate arguments and sophisticated ideas using the Hakka dialect. On the other hand, despite \nthe imperfect knowledge of Hakka, many young semi-speakers claim Hakka as their mother \ntongue and use Hakka more than they would prefer to. These linguistic behaviours of young \nsemi-speakers who chose to continue speaking in imperfect Hakka also indicated that it had yet \nto be totally superseded by Mandarin. \n       To sum up, the language environment in East Malaysia has changed in recent years. Many \nfamilies and individuals had significantly re-aligned their linguistic repertoires in daily \ncommunication within and outside the family domain. Mandarin, as the language of the \nChinese schools and the common language of the Chinese, has effectively encroached upon the \ntraditional Hakka speaking domestic territory. This is an inevitable trend of development which \nwould have a great impact on heritage language maintenance among the Hakkas now and in the \nfuture. This study has not taken into account the considerable appeal of English to the young as \nan essential language of commerce and social interaction. It is too soon to speak of the demise \nof the Hakka dialect in East Malaysia. However, if increased institutional support from \ncommunities, schools and religious groups is not forthcoming, the fate of Hakka as a heritage \nlanguage may become progressively more precarious with the passage of time.\n\n\n\n2524\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1    The term \u201cheritage language\u201d is used to identify languages other than the dominant language (or       \n      languages) in a given social context (Kelleher, 2010), a language spoken in the home. Fishman\n      (2001b)  identifies three types of heritage languages in the United States, namely immigrant languages,  \n      indigenous languages and colonial languages.  \n2    In 1901, the Brooke government in Sarawak contracted Wong Nai Shang, to recruit Chinese immigrants.    \n      Wong was a Foochow and he naturally recruited his clansmen. This work was later taken over by \n      an American Methodist missionary, Rev. James Hoover (Kiu, 1997:1; Lockard, 2003: 53; Jones, \n      2007: 43).  \n3    In North Borneo, the earliest Hakka association was established in Sandakan in 1886 (\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765/Chong \n      Tet Loi, 2002: 61). The outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan and the lack of protection \n      among Hakka immigrants in Sabah compelled the need for dialect associations. The North Borneo \n      West Coast Hakka Association was established in 1940, with members of its governing board coming \n      from 13 towns. Several of its board and ordinary members took part in resistance and guerilla warfare  \n      against the invading Japanese army. The association was revived in 1947 when representatives from    \n      18 West Coast towns serving as board members. With the formation of Malaysia, a state-wide \n      Hakka Association was formed, with branches in seven major towns later in the same year (\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765/ \n      Chong Tet Loi, 2002: 65-69).        \n4    The High (H) and Low (L) language or variety was first introduced by Ferguson (1959) in his study of     \n      diglossia in a society, whereby a H variety is used in religion, education and other public domains, \n      and a L variety in the home and lower work sphere.   \n\n\n\nReferences \n\n\n\nALBA, R., J. LOGAN, A. LUTZ, and B. STULTS 2002. Only English by the third generation? Loss and \n        preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants, Demography,  \n        39(3): 467-484. \nANG Lay Hoon and SHIK Pei Yen 2013. Mixed marriages, language, and identity: The children of \n        Chinese-Indian parentage in Malaysia, Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2(2): 1-16.\nAPPEL, R. and MUYSKEN, P. 1987. Language Contact and Bilingualism, London: Edward Arnold. \nCOULMAS, F. 2005. Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers\u2019 Choice, Cambridge: Cambridge University  \n        Press.\nDENSCOMBE, M. 1998. The Good Research Guide: For Small Scale Social Research Projects,\n        Buckingham: Open University Press.\nDepartment of Statistics Malaysia (DSM) 2003. Population of Chinese Dialect Groups of Malaysia,   \n        2000 (unpublished data from the 2000 Population and Housing Census), Putrajaya.\n----- 2010. Year Book of Statistics Sarawak 2010, Kuching: Department of Statistics Malaysia, Sarawak.\n----- 2011. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2010: Population Distribution and Basic  \n        Demographic Characteristics 2010, Putrajaya.\nDORIAN, Nancy C. 1973. Grammatical change in a dying dialect, Language, 49: 413-438.  \n----- 1977. The problem of the semi-speaker in language death, International Journal of the Sociology of\n        Language, 12: 23-32.\n----- 1981. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect, Philadelphia: University of \n        Pennsylvania Press.\n\n\n\n2524\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDing\n\n\n\nFASOLD, R. 1984. The Sociolinguistics of Society, Oxford: Blackwell.\nFERGUSON, C.A. 1959. Diglossia, WORD, 15(2): 325-340.\nFISHMAN, J.A. 1972. The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to\n        Language in Society, Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.\n----- 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened \n        Languages, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.\n----- 1996. What do you lose when you lose your language? In Stabilizing Indigenous Language, edited  \n        by G. Cantoni, Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University: 80-91.\n----- 2000. Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism. In The\n        Bilingualism Reader, edited by Li Wei, London and New York: Routledge: 47-54.\n----- (ed.) 2001a. Can Threatened Languages Be Saved?, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.\n----- 2001b. 300-plus years of heritage language education in the United States. In Heritage Languages  \n        in America: Preserving a National Resource, edited by J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard and S. McGinnis,\n        Washington, DC & McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems: 81-89.\nGARC\u00cdA, M. 2003. Recent research on language maintenance, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics,  \n        23: 22-43.\nGILES, H. and NOELS, K.A. 1997. Communication accommodation in intercultural encounters. In \n        Readings in Cultural Contexts, edited by J. Martin, T. Nakayama and I. Flores, Mountain View,\n        CA: Mayfield: 139-149.\nHAYDEN, Robert G. 1966. Some community dynamics of language maintenance. In Language Loyalty\n        in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by\n        American Ethnic and Religious Groups, edited by J.A. Fishman et al., The Hague: Mouton & Co.:    \n       190-205.\nHUFFINES, M. L. 1980. Pennsylvania German: maintenance and shift, International Journal of the \n        Sociology of Language, 25: 43-57.\nJONES, L.W. 1962a. North Borneo: Report on the Census of Population taken on 10th August 1960,  \n        Kuching: Government Printing Office.\n----- 1962b. Sarawak: Report on the Census of Population taken on 15th June 1960, Kuching: Government  \n        Printing Office.\n----- 2007. The Population of Borneo: A Study of the Peoples of Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei, Kota Kinabalu: \n        Opus Publications (first published in 1966).\nKELLEHER, Ann 2010. What is a heritage language?, http://www.cal.org/heritage/pdfs/briefs/What-is-\n        a-Heritage-Language.pdf. Accessed on 19 October 2016. \nKIU Mee Kuok 1997.  The Diffusion of Foochow Settlement in Sibu-Binatang Area, Central Sarawak, \n        1901-1970, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association.\nKOW Yip Cheng, Karen 2003. Language shift and language maintenance in mixed marriages: a case\n        study of a Malaysian-Chinese family, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 161:\n        81-90.\nLI, W., SARAVANAN, V. and NG, Julia L.H. 1997. Language shift in the Teochew community in \n        Singapore: a family domain analysis, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development,\n        18(5): 364-384.\nLOCKARD, Craig A. 2003. Chinese Immigration and Society in Sarawak, 1868-1917, Sibu: Sarawak \n        Chinese Cultural Assocation.\nPAUWELS, A. 2005a. Maintaining the community language in Australia: challenges and roles for \n        families, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8(2-3): 124-131.\n\n\n\n2726\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRole of Parents in Heritage Language Maintenance in Malaysia\n\n\n\n----- 2005b. Language maintenance. In The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, edited by Alan Davies and    \n        Catherine Elder, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.\nPUAH, Y.Y., and TING, S.H. 2015. Malaysian Chinese speakers\u2019 attitudes towards Foochow, Hokkien\n        and Mandarin, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(5): 451-467.            \nSCANLAN, M. 2011. How school leaders can accent inclusion for bilingual students, families, and \n        communities, Multicultural Education, 18(2): 5-9.\nSPIELMAN, J. 2001. The Family Photography Project: we will just read what the pictures tell us, \n        Reading Teacher, 54(8): 762-770.\nTING, S.H., and PUAH, Y.Y. 2015. Sociocultural traits and language attitudes of Chinese Foochow and\n        Hokkien in Malaysia, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 25(1): 117-140.\nWONG FILLMORE, L. 2000. Loss of family languages: should educators be concerned?, Theory into\n        Practice, 39(4): 203-210.\n\u9648\u6e58\u7433\u3001\u8f9c\u79cb\u83b9 2015. <\u9a6c\u516d\u7532\u65b0\u6751\u5ba2\u5bb6\u7fa4\u4f53\u7684\u53e3\u8bed\u4f7f\u7528\u3001\u8bed\u8a00\u6001\u5ea6\u4e0e\u65b9\u8a00\u7fa4\u8ba4\u540c>\uff0c\u5f20\u7ef4\u5b89\u7f16\uff0c\n   \u300a\u5ba2\u5bb6\u6587\u5316\u3001\u8ba4\u540c\u4e0e\u4fe1\u4ef0\uff1a\u4e1c\u5357\u4e9a\u4e0e\u53f0\u6e2f\u6fb3\u300b\uff0c\u6843\u56ed\uff1a\u4e2d\u592e\u5927\u5b66\u51fa\u7248\u4e2d\u5fc3: 59-97 (DING Seong      \n        Lin and KOH Qiu Ying 2015. A study on Hakka community\u2019s language use, language attitude and \n        ethnic identity in Malacca. In Hakka Culture, Identity and Religion: Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Hong         \n        Kong and Macau, edited by Chang Wei\u2019an, Taoyuan: National Central University Press: 59-97).\n\u90ed\u7199 2003. <\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u69df\u57ce\u534e\u4eba\u793e\u4f1a\u7684\u8bed\u8a00\u751f\u6d3b>\uff0c\u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u793e\u4f1a\u8bed\u8a00\u5b66\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e00\u671f\uff1a125-134 (GUO Xi   \n        2003. The linguistic life of the Chinese community in Penang, Malaysia, The Journal of Chinese\n        Sociolinguistics, 1: 125-134).\n\u6d2a\u4e3d\u82ac 2008. <\u8bd5\u6790\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u6bcd\u8bed\u7684\u8f6c\u79fb\u73b0\u8c61>,\u300a\u534e\u4fa8\u534e\u4eba\u5386\u53f2\u7814\u7a76\u300b,\u7b2c\u4e00\u671f\uff1a32-41(ANG Lay  \n        Hoon 2008.  The shift of Chinese mother tongue in Malaysia, Overseas Chinese History Studies:  \n       1: 32-41).\n----- 2010. <\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u5bb6\u5ead\u8bed\u8a00\u7684\u8f6c\u53d8>\uff0c\u300a\u4e1c\u5357\u4e9a\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e09\u671f\uff1a73-84 (ANG Lay Hoon 2010.  \n         The shift of the Chinese family language in Malaysia, Southeast Asian Studies, 3: 73-84).\n\u9ece\u5353\u84c9 2012. <\u96ea\u5170\u83aa\u6c99\u767b\u65b0\u6751\u534e\u4eba\u8bed\u8a00\u4f7f\u7528\u65b9\u5f0f\u7684\u8c03\u67e5>,\u300a\u5b66\u6587\u300b,\u7b2c\u4e8c\u671f\uff1a118-127 (LI Zhuo \n         Rong 2012. A survey of the language patterns amongst Chinese in Serdang, Selangor,  Xuewen,\n        2: 118-127).\n\u6797\u51ac\u6885 2010.\u300a\u4ece\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u88d4\u5bb6\u5ead\u7528\u8bed\u770b\u534e\u8bed\u65b9\u8a00\u7684\u5174\u8870\u2014\u2014\u4ee5\u68ee\u7f8e\u5170\u5dde\u6587\u4e01\u65b0\u6751\u7684\u5b9e\u9645\u8c03\u67e5  \n    \u4e3a\u4f8b\u300b,\u4e2d\u56fd\u6d59\u6c5f\u5927\u5b66\u7855\u58eb\u8bba\u6587 (LIN Dong Mei 2010. A Survey on the Use of Mandarin and        \n        Dialects by Malaysian Chinese Family: A Case Study in Mantin, Negeri Sembilan. Unpublished       \n       M.A. thesis, Zhejiang University, China. http://www.docin.com/p-156287980.html. Accessed \n        on 21 October 2014). \n\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1 2005.\u300a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u793e\u56e2\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u5317\u4eac\uff1a\u4e2d\u56fd\u534e\u4fa8\u51fa\u7248\u793e (SHI Cangjin 2005. Study on\n        Malaysian Chinese Association, Beijing: The Chinese Overseas Publishing House).\n\u6587\u5e73\u5f3a(\u5373\u5c06\u51fa\u7248).\u300a\u805a\u65cf\u4e8e\u65af\u2014\u2014\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u521b\u4ef7\u5b66\u4f1a\u3001\u52a0\u5f71\uff1a    \n    \u65b0\u7eaa\u5143\u5b66\u9662 (VOON Phin Keong forthcoming. Calling Malaysia Home: Essays on Malaysian\n        Chinese, Kuala Lumpur: Soka Gakkai Malaysia and Kajang: New Era College).\n\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765 2002.\u300a\u6c99\u5df4\u7684\u5ba2\u5bb6\u4eba\u2014\u2014\u5ba2\u5bb6\u534e\u4eba\u8d21\u732e\u6c99\u5df4\u5dde\u73b0\u4ee3\u5316\u4e4b\u63a2\u8ba8\u300b, \u4e9a\u5e87\uff1a\u6c99\u5df4\u795e\u5b66\u9662 \n        (CHONG Tet Loi 2002. The Hakkas of Sabah: A Discourse on the Contributions of the Hakkas to\n          the Modernization of Sabah, Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Theological Seminary).\n\n\n\n2726\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n45\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 136-139\n\n\n\nBook Reviews\n\n\n\nMy Story, by Lim Goh Tong. Subang Jaya: Pelanduk Publications, 2004 (also available in \n\n\n\nChinese), vi + 187 pages (ISBN 967-978-859-8 (pb); 967-978-892-X (hb) \n\n\n\nBiography of Wee Kheng Chiang, by Lam Chee Kheung, Kuching: Wee Hood Teck & Co, \n\n\n\n2005 (available only in Chinese), iv + 169 pages (soft cover ISBN 983-99454-3-2)\n\n\n\nThe work and contributions of Malaysian Chinese to the progress of the nation are \n\n\n\ngenerally acknowledged. Yet claims of the community are not always backed up by reliable \n\n\n\ndocumented \u201cevidence\u201d. This is despite the fact that the Chinese have resided in Malacca \n\n\n\nfrom the fifteenth century and permanent Chinese settlements were scattered in parts of the \nMalay Peninsula from the time of Francis Light. Some of the oldest clans in Penang trace \n\n\n\ntheir settlement back to 13 generations. \n\n\n\nSadly, despite more than 200 years of settlement, the Chinese have little to show in terms \n\n\n\nof documented history or historical records. The community is not known for its appreciation \n\n\n\nof old records, be they in the form of genealogies, personal papers and biographies, or files \non Chinese associations, schools, temples, and other organizations. In view of the paucity of \n\n\n\nwritten documents and the absence of community archives, the appearance of biographies \n\n\n\nand autobiographies by or on Chinese entrepreneurs is indeed a welcome sign of change of \n\n\n\nattitude among Malaysian Chinese. \n\n\n\nIn general, the Chinese tend to keep a low profile and are loath to make public their life \nhistories. Many too are unwilling to share their experiences with private researchers who are \n\n\n\nlooked upon more with suspicion than understanding. Biographical research to date has been \n\n\n\nsporadic and include those on Khaw Soo Cheang (1797-1882), Yap Ah Loy (1837-1885), Wong \n\n\n\nAh Fook (1837-1918), Chan Wing (1873-1947), Tan Kak Kee (1874-1961) and a number of \n\n\n\nothers who are still active in public life. Some are serious studies by academics and others by \n\n\n\ntheir descendants or the biographers themselves. This is a healthy trend of development that \n\n\n\ncontributes positively towards the documentation of the history of Malaysia. \n\n\n\nThe tradition of biographical writing in Malaysia, especially on Chinese personalities, \n\n\n\nhas yet to take root as a recognized field of academic research. For one, the early pioneers \nand personalities are no longer around, others are unwilling to commit their experiences and \n\n\n\nachievements to paper or permit others to do so. Again, academics who have a \u201cvested\u201d \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews          137\n\n\n\ninterest in writing about the lives of past personalities are restricted to the historians or \n\n\n\nfreelancers. Research by the trained historians has led to excellent studies, such as those \n\n\n\nby Yong Chin Fatt on Tan Kak Kee (1989) and Jennifer Cushman on Khaw Soo Cheang \n\n\n\n(1991). A select few outside the confines of history have made valiant efforts in biographical \nstudies. These include Lim Pui Huen on Wong Ah Fook (2002) and Lam Chee Kheung on \n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang (2005). There are also those who try their hands in producing biographies \n\n\n\nof their illustrious ancestors, while a few \u201chigh achievers\u201d have taken steps to record their \n\n\n\nautobiographies. \n\n\n\nTwo welcome publications that have appeared recently are those on Wee Kheng Chiang \n\n\n\n(\u9ec4\u5e86\u660c1890-1978) and Lim Goh Tong (\u6797\u68a7\u68501918-2007). The former, by Sarawakian \n\n\n\nacademic Dr Lam Chee Kheung, is written in Chinese, and the latter is an autobiographical \n\n\n\naccount drafted in Chinese by Chew Sau Loong and in English by Ms Cheong Mei Sui.\n\n\n\nBorn a generation apart, these two pioneer entrepreneurs shared many similarities in \n\n\n\ntheir background and experiences. Wee was born in Kuching, Sarawak, and Lim in Anxi \n\n\n\nvillage, Fujian province. Both were Hokkiens and came from poor families. They grew up \n\n\n\nunder difficult and demanding circumstances that helped them to build up their resolve to \nsucceed in life. They learned many lessons from their early lives that enabled them to venture \n\n\n\ninto businesses ahead of their peers. Through their strict upbringing, hard work and foresight, \n\n\n\nthey charted their own rags-to-riches careers with remarkable enterprise. Wee became known \n\n\n\nas \u201cThe Uncrowned King of Sarawak\u201d and Lim reigned over one of the largest business \n\n\n\ncorporations in Malaysia and the East Asian region. \n\n\n\nWritten by an academic, Wee Kheng Chiang is more generous with details as the author \n\n\n\nhas the full cooperation of the family. The account provides insights not only into the family \n\n\n\nlife and business operations of Wee, but also his active involvement in community work and \n\n\n\nphilanthropy. Lim Gong Tong is a straight forward account by the autobiographer himself \n\n\n\nand without the slightest hint of self-aggrandizement. Major business deals and transactions \n\n\n\nare mentioned almost in passing without revealing the secrets of how crucial decisions and \n\n\n\njudgements are arrived at. \n\n\n\nThe two books take the readers on a journey to the different stages of the remarkable \n\n\n\nlives of their subjects. Both survived a harsh and early adulthood to lay the foundations of \n\n\n\ntheir enterprises, escaped death at the hands of Japanese invaders through sheer luck, and \n\n\n\nnavigated through the vicissitudes of policy changes after independence.\n\n\n\nIn business, both Wee and Lim started small, building up their ventures block by block \n\n\n\nthrough years of honest hard work, patience and unflinching resolve. They left behind lasting \nlegacies that are now thriving and expanding transnational businesses. Wee founded the \n\n\n\nUnited Overseas Bank (UOB), now a leading financial institution in Singapore, and Lim \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n138          Voon\n\n\n\nbuilt a sprawling business empire from his base in the highlands of Genting. They also saw \n\n\n\nthe decline of some of their ventures, for example, Wee\u2019s Sarawak business now remains \n\n\n\nin dormancy and Lim\u2019s joint-venture in banking has fizzled out. A comparison of these two \ngiants among Malaysian entrepreneurs reveals some interesting insights. \n\n\n\nThe first is the lessons that their youthful days and early careers brought to their business \nventures. Their keen minds and rational thinking led them to ventures that offered attractive \n\n\n\nprospects. These early ventures led to expansion into new ones. They had confidence in what \nthey did and seized opportunities when their peers saw nothing but risks. \n\n\n\nThe second is their family background and strict upbringing that instilled in them strong \n\n\n\ntraditional values that helped to strengthen their determination to excel. Both were imbued \n\n\n\nwith a strong sense of filial piety and gave their children an excellent education. They answered \nreadily the needs of society through generous acts of charity and in support of education. \n\n\n\nNext is the recognition of their peers, society and country. Both were rewarded by \n\n\n\nthe government and scaled social heights that were beyond all but the select few. Wee\u2019s \n\n\n\ncontributions to education and charities are documented. Lim remained largely quiet on \n\n\n\nthis issue but his contributions too were well-known to all. The Chinese believe that the \n\n\n\nbenevolent are well-rewarded with a good life and longevity. Both were abundantly blessed \n\n\n\non this count. \n\n\n\nAnother important insight is that Wee and Lim successfully passed on their baton \n\n\n\nof control to the next generation. This is particularly pertinent as Chinese businesses are \n\n\n\ncommonly afflicted by a \u201ccurse\u201d that wealth does not last three generations. Instead, the \nsecond generation of the Wee and Lim families has more than justified the trust of the founders \nby diversifying the original portfolios of the family enterprises.\n\n\n\nAnother element that may have escaped notice is that \u201cluck\u201d had smiled on Wee and Lim \n\n\n\nin the early stages of their business careers. The former married the daughter of his employer \n\n\n\nand eventually surpassed the fortunes of his father-in-law. The latter\u2019s plan to develop Genting \n\n\n\ninto a family retreat in the mountains turned into a casino through a suggestion from an \n\n\n\nofficial source. But one must not attribute business success to luck as it works only on those \nwho are enterprising, farsighted, and perceptive.\n\n\n\nIn all, one is impressed by the force of the spirit of ziqiang buxi, or unremitting efforts \n\n\n\ntowards self-advancement, that is manifested in the lives of Wee and Lim. By their bold \n\n\n\naction, keen foresight and unwavering efforts, they were destined to be truly remarkable \n\n\n\nentrepreneurs who became iconic figures during their lifetime. \nFor obvious reasons, both accounts are meant to be informative rather than interpretative \n\n\n\nor analytical. These books are not to be judged on their academic merits or demerits but \n\n\n\nessentially in throwing insights into the supremacy of the human spirit and the personal \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews          139\n\n\n\nchallenge to rise above one\u2019s circumstances in the spirit of xiqiang buxi. Both books are non-\n\n\n\nacademic but this fact does not in anyway detract from the lessons that may be learned from \n\n\n\ntwo distinguished entrepreneurs in different areas of business endeavours. The broad strokes \n\n\n\nof the brush in both cases are tantalizingly sketchy in painting panoramic scenarios that reveal \n\n\n\nenough details only to whet one\u2019s appetite for more. Without doubt, both may easily be filled \nwith more details and penetrating observations to enhance their presentation and authority as \n\n\n\nsources of reference. \n\n\n\nFrom a reading of both the books, one may be tempted to ask if the success stories \n\n\n\nof Wee and Lim are repeatable. The answer is obviously negative as each offers a unique \n\n\n\nbusiness model circumscribed by the special conditions of the time. The readers come face \n\n\n\nto face with two outstanding personalities who embody the quintessential qualities of the \n\n\n\nsuccessful entrepreneurs. Their success is the epitome of the self-made entrepreneurs guided \n\n\n\nby a belief in themselves and a set of age-old moral and cultural values in the conduct of \n\n\n\nbusiness and their demeanour in the public and private spheres.\n\n\n\nJust as these remarkable entrepreneurs have contributed immensely to the development \n\n\n\nof the country in the past, many are similarly carrying out the tradition in the contemporary \n\n\n\nperiod. Yet their lives would have counted for little if the stories behind their enterprise \n\n\n\nand contributions remain undocumented. In this context, the need for more biographical \n\n\n\nstudies of distinguished personalities will certainly help to fill the immense gap that exists \nin the literature on the entrepreneurial spirit of Chinese business people. These two modest \n\n\n\npublications may yet inspire others to undertake biographical studies to add to the collective \n\n\n\nmemory of the nation.\n\n\n\nVOON Phin Keong \n\n\n\nNew Era College \n\n\n\nMalaysia \n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training in \nMalaysian Chinese High Schools: \n\n\n\nCurrent Situation, Characteristics, and Issues\n\n\n\nWONG Shwu Huey *\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n       If education is to equip students with the basic knowledge to teach, then in-service education \nis to enable teachers to raise their teaching competence and to cope with changing demands to keep \nabreast of the times. Hence, in-service training is both a difficult and challenging task. This study \nis based on the teacher training programmes that are currently managed by New Era College of \nMalaysia. Over time, Chinese secondary education in Malaysia has evolved a system for teacher \neducation to meet local requirements and to develop a model of in-service training in \ncollaboration with foreign universities. This study highlights the current scene in teacher training \nin Chinese education and to examine its major characteristics, constraints, issues and emerging \ntrends. The cumulative experience acquired from these training programmes will provide useful \nreference and guidance on the practical aspects of implementation and management of teacher train-\ning in Malaysia and even in other countries of Southeast Asia.\n\n\n\nKey words: Chinese Independent High Schools, in-service teacher training, characteristics, issues     \n                     and trends\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n         The training of teachers is an integral part of an educational system. The \u201cquality\u201d \nof education is determined by the \u201cquality\u201d of the teachers. How well teachers perform \nin a professional and competent manner is in turn dependent on the type of training that they \nreceive. Hence teacher training is an indispensable service to impart the latest principles of \npedagogy and concepts of education to trainees who will be entrusted with the arduous task of \neducating an entire generation of students.\n       Malaysia has a relatively long history of teacher training. The earliest centre to train teachers \nserving in Malay schools was established in Singapore in the late nineteenth century. Similar \ntraining centres were initiated in the states of Perak, Melaka, Kelantan, and Johor between 1898 \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 31-45\n\n\n\n*   Dr. WONG Shwu Huey (\u738b\u6dd1\u6167) is Senior Lecturer and Head, Department of Education, New Era  \n    College, Kajang. E-mail: shwuhuey.wong@newera.edu.my \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong32\n\n\n\nand 1919. These separate entities were subsequently closed down when the Sultan Idris Training \nCollege was established in 1922 in Tanjong Malim, Perak (see Academiatutorials, 2010).\n          To cater to the needs for trained teachers in English schools, teacher training centres \nwere set up in Kuala Lumpur in 1905 and in Penang in 1907. But it was not until after the \nJapanese Occupation of 1941-1945 that the teacher training programme was put on a firmer \nfooting when trainee teachers were dispatched to England for training. \n     The Kirby and Brinsford Teachers\u2019 Colleges began to conduct two-year courses in 1951 \nand 1955 respectively (Academiatutorials, 2020). The training programme lasted for about \nten years, during which as many as 1,500 teachers and over 400 teacher-trainers graduated at \nKirby (Sunday Star, 23 March 2014). These colleges succeeded in grooming a core cohort of \nteachers who were highly proficient in English. Today, the Malaysian Ministry of Education \nruns a network of 27 specialized teacher training institutions in Peninsular and East Malaysia. \nThese cater to the needs of separate subjects covering various disciplines and languages. \nMost of these institutes are organized under departments such as Malay Studies; language \nunits dealing with English, Chinese and Tamil; Islamic Religion and Moral Studies; Science \nand Environmental Studies; Social Studies; Information and Technology; and Physical Education \n(Almacen, 2015). Teacher education at the university level began in the University of Malaya \nin 1963 when the School of Education was upgraded into a Faculty in 1965 and headed by \nRuth Wong (Wong, 2013: 33). The training of graduate teachers was later extended to \nUniversiti Sains Malaysia in 1969 and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 1971.1\n\n\n\n         The situation of teacher training to serve the needs of Chinese education is a different story \naltogether. This is particularly so with Chinese secondary education. In Malaysia, education \nin the medium of Mandarin, more popularly known as \u201cChinese education\u201d, occupies a \nunique position in the education system of the country. Outside Mainland China, Hong Kong/\nMacao and Taiwan, Malaysia is the only country with an \u201cintegrated\u201d system of Chinese \neducation from primary to tertiary levels. Although Chinese primary schools are part of the \nnational education system, those at the higher levels are not. Sixty Chinese secondary schools \ndistributed in some of the larger towns of Malaysia operate as \u201cindependent\u201d entities. These are \npopularly known as Chinese Independent High Schools (CIHS). A nationwide Chinese \ncommunity-sponsored education body known as the United Chinese School Committees\u2019 \nAssociation of Malaysia (or Dong Zong in short) administers a uniform examination for students \nin year 12, and some of these schools also participate in  the government secondary school \nexamination offered under the national education system. The special CIHS certificate, known \nas the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) is hitherto not recognized by the government \nbut is accepted as a qualification for direct admission to an increasing number of foreign \nuniversities in such countries as Australia, Britain, Canada, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, New \nZealand, Singapore, and the United States of America. Chinese high school graduates have \nbeen worthy of their credentials and have performed well in foreign universities.2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training 33\n\n\n\n         Despite the relatively long history of Chinese education in Malaysia, it is beset with numerous \nproblems and constraints that pose serious challenges to the Chinese community. Operating in \na multi-ethnic setting in which Malay is the official language and English is the second \nlanguage, Chinese education occupies a marginal position that is kept alive by sustained \nfinancial and moral support of the Chinese community. Operating under testing circumstances, \nthese schools are confronted by problems of funding, shortage of qualified teachers, and \ncontention with official policies, among others. \n       Numerous studies on Chinese education in Malaysia have been published in the recent \npast. These have generally emphasized the plight of Chinese education arising from the ethnic and \nlinguistic complexities of Malaysia and the political contestations between the government and \nthe Chinese community (see L.E. Tan, 1997; \u90d1\u826f\u6811/Tay Liang Soo, 1998-2003; Lee, 2011; Kua, \n2008). However, the issue of teacher training has barely received any attention.\n        Despite official indifference, Chinese schools constitute an important community project \nthat is dedicated to nurturing the talents of the young. Over time, the need for qualified \nteachers has become indispensable and the pressure for a constant supply of such teachers is \nmounting. Back in 1983, the academic qualifications of CIHS teachers were generally \nsatisfactory, as 57 per cent among them possessed the bachelor degree and 2.6 per cent had higher \ndegrees. It is not possible to ascertain the number who had been trained to teach. From the 3.1 \nper cent among non-graduates who had teacher training certificates (Lee, 2011: 179), the \ncorresponding proportion among graduate teachers could not have been any higher. A real \nissue confronting the CIHS is therefore the shortfall of qualified teachers. In 2007, the student \nenrollment and teaching staff of CIHS were 55,818 and 3,215 respectively (Lee, 2011: 234).\n        In the absence of access to official teacher training, a way has to be found to meet \nthe training needs of this army of teachers. In 2007, Dong Zong and the CIHS management, \nthrough its National Working Committee, launched a package of training programmes to meet \nthe long-term needs of the CIHS. As a community-funded college founded by the Dong Jiao \nZong Higher Learning Centre Bhd., New Era College (NEC) was charged with the \nduties to co-ordinate and supervise the programme.3 NEC\u2019s Department of Education has \nsince launched a teacher training programme in collaboration with selected foreign universities \nand the CIHS.4 The earliest training programme was conducted in several regional centres to \nreach out to the teachers. Besides the College itself, four other centres were located in Zhong \nHua High School in Kuala Lumpur, Han Jiang High School in Penang, Jian Guo High School \nin Sabah, and the Perak Council of Chinese School Committee (Lee, 2011: 233).   \n        This study will examine the hitherto neglected subject of teacher training in CIHS. The first \npart examines the current situation of teacher training and its various constraints, followed by \na study of the design and features of the training programme. The final section will deal with \nsome broad issues and trends in teacher training.    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\nCurrent Situation and Constraints of In-Service Teacher Training\n\n\n\n         Perhaps the earliest instance in the training of Chinese school teachers took place in Kuala \nLumpur in July 1924 in an attempt to supply locally-trained teachers to the Chinese schools in \nMalaya (AR on Education in FMS for the Year 1924, in Supplement to FMS, 1925: 18, quoted \nby A.B. Tan, 2015: 190). However, it was only after the Japanese Occupation that the Chinese \ncommunity began to focus their attention on the development of Chinese education. Two \nnationwide organizations were inaugurated in the early 1950s, one mobilizing the teachers \nand the other the board of directors of Chinese schools. The former was the United Chinese \nTeachers\u2019 Association (Jiao Zong in short) established in 1951 and the other was Dong Zong \nestablished in 1954. The latter\u2019s daily administration is spread over eight bureaux, including \none charged with the responsibility of managing the work of teacher training of CIHS.\n         The 60 CIHS in Malaysia boast a current enrollment of around 60,000 students (\u8463\u603b\u8003\u8bd5\n\n\n\n\u5c40/Dong Zong Examination Bureau, 2012: 411). This number represents a substantial increase \nover the total of just more than 41,000 in 1980 (Lee, 2011: 179). In the past four decades, more \nthan half a million students have graduated from these schools. A recent trend is the admission \nof an increasing number of Malay and Indian students in CIHS. This is perhaps a reflection of \nthe quality and resilience of the Chinese education system that has been able to stand the test \nof time.\n\n\n\nCurrent Situation of In-Service Teacher Training\n       The current teaching staff strength in CIHS exceeds 3,900 in number, comprising a \nmulti-ethnic team of Chinese, Malay and Indian teachers who respectively account for 87.9, \n5.1 and 5.9 per cent of the total (\u8463\u603b\u5b66\u52a1\u4e0e\u5e08\u8d44\u5c40\u5e08\u8d44\u7ec4/Dong Zong Schools and Teachers \nBureau, 2013). The proportion of non-Chinese teachers is likely to increase in the teaching of the \nnational and English languages.  \n     The Education Affairs and Teaching Personnel divisions of Dong Zong are assigned to \nimplement and manage the teacher training programme. The scope of work of these divisions  \ncovers the following aspects: \n        (a) Training of novice teachers: to assist them to grasp basic professional teaching skills.\n        (b) Subject training: to improve teaching skills through the competent use of teaching materials  \n              and methods. \n         (c)  Professional training for Form Teachers: to raise the professional quality and performance\n             of Form/Class teachers through short-term and intensive training courses. \n          (d) Management training for senior administrative staff: to provide short-term training \n                 programmes in co-operation with relevant organizations in China or Taiwan for the \n             purpose of upgrading administrative skills and to nurture a core of future administrators.     \n     Training that is aimed at upgrading teaching and administrative skills is accomplished \nthrough a variety of approaches and methods. These include the following components: special \nlectures or workshops conducted by invited specialists and academics and are meant to raise \n\n\n\n34\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\nawareness on educational trends, teaching methods and skills; discussion groups among teachers \nto exchange ideas and experiences on teaching, curriculum, instruction materials and methods for \nthe professional improvement of teachers; mobilization of experienced teaching staff in different \nareas of specialization to mentor middle and junior level staff and to help them in their professional \ndevelopment; and special sessions to observe and to share their thoughts on instructions among \nteachers from different schools (\u738b\u6dd1\u6167/Wong Shwu Huey, 2012).   \n       In recent years, a depository of resources in teacher training has been built up in the \nform of services provided by several local institutions of higher learning. The liberalization of \nhigher education in Malaysia has encouraged more educational exchanges and co-operation \nbetween local and foreign universities. Teacher education programmes in Chinese and English \nare available at Southern University College, HELP University, and Universiti Tunku Abdul \nRahman. These programmes are an important resource and reference for the training of teachers \nof CIHS.      \n       Taiwan has for decades been a destination for higher education for graduates of Chinese \nhigh schools, and Mainland China has become an attractive alternative in recent years. These \ngraduates as well as some from local universities form the backbone of the teaching staff in \nCIHS. Other than Dong Zong, the Taiwan and Mainland China graduates alumni have \ncontributed positively to the promotion of teacher training in CIHS. They have spared no \nefforts to bring in experienced teachers from Taiwan and Mainland China, promote exchanges \non teaching, and sponsor degree programmes in the teaching of Chinese and related courses. \nThe final outcome has been to enhance the professional quality of CIHS teachers.5\n\n\n\nConstraints and Problems in Teacher Training   \n   To undertake teacher training without official assistance is a gigantic task indeed. The \nconstraints and problems that have to be faced and overcome are numerous. This issue may be \nexamined from four perspectives pertaining to the desire for training, planning, available \nresources, and management of training programmes.       \n         Unlike the days of limited job opportunities several decades ago when teaching was held in \nhigh social esteem and a profession of choice among fresh graduates, it is now often considered \nas an employment of last resort. The purpose of education today is increasingly examination-\noriented and results-based; teachers are forced by the demands of the time to produce \u201cresults\u201d. \nA key performance index by which a teacher\u2019s prospects for advancement are assessed is the \nsuccess rates of students and the brilliance of their examination scores. Teachers are required \nto spend large amounts of time and energy to help students to excel in examinations. They bear \nmuch of the blame when students perform poorly. Additionally, teaching in CIHS is not \nconfined to imparting knowledge alone but also to act as class mentors as well as to plan, \nexecute, and supervise numerous extra-curriculum activities. The heavy teaching and \nadministrative workload has effectively kept many away from professional training. This in \nturn affects enrollment in many in-service training programmes or frustrated efforts to achieve \nthe desired results.\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\n         Another constraint in the running of teacher training is the lack of planning. A primary \ndisincentive to potential trainees is the timing and duration of the training programme. A \ncommon feature is the holding of a \u201cone-off\u201d 2-3 hour or a half-day session of lectures and \ndiscussions on a selected theme. Many trainees struggle to engage themselves totally on the \nsubject in a productive manner. The contents of training tend to focus largely on teaching skills \nwith little attention on the administrative set-up of schools and the personal development of the \ntrainees. The training often takes the form of special lectures by foreign or local specialists, or \nsessions on the sharing of teaching experience with senior teachers. As the exercise tends to \nfocus largely on tips on teaching, it is unlikely to stimulate meaningful interactions or lively \nexchanges of ideas between instructors and trainees.     \n       The training of CIHS teachers operates on the limited resources of several stakeholders. \nThese are non-profit educational organizations headed by Dong Zong and complemented by \nNEC, the CIHS themselves, several private universities, and the Taiwan and Mainland China \ngraduates alumni. While united in their good intention to help the CIHS, they have yet to pool their \nconsiderable resources effectively and to act in unison. Instead, each acts on its own agenda \nand the final outcome is the replication of efforts at the expense of a uniform approach \nto teacher training.          \n       The different stakeholders generally appoint a unit with one to three executive staff \nto handle matters pertaining to teacher training. From the current organizational set-up, it is \nobvious that there is a lack of suitable personnel to run an efficient nationwide teacher \ntraining programme. The availability of personnel who is sufficiently knowledgeable or \ncompetent to conceptualize and plan an effective teacher training programme will have a direct \nimpact on the success of the entire exercise.        \n       The current situation among the teaching staff in CIHS is that almost one-sixth have \nnot received any formal training in education. Despite their academic credentials, their basic \nknowledge of education and its structure can only be strengthened through in-service training in \nthe art of teaching to raise the level of their performance.       \n\n\n\nThe Design and Characteristics of Training Programmes\n\n\n\n    In co-operation with selected foreign universities, the Department of Education of NEC \nadministers under-and post-graduate programmes on teacher training and education in general. \nThe programmes are offered in Mandarin to adapt to the needs of CIHS teachers in the areas \nof education, teaching, and administration. Two major aspects that deserve attention are those \ndealing with the design of systematic training programmes and a three-step training model.\n                                                                                                                                                                                                                               \nDesign of Systematic Training Programmes\n        The last two decades have witnessed a deepening commitment among the CIHS in teacher \ntraining in line with the trend of educational reform in many parts of the world. NEC too has \nresponded accordingly by putting in place collaborative schemes with foreign universities to \n\n\n\n36\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\noffer various training programmes to meet the needs of CIHS teachers. Training programmes \nhave been introduced in three broad areas aimed at raising the professional level of teachers, \npromoting their personal development, and opening access to research-based post-graduate studies. \n\n\n\nTraining for Professional Advancement\n        In 2013, available statistics compiled by Dong Zong show that 1,553 out of 3,936 CIHS \nteachers in possessed professional qualifications in education. That this number represents \nonly 39.5 per cent of the total teaching staff indicates that six out of every ten teachers have yet \nto be properly trained to teach professionally (Table 1).    \n\n\n\nTable 1. Qualification in Education among CIHS Teachers, 2013\n\n\n\n                            Source: Dong Zong Schools and Teachers Bureau, 2013\n\n\n\n        A professional diploma in education, launched in 1998, focuses on education per se \nand to impart teaching skills. The primary aim is to upgrade basic knowledge concerning the \nteaching profession and, through the integration of theory and practice, to enhance the teaching \nskills of trainee teachers. The curriculum is centred on teaching, with courses on education \npsychology, principles of education, class management and related subjects, and supplemented \nby observations on classroom teaching in the parent or other schools (Table 2). \n       Upon completion of the programme, trainees are subjected to teaching inspection by \nNEC-appointed observers. These observers are experienced lecturers from local colleges and \nuniversities as well as senior teachers from the CIHS. Trainee teachers are assessed on their \ncompetence in combining theoretical principles and real-life teaching practices.  \n\n\n\nTable 2. Professional Diploma in Education, 2013\n\n\n\n                              Source: Department of Education, New Era College, 2013\n\n\n\nQualification in Education\nEducation\nWithout education\nTotal\n\n\n\nNumber of Persons\n1,553\n2,383\n3,936\n\n\n\nPercentage\n 39.5\n 60.5\n100.0\n\n\n\n37\n\n\n\nCredits\n4\n4\n4\n4\n4\n4\n3\n3\n\n\n\nCourse Title\nEducation Psychology \nPrinciples of Education\nClass Management\nMultimedia-assisted Teaching and Action Research\nMalaysian Education Studies\nSchool Counselling Work\nObservation on Teaching I\nObservation on Teaching II\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\nDevelopment-Oriented Training \n       Emphasis on professional training has generated a demand for \u201cdevelopment-oriented\u201d \nprogrammes in recent years. Easy access to knowledge and information on the teaching \nprofession will enable teachers to raise and broaden their expertise in teaching and in \nvarious forms of \u201cschool-oriented\u201d training. The latter is based on the development needs of the \nschool and teachers receive on-the-job training to raise their professional performance.                        \n      Based on the special needs of different schools, NEC provides advice and assistance in \ndevising training programmes and in mobilizing suitable specialists to serve as trainers. The \nthematic focus of these training programmes falls under four broad categories, namely, education, \nteaching, management, and counseling (Table 3).     \n\n\n\nTable 3. Thematic Focus of In-Service Training Programmes\n\n\n\n         Source: Department of Education, New Era College, 2013\n\n\n\n     As a base for the practice of teaching, the school is the cradle for the professional development \nof teachers. As such training on the job is a way to increase the teachers\u2019 self-worth and to \novercome the lack of competence. At the same time, training programmes may allow the school \nmanagement and teachers to work together to seek solutions to problems. Equally important, \ntraining provides a mechanism by which the potentials of teachers and the resources of each \nschool may be fully exploited. In short, training is targeted to meet specific and practical needs. \nIt is an inevitable trend of development in the training of teachers in CIHS. Between 2010 \nand 2013, the demand for in-service training has increased considerably from less than a \nhandful of classes in each of the first two years to 21 and 17 respectively in the last two. \n\n\n\n38\n\n\n\nFocus\n\n\n\nEducation\nTeaching\n\n\n\nManagement\n\n\n\nCounselling\n\n\n\nOthers\n\n\n\nArea of Emphasis\n\n\n\nEducation Management and Leadership\nPrinciples of Teaching\nMedium of Instruction\nTeaching Evaluation\nTeaching Observation\nSchool Operation and Management\nSchool Crisis and Conflict Management\nClassroom Operation\nPrinciples and Practice of Counseling\nPsychology and Emotions of Teachers\nGroup Dynamics\n\n\n\nNumber of Programmes\n2010-2013\n\n\n\n9\n9\n1\n3\n5\n\n\n\n1\n2\n6\n5\n10\n2\n2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\nTowards Post-Graduate Training \n      An important component of in-service training takes the form of post-graduate courses. \nThe objective is to raise the awareness of teachers on new pedagogic and theoretical insights \nand trends and to increase their ability to explore and reflect on these developments. A scheme \nwas launched by Dong Zong in 2003 in collaboration with Central China Normal University in \nWuhan to facilitate the pursuit of higher degrees in education by CIHS teachers during school \nvacations. Management of this scheme was transferred to the Department of Education of NEC \nin 2008. To date, a total of six doctoral and ten masters candidates have completed their studies, \nwhile another eight are about to graduate, of whom six are for the Ph.Ds.  \n         It was also in 2008 that NEC initiated its collaboration with Taiwan\u2019s Zhanghua/\u5f70\u5316 University \nto initiate a masters programme on school management to nurture teachers in management \nskills. The inaugural class in 2011 attracted 21 persons, followed by 16 candidates in 2012 and \n25 in 2013. The course of study consists of 16 subjects conducted at NEC by academic staff \nfrom Zhanghua University and a viva voce on the thesis in Taiwan (Table 4). This programme \nis to serve as the foundation by which to build up an administrative corps of professional  \npersonnel in the Chinese schools.\n\n\n\nTable 4. Master\u2019s Programme in School Administration   \n\n\n\n                               \n                               Source: Department of Education, New Era College, 2013\n\n\n\n39\n\n\n\nCourse Title\nSchool Administration\nEducation Psychology\nDevelopment Psychology\nTopics in Psychological Health\nMethods in Education Studies\nMulti-Cultural Education\nEducation Statistics\nSocial Psychology\nYouth Psychology\nProblems of Practical Education\nEducation Aesthetics\nAction Studies\nMoral Principles\nTopics in Curricular Studies\nClass Management\nOrganizational Psychology\n\n\n\nCredits\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\nFormation of a Three-Step Training Model\n       Past training programmes had contained components incorporating the principles of theory \nand teaching practice. These were often assembled and presented as teaching materials that were \nnot always easy to understand. To be effective, the in-service training programme should be one \nin which theory and practice are well integrated. It is clearly not advisable and unrealistic to \nover-emphasize theories at the expense of practice, while an overdose of practice will marginalize \nthe importance of theory. Hence, in order to place in-service training of CIHS teachers on solid \nground, due attention must be given to the proper integration of the principles of teaching both \nin theory and practice.                     \n       Training under this model of equal emphasis on theory and practice involves three aspects \nof work. The first is to provide the teachers with basic theoretical courses. These will emphasize \neducation psychology, principles of pedagogy, teaching, counselling, issues and trends of \neducation in Malaysia and related subjects. These courses are to strengthen the teachers\u2019 grasp \nof the structure of theoretical knowledge in the broad discipline of education. The next is \nto provide training on teaching that is relevant to real-life situations and modern needs. This \nincludes teaching practice and observation on performance. Exposing teachers to practical \nperformance in the class will enable them to experience how the best practices in teaching \nmay be acquired for their professional development. Lastly, teachers may pursue post-graduate \nstudies and research on specific aspects of teaching and education. They will then begin to \nappreciate the rules and principles of education and thereby to deepen their understanding of \neducation issues and related problems. Equipped with these abilities and aided by their experience \nin teaching, the teachers are then better prepared to face the challenges of Chinese education \nand to formulate appropriate strategies to safeguard its future.                                \n\n\n\nIssues and Trends in Teacher Training\n \n       One of the demands of contemporary reform and development in education is the need \nfor professionalism among teachers. In-service training is an essential approach to elevate the \nteacher\u2019s overall character and professionalism. Efforts towards this end have to take into \naccount specific issues and trends in in-service training.\n\n\n\nIssues Concerning In-service Training\n        The collaboration between Dong Zong and the CIHS in the provision of in-service teacher \ntraining has been going on for 17 years since 1998. This joint programme has produced several \npositive outcomes. From the perspective of implementation, the following items demand \nspecial attention.\n\n\n\n40\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\nRoles of Training Providers and School Management     \n         It is necessary for training providers and the management of individual schools to have \na common understanding of their respective roles. In-service training adds value to the worth \nof each trained teacher especially in the enrichment of experience and enhancement of skills. \nHowever, from the perspective of the school, what does in-service training bring? What are the \nthings that teachers ought to know and need to learn? On the objectives of in-service training, \nthe training providers should seek to match the needs of both the school and those of the teachers. \nIt is essential that the training provider and school management have a common understanding \nas to the maximum benefits that trainees may derive from their training. In the long-run, the \nrole of in-service and other forms of training is to promote the professional development of \nteachers and the overall interests of the school.                                    \n\n\n\nCommitment and Acceptance of In-service Training \n      In-service teacher training is adapted to meet the actual needs and situations of CIHS. \nIts emphasis is therefore placed on defined objectives, focus, and practical considerations. \nIn this connection, it is important to ascertain teachers\u2019 attitudes towards training. In view of \nthe heavy workload of teachers, some may tend to disregard the relevance of training and lose \ninterest or waver in their commitment. Excessive or inappropriate training contents may arouse a \nsubconscious reaction against training. Care is therefore needed to devise a programme that is \nsufficiently stimulating to engage the commitment of the trainees rather than to turn them into \nindifferent passengers. The lack of commitment of the target group of teachers will only serve \nto nullify attempts to provide in-service training. \n\n\n\nProfessional Approach to In-service Training  \n        As the CIHS do not have the expertise to train their own teachers, it is inevitable that \nthey work with academic institutions. An effective training programme is determined by \nthe level of professionalism shown by the training providers and the school management. \nTeacher training is more than imparting skills in teaching but has to take into account the \ntrainees\u2019 desire for self-advancement, the need to stimulate their passion and commitment to \ntraining, and the specific requirements of the education of teachers in general. Fulfilling these \nobjectives would call for a professional approach to teacher training by the trainers and school \nmanagement.       \n\n\n\nTrends in the Development of In-service Training\n        In-service training is an essential step in helping employees to keep abreast of changes \nand developments in their professions. In the case of secondary Chinese education, the discussion \nof teacher training has to take note of the bigger picture of development trends in education in \ngeneral.       \n\n\n\n41\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\nThe Diverse Features of In-service Training \n     In-service teacher training in CIHS shares certain similarities with developments and \npractices in the country and elsewhere. Diversity is one of the main features of the training \ninfrastructure that has been built up to meet the many requirements of the CIHS. There is \na diversity of training providers comprising local and foreign institutions of higher learning as \nwell as administrative divisions dealing with teaching in Dong Zong and the individual schools. \nTraining programmes are presented under different models on an open-access or in-house basis, \nor they may combine the functions of teacher training and research. Training may also take the \nform of basic degrees in education, special certificate classes in education, short-term training, \nvacation courses, seminars and lectures, and conferences.       \n       The diversity of training providers, models and methods have enabled the CIHS to satisfy \ntheir specific needs and circumstances. It is this diversity that encourages the schools and \nteachers to upgrade their skills and to chart their future, and to raise the overall qualifications \nof teachers and their performance. \n\n\n\nPerformance and Terms of Service\n   The \u201cvalue-added\u201d worth of teachers through in-service training is reflected in their \nperformance. Improved performance deserves corresponding improvement in the terms \nof employment. The integration of performance and benefits has a motivational impact on the \nwork and morale of the teachers. Promoting the well-being of staff produces spill-over effects on \nthe student body and the all-round performance of the school and its reputation. \n\n\n\nEmphasis on Theoretical Foundation of In-service Training  \n         Under the concept of \u201clifelong education\u201d that is being advocated in many countries, \nthe theoretical development of in-service training is receiving increased attention. Research \nhas demonstrated that in-service training is meant to promote and drive the professional \ndevelopment of teachers. Hence \u201clifelong education\u201d may be viewed as the theoretical basis of \nin-service training and the guiding principle by which teachers educate themselves throughout \ntheir career. This is radically different from the \u201cone-off\u201d training in a normal or teachers\u2019 \ncollege or university. In-service training allows teachers to build upon what was learned \npreviously and at the same time motivate them to keep abreast of the expanding and changing \npool of knowledge.\n\n\n\nEmphasis on the Practicality and Comprehensiveness of Training \n       Modern-day teacher training has gone beyond imparting basic knowledge and the principles \nof teaching, but has broadened its scope to include strengthening teachers\u2019 social and economic \nawareness. Their training too is designed to improve their social skills, personal character, \nindependent thinking, rapport with and understanding of students, responsibility to school and \nsociety, and professional conduct. The contents of training have also expanded beyond transferring \n\n\n\n42\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\nskills but also emphasize what is practical and what are possible future trends. This is the \ncoupling of self-realization with the ability to overcome practical issues of education and those \nof education reform. The training of CIHS teachers in recent years is making an attempt to \nkeep up with the footsteps of education reform in other countries. This is to veer away from \nthe past framework of skills training and to follow a path that is adapted to the requirements of  \nthe CIHS in Malaysia.    \n\n\n\nConclusion\n \n        Training the teacher on the job is a trend that is increasingly important and driven \nby the wheel of change of the information age. Arising from the \u201cindependence\u201d of secondary \neducation in the Chinese medium in Malaysia, teacher training has consumed the efforts \nof different generations of dedicated groups to bring it to fruition. The evolution and \nimprovements in teacher training will benefit immensely the development of Chinese education \nin Malaysia. With this additional function of training, the system of Chinese education is now \nmore complete and comprehensive than ever.\n     Teacher training at the service of the CIHS is still in its infancy. Further development \nis required to evolve a training programme that is more comprehensive to satisfy long-term \nneeds. Accumulated experiences and insights would enable fine-tuning and upgrading so that \nthe system becomes more effective in helping teachers to cope with the ever-changing scenario \nof modern education. Viewed from this perspective, the training programme of CIHS teachers \nin Malaysia is a development in the right direction as the schools will reduce their dependence \non foreign-trained teachers. Equally significant, the programme has put in place a workable \nsystem of training that has the potential to meet the regional needs of Chinese education in \nSoutheast Asia.\n\n\n\nNotes\n \n\n\n\n1   For a discussion on teacher training administered by the government and selected public universities,  \n     see Lee, N.N., 2002.   \n2   Dong Zong tracked the distribution of students by countries for 2012. The 56 out of 60 CIHS  \n       that responded to a questionnaire survey showed a total graduating cohort of 7,017 students. Of       \n      these, 5,326 students (76%) opted to further their studies, 1,051 (15%) chose to work, and 640 (9%)          \n         did not respond. Of the 5,326 who continued with tertiary education, half were enrolled in local  \n     private universities and four out of ten in foreign universities. The most popular foreign destinations  \n     were Taiwan (1,316 students), Singapore (407), Mainland China (129), and smaller numbers  \n     to Australia, England, Ireland and Hong Kong (\u8463\u603b/Dong Zong, 2012). In 2015 the state government  \n     of Sarawak extends formal recognition of the UEC.\n3    The Dong Jiao Zong Higher Learning Centre is the legal entity that establishes New Era College.  \n     This Centre is jointly instituted by Dong Jiao Zong and Merdeka University Limited with representatives   \n     to its board of directors. This board in turn nominates selected members to serve as members of the  \n     New Era College Council that is responsible for formulating policies on development and related \n     matters.       \n\n\n\n43\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong\n\n\n\n4    Besides being tasked with the mission of administering teacher training, the Department of Education of  \n     NEC currently offers degree programmes on early childhood education and the teaching of Chinese  \n     as a foreign language. \n5   Academic linkages between NEC and Taiwan began soon after NEC was established in 1997. The  \n     founding organizations of New Era College, namely, Dong Zong and Jiao Zong, had sought the \n     co-operation of Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Education on twinning academic programmes in the late 1990s  \n     (\u6559\u80b2\u90e8\u4fa8\u6c11\u6559\u80b2\u59d4\u5458\u4f1a/Ministry of Education Overseas Chinese Education Committee, 1999: 46). \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nALMACEN, Bayani Ursolino 2015. Teacher education program: the Malaysian perspective. www. academia. \n        edu/428150/Teacher_Training_Program_The_ Malaysian_Perspective.\nAcademiatutorials/blogspot.com 2010. Teacher training in Malaysia. http://academiatutorials/blogspot/           \n        com/2010/11/teacher-education-in-malaysia. html.\nKUA Kia Soong 2008. The Chinese Schools in Malaysia: A Protean Saga, Kajang: New Era College.\nLEE, Molly N.N. 2002. Teacher education in Malaysia: current issues and future prospects. In Teacher  \n        Education: Dilemmas and Prospects, edited by Elwyn Thomas, London and New York: Routledge,  \n        57-67.\nLEE Ting Hui 2011. Chinese Schools in Peninsular Malaysia: The Struggle for Survival, Singapore:  \n        ISEAS Publishing. \nTAN Ai Boay 2015. The Making of Chinese Society of Perak, 1874-1941, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, \n        Department of History, University of Malaya.\nTAN Liok Ee 1997. The Politics of Chinese Education in Malaya 1945-1961, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford  \n        University Press.\nWONG Hee Ong 2013. Ruth Wong: Educationist and Teacher Extraordinaire,  Petaling Jaya: Strategic  \n        Information and Research Development Centre.\n\u8463\u603b 2012.\u300a2012\u5e74\u5168\u56fd\u534e\u6587\u72ec\u4e2d\u6bd5\u4e1a\u751f\u5347\u5b66\u6982\u51b5\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u4f1a\u603b       \n    \u4f1a. (Dong Zong 2012. Report on the 2012 Investigation on the Further Studies of Students, Kuala  \n        Lumpur).  \n----- \u8003\u8bd5\u5c40 2012.\u300a2012\u5e74\u5de5\u4f5c\u62a5\u544a\u4e66\u2014\u5168\u56fd\u534e\u6587\u72ec\u7acb\u4e2d\u5b66\u7edf\u4e00\u8003\u8bd5\u5404\u9879\u7edf\u8ba1\u7b80\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a \n    \u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u4f1a\u603b\u4f1a(Dong Zong Examination Bureau 2012. 2012 Working Report:   \n        Report on Chinese Independent High Schools Unified Examination, Kuala Lumpur).  \n----- \u8463\u603b\u5b66\u52a1\u4e0e\u5e08\u8d44\u5c40\u5e08\u8d44\u7ec4 2013.\u300a2013\u5e74\u5168\u56fd\u534e\u6587\u72ec\u4e2d\u6559\u5e08\u57fa\u672c\u8d44\u6599\u8c03\u67e5\u5206\u6790\u62a5\u544a\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a   \n    \u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u4f1a\u603b\u4f1a(Dong Zong 2013. Report on the 2013 Analysis of the Statistics on  \n        Teachers in Chinese Independent High Schools, Kuala Lumpur).   \n\u6559\u80b2\u90e8\u4fa8\u6c11\u6559\u80b2\u59d4\u5458\u4f1a\u7f16 1999.\u300a\u4fa8\u751f\u6559\u80b2\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u6559\u80b2\u90e8\u4fa8\u6c11\u6559\u80b2\u59d4\u5458\u4f1a (Editorial Committee  \n        on Overseas Chinese Education, Ministry of Education 1999. Education of Overseas Chinese Students,  \n         Taipei).  \n\u738b\u6dd1\u6167 2012. <\u8c08\u72ec\u4e2d\u6821\u672c\u57f9\u8bad\u6211\u4eec\u8981\u7684\u662f\u4ec0\u4e48>\uff0c\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u62a5\u300b 9\u670818\u65e5\uff0c\u6559\u80b2\u526f\u520a (WONG           \n        Shwu Huey 2012. On teacher training in Chinese Independent High Schools. In Nanyang Siang Pao,     \n        18 September).\n\u5434\u536b\u4e1c 2005.\u300a\u6559\u5e08\u4e13\u4e1a\u53d1\u5c55\u4e0e\u57f9\u8bad\u300b\uff0c\u676d\u5dde\uff1a\u6d59\u6c5f\u5927\u5b66\u51fa\u7248\u793e (WU Weidong 2005. Professional  \n          Development and Training of Teachers, Hangzhou: Hangzhou University Press).\n\u65b0\u9662\u6559\u80b2\u7cfb 2013a.\u300a\u6559\u80b2\u4e13\u4e1a\u6587\u51ed\u8bfe\u7a0b\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u65b0\u7eaa\u5143\u5b66\u9662.(Department of Education 2013a. \n        Handbook on Professional Certificate Programme in Education, Kajang: New Era College).\n\n\n\n44 45\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training \n\n\n\n----- 2013b.\u300a\u6821\u672c\u57f9\u8bad\u8bfe\u7a0b\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u65b0\u7eaa\u5143\u5b66\u9662. (Department of Education 2013b. Handbook  \n        on Teacher Training Programme, Kajang: New Era College).\n----- 2013c.\u300a\u7855\u535a\u8bfe\u7a0b\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u65b0\u7eaa\u5143\u5b66\u9662.(Department of Education 2013c. Handbook on  \n        Masters and Doctoral Programmes, Kajang: New Era College).\n\u90d1\u826f\u6811 1998-2003.\u300a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6587\u6559\u80b2\u53d1\u5c55\u53f2\u300b(\u56db\u518c)\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u6559\u5e08\u4f1a\u603b\u4f1a.           \n        (TAY Lian Soo 1998-2003. History of the Development of Chinese Education in Malaysia, in four \n          volumes, Kuala Lumpur: The United Chinese School Teachers\u2019 Association of Malaysia).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n44 45\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity \nunder the Belt and Road Initiative: \n\n\n\nAchievements and Challenges \nKaili Zhao* and Chang-Yau Hoon**\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Kaili Zhao and Chang-Yau Hoon (2023). Navigating Brunei-China Economic \nConnectivity under the Belt and Road Initiative: Achievements and Challenges. Malaysian Journal of \nChinese Studies 12(1): 95\u2013116. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0007\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0007\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 95\u2013116\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n As a member state of ASEAN, Brunei Darussalam has historically maintained a close \nrelationship with China. In recent years, with the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative \n(BRI), the two countries have deepened their bilateral diplomatic, economic and trade co-operation \nthrough the establishment of the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor and other multilateral platforms \nfor China-ASEAN co-operation, especially the China-ASEAN Expo. These developments, and \nthe consequential rise in Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI), have led to the establishment \nof mainland Chinese enterprises and an influx of Chinese transient migrants in Brunei. Using \nmaterials from a thorough review of literature and ethnographic fieldwork conducted at two Chinese \ncompanies, this article examines the economic connectivity between Brunei and China under the \nBRI. It provides an analysis on the achievements made by the two countries on multi-type FDI co-\noperation and rapidly growing bilateral trade. The article also discusses the ongoing challenges of \nthe bilateral co-operation, including a deficient publicity of the BRI, lackadaisical progress of some \nprojects, and labour controversies surrounding the Chinese FDIs in Brunei. \n\n\n\n Keywords: Brunei-China relations, the Belt and Road Initiative, Economic Connectivity, \n                          Chinese FDI, Brunei\n\n\n\n Introduction\n\n\n\n In late 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter \nBRI) in his official visits to Indonesia and Kazakhstan, when he unveiled the extensive connection \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n96\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nof this massive project to Asia, Africa, and Europe. The colossal initiative included the \u201cSilk \nRoad Economic Belt\u201d and the \u201c21st Maritime Silk Road (MSR)\u201d. Due to its vast economic \nand geographical coverage, ASEAN has become one of the key partners in the MSR, which is \n\u201cpivotal to the success or failure of Beijing\u2019s ambitious undertaking\u201d (Yu, 2018: 3).  In the past \ndecade, China\u2019s economy had shifted from high-speed growth to medium-high growth and had \nexperienced industrial restructuring from investment to innovation (Zhang, 2015). In this regard, \nChina needed to escape the middle-income trap and to accelerate its efforts to reduce poverty by \nremoving overcapacity in its industries and labour force (Wong, 2021). This \u201cNew Normal\u201d (xin \nchang tai, \u65b0\u5e38\u6001) economy prompted China to solve its internal overcapacity and to promote \nindustrial co-operation with ASEAN countries by building economic industrial parks, ports and \nother infrastructures. \n In September 2019, as the Joint Statement Between ASEAN and China on Further Deepening \nthe Cooperation on Infrastructure Connectivity was implemented, Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng \nannounced that China was willing to further synergise the BRI with the Master Plan on ASEAN \nConnectivity 2025 (MPAC 2025) guided by the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership Vision 2030 \n(China Daily, 2019). Prior to this, the China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and \nInvestment Summit have already been held annually in Nanning since 2004, culminating in the \nestablishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area in 2010. \n One major appeal of the BRI is its compatibility and complementarity to the strategic objective \nof individual ASEAN countries as well as ASEAN as a whole in broadening regional connectivity \n(Kong, 2019). The BRI also overlaps with the development strategy of many individual ASEAN \ncountries. In October 2009, the heads of ten ASEAN countries jointly issued the ASEAN Master \nPlan for Connectivity (AMPC), with the aim of building a more competitive and resilient ASEAN \ncommunity by 2015. In 2016, this proposal was updated to the MPAC 2025, which was announced \nby ASEAN leaders in Vientiane, Laos. MPAC 2025 specifically focuses on five strategic areas: \nsustainable infrastructure, digital innovation, seamless logistics, regulatory excellence and people \nmobility (Asean.org, 2016). \n China\u2019s BRI presented a good match to the MPAC 2025, especially on the contribution to \ninfrastructure constructions. On the one hand, China is targeting the ASEAN area as part of its MSR \ninitiative, in which infrastructure investments in logistics and transportation are anticipated (Zhang \net al., 2017). On the other hand, ASEAN lacks the financial resources to properly complete the \nambitious AMPC initiatives, which China can finance through its strong foreign currency reserves \nvia a variety of mechanisms, such as the China-ASEAN Investment Cooperation Fund and the \nAsian Infrastructure Investment Fund (Jetin, 2017).\n In 2020, ASEAN received US$16.06 billion of FDI from China, which accounted for 10.4% \nof the total Chinese global investment, a year-on-year increase of 23.3%.1 In addition, since the \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n97\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nannouncement of the BRI, more than 6,000 Chinese enterprises have been established in ASEAN, \nwhich were reported to have created 550,000 jobs (Ministry of Commerce, China et al., 2021). By \nthe end of 2020, ASEAN has become China\u2019s largest trading partner for the first time, and China \nhas maintained its position as the region\u2019s largest trading partner for 12 years in a row (Global \nTimes, 2021). \n In the past decade, each ASEAN member state has proposed its own initiatives to boost its \neconomy and to diversify its development. For instance, in 2014, Indonesian President Joko Widodo \nput forward the Global Maritime Fulcrum, which had tremendous potential for co-operation \nwith the BRI in the development of maritime connectivity. In fact, Indonesia is one of the major \ncountries where China has invested, primarily in manufacturing, leasing and business services, \nproduction and supply of energy. The interconnectedness of both economies is demonstrated in the \nfollowing statement by Bahlil Lahadalia, Chief of the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board \nthat if China\u2019s economic growth decreases by 1%, it would have a 0.3% impact on Indonesia\u2019s \neconomic growth (Rustandi, 2020). \n A series of publications on China and the BRI in Southeast Asia has emerged in the past decade \n(see for example, Negara and Suryadinata, 2018; Gong, 2019; Kong, 2019; Gomez, 2020; Chiong, \n2021; Chin, 2021; Liu & Lim, 2021; Lee, 2021; and Punyaratabandhu & Swaspitchayaskun, 2021). \nHowever, literature on the BRI in Brunei Darussalam (hereafter Brunei) remains scarce (see Druce \n& Julay, 2018; Lawrence, 2021), even though large-scale projects involving mainland Chinese \nenterprises have taken place in the country in recent years. This paper is, thus, a modest attempt to \ncontribute towards this literature.  \n Located on the northwest coast of the island of Borneo, the tiny sultanate is governed by a \nconstitution with a strict adherence to the national philosophy of the Malay Islamic Monarchy \n(MIB, Malayu Islam Beraja). Brunei\u2019s population of 453,600 in 2020 consists of a Malay majority \nof 65.8% and, among many minorities, 10.2% ethnic Chinese.2 Brunei has a largely homogeneous \neconomic structure, with crude oil and natural gas production accounting for almost half of its GDP \n(Ministry of Finance and Economy, 2021). The country is classified by the World Bank as a high-\nincome country with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of US$32,230, which is the second \nhighest in Southeast Asia after Singapore (US$59,590) (Borneo Bulletin, 2020). \n Using materials from a review of literature and ethnographic fieldwork conducted at two \nmainland Chinese companies in Brunei,3 this paper examines the economic connectivity between \nBrunei and China under the BRI. While it focuses on the achievements made by the two countries \nin multi-type FDI co-operation and a growing bilateral trade, the article also discusses the ongoing \nchallenges surrounding the Chinese FDI in Brunei, including a deficient publicity of the BRI, \nlackadaisical progress of some projects and issues in labour supply. The article begins with \nan overview of the connectivity between Brunei and China that traces the lineages of bilateral \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n98\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nrelations between the two countries. It will then discuss the milestones and achievements made by \ntwo the countries on FDI and bilateral trade co-operation followed by an analysis of the emerging \nchallenges related to the implementation of the BRI in Brunei. \n\n\n\nBrunei-China Connectivity: An Overview\n\n\n\n Brunei and China established formal bilateral relations in 1991. The Chinese government \nhad formally recognised the Sultan\u2019s leadership and the Brunei government\u2019s legitimacy after its \nindependence in 1984.4 At the UN General Assembly in 1988, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian \nQichen met with Brunei Foreign Minister Prince Mohammed Bolkiah, which marked the first \nhigh-level official meeting between the two countries. On September 30, 1991, Minister Qian and \nPrince Mohammed signed a joint communiqu\u00e9 on establishing diplomatic relations between the \ntwo countries. In August 1993, both countries agreed on the mutual establishment of embassies \nin their respective capitals (Liu, 2017). The following years witnessed frequent high-level visits, \npragmatic bilateral co-operation, and close co-ordination in international affairs between China \nand Brunei. For instance, at the invitation of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Brunei Sultan \nHassanal Bolkiah paid his first state visit to China in 1993. In 2000, Chinese President Jiang Zemin \npaid a state visit to Brunei and attended the 8th APEC Informal Leaders\u2019 Meeting held in Bandar \nSeri Begawan, the capital city of Brunei. It was the first state visit to Brunei by a Chinese head of \nstate. In April 2013, the top leaders of the two countries agreed to recognise bilateral relations as the \nStrategic Co-operative Relationship.\n In 2007, the monarch of Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, announced the \u201cWawasan Brunei \n2035\u201d (WB 2035 or Brunei Vision 2035) \u2013 a long-term development plan that aimed to reduce the \nexisting overreliance on oil and to promote the sustainable development of the economy, environment \nand society. With the need for economic diversification from hydrocarbon resources, the Sultanate \nhas been attracting foreign investments to develop the non-oil and gas industries, promote market \ngrowth and create employment. Since 2016, the government had introduced fiscal and structural \npolicy reforms including the formation of a Foreign Direct Investment and Downstream Industry \nCommittee to foster a conducive business environment for foreign investment (Kumpoh & Hoon, \n2023). The reforms witnessed a proliferation of investments in infrastructures and production facilities \nincluding Hengyi Industries\u2019 oil refinery and petrochemical plant, which will be discussed below. \nUnder the facilitation of both Brunei and Chinese governments, Chinese enterprises began to enter \nBrunei around a decade ago, culminating to its peak in 2016. China is now one of the most active \ntrade partners of Brunei, which has an increasing economic presence in the country (Hamdan & Hoon, \n2019). Under the BRI and WB 2035, the two countries have deepened people-to-people exchanges \nand developed complementary industries in oil and gas, agriculture, transportation and fishery. \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n99\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n As one of the earliest respondents and an \u201centhusiastic supporter\u201d of the BRI (Lawrence, 2021; \nStorey, 2018: 2), Brunei signed an MOU with China\u2019s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to \nestablish the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor (BGEC) in 2014. During the state visits made \nby the Brunei Sultan and the Chinese President in 2017 and 2018, the two countries further signed \nMOUs on Belt and Road Development and the Belt and Road Cooperation Plan, and upgraded \ntheir bilateral relations to the level of Strategic Partnership of Cooperation. According to Wang \n(2020), President Xi\u2019s visit to Brunei in 2018 aimed to boost the enthusiasm for developing bilateral \nrelations between the two countries. These MOUs laid a solid foundation for the deepening of \neconomic and trade co-operation between the two countries under the framework of the BRI. On \nthe sidelines of the BRI Forum in Beijing in 2019, the Sultan expressed that Brunei was ready to \nexpand co-operation with China on all fronts and to align the BRI with the Sultanate\u2019s Vision 2035 \ndevelopment plan (The Scoop, 2019a). Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brunei Sultan visited \nChina twelve times, which is a testament to the Sultanate\u2019s connectivity with China. In a recorded \nvideo message delivered at the Opening Plenary of the Bo\u2019ao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual \nConference 2021, the Sultan further stressed that the BRI would complement the revitalisation of \neconomies and contribute to regional connectivity (Borneo Bulletin, 2021a). China is considered \none of Brunei\u2019s most important partners in diversifying and strengthening its fossil fuel-based \neconomy and preserving peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region (Hamdan & Hoon, 2019). \n Moreover, bilateral mechanisms that play an essential role in promoting mutual trust between \nthe two sides have been solidified and institutionalised by Brunei and China governments. In \n1993, China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Brunei Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade \nofficially formed the Bilateral Consultative Meeting (BCM) at the Senior Officials Level, and \nsixteen diplomatic consultations and talks were held to enhance ministerial collaboration.5 In 2020, \nthe China-Brunei Intergovernmental Joint Steering Committee was established to facilitate the co-\noperation on various sectors including the economy, trade, investment, energy, transport, maritime \nand architecture, providing strategic guidance and enhancing bilateral ties (Borneo Bulletin, \n2021b). During the 5th China-Brunei Consultation Meeting on Trade, Investment and Economic \nCooperation (COMTIEC) in 2021, the two countries jointly announced the establishment of \nChina-Brunei Investment and Economic Cooperation Working Group, which further contributed to \nbuilding mutually beneficial co-operation. \n On top of that, Brunei aligned with China on regional economic platforms such as the China-\nASEAN Cooperation and the BIMP-EAGA and China Cooperation.6 Brunei aims to become \u201ca \nregional service hub for trade and tourism\u201d (Asian Development Bank, 2017: 37) in the BIMP-\nEAGA initiatives. China has the ability and resources to assist the BIMP-EAGA in infrastructure, \ndigital economy, agriculture, green technology, public health, tourism, industrial parks, and human \ncapacity building (Ngeow, 2021). In fact, China has been engaging actively and enthusiastically \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n100\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nas a partner in supporting the BIMP-EAGA. Besides the founding of the joint-venture Muara Port \nCompany (MPC) with the Brunei government agency, Darussalam Assets Sdn Bhd, in 2017, China \nhas also shown interest to extend the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor as a linking hub of the \nBIMP-EAGA with Brunei.\n The bilateral relations between Brunei and China have been stable, complementary, and \nmutually beneficial. For China, Brunei\u2019s support is essential for the success of the BRI in the region. \nAs domestic actors can influence the success or failure of specific projects (Hutchinson & Tham, \n2021), China views Brunei\u2019s stable political environment as an advantage for its investments (Druce \n& Julay, 2018). Chinese investors are drawn to Brunei\u2019s unique geographical conditions given the \ncountry\u2019s abundant oil resources, unpolluted marine environment and its central location in Southeast \nAsia.  Such conditions can cater to the needs of businesses that focus on investments in natural \nresources and are ideal for aquaculture and fisheries. Nevertheless, Mobley argues that \u201cthe long-\nterm success of the BRI will depend on the ability to strike an equitable balance between China\u2019s \ninterests and those of partner nations\u201d (Mobley, 2019: 53). To avoid being seen as dependent on \nChina, the Brunei leadership remains \u201csupportive of BRI\u201d but not \u201coverly enthusiastic\u201d (de Vienne \nand Jammes 2020: 923). Although foreign capital is needed for Brunei economic diversification, the \ncountry has also offered an olive branch to Japanese and South Korean companies while attracting \nChinese investments at the same time (see The Scoop, 2019b; Kumagai, 2020). \n\n\n\nExisting Achievements on Bilateral Economic Ties\nMulti-type FDI Co-operation \n The political stability, friendly bilateral relations, rich natural resources and strategic location \nof Brunei present unique advantages for Chinese capital and companies. With such favourable \ninvestment environment, numerous Chinese enterprises from various industries entered Brunei \nto participate in its economic development. They brought in financial resources and technology, \ncreated jobs, introduced new products to local market, and attracted Chinese transient migrants to \nBrunei. While China is not the top-ranked country for Brunei\u2019s inward FDI and its investment flow \nto Brunei has not been steady, Chinese capital has made significant economic contributions to the \ncountry, especially in the diversification and growth of the national economy.\n The latest statistics suggest that there are 42 Chinese enterprises and an estimated 1,450 Chinese \nworkers in the Sultanate.7 In general, small- and medium-sized Chinese companies represent the \nbulk of the Chinese FDIs in sectors encompassing commerce, logistics, fisheries, infrastructure \nand many others. The establishment mode of Chinese enterprises in Brunei can be divided into \ntwo categories: sole proprietorship (in majority of the cases) and joint venture. The former are \nsubsidiaries of Chinese private companies or state-owned companies operating in Brunei, while the \nlatter are large private and state-owned enterprises associated with the Brunei government-linked \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n101\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ninvestment fund and organisations, such as the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), \nthe Strategic Development Capital Fund (SDCF) and Darussalam Assets. In contrast to the profit-\noriented strategy of the Indonesian government on the BRI, which focuses on the private sector \nand business-to-business co-operation objective (see Soeriaatmadja, 2019; Lee, 2021), the Brunei \ngovernment is more hands-on and open to investing in a variety of initiatives. A reason for this is \nthe absence of sizable private local businesses that can collaborate with Chinese businesses.\n A few Chinese companies, including Huawei, Tong Ren Tang and China Communications \nServices have begun operating in Brunei prior to the announcement of the BRI. However, since \n2016, Brunei has seen the second wave of an influx of Chinese businesses to Brunei with higher \nvisibility than their predecessors. This has emerged as a result of the building of regional co-\noperation regimes such as the BGEC and the global strategies of Chinese corporations in response \nto China\u2019s national development plan after  their field visits in Brunei. We will exemplify the ways \nin which Chinese capital engage with the local business environment and contribute to Brunei\u2019s \neconomic and industrial landscape with a sample of Chinese companies with different origins and \ncharacteristics below.\n The Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited Brunei Branch (a.k.a. BOCHK Brunei Branch) is \nan example of a sole proprietorship. On December 20, 2016, BOCHK Brunei Branch officiated its \ngrand opening, making it the first Chinese financial institution to establish a presence in Brunei. \nThe bank provides financial services including corporate banking, syndicated loan, RMB services \nand trade finance, targeting mainland Chinese companies in Brunei. BOCHK Brunei Branch is \nowned by Bank of China (Hong Kong) Holdings Ltd., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a \nChinese state-owned company \u2013 Bank of China. \n Hiseaton Fisheries (B) Sdn Bhd (Hiseaton) is another case of a sole proprietorship, established \nin Brunei in June 2016. The company is located in Meragang, Brunei-Muara District. The core \nbusiness of the company involves the hatching, breeding, acquisition, processing and marketing \nof marine products. As a private company with its headquarters in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous \nRegion, China, Hiseaton is recognised as a pioneer enterprise. The head office actively participated \nin the BRI, making Hiseaton an early agricultural project for the construction of the BGEC. In \nBrunei, Hiseaton has built 12 deep-sea aquaculture cages with a single capacity of more than 6,100 \ncubic meters in an area of 12 to 19 kilometers offshore. In July 2018, the company exported its first \nfrozen container to Canada, realising the first export of fish from Brunei (Sina, 2019). \n The largest overseas investment by a private Chinese enterprise and the largest foreign direct \ninvestment in Brunei is the Hengyi Industries, a chemical plant from Zhejiang Province, China. \nAs an iconic joint venture between the Brunei government and Chinese private capital, Hengyi \nIndustries\u2019 Pulau Muara Besar (PMB) refinery and integrated petrochemical project formally began \nproduction in Brunei in the first quarter of 2019. In 2020, the company recorded US$3.5 billion \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n102\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nin revenue in the first full year of operation, which accounted for 4.48% of Brunei\u2019s GDP (Borneo \nBulletin, 2021). The company has also initiated collaborative programmes with local schools and \nuniversities to create a platform to develop technical skills and provide jobs for Bruneian youths \n(Borneo Bulletin, 2022a). The arrival of the Hengyi Industries was followed by numerous Chinese \nconstruction companies that entered Brunei as subcontractors to build infrastructure for the mega \nproject. \n Besides the Chinese FDIs above, China has also provided the technology and human resources \nto develop physical and digital infrastructure in Brunei such as the Sultan Omar Saifuddin Bridge, the \nUlu Tutong Dam and the Telisai\u2013Lumut Highway. Digitalisation was identified as one of the national \npriorities of Brunei as discussed in the official Digital Economy Masterplan 2025 (Borneo Bulletin, \n2022c). Leading Chinese digital technology companies such as Huawei and China Communications \nServices have had a presence in Brunei since 2004, and have played a quintessential role in building \nthe country\u2019s digital infrastructure such as optic fiber, broadband and 4G network (People.cn, 2018; \nThe Bruneian, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic had unexpectedly provided the impetus to expedite \nBrunei\u2019s journey in digital transformation. A little more than a month after the first COVID-19 case \nwas recorded in March 2020, the Ministry of Health (MoH) introduced a mobile application called \nBruHealth for tracing, informing, monitoring of the spread of the virus in the country (Hoon and \nJammes, 2022). The use of the BruHealth app was ubiquitous in Brunei as it was mandated by the \ngovernment. The technology was brought into Brunei by EVYD Technology\u2013\u2013an entity set up by a \nleading healthcare data analytic company in China, Yidu Tech Inc.\u2013\u2013with the financial backing of \nBrunei Investment Agency. With the MoH as its largest partner in Brunei, EVYD Technology also \nengages in data-driven research in healthcare, and provides digital solutions to public health, health \nmanagement and policy planning (see EVYD Technology website,https://www.evydtech.com/our-\nstory/). \n\n\n\nGrowing Bilateral Trade\n The bilateral trade between China and post-independent Brunei accelerated after the first \ndecade of the twenty-first century (see Table 1). Before this period, the trade exchanges between the \ntwo countries were minimal and insignificant. Crude oil has always been the main export product \nof Brunei, which price was strongly affected by global geopolitical and economic outlook. For \ninstance, Brunei\u2019s oil export prices fluctuated during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and the \nGlobal Financial Crisis in 2008, which led to a reduced trade volume with China. During the 2008 \nglobal recession, external oil demand fell and Brunei\u2019s oil exports to its trade partners, including \nChina, declined.8 However, the two sides saw a remarkable growth in trade in the 2010s. In 2010, \nbilateral trade between Brunei and China amounted to US$756 million, which was almost double \nthe amount of that in 2003. Brunei exported a total value of US$585 million of mineral fuels, \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n103\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nincluding mineral oils and organic chemicals, to China while importing a small fraction of items, \nsuch as iron or steel products, machinery, mechanical appliances, furniture, textiles, vegetables, and \nfruits. The official visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2011 witnessed the signing of a number \nof co-operation agreements, which led to the deepening of economic ties between the two countries \n(Druce & Julay, 2018). \n\n\n\nTable 1 \nBrunei-China Bilateral Trade 1992-2021 (US$ million)\n\n\n\nYear 1992 1997 2003 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021\n\n\n\nTotal 35 52 336 217 756 735 646 563 455 472 659 914 1870 1101 1744 2796\n\n\n\nExport 5 0.1 276 40 585 515 352 157 97 95 311 269 234 429 1169 2221\n\n\n\nImport 30 52   60 178 171 220 294 406 358 377 348 645 1639 672 575 575\n\n\n\nSource: (1992-2005) World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), World Bank, https://wits.worldbank.org/\nCountryProfile/en/Country/BRN/Year/1992/TradeFlow/EXPIMP; (2010-2021) ASEAN Stats Data Portal, https://\ndata.aseanstats.org/trade-annually.\n\n\n\n The bilateral trade volume hit a historic high of US$1,870 million in 2018, surpassing US$1 \nbillion for the first time since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei. \nThis accounted for 17.4% of Brunei\u2019s national import and export trade.9 Products such as iron or \nsteel articles, machinery and mechanical appliances, electrical machinery and equipment imported \nfrom China to Brunei occupied the most trade volume. One of the new Chinese FDI companies \nthat operated in Brunei in 2017, Huludao Steel Company, contributed to this trade structure. They \nimported building materials, decorations, machinery and equipment from China at the inception of \ntheir operation in Brunei; and exported their manufactured steel products back to China. \n Dr. Li Feng, the President of Chinese Enterprise Association of Brunei, asserts, \u201cThe surge \nin bilateral trade between Brunei and China is mainly due to the Chinese enterprises in Brunei, \nespecially Hengyi Industries. Because of these Chinese companies, the imports and exports \nincreased in recent years significantly\u201d (September 17, 2022).10 Chinese businesses, including their \nsubcontractors, tend to import supplies from China to overcome the insufficient availability of raw \nmaterials for infrastructure construction in Brunei. Given the tiny domestic market, most Chinese \ncompanies in Brunei focus on exports, with China as one of their biggest markets. As a result, the \nbilateral trade between the two countries further expanded with a rise in the number of Chinese \ncompanies, occupying a sizable share of Brunei\u2019s import and export trade. \n As a downstream company in the oil industry, Hengyi purchases crude oil locally and ships \nmost of the refined derivatives back to China for reproduction. From January to September 2020, \nHengyi\u2019s production value contributed to 50.57% of Brunei\u2019s total trade volume and accounted \nfor 44.6% of the country\u2019s exports and 59.27% of its imports (Borneo Bulletin, 2021). In 2021, \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nbilateral trade between the two countries surged to a record high of US$2.8 billion, marking a 60%  \nyear-on-year increase and 15% of Brunei\u2019s total import and export trade.11 Compared to a decade \nprior to the BRI announcement, bilateral trade between China and Brunei volume had tripled. As \nthe Brunei Minister at the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II, Dr \nAmin Liew notes, \u201cit is encouraging to note that China continues to be one of Brunei\u2019s top trading \npartners and largest investors\u201d (Borneo Bulletin, 2022b). \n\n\n\nChallenges Associated with the BRI in Brunei\nDeficient Publicity \n Domestic politics play a key role in determining a country\u2019s level of co-operation with an \neconomic giant like China (Chin, 2021). Many countries that are involved in the BRI strive to \nbalance national interests, development priorities and economic dependence on China (Weng et al., \n2021). Responding to President Xi\u2019s visit in late 2018 and his affirmation for the BRI to synergise \nwith the Vision 2035, the Sultan\u2019s participation in the Second Belt and Road Forum in 2019 \ndemonstrated Brunei\u2019s commitment to the BRI. However, there appears to be a substantial gap below \nthe top leadership level as there has been little engagement between Brunei ministers and Chinese \nparty members or provincial party members. This generates a disparity in policy interpretation and \nstrategic links between the upper and lower management in government bureaucracy. In contrast \nto Singapore where all levels of government actively involve with various levels of counterparts in \nChina (see Ba, 2019; Liu et al., 2021; Tong & Kong, 2021), Brunei has little information regarding \nthe BRI circulating within or between ministries. \n Although several large-scale Chinese FDIs linked to the BRI have been implemented in Brunei, \nthe general public have little knowledge about them due to the low coverage of these projects \nin local media. This lack of publicity of the BRI might be a deliberate strategy to prevent the \nperception of a Chinese economic encroachment in the country. To avoid public anxiety, the state \nprojected an attitude of ambivalence towards the BRI within the local society. Consequently, we \nfound that most local Malays employed in Chinese companies in Brunei were unaware of the BRI, \nnor did they know that their company was part of the BRI co-operation between the two countries. \nFor instance, a young Malay male employee states, \u201cI googled the BRI after seeing your interview \nquestions. Although I have browsed some information, I still don\u2019t know what the BRI is like in \nBrunei and what kind of policy it entails\u201d (Interview, August 29, 2022).\n The lack of public information about Brunei\u2019s involvement in the BRI largely stems from \nthe assumption that the BRI only involves economic co-operation between the two governments \n(G2G) and is not relevant to the public. This leads to an absence of the role and input of the \npublic in the process. Moreover, local businesses, including those that are owned by local Chinese, \nlamented that they have been excluded from participating in the BRI or co-operating with mainland \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n105\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nChinese companies (Interview, Chinese Bruneian business leader, April 4, 2022). This is because \nthe predominantly G2G arrangements have by-passed the need for local conduits. In addition, most \nChinese firms source their supplies directly from China rather than from local suppliers. Hence, \nlocal businesses are unable to reap much economic benefits from the BRI co-operative efforts. \n With the rising presence of Chinese companies in Brunei, distrust and suspicions based \non disinformation that resembles the \u201cChina threat\u201d theory began to emerge among some local \npopulation. Our local Malay informants who work for Chinese companies in Brunei revealed \nthat their family and friends have often asked them about the real purpose of Chinese capital. A \nMalay informant expressed his concerns that the Chinese might eventually \u201ceat up\u201d Brunei\u2019s shares \nand take over the entire company, according to China\u2019s expansion intentions in other countries \n(Interview, August 23, 2022). Some Bruneian nationalists believe that China aims to make Brunei \na part of its territory by gradually occupying Brunei through investments (Interview, staff of the \nChinese company, August 22, 2022).\n As mentioned above, even though new Chinese transient migrants have an increased presence \nin Brunei along with the emergence of mainland Chinese enterprises, they remain largely invisible \nto Bruneians. Besides the fact that they mostly patronise specific supermarkets and a handful of \nChinese restaurants that serve mainland Chinese cuisines. Moreover, workers from mainland \nChinese companies are placed in accommodations that are separate from the local community. For \ninstance, Hengyi Industries is the largest employer of mainland Chinese workers in the country. \nMost Chinese employees live in entire apartment buildings that the company rented and are \ntransported by company busses to the island, Pulau Muara Besar (PMB), where the petrochemical \nplant is located, in the early morning and return in the evening after sunset. \n While their lack of visibility may reduce local anxiety on the influx of mainland Chinese \nin Brunei, it unwittingly impedes any possibility of cross-cultural exchange between transient \nChinese migrant workers and local Bruneians. As such, it becomes challenging for them to build \nmutual trust and understanding. Occasionally, the bad behaviour of a few \u201cbad apples\u201d among \nthe new Chinese transient migrants were exaggerated and made viral via social media within the \nlocal society like what often happens in Singapore and Malaysia (see Aw, 2015; Tan, 2016). A case \nin point is expressed by our Malay Bruneian informant, \u201cIn supermarkets, mainland Chinese are \neasily recognisable as they wear T-shirts, shorts, and slippers and speak loudly. The locals do not \nfeel very comfortable because we are polite in public and speak quietly, but they are different\u201d \n(Interview, staff of the Chinese company, August 24, 2022). Thus, it can be argued that while the \nBRI has made some notable achievements on the G2G level, the people-to-people exchange is \nsorely lacking at the ground level. \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n106\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nIndifferent Progress\n China\u2019s implementation of the BRI in Southeast Asia has encountered practical challenges \nrelated to policy co-ordination, infrastructure connectivity, financial integration and people-to-\npeople relations, which led to unrealised MOUs and collaboration agreements (Gong, 2019). \nWhile Brunei and China had inked dozens of MOUs under the BRI in areas such as energy, \ninfrastructure, marine, finance, e-commerce and smart healthcare in the past few years, the total \ninvestment is limited (Lawrence, 2021). According to the data published by the Chinese Ministry \nof Commerce, in 2016 and 2017, Brunei\u2019s inward FDI from China amounted to US$142.1 million \nand US$71.36 million respectively (Ministry of Commerce, China et al., 2020). These figures \nmark the highest investment volume in ten years. Chinese FDI in Brunei decreased in 2020 to \nUS$16.58 million12 after the completion of Phase 1 of the refinery project, demonstrating that \nmost of China\u2019s direct investment in Brunei are related to one or two major projects, which are \nclosely related to Hengyi Industries.\n Apart from the large-scale Chinese enterprises mentioned above, both Chinese state and \nprivate investment in Brunei have slowed down after reaching its peak in 2016. Moreover, the \nprogress of some collaborative projects has been unimpressive. The outbreak of the COVID-19 \npandemic in 2020 further exacerbated this downward trend. While Brunei\u2019s overall stable political \nenvironment is favourable to FDI, the experience of conducting business on the ground presents \na different story. A Chinese manager explains the frustrations he experienced with the \u201cinefficient \nBrunei bureaucracy\u201d and the government often changes its policies and officers with whom the \ncompany liaised. Strict labour policies in Brunei have also made it difficult for foreign companies \nto hire low-skilled workers (Interview, mainland Chinese manager, August 16, 2022).\n It is also noted that the timeframe for implementing projects is lengthy, and several \ncollaborations remain in the initial phases. With the BGEC as a BRI flagship co-operation, several \nChinese companies from Guangxi have settled in Brunei. The BGEC encompasses logistics and \naquaculture sectors, and other key projects including the halal food production industry with the \nestablishment of the China-Brunei Yulin Health Industrial Park and the China-Brunei Agricultural \nIndustrial Park. However, both industrial parks are reported to be either stagnating or making \nslow progress. \n The China-Brunei Agricultural Industrial Park, for example, is a project that covers a planned \narea of 100 square kilometers with an estimated investment of US$7 billion (Huanqiu, 2015). It was \nannounced that the Park would be the first transnational agricultural industrial park that produces \nhalal products using modern technology. To meet the demand for raw materials for the development \nof Brunei halal industry, Guangxi Ruian Logistics invested B$60 million in 2017 to co-operate \nwith the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) on halal food and spices (Borneo Bulletin, \n2017). However, the progress of these projects is unclear because no published information is \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n107\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\navailable. Our informant argues that out of all the BGEC initiatives, the only companies from \nGuangxi that are active in Brunei are Hiseaton Fisheries and Beibu Gulf Group, which established \na branch company and a joint venture, Muara Port Company, in Brunei (Interview, Chinese senior \nmanager, August 18, 2022). \n Our informants revealed several reasons for the indifferent progress of the BGEC projects, \nclaiming responsibilities from both sides. On the China side, Guangxi is one of China\u2019s least \ndeveloped regions. Compared to other more developed Chinese provinces, Guangxi\u2019s economy \nis much smaller. The slow progress in the implementation of collaborative projects is reflective \nof the province\u2019s moderate expansion rate and lack of experience in managing international \ninvestment. A senior management member in a Chinese company confesses that it is common \nfor certain undertakings to fall short of completion at times (Interview, August 20, 2022). \nSimilarly, Brunei also lacks the capacity to expedite the speedy completion of projects, and \nexisting policies are insufficient to support these projects. Moreover, the replacement of \nministerial personnel has also delayed the progress of such collaboration (Interview, Malay \nsenior manager, September 13, 2022).\n\n\n\nLabour Challenges \n The influx of mainland Chinese workers has caused anxieties in many Southeast Asian \ncountries. This is observed especially in Indonesia where there is a growing resentment against \nlabourers from China who were perceived by locals to have taken away their jobs (see Herlijanto, \n2017; Negara & Suryadinata, 2018; Rakhmat, 2020; Lee, 2021; Weng et al., 2021). The Chinese \ngovernment has repeatedly publicised the ways in which Chinese FDIs have benefitted local \neconomies by creating jobs and engaging in technology and knowledge transfer (Xinhua, 2015). \nHowever, Chinese enterprises are known to import their labour from China, as they claim that the \nlocal workforce does not have the expertise required for the jobs (see Zhang et al., 2020). This led \nto complaints from some Bruneians that the Chinese enterprises have failed to create thousands of \nlocal employments as they have promised. A Chinese supervisor refutes such accusations:\n\n\n\nWe have offered them more than a thousand jobs. Is that not enough? Bruneians will damage \nour firm if they take over the all jobs. An explosion could occur if they failed to operate a valve \nor click the incorrect button [on the petrochemical plant]. The business still needs mainland \nChinese employees in Brunei for a bit more time\u201d (Interview, July 3, 2022).\n\n\n\n Foreign workers are no strangers to Brunei, as they accounted for 33.5% of the country\u2019s labour \nforce in 2019 (Musa & Ananta, 2023). By 2019, Indonesian labourers occupied the largest number \nof foreign workers, with 23,121 persons, followed by Bengali, Filipino, and Indian labourers, with \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n108\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nbetween 10,000 and 13,000 each.13 They occupy labour-intensive and service industries, and they \nare preferred by local and Chinese companies over local employees for their hard-working and \nresilient character. \n In 2018, there were approximately 13,000 mainland Chinese labourers in Brunei, most of \nwhom are working for Hengyi Industries (Interview, Chinese Bruneian human resource manager, \nJune 22, 2022). With the building completion of the petrochemical plant in PMB in 2019, the \nnumber of Chinese workers in Brunei decreased to less than 1,300.14 This drastic drop is attributable \nto various factors. Besides the fact that many Chinese workers were brought in for the purpose \nof infrastructure building at PMB and were no longer needed after its completion, the closure \nof national borders during the pandemic and the tightening of foreign labour quota by Bruneian \nauthorities have also contributed to the reduction of Chinese workers. It was reported that during \nthe COVID-19 pandemic, over 20,000 foreign workers had to return home due to visa issues, and \nthe Brunei government further limited the number of working visas to bring them back (The Scoop, \n2021). Chinese companies, like many of their local counterparts that relied on foreign labours, \nsuffered greatly in production due to the shortage of workers. These companies had little choice but \nto recruit local workers. However, our informant who works as a manager at a mainland Chinese \nenterprise noted:\n\n\n\nThey [Bruneian workers] want to [work] in the office only. Sometimes I ask them to help \nin the workshop, and they\u2019d say no because it doesn\u2019t match the job description. They just \ncome for an internship for a day or two, and they can\u2019t even do the job, so I can only say that \n[they] are not suitable for [the position], because they are young locals who cannot shoulder \nresponsibilities (Interview, Chinese manager, May 22, 2022).\n\n\n\nThis observation is consistent to Musa and Ananta\u2019s assertions below: \n\n\n\nThey [local Bruneians] seek jobs in professional, managerial or technical sectors, and they \nhave less preference for manual jobs\u2026 A majority of employers identify the lack of drive \nand awareness of the importance of leadership from an early age as an inhibiting factor for \nemployability. The perception among some companies towards local jobseekers is that the \nyouth are not sufficiently prepared and are riddled with issues such as quitting without notice, \nabsenteeism and other disciplinary problems (2023: 317).\n\n\n\n The labour challenge must be read in the context of high unemployment rate in Brunei and,  \nparadoxically, the labour shortage experienced by these Chinese enterprises. Brunei has one of \nthe highest unemployment rates among ASEAN countries (The ASEAN Secretariat, 2021). The \n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n109\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\naverage unemployment rate for Brunei from 2017 to 2021 was 8.0%, with a minimum of 6.9% in \n2019 and a maximum of 9.3% in 2017.15 The impetus for Brunei to attract FDI is to diversify its \neconomy from hydrocarbon reliance and to create jobs for the locals. Hence, from the perspective \nof the Bruneian government, Chinese companies have not delivered the latter objective. As a HR \nmanager informant reveals:\n\n\n\nThe Brunei government felt very disappointed with a particular Chinese company. When this \ncompany signed the MOU with the Brunei government, it promised that it would provide \nmany jobs for the locals, including graduates from the Institute of Brunei Technical Education. \nThe government invested a lot of money to train these students but many of them were not \nemployed by the company; the government\u2019s money was wasted. Currently, the Brunei \ngovernment does not welcome many Chinese workers, and working visas are issued very \nrarely and slowly. Some employees [of this company] do not have working visas, so they \nhave to go back to China every six months and then come again (Interview, Chinese Bruneian \nhuman resource manager, June 22, 2022).\n\n\n\nHowever, the manager of another mainland Chinese enterprises reported the following:\n \n\n\n\nI know many college graduates here are not getting jobs, but why don\u2019t they apply to our \ncompany? We have many vacancies. Especially before each delivery date, the factory is very \nshort of people. We even called the former employees one by one to ask if they would like to \ncome back to work (Interview, Chinese manager, June 22, 2022). \n\n\n\n Our informants revealed that very few local workers apply for jobs in mainland Chinese \ncompanies, even though these companies claimed that they are willing to hire local candidates \nwithout interviews and assessments. It is a public knowledge that local Bruneians prefer to work for \nthe government over private enterprises due to the job security, attractive salary package and laidback \nculture (Musa & Ananta, 2023). As a Malay employee states, \u201cThe jobs in Chinese companies \nare all short-term (contract workers), not long-term, like government workers\u201d (Interview, July 3, \n2022). Due to the mismatch between the jobs offered by Chinese companies and the preference \nof local employees, it is unclear how these companies can contribute to local employment as a \ncondition to their presence in Brunei. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n Since the formal establishment of diplomatic ties in 1991, the bilateral relations between \nBrunei and China have grown steadily, especially in economic and trade co-operation, culminating \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n110\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nto the collaborations on the BRI in recent years. Similar developments have been observed across \nASEAN where economic ties with China have become the foundation to bilateral relations in the \nregion (Cheong, 2021). While the scale and volume of Brunei\u2019s involvement in the BRI are much \nsmaller compared to most of its ASEAN neighbours, Chinese FDIs in Brunei have contributed to \nthe country\u2019s economic diversification. At present, the most prominent co-operation projects in \nBrunei are the Hengyi Industries, Muara Port Company, Hiseaton and Huludao Steel Company. The \nnotable achievements in bilateral trade between Brunei and China notwithstanding, the success of \nthese collaborations will still depend on whether issues related to publicity of the BRI in Brunei, \nmeasurable progress of the projects and labour controversies can be properly resolved. \n Most of the emerging literature on China\u2019s engagement of the BRI in Southeast Asia have \nostensibly focused on the macro level, particularly from a political economy, geopolitical and \nregional perspective. However, Chinese capital do not operate in an instrumentalist vacuum. They \ninvolve human actors such as managers and workers of Chinese enterprises, who live and negotiate \ntheir presence in the context of otherness in the host country. Hence, in order to gain a more \ncomprehensive understanding of Chinese capital in the region, there is a need for ethnographic \nresearch that examines the meso- and micro-level perspectives. Such future research may address \nsome of the following questions: How do Chinese businesses and their employees engage in cross-\ncultural communications and adapt to the local society? What cultural resources and strategies \ndo they employ to negotiate their presence in the new society? What are the mutual perceptions \nbetween new Chinese migrants and local population, including the old Chinese community? The \ninsights into the everyday cultural negotiations of these actors will not only give a human face to the \nBRI, but also shed important light on the practical operations of Chinese multinational corporations \nin the context of economic globalisation.\n\n\n\n*  Kaili Zhao [\u8d75\u51ef\u8389] is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei \n     Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam. Email: 19H8104@ubd.edu.bn.\n** Dr. Chang-Yau Hoon [\u4e91\u660c\u8000] is Professor, Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti \n     Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam. Email: changyau.hoon@ubd.edu.bn.\n\n\n\nReferences\nAsean.org. (2016). ASEAN leaders adopt Master Plan on Connectivity 2025. September 6, from, \n https://connectivity.asean.org/news-post/asean-leaders-adopt-master-plan-on-\n connectivity-2025/.\nAsian Development Bank. (2017). 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China to prioritise development projects with Brunei, says Xi, April 27, from, \n https://thescoop.co/2019/04/27/china-to-prioritise-development-projects-with-brunei-says-xi/.\nThe Scoop (2019b). Korea seeks to woo Brunei with \u2018infrastructure diplomacy\u2019, March 12, from, \n https://thescoop.co/2019/03/12/korea-seeks-to-woo-brunei-with-infrastructure-diplomacy/.\nThe Scoop (2021). Brunei\u2019s population declines as more foreign workers leave due to pandemic, \n October 20, from, https://thescoop.co/2021/10/20/brunei-sees-population-growth-but- more- \n foreign-workers-leave-early-2021-census-results-show/.\nToai, D.-B., Guan, X. & Ghimire, A. (2018). Situational analysis of Vietnam for Belt and Road \n Initiative. In 2018 International Conference on Economics, Business, Management \n and Corporate Social Responsibility (EBMCSR 2018) (pp. 176\u2013181). Atlantis Press.\nTong, Y. & Kong, T.-Y. (2021). Singapore in China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative. In Research Handbook \n on the Belt and Road Initiative (pp. 215\u2013227). https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789908718.\nWang, L.-G. [\u738b\u7075\u6842]. (2020).\u201c\u4e00\u5e26\u4e00\u8def\u201d\u4e0e\u56fd\u9645\u65b0\u79e9\u5e8f\u6784\u5efa\uff1a\u56fd\u5916\u667a\u5e93\u8bba\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e0e\u4e16\u754c\uff08\u516b\uff09 \n [The Belt and Road and its Re-Construction of the international Order: Special Report on China \n         and the World by International Strategic Think Tanks (No. 8)]. Social Sciences Academic Press.\nWeng, L., Xue, L., Sayer, J., Riggs, R.A., Langston, J.D. & Boedhihartono, A.K. (2021). Challenges \n faced by Chinese firms implementing the \u2018Belt and Road Initiative\u2019: Evidence from three \n railway projects. Research in Globalization, 3, 100074.\nWong, T.-C. (2021). China\u2019s Infrastructure investment in the ASEAN Region: Approach and effects. \n Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 10(2), 69\u201382.\nXinhua [\u65b0\u534e\u7f51] (2015). \u6388\u6743\u53d1\u5e03:\u63a8\u52a8\u5171\u5efa\u4e1d\u7ef8\u4e4b\u8def\u7ecf\u6d4e\u5e26\u548c21\u4e16\u7eaa\u6d77\u4e0a\u4e1d\u7ef8\u4e4b\u8def\u7684\u613f\u666f\u4e0e\n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n115\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n \u884c\u52a8[Promoting the actions of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st \n Century Maritime Silk Road], March 28, from, http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2015-\n 03/28/c_1114793986.htm.\nYu, J. (2018). China and Southeast Asia: Many belts and roads to turn. In China and Southeast \n Asia: Many Belts and Roads to turn, China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Southeast  \n Asia (p.3). https://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/Assets/Documents/reports/LSE-IDEAS-China-SEA- \n BRI.pdf.\nZhang, M., Li, R. & Cheong, K.-C. (2017). Introduction: Southeast Asia and China\u2019s growth \n deceleration. International Journal of China Studies, 8(2), 125\u2013138.\nZhang, X., Song, W. & Peng, L. (2020). Investment by Chinese enterprise in infrastructure \n construction in Malaysia. Pacific Focus, 35(1), 109\u2013140.\nZhang, Z.-B. [\u5f20\u5360\u658c]. (2015). \u4e2d\u56fd\u7ecf\u6d4e\u65b0\u5e38\u6001\u7684\u8d8b\u52bf\u6027\u7279\u5f81\u53ca\u653f\u7b56\u53d6\u5411 [The trend and policy \n orientation of the China\u2019s new normal economy]. Journal of Chinese Academy of Governance. \n (01), 15\u201320.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n 1 According to the data of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, in 2020, China\u2019s FDI is \nUS$153.71 billion. See 2020 Statistical Bulletin of China\u2019s Outward Foreign Direct \nInvestment,http://images.mofcom.gov.cn/hzs/202111/20211112140104651.pdf.\n\n\n\n 2 Source: Population,Department of Economic Planning and Statistics, https://deps.mofe.gov.\nbn/SitePages/Population.aspx.\n\n\n\n 3 The sites of the ethnographic fieldwork conducted from February to July and August to \nOctober 2022 were a sole proprietorship manufacturing factory and a joint venture logistics \nand transportation company. In addition to participating observations, we also conducted semi-\nstructured interviews with company management and employees. \n\n\n\n 4 In fact, it was claimed that China and Brunei had maintained close exchanges dating back to \nthe fifth century when trade and official exchanges were established between dynastic China \nand the ancient state of Brunei (Hadi, 2012). The relations continued into the Song (960-1279) \nand Ming dynasty (1368\u20131644) (Shen, 2013). In Nanjing, China, the tomb of Manarejiana, the \nKing of Boni (referring to Brunei) who died in 1405 when visiting China, was restored as a \nhistorical site by the Chinese government. The site is now a monument that commemorates the \nlong relations between the two countries.\n\n\n\n 5 Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official website. See, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/\ngjhdq_676201/gj_676203/yz_676205/1206_677004/sbgx_677008/. \n\n\n\n 6 The Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) is an \nASEAN sub-regional area launched in 1994. The region includes Brunei and parts of  Indonesia \n\n\n\nNavigating Brunei-China Economic Connectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n116\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nAccording to information collected by the Brunei Research Center, Guangxi University for \nNationalities, there are 42 registered Chinese company in Brunei by March 31, 2022.\nSee Country Report of the ASEAN Assessment on the Social Impact of the Global Finance \nCrisis: Brunei Darussalam. https://www.asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Brunei.pdf.\nAccording to ASEAN Stats Data Portal, the total import and export trade of Brunei in 2018 is \nUS$10,729 million.\nOn September 17, 2022, Dr. Li Feng gave a speech at the Symposium on \u201cBuilding China-\nBrunei Strategic Partnership: Opportunities and Paths for Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao \nGreater Bay Area\u201d organised by South China Normal University, China, and he mentioned the \nabove content.\nAccording to ASEAN Stats Data Portal, the total import and export trade of Brunei in 2021 was \nUS$18,686 million.\nFrom Ministry of Commerce of the People\u2019s Republic of China official website, http://www.\nmofcom.gov.cn/article/tongjiziliao/sjtj/yzzggb/202103/20210303042830.shtml.\nDepartment of Labour, Brunei. Foreign Workers in Brunei. https://www.data.gov.bn/Lists/\ndataset/mdisplay.aspx?ID=946.\nAccording to the \u5bf9\u5916\u6295\u8d44\u5408\u4f5c\u56fd\u522b\uff08\u5730\u533a\uff09\u6307\u5357\u00b7\u6587\u83b1 (2020) [Country (region) guide for \nforeign investment and cooperation: Brunei Darussalam 2020] (2020: 35) edited by Chinese \nAcademy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, Ministry of Commerce of the \nChinese Embassy in Brunei Darussalam, Department of Foreign Investment and Economic \nCooperation of the Ministry of Commerce of PRC, at the end of 2019, there were 1,240 Chinese \nlabourers in Brunei.\nBrunei\u2019s unemployment rate in 2018 and 2020 was 8.7% and 7.7%. Source: World Bank portal, \nhttps://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?locations=BN.\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n11\n\n\n\n12\n\n\n\n13\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\nZhao and Hoon \n\n\n\n(Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua), Malaysia (Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan) and the \nPhilippines (Mindanao and Palawan). The initiative was created to tackle the underdevelopment \nof these remote areas\u2019 socio-economic infrastructure.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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"\n\nThe Early Maritime Chinese Diaspora in \nSoutheast Asia: Ports, Routes, and Communities \n\n\n\nWU Xiao An*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n         This paper sketches the early maritime Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia by focusing on \nthe entries of trade ports, trade routes, and Chinese communities. It discusses the interconnected \nlinkages in the making of ports, routes, and Chinese communities and highlights the key roles of \nChinese diaspora in the China-Southeast Asian context and early maritime historical interactions.\n\n\n\nKey words: Early maritime, Chinese diaspora, trade ports, trade routes, Chinese communities,  \n          Southeast Asia        \n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n        By \u201cthe early maritime Chinese diaspora,\u201d my understanding is that underlining the \ntitle are three interconnected parameters of time, place, and Chinese migrants. Each of these \nparameters should have its specific historical dimensions. The issues of \u201cmaritime\u201d and \n\u201cChinese diaspora\u201d are definite and scholars should have no big quarrel over their implications. \nThe most problematic issue might be centred around the definition of \u201cthe early\u201d. Many \ncontroversial problems could be raised then: First, from the perspective of Chinese migration, \nhow to we define the term \u201cthe early\u201d? Should the parameter be interpreted from the \nperspective of the qiaoxiang (\u4fa8\u4e61) or the native towns and villages of Chinese diaspora or of \nthe host societies? Would this have a fundamental difference in the way we define \u201cthe early\u201d?  \nFor example, there is documentary evidence to show that the Chinese migrated to Southeast \nAsia two thousand years ago, whereas they arrived in North America and Australia only from \nthe mid-nineteenth century, and to Europe just before the twentieth century. In Africa, although \nsome Chinese were shipped to South Africa by the Portuguese as early as 1593, and three \nChinese were shipped from the Dutch Batavia to Mauritius, it was not until the turn of the \neighteenth century that sizable Chinese migration to Africa took place either directly from \nGuangdong or via Southeast Asia (Li, 2012).\n    \n*   Dr. WU Xiao An (\u5434\u5c0f\u5b89) is Professor of History, Peking University, Beijing, China. E-mail: \n    wu2@ pku.edu.cn\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 47-58\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\n        Moreover, \u201cthe early\u201d should be placed in historical context to satisfy at least two \nfundamental conditions: one is the scale of Chinese migration; the other is the timing that \nshaped the scale of Chinese migration. The former suggests that the scale of Chinese emigration \nshould be significant enough so that they could form a sizeable Chinese diaspora. The latter \nimplies that a dual issue of how \u201cthe early\u201d maritime Chinese diaspora shaped \u201cthe \nmodern\u201d Chinese migration, and vice versa. In other words, \u201cthe early maritime\u201d Chinese \ndiaspora should coincide with \u201cthe early modern\u201d period in human history, roughly correspondent \nto the early colonial period prior to the rise of Western imperialism and the subsequent massive \nChinese emigration.\n     Under these circumstances, the issue of time concerning \u201cthe early\u201d maritime Chinese \ndiaspora is defined as the period between the fifteenth century and the mid-1850s. For \ntechnical considerations, especially over long-distance transnational migration, the early \nChinese diaspora was constrained by the means of transport. Geographical and geopolitical \nfactors were similarly significant in shaping Sino-foreign interactions. Hence, \u201cthe maritime\u201d \nshould be made in reference to the seas that connected China with foreign countries through \nhistorical linkages via geography, trade, and politics. The early maritime Chinese migration \nwas therefore referred to as a movement to \u201cNanyang\u201d, literally the \u201cSouth Seas\u201d, which soon \nbecame an idea that conveyed the image of a sprawling region that was later formally known as \nSoutheast Asia. \u201cNanyang\u201d had for centuries constituted the most important \u201cwater frontier\u201d, \nor a form of \u201cAsian Mediterranean\u201d, that also formed a vital component of \u201cthe Maritime Silk \nRoad\u201d. It is the region with which China has the longest interaction through trade and migration. \nFor the global commercial interactions, Nanyang\u2019s maritime significance lay in its extraordinary \nunifying linkages with various areas and isolated societies, unifying a vast region from the \nAndaman Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Java, Sulu, and South China Seas. As Anthony Reid \n(2000: 3) writes, \u201cIt was the region most affected by the explosion of Chinese maritime activity \nat the beginning of the fifteenth century, and the source of the spices and much of the pepper \nthat drew the Spanish to America and eventually in the Philippines, and the Portuguese to India \nand Southeast Asia.\u201d It is also the area that Chinese diasporas are overwhelmingly concentrated, \nand free from the economic and social marginalization as in North America, Australia, and \nEurope. Hence, on the issue of place, the focus of this study is that of the \u201cNanyang\u201d region.\n\n\n\nThe Ports and Entrep\u00f4ts\n\n\n\n       In shaping the long-distance trade of transnational nature, the ports or entrep\u00f4ts, as usual \nplay critical roles. This is a distinct pattern for the formation of Southeast Asian cities and \ncommercial activities. In the age of commerce, the major cities of Southeast Asia were located \neither along the coast or at the estuary of navigable rivers. These cities were major meeting \npoints for long-distance trans-regional or intra-regional trading communities such as the Arabs, \n\n\n\n48 49\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly Maritime Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nChinese, Indians, Japanese, Malays, Minangkabau, Javanese, Cham, Luzon, and Pegu. They \nalso doubled as the power centres of international, regional, and local politics. \n        Within the region, such ports included Angkor of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, \nAyutthaya on the Chao Phraya River, Pasai and Palembang in Sumatra, Patani and Melaka in \nthe Malay Peninsula, Banten and Batavia in Java, Makassar in Sulawesi, Brunei (now Bandar \nSeri Begawan) in what is now Brunei Darussalam, Manila in Luzon Island, and Hoi An in \nVietnam (Reid, 1993). Beyond the region, on the China side, centred on the trading ports in \nFujian and Guangdong were \u201cqiaoxiang\u201d and their ports of embarkation. On the Nanyang side, \ncentred on the trading ports were clusters of Chinese communities, whose emergence coincided \nwith the rise of these ports. Trading ports were the key linkage points between the Pacific and \nthe Indian Oceans, making maritime or monsoon Asia an integrated whole, in which the Chinese \ndiaspora formed the core \u201ccorridor\u201d between China and Nanyang via remittances, correspondence, \nmigration chains, and emotional attachments. According to Philip Kuhn (2006: 163; 2008), the \ncorridor bridged the immigrant and indigenous societies and functioned as \u201ca cultural space that \ntransmits people, wealth and information in both directions\u201d. \n       In the context of maritime trade, the ports were usually regionally or transnationally \noriented. In the case of China, Quanzhou, having for centuries been the most important trading \nport, was joined by a string of such ports as Nakasaki in Japan, Manila in the Spanish \nPhilippines, Portuguese Macau and Melaka, the Dutch Batavia, and Siamese Bangkok. \nQuanzhou was subsequently overtaken by Amoy (Xiamen) and Canton (Guangzhou) as new \ntrading ports in Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong emerged. \n      Chinese traders played a key role in the maritime interaction between South China and \nSoutheast Asia. According to Lockard (2010: 228),\n\n\n\n            During the age of commerce [ca 1400-1750] Melaka, Hoi An, and Ayutthaya all had \n            important trade (and sometimes political) links with China and all developed resident \n              communities of Chinese, mostly Hokkien, merchants in these centuries. These Chinese \n            settlers became the basis for distinctive hybrid communities blending Chinese and\n              Southeast Asian cultures.\n\n\n\nChinese communities in Nanyang facilitated \u201cthe treaty port connection\u201d and played a special \nrole in China\u2019s entry into the modern age. As Godley (1981: 259) commented: \n\n\n\n             Inevitably, as they had done before, the Overseas Chinese continued to build bridges to \n              China. So much so that they insured that the corridor of modern, mobile, and frequently \n              interchangeable personalities characteristic of the bourgeoisie would continue to link \n              the interests of the treaty ports with those of the neighbouring tropics. And, along that \n              invisible highway, personnel, ideas, and wherewithal travelled back and forth from China.\n         \n\n\n\n48 49\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\n        The rise and fall of trading ports both in China and Southeast Asia coincided with the \nshift in international power relations among the major powers and the inevitable changes in \nthe trading routes. At the international level, dominating the scene was the shifting balance of \npower between the old European empires of Spain and Portugal and the emerging ones of the \nNetherlands and Britain. The early international entrep\u00f4ts in Southeast Asia were Portuguese \nMelaka and Spanish Manila. These were subsequently over-shadowed by Dutch Batavia and \nBritish Singapore. At the regional level, the period before the arrival of the Europeans in the \nfifteenth century and the rise of the Dutch and the British imperialism had witnessed several \ntransitional phases in the shifting dominance of trading ports among Hoi An, Palembang, \nAyutthaya, Bangkok, and Penang. Five major shifts that occurred between the early fifteenth \ncentury and the 1850s were demarcated by Anthony Reid (1996). The first shift took place \nbetween 1450 and 1520, when Melaka was the major international entrep\u00f4t that connected \nthree principal trade systems of the western Indian Ocean, Java Sea and South China Sea. \nThe second shift occurred between 1567 and 1640, when Manila emerged as another major \ninternational port that contributed to the shaping of the world system not only between Asia \nand America, but also between East and Southeast Asia. The third one, from 1680 to \n1740, coincided with the heyday of the junk trade when Dutch Batavia probably replaced \nPortuguese Melaka and Spanish Manila. The fourth shift took place between 1740 and \n1850, when Batavia was superseded initially by British Penang and then Singapore.  \n         Chinese trading communities congregated at various key port cities scattered along coastal \nand estuarine areas of Southeast Asia. In the early fifteenth century, prosperous Chinese trading \nsettlements had developed in the ports of Palembang and Gresik, where Cantonese migrants \nplayed dominant roles. In the 1560s, some 2,000 Chinese \u201cpirates\u201d had turned Patani into their \ncommercial base and extended their networks as far as Brunei by 1600. A merchant enclave \ncomprising 3,000 Chinese had also existed in Banten, and in 1642, there were between 4,000 \nand 5,000 Chinese in Hoi An (Reid, 1996: 27 and 39). In Java, for example, according to Gerrit \nKnaap (1999: 408-409):      \n\n\n\n            The ports of Java in the early modern period were very different from what we call a \n             \u2018port\u2019 today....The port-cities which lay on this shallow coast were usually clusters of\n              unwalled village-like settlements. Many of these settlements were reserved exclusively \n              for non-Javanese communities of seafarers and traders, such as Chinese, Indians, Malays,  \n              Sulawesians, and so forth. Most of the ports had a relatively small population: less than\n              10,000. In the 1700s Batavia, Semarang, and Surabaya were the only places which had      \n              populations of between 10,000 and 30,000. The port cities were usually the hub of the\n              economy in their region, in which they functioned as an inlet for imports or an outlet for \n              exports for remote hinterlands, to which they were connected by networks of small roads \n              and/or rivers.\n\n\n\n50 51\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly Maritime Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nImmigration and Trade Routes\n\n\n\n      The migration routes were generally coincident with the trade routes that connected the \nports. In early maritime interactions, trade and migration were complementary processes. There \nwere two major maritime routes in Southeast Asia, namely, the eastern and western oceanic \nroutes, where the maritime ports were located. Trade and migration became the dynamic forces \nfor the formation of maritime ports, which in turn forged a network of routes for the conduct of \ntrade and the movements of people. The ports that were located along the trade and migration \nroutes were intimately related; the shifting fortunes of one would invariably impact on those of \nthe other. The vicissitudes of fortunes of ports and trade routes were inseparably linked to the \nshifting power relations of political economy at the levels of the local, national, regional, and \ntransregional.\n       The Chinese cartographical construction of Nanyang was one involving \u201cthe western \nocean\u201d and \u201cthe eastern ocean\u201d. The former embraced a broad swathe of Southeast Asia including \nIndo-China, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and the southwestern coastal sultanates of \nBorneo. The latter connected the Philippines Islands, the Moluccas, Sulawesi, and the northern \nBorneo state of Brunei (see \u5434\u6657/Wu Han, 1936: 137-186\uff1b\u4f55\u51e4\u7476/He Fengyao, 1994: 78-81). \nInterestingly, this Chinese construction is comparable to the seventeenth century Japanese \ncartographical construction of the Pacific Ocean into \u201cthe small eastern sea\u201d and \u201cthe large \neastern sea\u201d in which the former comprised the portion of the Pacific closest to Asia and the \nJapanese Archipelago, and the latter extending to the North American continent (Yonemoto, \n1999: 169-187).\n    The western ocean and the eastern ocean provided two main routes connecting China \nand Nanyang. Sailing from Fujian, the western sea route followed the China coast to central \nGuangdong, and subsequently to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore at the southern \ntip of Vietnam. From there the sea route could split into three directions to Siam, northwestern \nBorneo or the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. The western sea route was of great antiquity \ndating back to the Tang dynasty and had as many as 125 possible stop-overs. It was mainly \nused by the merchants from the Indian Ocean and served as the principal sea route during the \nSong dynasty. The eastern sea route developed initially from Quanzhou and subsequently from \nYuegang (Moon Harbour), both in Fujian, via Taiwan to the Philippines, the Sulu zone, \nnorthern Borneo, and further south to the Celebes Sea and the Moluccas. This was a relatively \nnew shipping route that emerged during the Song dynasty and had some 46 stop-overs. Trade \nalong this route prospered during the Yuan dynasty when the western route was no longer as \ndominant as before. The ban on private trade during the reign of Hongwu Emperor of the Ming \ndynasty witnessed the decline of the eastern route, and further exacerbated by widespread \npiracy and smuggling activities. Official contacts were then restricted largely to the western \nsea routes. It was not until 1567 when the ban was lifted that the eastern route revived and \nflourished (Blusse, 1996: 51-76; Ptak, 1998: 269-294). Situated between the western \n\n\n\n50 51\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\nand eastern sea routes was the important convergent port of Brunei on the northern coast of \nBorneo. It emerged as a prominent international trading port over three centuries extending from \nthe mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries (\u8042\u5fb7\u5b81/Nie Dening, 2008: 78-84). When \nthe eastern sea route was abandoned in the mid-fifteenth century, Fujian and Guangdong \nas well as Sino-Southeast Asian traders based in the ports of Indo-China, Siam, and Malay \nPeninsula sailed by the western sea route to Brunei and thence to Mindanao and Luzon (Reid, \n1996: 35-36).\n      The rise of Melaka in 1511 under Portugal rule and of Manila in 1571 under the \nSpanish witnessed the formation of two influential Chinese trading communities that \ntransformed these ports as international entrep\u00f4ts in Southeast Asia linking Macau in South \nChina, the Indian Ocean in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east. The rise of these early \nentrep\u00f4ts in Southeast Asia also heralded the ascendancy of Portuguese and Spanish imperialism. \nManila had emerged as a major entrep\u00f4t largely for the galleon trade across the Pacific. On \nthe South China Sea, a trading network comprising the ports of Canton, Manila and Macau \nhad been in existence for several centuries. In the case of Melaka, however, its commanding \nlocation on the Straits of Melaka had ensured its unrivalled significance in East-West trade in \ngeneral and the China-Southeast Asia trade in particular. Despite being overshadowed by the \nsubsequent rise of Batavia, Bangkok and Penang, the strategic importance of Melaka \nin international commerce was confirmed by the emergence of Singapore. The location of \nSingapore was pivotal in reshaping the alignment of trade routes between the principal ports of \nChina, India, and the West. This development coincided with, and was heavily influenced by, \nthe arrival of Dutch and British imperial domination in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the rise of \nBangkok that replaced Ayutthaya in Siam and Saigon that bypassed Hoi An in Cochin-China, \nand the creation of treaty ports along the China coast such as Hong Kong, Canton, Shantou, \nXiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai, contributed collectively to the realignment of the \ntrading and shipping routes.         \n\n\n\nChinese Communities\n\n\n\n      Early Chinese communities in Southeast Asia congregated at the maritime ports and \nimmediate hinterlands. Prior to the Zheng He voyages in the early fifteenth century, Chinese \ntrading communities of up to a few thousand persons were already present in Surabaya of Java \nand Palembang of Sumatra. By the early seventeenth century, these communities were found \nin Manila, Batavia, Surabaya and Banten in Java, Melaka, Patani and Kelantan in the northeast \nof the Malay Peninsula, Dacheng in Siam, and Bamo in Burma. There was also a fairly large \ncommunity in Nakasaki, Japan. In 1603, there were 25,000 Chinese in the Philippines, probably \nthe largest Chinese communities overseas; while the Chinese merchant community in Nakasaki \nhad between 20,000 and 30,000 persons at the end of the sixteenth century. By the first half \n\n\n\n52 53\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly Maritime Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nof the seventeenth century, Chinese communities in Southeast Asia numbered about 100,000 \nor so, increasing to 1.5 million by the mid-nineteenth century (\u5e84\u56fd\u571f/Zhuang Guotu, 2011: \n5-8).\n        Frederic Wakeman (1993: 15-16) paints a vivid picture of the early phases of Chinese \nimmigration to various parts of Southeast Asia: \n\n\n\n              During the later years of the fifteenth century, Chinese began to colonize the Malay \n              Archipelago, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago, and the Philippines. In the \n              sixteenth century, another stream of Chinese settlers began to arrive in Siam, and by the \n              end of the 1600s there were thousands in the capital of Ayutthaya. The Qing (1644-1912) \n              government continued the Ming policy of forbidding emigration. \u2026 Individual \n              emperors issued pardons to overseas merchants, who returned home, but not until 1727\n              was the interdiction removed; by then, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were living \n              abroad. A century later, virtually half the 400,000 residents of Bangkok were Chinese \n              immigrants.\n\n\n\n       In terms of dialect group and ethnicity, early immigrant Chinese communities in Southeast \nAsia were primarily Hokkiens (Minnan) from the southern part of Fujian province. There were \nalso considerable numbers of Hakkas (Kejia), Cantonese (Guangfu), and Teochews \n(Chaozhou). The Hokkiens were largely concentrated in the ports and coastal towns, and the \nCantonese and Teochews traders and artisans in the towns. The Hakkas, however, tended to \ncongregate in gold or tin mining localities in west Kalimantan and the Malay Peninsula \nrespectively. In the larger towns, some have intermarried with indigenous women and gave rise \nto, according to Skinner (1996), different \u201ccreolized Chinese societies\u201d. These societies had \nappeared after the coming of European rule. Three distinctive creolized Chinese groups were \nthe Mestizo in the Philippines, the Peranakan in Java, and the Baba in the Straits Settlements. \nThe mother tongues, food, clothing, and housing of the creolized communities were neither \nindigenous nor Chinese, but an acculturation the outcome of which was the blending of \nindigenous and Chinese elements. A distinctive feature of creolized communities was that even \nthe offspring were normally not incorporated into indigenous societies (Skinner, 1996).\n       However, mainstream Chinese communities other than the creolized components consisted \nof divergent groups in response to their adaptation to economic and environmental conditions. \nEach group had come about not because of acculturation but rather an accentuation of its \nculture in the search for survival in different environments. Cases in point are two distinct \nChinese communities in Batavia and Kalimantan in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth \ncenturies (see Blusse, 2003). One was a Hokkien community from south Fujian, and the other \nwas a Hakka community from the mountainous outback of Fujian and Guangdong. Each had \noccupied markedly different economic and physical environments: one being an urban trading \ncommunity under Dutch colonial authorities in Batavia, and the other was a gold mining \n\n\n\n52 53\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\ncommunity in the uncharted rainforests of West Kalimantan and subjected to control by \nhostile Malay rulers at the river mouths and fierce Dayak tribes living up-river. Both had \nevolved similar self-government schemes, namely, the Kapitan Cina (Chinese headman) and \nkongkoan (Chinese Council) in the case of Batavia, and the kongsi or organization operating \nalong lines of a Chinese-style governance remotely resembling that of a western republic in the \ncase of Kalimantan (see Wang, T.P., 1995). Both, however, shared a common feature in that \nneither community gave up their cultural and institutional social set-up but instead accentuated \nself-consciousness of their own identity and ethnicity (Blusse, 2003). They transplanted their \ntraditions of organizing their socio-economic activities and nurturing their cultural heritage. At \na time when colonial rule was still at its infancy, it was relatively easy for the Chinese diaspora \nto cultivate a sense of \u201cChineseness\u201d in foreign territories and to stand out rather distinctly \nbecause a non-Chinese \u201cother\u201d was available as a standard of self-comparison (Fernandez-\nArmesto, 2003: 201).  \n    Three typical institutions formed the key social organizations and leadership of the Chinese \ncommunities, namely, the kapitan system, the secret societies, and the kongsi system. The \nChinese kapitan system was a \u201clegitimate\u201d mechanism in the appointment of Chinese communal \nheadmen that was employed in the Portuguese, Dutch, and English colonial territories including the \nMalay states. The kapitans were men of power and wealth, and were officially vested with \ncertain executive, administrative, and even judicial powers within their own communities. It was \nessentially an intermediary system and a product of the indirect rule as it provided a convenient \nlink between the immigrant Chinese communities and the colonial and indigenous authorities. \nIts origin, duration, and structure varied in different places in Southeast Asia. The first Chinese \nkapitans were appointed in Portuguese Melaka in 1511 and in Dutch Batavia in 1619. The \nNetherlands Indies devised a hierarchical structure whereby the Chinese kapitan was ranked \nabove the majors, lieutenants, and even sergeants. The kapitan system persisted in Southeast \nAsia until the end of the nineteenth century, and was still in practice in some Malay states until \nthe beginning of the twentieth century.\n        Running parallel with the \u201clegitimate\u201d Chinese kapitan system were the so-called \u201csecret \nsocieties,\u201d an overall term encompassing all putatively \u201cillicit\u201d Chinese organizations in Southeast \nAsia. They were forms of internal governance within the larger local context of Southeast Asian \nsettings. For this reason, secret societies are not treated here as disparate elements on their own, \nor as \u201ccriminal gangs,\u201d \u201cprimitive rebels,\u201d or \u201cmutual aid\u201d societies with particular ritual and \nbrotherhood ties in relation to national politics. Instead, they will be revealed as functioning as \nnew creations of Chinese internal political form, co-existing alongside the colonial and indigenous \nstates, and part of a historical process in line with Southeast Asian political development.\n         The term kongsi was used to refer loosely to any association of the Chinese, ranging from \na business partnership to community governance in West Kalimantan, secret societies, and clan \nassociations. It functioned as a form of open government in the early modern Southeast Asian \n\n\n\n54 55\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly Maritime Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nChinese societies of the eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, based on extended \npartnerships and brotherhoods. In comparison to either the kapitan system or the secret societies, \nthe kongsi served important economic and political functions.\n         These social organizations provided overlapping, complementary but differentiated forms \nof leadership for immigrants in the host societies. The kapitan system was an official and \nlegitimate institution representing the community to the colonial and local government and \nother communities. The kongsi system created a public office, open government, and \neconomic entities founded on extended partnerships and brotherhoods. The kapitan could also \nbe the headman of a secret society or of a kongsi. But the headmen of the secret societies or \nkongsi would not necessarily be the kapitans.\n       Behind the kapitan system, secret societies, and kongsi loomed the important towkays \nwhose wealth supported and maintained the power of these institutions. These were wealthy \nand successful proprietors whose business interests could spread across such enterprises as \nrevenue farming, tin-mining, the plantations, and commerce and trade. Prior to the late nineteenth \ncentury, the towkays were also the headmen of the kapitan system, secret societies, or kongsi \ninstitutions. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, independent groups of wealthy \ntowkays also emerged in other areas of entrepreneurship. The towkays and their family estates \nplayed dominant roles in their support and sponsorship of temples, schools, hui-kuan (clan \nassociations), chambers of commerce, and various organizations that formed the essential public \nspheres of life of Chinese communities (Wu, 2010: 22-25).\n\n\n\nDefining Characteristics\n\n\n\n        Maritime situations not only united the fragmented and diversified Southeast Asian \nregion into an integral whole, but also defined China-Southeast Asian interactions that were \nsustained by Chinese migration and trade. China\u2019s two coastal provinces of Fujian and \nGuangdong had been the major sources of Chinese emigrants for centuries. On the one \nhand, overland distance had kept these provinces apart from the political nerve centre in north \nChina and, on the other, the coastal location had facilitated easy access to the Southeast Asian \nregion. These geoeconomic and geopolitical factors were fundamental in shaping the \nformation of the numerous \u201cqiaoxiang\u201d that were dispersed over the extended coastline and \nhinterlands of south China.\n      From the perspective of global history, the period under study was shaped by two great \nevents in world history. The Zheng He voyages were the first, and these were likely to have \nresulted in the appearance of Chinese communities in various localities. The other was the \n\u201cGreat Discovery\u201d that spawned initially Portuguese and Spanish imperialism and subsequently \nthat of the Dutch, British, and French in Asia. At the same time, two political and commercial \nmechanisms consolidated the transnational interactions between the East and the West in general \nand between East Asia and Southeast Asia in particular. These were the Tributary System \n\n\n\n54 55\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\nwith regard to Sino-Southeast Asia relations, and the Dutch and British East Indies Companies \nand the junk trade (da fanchuan maoyi - \u5927\u5e06\u8239\u8d38\u6613) with respect to Europe-Southeast Asia \ninteractions. These are the contexts and frameworks that characterized the early maritime \nChinese diaspora in Nanyang, a subject that should be better understood from the perspective \nof West-East relationships in general and of monsoon Asian interactions in particular. \n        From the perspective of Chinese migration history, the period under study coincided with \nthe first wave of Chinese migration that lasted over three and half centuries until the mid-1850s  \n(\u5e84\u56fd\u571f/Zhuang Guotu, 2008). The dynamics of Chinese migration were driven by trade and \ncommerce, and the diaspora featured overwhelmingly the merchants and artisans (Huashang \n- \u534e\u5546), in sharp contrast with \u201cthe coolie pattern\u201d (Huagong - \u534e\u5de5) in the following wave \nof Chinese migration (Wang, G.W., 1989: 33-48). Yet in the eyes of the Chinese government, \nthe image of the emigrant Chinese was nothing but negative. For more than four centuries \nduring the Ming and early Qing dynasties, Chinese emigrants were regarded as \u201cdeserters\u201d, \n\u201ccriminals\u201d, and \u201cpotential traitors\u201d. This perception persisted until the period of the Opium \nWars (see Yen, 1981). Helpless migrant Chinese could only look upon themselves as \u201coverseas \norphans\u201d. It is not without reason that contemporary Chinese communities overseas reject the \nold notion of \u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d and opt for the more acceptable notion as embedded in the \nterm \u201cChinese diaspora\u201d.  \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n       In the historical process of globalization, the oceans and seas had been crucial platforms \non which transnational interactions were enacted. The oceans, seas, and ports functioned as \nlinkages to connect the continents, regions, and states as they themselves developed into key \n\u201cin-between\u201d frontiers. Southeast Asia or Nanyang emerged as an in-between region linking \nnot only the West and East, but also South and East Asia, and thus rendering maritime or \nmonsoon Asia into a coherent geographical entity. It was international trade and migration that \neffectively linked together the formerly isolated worlds of the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, China \nSeas, and the Pacific (Mettele, 2008: 228-230). In the making of the Chinese diaspora, it was \nthe ports, routes, and communities that served as the interconnected structural components \nthat contributed to the making of the sprawling territories in maritime or monsoon Asia into \na functional region. The ports are located on both sides of the water frontiers that separated \nChina and Nanyang, and in turn connected by the routes of migration and trade. Chinese \ncommunities clustered and emerged around the trading ports as they evolved in a spontaneous \nprocess of mutual reinforcement. The key players in the making of the Chinese diaspora were \nthe merchants who initiated and managed communities of their own and contributed to the \ndevelopment of trade through their drive and unremitting enterprise. \n\n\n\n56 57\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly Maritime Chinese Diaspora \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nBLUSSE, Leonard 1996. 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From Quanzhou to the Sulu zone and beyond: Questions related to the early fourteenth  \n        century, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 29: 269-294.\nREID, Anthony 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, volume two: Expansion and  \n        Crisis, Chiang Mai: The Silkworm Books.\n----- 1996. Long-term Chinese interaction with Southeast Asia. In Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of  \n        Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin:  \n        33-50.\n----- 2000. Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian   \n        Studies.\nSKINNER, G. William 1996. Creolized Chinese societies in Southeast Asia. In Sojourners and Settlers:  \n        Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid, St Leonards, NSW:Allen &           \n        Unwin: 51-93.\nWAKEMAN Jr., Frederic 1993. Voyages, The American Historical Review, 98 (1): 15-16.\nWANG Gungwu 1989. Patterns of Chinese migration in historical perspective. In Observing Change in  \n        Asia: Essays in Honour of J.A.C. Mackie, edited by R.J. May and W. J.O\u2019Malley, Bathurst, NSW:  \n        Crawford House Press: 33-48.\nWANG Tai Peng 1995. The Origins of Chinese Kongsi, Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.\nWU Xiao An 2010. Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1942, New Edition, Singapore:  \n        NUS Press.\nYEN Ching-Hwang 1981. Ch\u2019ing changing images of the Overseas Chinese (1644-1912),  Modern  \n\n\n\n56 57\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWu\n\n\n\n        Asian Studies, 15 (2): 261-276.\nYONEMOTO, Marcia 1999. Maps and metaphors of the \u2018Small Eastern Sea\u2019 in Tokugawa Japan \n         (1603-1868), Geographical Review, 89 (2): 169-187. \n\u4f55\u51e4\u7476 1994. \u3008\u4e1c\u897f\u6d0b\u7684\u754c\u57df\u548c\u6f14\u53d8\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u4e0a\u6d77\u5927\u5b66\u5b66\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c5\u671f\uff1a78-81 (HE Fengyao 1994.  \n        The oceans of the East and West: Territorial limits and changes, Journal of Shanghai University, 5: \n        78-81). \n\u8042\u5fb7\u5b81 2008. \u3008\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e0e\u6c76\u83b1\u8d38\u6613\u5f80\u6765\u7684\u5386\u53f2\u8003\u5bdf\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u793e\u4f1a\u7ecf\u6d4e\u53f2\u7814\u7a76\u300b, \u7b2c2\u671f\uff1a78-84     \n        (NIE Dening 2008. A historical review of Sino-Brunei trade, Research Journal of Chinese Socio- \n         Economic History, 2: 78-84).\n\u5434\u6657 1936.\u3008\u5341\u516d\u4e16\u7eaa\u524d\u4e4b\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e0e\u5357\u6d0b\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u6e05\u534e\u5927\u5b66\u5b66\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c1\u671f\uff1a137-186 (WU Han 1936.      \n        China and Nanyang prior to the sixteenth century, Journal of Tsinghua University, 1: 137-186).\n\u5e84\u56fd\u571f 2008.\u3008\u8bba\u4e2d\u56fd\u4eba\u79fb\u6c11\u4e1c\u5357\u4e9a\u7684\u56db\u6b21\u5927\u6f6e\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u95ee\u9898\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c1\u671f\uff1a69-81 (ZHUANG            \n        Guotu 2008. The four Chinese migration waves in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian Affairs,  \n        1: 69-81).\n----- 2011. \u3008\u4e16\u754c\u534e\u4fa8\u534e\u4eba\u6570\u91cf\u548c\u5206\u5e03\u7684\u5386\u53f2\u53d8\u5316\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u4e16\u754c\u5386\u53f2\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c5\u671f\uff1a4-14   (ZHUANG  \n        Guotu, 2011. The historical changes of the Overseas Chinese population and distribution in the \n        world, World History, 5: 4-14).\n\n\n\n58\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nRAINBOW: An Epic Story of Heroic Fighters for Independence by Lin Yan, Labis Johor: \nHuai Lie Enterprise, 2013, 388pp. (Softcover ISBN 978-967-10478-1-1).\n\n\n\nMalayan history is never complete without the inclusion of the warring days of the \nJapanese, the British, and the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). For a long time, interested \nparties and scholars alike have been referring to the \u201cofficial\u201d versions of events. Resorting \nto oral history by eye-witnesses has provided renewed discourse on the \u201cpeople\u2019s history\u201d to \ncomplement the \u201cofficial\u201d histories. On the CPM, Chen Peng\u2019s My Side of History (Media \nMasters, Singapore) published in 2003 is one of the first to reveal the \u201cother\u201d side of the story.\n\n\n\nLin Yan, whose real name is Wang Jun Yong, was born in 1932. He had a taste of life under \nthe Japanese military occupation and the post-war years prior to independence in 1957. He later \nstudied in China, and is now peacefully retired in Australia. Rainbow is an auto-biographical \naccount of life in the war-torn days of the Japanese Occupation and the Emergency declared by \nthe returned British administration in 1948 and lifted by the Malayan Government in 1960. \n\n\n\nThe narrative provides glimpses into the life of the Malayan people especially of the 1930s \nto the 1950s. The Chinese who lived in the towns earned their living as traders and retailers and \nled a way of life tied to their religion and culture. The brutal treatment of the Japanese invaders \nand the post-war resumption of British rule had challenged the right of Malayans to a better \nlife. Hence their urge to fight for justice and what they stood up for. Armed with these simple \nbut powerful ideals, the author and many others before and after him engaged in a prolonged \nmovement, initially to resist Japanese aggression, and subsequently to fight for independence \nfrom the British. To the author, those who had sacrificed in their valiant efforts in the service of \nthe country deserve to be looked upon as \u201cheroes\u201d and \u201cheroic fighters\u201d.\n\n\n\nThe book title evokes expectations of awe-inspiring heroic acts. Indeed, the book is \nreplete with the author\u2019s ideas of heroes in a rapid succession of events, with many paying the \nultimate price in their twenties. The author does not offer any definition of \u201chero\u201d or \u201cheroic \nfighter\u201d. These were recognized according to his personal criteria of having rendered service \nto the country for a patriotic cause, that is, resistance against Japanese invasion or the struggle \nfor independence and having paid the ultimate price for it. But to continue the narrative after \nindependence in 1957, the use of these descriptions would be increasingly difficult to justify. \nIn contrast, the colonial authorities were definitive in their use of the words \u201cbandits\u201d and \n\u201cterrorists\u201d in their ideological battle with what were regarded as \u201canti-government\u201d rebels. \n\n\n\nLin Yan\u2019s first heroes were those in his own family: his father, mother, brother, and sister. \nThis list is then extended to include his cousins, friends, and fighters from Singapore. Then there \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 83-85\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSim\n\n\n\nwere those in the Japanese prison breakouts, the numerous unyielding anti-Japanese martyrs, \nand those who maintained the peace after the announcement of Japanese surrender. Too modest \nto dub himself a hero, Lin Yan played his rightful part in supporting his comrades, dedicating \npoems to his heroes for the memory of posterity, and showing his admiration and respect as a \nmeans to boost their morale. \n\n\n\nThe narrative is spread over 29 disjointed chapters, reflecting the typical characteristic of \nauto-biographical accounts of the Japanese Occupation and Emergency years by persons who \nare now advanced in age and who try to put down their memories and experiences on record. \nThe author is well aware of this shortcoming and is apologetic in writing about past events in \n\u201cbits and pieces\u201d. However, the value of the narrative is in the details on certain past events on \nwhich little is known. \n\n\n\nThe chapters are grouped under three sections as the author recalls life during the war-\nridden years of the Japanese Occupation, the struggle from the jungle during the Emergency, \nand an account of heroes and former comrade-in-arms. \n\n\n\nLin Yan\u2019s biography is reminiscent of those of many Chinese immigrants of pre-\nindependence days. He speaks of his childhood and education in the small town of Kajang \nsouth of Kuala Lumpur. He remembers the atrocities of the Japanese aggressors but had no \ngood words for the fleeing British either. The Japanese were ruthless, and the British army was \noutwardly strong but \u201cinwardly weak, stupid and incompetent\u201d. The Japanese fascist policy of \n\u201cloot all, burn all, kill all\u201d was meant to exact maximum destruction and fear, and was coupled \nwith the brutal use of tortures and commitment of atrocities such as rape and massacres. One \nof the most notorious massacres took place in 1942 in the township of Titi in Negeri Sembilan \nin which children and women were not spared. Remembered too was the mass break-out from \nPudu prison in Kuala Lumpur in 1943. The resistance against the Japanese by the Malayan \nPeople\u2019s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) won the recognition of the deposed British who were \nstill hoping to defeat the Japanese. The end of Japanese Occupation saw ethnic clashes instigated \nby the Japanese and the subsequent British clampdown on the Chinese and the disbanding of \nthe MPAJA and harsh treatment of workers who went on strikes. The onset of Emergency rule \nbegan with, among others, the detention of activists and the suppression of workers. The story \nalso tells of the mass rallies and marches in Kajang on May 1, 1984; British trumped-up charges; \nbloodshed in Sungai Siput; the ill treatment of workers; the banning of newspapers; and the \nclosing of Chinese schools such the Wah Chiao School in Kajang. All these had compelled a \nreturn to underground resistance.\n\n\n\nThe second part extends the tale to the immediate post-war years of political struggles \nbetween CPM and the colonial government. The story begins with the mass arrest on June \n20, 1948 of many in Kajang, including the author\u2019s brother, suspected of leftish activities. \n\n\n\n84\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews 85\n\n\n\nA peninsula-wide Emergency Act was introduced and the CPM and numerous Chinese and \nworker organizations were outlawed, and 600 CPM members arrested.  At age 17, the author \njoined his friends to carry on the anti-colonial struggle in the jungle. His training in the jungle \ncamp and the emphasis on the four main rules of discipline and ten points for attention was \nreminiscent of life in the Red Army of China.\n\n\n\nThe final part recounts the life of \u201cheroes\u201d such as Liu Guan Jin, described as an earth-\nshaking hero against imperialism; Qiu Shui Sheng, a veteran who dedicated his life to the \nrevolutionary movement; Lao Tie, an international fighter; Gu Ning and Yu Jie as revolutionary \nmartyrs; and numerous others who fought for democracy and freedom from colonialism.\n\n\n\nThis is the account of a person whose life and work were connected with Malaysia \nfor up to 60 years. Its purpose is to record \u201cthe figures and events that I had witnessed and \nheard half a century ago\u201d, though with unavoidable \u201cerrors and omissions\u201d. In recent years \nnumerous publications on the Japanese Occupation and Emergency years have appeared, \npenned by surviving eyewitnesses of the period or amateur historians and largely written in \nChinese. Rainbow is rather special as it is an account of facets of life and events of the period \nin English.   \n\n\n\nThis book is written in simple narrative style that succeeds in sharing with the reader \nthe feelings of admiration and pain of a youthful author living at a time of political turmoil in \nMalaya. Digging deep into the memory of his youthful days, the author has made available \ndetails of life and events of the 1940s to the early 1950s that are little known until today. The \nlanguage is apologetic, and readers might feel that the author was wistful while narrating his \nstory. \n\n\n\nDespite the fact that Rainbow is a personal tale of life and events of the 1930s to 1950s,  \nits first-hand account would certainly help to construct a more comprehensive history of the \nJapanese Occupation and the Emergency period. This and other similar titles dealing with the \nperiod do provide snippets of evidence on the brutality of Japanese aggression and doubts \non the reliability of British colonial sources on the counter-insurgency campaign during the \nEmergency.\n\n\n\nThe book would read better if it is appended with a glossary on such words as baohu, \nbelacan, hartal or surau, and acronyms such as CPM, MPAJA, ABSDC, and MNLA. These \nwords often crop up and the need to trace back to earlier explanations adds to the disjointed \nflow of thoughts. As the key characters in the book have nicknames, given names, and aliases, \na listing of these characters may help the readers to keep track of the broad outline as the story \nunfolds.\n\n\n\nSIM Kay Koh\nNew Era College\n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nBook Reviews\n\n\n\n\u300a\u8d8a\u6d0b\u63a7\u8bc9 \u5cc7\u51ac\u52a0\u91cc\u5c60\u6740\u60e8\u6848\u300b\u90ed\u4ec1\u5fb7\u3001\u90ed\u4e49\u6c11\u8457\uff0cKuala Lumpur: \u8ffd\u8ba8\u82f1\u519b\u5c60\u6740\n\n\n\n\u7f6a\u884c\u5de5\u59d4\u4f1a (Trans-Ocean Litigation: The Batang Kali Massacre, by Quee Jin Teck and Quee \nNgee Meng, Kuala Lumpur: Action Committee to Impeach British Soldiers on Their Crime of \nCommitting Massacre, 2013, 356 pages) (ISBN 978-983-40397-1-4).\n\n\n\nThis book in Chinese, literally translated as Trans-Ocean Litigation: The Batang Kali \nMassacre is an account of the attempt to seek justice for the massacre of 23 rubber plantation \nworkers by British soldiers on 12 December 1948 and a boy shot the day before. While the \nkilling has been made known in various forms and by various quarters in the past 60 years, a \nfather-and-son team has been instrumental in bringing the case to Britain for the first time. The \naccount of the brutal massacre reveals the efforts of the \u201cAction Committee to Impeach British \nSoldiers on Their Crime of Committing Massacre\u201d with the intention to put the record straight \nand to expose the attitude of the British Government. The publication goes beyond establishing \nthe truth of the crime. This has been accomplished by Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor in Slaughter \nand Deception at Batang Kali in 2009 (Media Masters) and Christopher Hale in Massacre in \nMalaysia: Exposing Britain\u2019s My Lai (The History Press) in 2013. \n\n\n\nIn the hearing in London in 2012, Sir John Thomas, President of the Queen Bench \nDivision, sitting with Justice Treacy and Justice Silbert of the British High Court, established \nthe following ten key facts of the case (pp. 24-25): \n\n\n\nIn the hamlet where the Batang Kali plantation killings took place lived several 1. \nfamilies. The persons killed did not wear any uniform nor carry any weapon. (The \ncourt takes note that the plantation owner, Menzies, on 12 December 1948, had openly \nacknowledged that those killed had a good record of being faithful employees.)\nThe platoon had pursued two uniformed and armed rebels; having lost sight of them 2. \nthe platoon had entered the hamlet in Batang Kali plantation.\nOn the evening of 11 December 1948, a young man called Luo Hui was shot by the 3. \nScots Guards. Luo Hui was a student and he did not carry any weapon. He was shot in \nthe stomach and collapsed, and was shot again at close range by the Scots Guards.\nThe settlers were divided into two groups, the males in one group and females and 4. \nchildren in another. All were detained in the hamlet. \nThe British soldiers began to interrogate the settlers and subjected them to simulated 5. \nexecutions to frighten them (Hale, 2003: 298).\nThe local police learned from a settler of the occasional visits of armed rebels to the 6. \nhamlet to obtain food. This information was later passed on to the platoon.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 79-82\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNg\n\n\n\nA lorry entered the hamlet the next morning. The search party of British soldiers 7. \nfound a supply of food. The head worker was detained.\nWomen, children and a man traumatized by fear were loaded onto a lorry. The lorry 8. \nmoved a short distance away. Before they were taken to the town, a British soldier \nkept watch.\nShortly after 23 male settlers detained in a hut were released, all were shot by British 9. \nsoldiers.\n\n\n\n10.   The platoon set fire to the village and returned to their camp.\nThese incriminating facts have gradually surfaced from eye-witness accounts of the crime \n\n\n\ncommitted in cold blood by British soldiers on 12 December 1948. The authors are a father \n(since deceased) and son team who join forces with a group of concerned citizens to set up the \n\u201cAction Committee to Impeach British Soldiers on Their Crime of Committing Massacre\u201d in \nKuala Lumpur in 2008. Although the Action Committee failed to convince the current British \nGovernment to admit their guilt, they have nevertheless aroused domestic and international \nattention.\n\n\n\nWhat the authors wish to accomplish is to inform Malaysians the truth about the massacre \nand the legal wrangles with the British Government to hold them accountable and to seek \njustice on behalf of the innocent victims. Indeed, the campaign is a concerted effort of the \nChinese community to restore the names of the victims and their families as well as their place \nin the community and society. It is not a case of righting a wrong but the acknowledgement \nby the perpetrators, the British Government, of their action. Not surprisingly, when a group of \nordinary citizens of an ex-colonial territory pit themselves against a former colonial ruler, it \nis almost certain that they would fail to wrest any concession other than establishing the legal \nfacts of the case.\n\n\n\nThe Batang Kali massacre has never made it to the nation\u2019s history book. How is history to \nbe written and how can the genuine face of the past be presented? History may come in different \nversions. For a former colonial state, there is a \u201ccolonial\u201d history which is subsequently replaced \nby an \u201cofficial\u201d version to glorify the sovereign state. But the people\u2019s or grass-root version is \ninvariably marginalized and, with the passage of time, erased from the collective memory. Yet \nit is these grass-root efforts that are instrumental in filling the voids and gaps in the colonial \nhistory.\n\n\n\nMy grandma and later on my dad used to refer to the killing of innocent Chinese villagers \nin Batang Kali. Growing up in a village outside Kuala Lumpur, I had found the place distantly \nremote from reality as I failed to understand why grandma and dad could not banish the memory \nfrom their minds. Dad had mentioned that his father was lucky for having left the Batang Kali \nplantation the day before the fateful event to visit his grand-children and to procure some food.\nIt was on reading Trans-Ocean Litigation that I found that Ng Yeng Kui @ Ng Kong, 55 years \nold, was among the 24 victims. For the first time, it dawned on me that this was my grandpa\u2019s \nbrother, my granduncle, with whom I share the same bloodline.\n\n\n\n80\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews\n\n\n\nI now empathize with the victims. Ng Kong and grandpa had migrated from China and \nsettled down in Batang Kali with his compatriots from Gaozhou, their ancestral village in \nGuangdong province. He had toiled with bare hands to open up land to eke out a living, hoping \none day to return to his home village. But this was not to be. He and 23 others were ruthlessly \ncut down by gun shots fired by colonial soldiers from the other side of the globe. \n\n\n\nIn 1948, the British had declared a state of emergency in Malaya and on 12 December, 24 \nplantation workers were made the triumphant prize of a colonial government desperate to claim \nlegitimacy as ruler of a rich colonial possession. The massacre adds a shameful example to \nBritish colonial history in which innocent Chinese settlers who had contributed their sweat and \nblood to the enrichment of colonial coffers were killed with total disregard for the truth. History \nbooks sing the praise of the great colonial rule but will readily suppress or distort \u201cpainful\u201d \nhistorical truths. \n\n\n\nThe Quee father-and-son team has not only recorded the Batang Kali massacre in clear \nhistorical detail but also, more importantly, left no stones unturned to present this brutal act \nto the British Government and to seek justice on behalf of the victims. As chairman of the \nAction Committee, the late Senior Quee had borne immense sacrifices. He travelled to England \nto compile documentary evidence, hired distinguished British lawyers to initiate legal action, \nsolicited the support of Malaysian Chinese community to petition the British government, \nconducted briefings to publicize the case, and strived to make known their cause to the attention \nof international community. Junior Quee is a lawyer and a key member of the Action Committee \nthat brought their case to London to seek justice on an act of murder.\n\n\n\nTrans-Ocean Litigation is the narrative of a rare international litigation in the legal \nhistory of Malaysia. It involves not only the judiciaries of Malaysia and Great Britain but also \nsuch considerations as diplomatic and official relations, and even touching on the dignity and \ncultures of two countries and peoples. Eventually, taking into account all considerations, how \ndoes history judge the victims and do justice to their surviving family members who have \nsuffered emotional torments for more than 60 years? They continue to suffer the indignity of \nbeing dismissed and disregarded by the power behind the massacre.The appeals of the families \nfor compensation and apology has been rejected repeatedly. The British Government of the \npast has objected to any form of hearings on the case and all forms of investigation, behaving \nin the classic pattern of casting judgement before the case is heard. Seeking legal redress is \nmeaningful in many ways: to restore the names of the victims; to bring justice on a criminal act; \nto demand admission of the act by the British Government and to seek an apology for a crime \non humanity; and to set the historical record straight.\n\n\n\nIn 2012, members of the Action Committee submitted a memorandum to British Prime \nMinister Cameron during his state visit to Malaysia. On 8-9 May in the same year, an official \nhearing opened in London in which three surviving eye-witnesses aged between 71 and 75 \nappeared before the court. This book describes in detail the entire process to prepare a legal \nbattle with the British Government that began with the setting up of the Action Committee in \n\n\n\n81\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNg\n\n\n\n2008 and ended in 2012 with the rejection of the appeal against the decision not to set up a \npublic enquiry on the case.\n\n\n\nThe book consists of 21 chapters grouped into six sections. Broadly, these sections \nare: continuing the fight against a framed-up case; out-of-court preparation and community \nsolidarity; protracted and meticulous process of litigation; crossing the seas to sue the British \nGovernment; cross-century hearing; upholding dignity throughout. Section 1 outlines the setting \nup of the Action Committee and the determination to set the record straight and to expose the \ncover up by the British authorities. Section 2 deals with efforts to pool legal and community \nresources, visits to London for legal advice and consultation, and exposure of the Batang Kali \nslaughter by veteran journalists. Section 3 describes the persistent efforts for a public enquiry \nand challenging the legal position of the British Government in its rejection. The next section \ntells of efforts to seek British legal subsidy and the preparation for legal battle. Section 5 sets \nout the legal hearing in London and its outcome. The final section is the reaction to the rejection \nof a public enquiry and the attempt to appeal against this decision.\n\n\n\nAs expected, the British Government did not come out with a fair judgement based on the \nestablished facts of the case. To add insult to injury, the victims were framed: the standard and \nonly official explanation of the British was that the victims were \u201cterrorists\u201d and were armed, \nand that these \u201cChinese suspects were shot because they tried to escape\u201d. More ridiculously, \nthe ruling of the British court was that, because of the state of Emergency then prevailing, the \nresponsibility for the killing of the people by British soldiers lies with the Sultan and not the \nBritish Government. \n\n\n\nThe authors of Trans-Ocean Litigation wrote: \u201c The truth is the biggest lesson for the \nBritish Government.\u201d The Action Committee has demonstrated a strong show of support and \nconcern for fair play for the victims. The current generation is trying to accomplish what the past \ngeneration had failed to do. Continued failures to secure justice for the victims will spur future \ngenerations to carry on. Our forefathers, having settled down and contributed their labour to \nthe development process, had conducted themselves with dignity and, with other communities, \nhave left behind a land where their descendants put down their roots as the permanent legacy \nof their sacrifices.\n\n\n\nOn reading the book, I have asked my father if grandfather had returned to the scene of the \nmassacre to collect the body of his younger brother to give him a decent burial. He shook his \nhead: \u201cWho would dare to return then? Grandpa said the children were still young and he could \nnot risk the suspicion of the soldiers.\u201d To my granduncle and others, where they had settled \ndown to make a living with their honest efforts, that was the land that they called home.\n\n\n\nThe victims have been sacrificed, but history will not forget them. For history is on the \nside of the truth.\n\n\n\nNG Yean Leng\nNew Era College\n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n82\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nReference Materials\nThe Position of Chinese Women \n\n\n\nSONG Ong Siang\n\n\n\n                         \u201cWeakness to be worth with weakness. Women\u2019s pleasure, woman\u2019s pain.\n                            Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain.\n \n                            Women is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match\u2019d with mine.\n                            Are as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine.\u201d\n\n\n\n        This is most exquisite language, but like the language that is found and permitted often \nin poetry, it is apt to be somewhat exaggerated when applied to the position of English women \nat the time that \u201cLocksley Hall\u201d was penned by the late Lord Tennyson. It was an unfair \ncomparison between the two sexes drawn by a lover who had been spurned and rejected by the \nyoung lady upon whom he had set his heart and affections.\n      But tell me seriously if the above lines from \u201cLocksley Hall\u201d do not contain the very \nthoughts that would arise in the minds of, and the very words that would be uttered by the \nBabas (or Straits-born Chinese) if they were asked to make a comparison between themselves \nand their women whom I shall henceforward in this paper call the \u201cNyonyas\u201d? Was it not some \nBaba who supplied this piece of information which I find in Mr. J. D. Vaughan\u2019s The Manners \nand Customs of the Chinese? Referring to their domestic habits, the author says \u201cMen take their \nmeals alone, women and children take theirs in an inner chamber; there is no social intercourse \nbetween sexes. Women are treated by the Chinese, like all Eastern nations, as inferior to the \nlords of the creation.\u201d Bearing in mind that I am dealing with the women of the Baba \ncommunity, is this picture of the inferior social status or position of the Nyonyas true to life? \nIf it is, then how unfavourably does it compare with the status of women in China if what \nColonel Tcheng-ki-tong says in his work The Chinese painted by Themselves is true. \u201cThe \nChinese women\u201d says he, \u201ccan replace their husbands in every circumstance of ownership, and \nthe law recognises their right to sell and to buy, to alienate common property, to draw bills, \nto give their children in marriage and give them what dowry they please. In a word they are \nfree.\u201d And again he adds \u201cFamily life is the education which forms the Chinese women, and she \nonly aspires to be learned in the art of governing her family. She superintends her children\u2019s \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 59-67\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSong\n\n\n\neducation, and is content to devote her existence to her family. If fate gives her a good husband, \nshe is certainly the happiest of women.\u201d\n         Not having had the advantage of going to China, I cannot say whether the above description \nis generally true or is an exaggeration, perhaps excusable, on the part of a writer somewhat \noffended at the unguarded statements made and hasty judgments formed about China \nby travellers whose knowledge of the country, the people and their manners and customs, is \nlacking in depth and anything like scientific investigation. But be that as it may. I presume that \nalthough the above description may not be absolutely or even generally accurate; it is not far \nfrom the truth with regard to Chinese women in the higher ranks of life in China. This therefore \nplaces the social status of the women in China on a much higher plane than that of their sisters \nin Singapore. If true, what is the significance of the boast and pride and self-glorification, \nO Babas! that you assume, and the meaning of the airs that you give yourselves when you \nspeak of possessing higher intellects, better education and the advantages of Western thought \nand culture and despise your fellow countrymen, the \u201cInche Eropas\u201das you term them. If true, \nthen what a standing rebuke this degraded social status of the Nyonyas is to the boasted \nsuperiority of the Straits-born Chinese over their fellow countrymen from China! Thus far I \nhave only ventured to make general remarks, but I shall now come to deal with the subject in \ndetail.\n\n\n\n          FIRSTLY \u2014 the present position or status of the Nyonyas in Singapore\n\n\n\n           I have advisedly confined the scope of my subject to this settlement, as I must confess \nmy ignorance of the real social position of the Nyonyas in Penang, though I may remark by the \nway that I am informed the Babas there hold more liberal views with regard to the position in \nsociety of their Nyonyas. I have further to put aside as beyond the scope of this subject their \nlegal position or status. So far as the married women are concerned, the law stamps their status \nduring coverture or marriage with incapacity; but this is a disqualification which they should \nnot take to heart, because married women of all nationalities in this Colony, save Mohamedan \nwomen, are in the same plight. It is the social status or the position in society of the Nyonyas \nthat I have to deal with and desire to draw your attention to.\n          (a) Ignorance\n        The present generation of Nyonyas, with a few exceptions, is a generation of illiterate \nand uneducated women. The only form of education that they do get is of a purely domestic \ncharacter. That of course must be supported, and must ever form one of the phases or branches \nof the education which should be imparted to the Nyonyas. But that is far from being the whole \nduty of a Chinese women. Not being taught to read or write in Chinese, English or Malay, they \nare deprived all through life of the ordinary means of gleaning or obtaining knowledge from \nnewspapers or journals, or of benefitting by the experience of other people recorded in books \nand other documents. Anything like an accomplished education is not only denied them but \n\n\n\n60\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPosition of Chinese Women \n\n\n\ndecried and denounced by their parents and husbands as being inimical or opposed to the best \ninterests of the women themselves. The usual argument against their having any knowledge \nof reading or writing is that they will become Christianised or be guilty of writing love letters. \nThus their souls, or, what is best and purest and noblest in them, become, to use the words of \nShakespeare, \u201ccribb\u2019d, cabin\u2019d and confin\u2019d.\u201d They become selfish and careless and ignorant, \nwith a propensity for gambling and some even for drinking for the sake of something that gives \nthem temporary excitement, and in some cases, apparently preferring now and again to have \nan audience of the Police Magistrate rather than to be occupied with the training, moral and \nmental, of their children, or to study to make their houses and their surroundings real homes \nfor their husbands and grown-up sons, to wean them and draw their attention and desires away \nfrom the temptations and vices and evil companions that dog their every step and to woo them \nto the comforts and the pleasures of an ideal family circle. I cannot blame them, for they are \nobjects rather of pity than of censure. They are the products of a system for which their fathers, \nhusbands and brothers are responsible.\n          To their ignorance is attributable, to a large extent, the superstition that troubles and haunts \nthem in each event and concern of their daily life. Superstition is, as you well know, the twin \nsister of ignorance. That they are full of superstitious ideas and beliefs you will readily admit. \nIs it a condition in life that is at all worthy of being envied or desired? Anything and everything \nthat occurs to them which is beyond the range of their previous experience is put down as the \nwork or influence of some evil spirit which has to be propitiated. And I suppose none of us so \nmuch as our Chinese friend Dr. Lim Boon Keng, as their medical adviser, appreciates fully what \na fearful prejudice there exists in the minds of the Nyonyas to the use of and belief in anything \nthat is strange and foreign to their limited experience, although most beneficial to themselves \nor favourable to their interests.   \n           (b) Dependence\n         The second deplorable thing about the present social status of Chinese women is their \nutter dependence on the male sex. No doubt from one point of view unmarried girls should be \ndependent on their fathers and brothers, and married women on their husbands. Under the \nexisting state of society, some of them can be independent and earn their own livelihood, or \nhelp a father or a brother himself but poorly educated, struggling bravely along to maintain a \nlarge family, to add a few dollars to the family income by doing embroidery work, by sewing \nor by making pastry or cakes to sell. And this is about all that they can do. Thus sense of their \nabsolute dependence has, I believe, led some of the women both unmarried and widows, to take \nfor a life of shame and vice, not always by inclination but by force of adverse circumstances \nand from sheer inability to shift for themselves when suddenly thrown upon a cold and \nunsympathetic world.   \n          (c) Lack of liberty\n         Other circumstances may occur to your minds which show that the present status of the \nNyonyas does not tend to reflect credit on the taste and the higher qualities of the Straits-born \n\n\n\n61\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSong\n\n\n\nChinese community, but I shall refer only to one more, viz; the zenana system, if I may borrow \nthe expression from India. What is this system? It is that of keeping the Nyonyas, more particularly \nthe unmarried girls, confined within the four walls of a house, be that house a palace or a \nhut. It is the practice that prohibits any social intercourse between them and the male sex until \nmarriage, and that prevents them from receiving visits from and paying visits to others of their \nown sex who do not come within the immediate family circle. Whether this custom is one that \ndeserves praise or condemnation, I will discuss later on, but I state this as a patent fact.\n          Now I am most anxious to know what is the origin of this custom, and whether it obtains \nto the same extent in China. Turning once again to my authority Tcheng-ki-tong, I find him \nsaying that although in a sense the Chinese women are free, they have not the same liberty of \namusement as in Europe. They do make visits to their friends and receive theirs in return, but \nthese re-unions are not open to men. And again \u201cthe institutions in China have but one aim \u2014 \nthe organisation of social tranquility, and to assure its realisation, the only infallible principle \nhas been \u2014 to avoid giving opportunities. Hence it is probable that the Chinese legislators in \ndiminishing as much as possible the number of occasions for men and women to meet have \nacted in the interests of the family.\u201d This is a laudable principle, but it looks only on one side \nof the picture. But I cannot find any direct reference to the custom of seclusion as it affects the \nunmarried girls. I have tried to get information from Chinese people here, and I have been told \nthat although custom absolutely prohibits a young man to speak to an unmarried girl, it gives \nthe latter more healthful liberty in another direction, viz: that of walking out during the \nday-time under the protection of the mother or some other relative, and of breathing the pure air \nof heaven, and thus of adding more vigour and health and enjoyment in her life.\n         What do you say to these things? Is my description of the present status of the Nyonyas \none that tallies and lits in with your experience? If it does, do you favour it to such an extent that \nany attempt at improvement will mean to you a backward instead of a forward step?\n          I address you thus\u2019as an advocate of some measure of improvement to the present status \nof the Nyonyas. I may be charged with having too much of western thought, and with being \nimbued with western ideas, and it may be said that I represent in the views I am about to put \nforward to you too faithful a picture of John Coming Chinaman. Therefore it is well for me \nbefore proceeding further to warn you that if I hold liberal views with regard to the position of \nthe Nyonyas, I am not a radical; in other words I do not advocate thorough and tremendons and \nrevolutionary changes because I know that such changes, if suddenly brought about and based \non other than sound foundations, will bring nothing but disaster in their train. Having given you \nthis note of warning, I shall now proceed to discuss the second part of my subject.\n\n\n\n         SECONDLY \u2014 Reasons for Improvement\n\n\n\n         I shall put it in this form. The present social status of the Nyonyas being one in which \nignorance, superstition and prejudice largely prevail, and in which there is absolute dependence \non the male sex, and in which our Nyonyas are injuriously fettered in their movements, ought \n\n\n\n62\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPosition of Chinese Women \n\n\n\nnot something to be done towards improving them, and that done by men who are the leaders \nand the lights of the Straits-born Chinese community? I contend that something ought to be \ndone for the following reasons:\n         (a)  The judgment of History has been that no community, no people, no country has ever \nreached a high stage of civilization whose women have been kept and forced to remain in a low \nand degraded condition of life and morals. Turn where you will, the countries that have attained \na high degree of civilization are the countries where the women are held in honour and deep \nrespect. Are we not desirous that the Straits-born Chinese community shall be looked upon as \nan educated and enlightened people? Then let us look after our women, and help them all we \ncan to be themselves more enlightened, more perfect, more noble in their thoughts and \naspirations, and more fit to be the worthy mothers of the future citizens of this Settlement. Far \nbe it from me to cast a slur on the women of this generation. We have men in our midst who are \nable and energetic, philanthropic and useful, qualified and competent by their experience and \nability to undertake and discharge public duties with credit, but they attained to these positions \nby their own efforts and not in any way by the inspiration of their wives and mothers. Are we \nambitious if we plead for the next generation of mothers to be so educated in literature and the \nfine arts, besides their necessary domestic education as to enable them to inspire in their \nchildren of both sexes from their childhood a love for moral excellence, and high and lofty \nideas of life both in the home and in the state of which they are to be dwellers and citizens? \nAre we ambitious and proud if we desire for our children good and respectable and honourable \npositions and appointments in the community or state wherein they may take up their abode? \nThis is ambition indeed, but it is the right sort of ambition to cherish. It is at present very much \na dream, but if \u201cthe dreams which nations dream come true, and shape the world anew\u201d so shall \nour dream be realised if we work and labour for its realisation. And we must expect our Chinese \nwomen, our Nyonyas, to play an important part to bring about this improved state of things.\n         (b) The second reason is this. In any country where the inhabitants are natives, i.e. are born \nand live and die there, it has been observed that the women outnumber the men and that the \ndisproportion increases as time goes on. In a place like Singapore you may be led to infer that \nthe above role finds a departure and an exception. But the inference would be wrong. You \nmust not take the whole community (because of its cosmopolitan character) to judge this rule \nby. You must not even take the Chinese section of it, but you must confine your calculations \nto the Baba sub-section, \u2014 that class which regards Singapore as its home and native place. \nA comparison of the figures in the Census for 1881 and for 1891 will show that the excess of \nStraits-born women over men which was 1,632 in 1881 had increased by 411 in 1891. Apart \nfrom that, as a matter of general observation you are aware that the number of Nyonyas is \nslightly greater than that of Babas. As time goes on, this disproportion will be more marked \nfor various reasons, such as the greater exposure of men to accidents, liability to diseases, and \nthe consequences of unhealthy occupations. Other reasons which do not exist now will crop \nup in time. Emigration to the Native States and elsewhere will be an important factor in the \n\n\n\n63\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSong\n\n\n\nlife of the community at no distant date, because Singapore is limited in its area and in its \nclerical appointments. For these reasons, therefore, as I have already remarked, the numerical \ndisproportion between the Baba women and men will become more strongly marked, and we \nmust calculate and make provision for the consequences with statesmenlike eyes and foresight. \nIn this calculation, we must not lose sight of the women. So long as you allow them to remain \nabsolutely dependent on the men, so long will their position be extremely unsatisfactory.There \nwill be nothing they could look forward to, except marriage, to give them the highest form of \nhappiness or satisfaction or to enable them to escape from a father\u2019s indigence or poverty. But \neven assuming that each girl does get a husband, there will be hundreds who can never hope to \nmarry, or have at best a faint chance of getting married. And what is to become of these latter? \nHaving been trained by their mothers to regard marriage, especially into a wealthy family, as \nthe one aim and object of their little pent-up lives, and having received no education to \nencourage and embolden them to strike out an honourable and useful path for themselves, when \ndisappointment comes, they fall easy victims to scheming and unscrupulous persons who lead \nthem away from the paths of virtue and honour.\n        When a little while ago I read this essay to the Chinese Philomatic Society, it was \npointedly suggested that the distinction between the Straits-born Chinese and the immigrant \nChinese has been too nicely drawn and that there is frequent intermarriage between these two \nsections of the Chinese community, and that the excess of the Nyonyas over the Babas is an \nadvantage as it gives the immigrant Chinese an opportunity of finding his wife and of settling \ndown here. This doubtless is an advantage, even though in a great many cases of such \nintermarriages, the Nyonya wife finds that she is only the junior wife. It would be also an \nadvantage as the means of infusing a new spirit of enterprise and adventure into the lethargic \nblood of the Straits-born Chinese. But if this particular difficulty is to be faced the \nintermarriages, I referred to above which at present are certainly not held in favour, will have \nto be strongly encouraged.\n        (c) There remains another reason for the question which I have put before you in the \nsecond part of this subject.  Mr. J. D. Vaughan in the book from which I have already quoted, \nsays of the Nyonyas, \u201cFemales are shorter than those of the European races, pretty when young, \nbut soon become ugly and repulsive,\u201d and further, in drawing a comparison between the Babas \nand the Chinese from China, he says \u201cTeeth regular and strong, except in Babas. A European \ndentist informed the writer that they as a rule have bad teeth. Babas are not so rebust as the real \nChinese, but resemble them in every other particular.\u201d How far these statements are consistent \nwith truth I cannot say, as I have not made sufficient comparisons myself, but with regard to \nthe features of the Nyonyas, I believe there is a great deal of truth in the remark of Mr. Vaughan. \nNow the quality of beauty happily is not the monopoly of any particular race or people. There \nare pretty faces to be found amongst our Nyonyas, and if we agree with the poet Keats that \u201ca \nthing of beauty is a joy for ever,\u201d should we not concern ourselves to let the beauty and bloom \nof youth remain with their possessor as long as Nature permits it? But we are doing nothing to \n\n\n\n64\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPosition of Chinese Women \n\n\n\nrealise this. And surely also, beauty is created in order that men may admire and satisfy, their \naesthetic minds by, whether that beauty is imprinted on a rose or a lily or on the features of a \nyoung woman. But we have allowed the rough hand of custom and prejudice to come in our \npath, and to confine youthful beauty within the four walls of a house to bloom and languish \nand die unnoticed and unadmired.   \n          Believing or assuming that women do not require to train their intellects, we further \nassume that they do not require to train their bodies and develop their muscles, and so we leave \nthem entirely to themselves. Are we sincere? Are we true to our experience and best judgment, \nor to the best interests of our women? Let us consider that point for a moment. Some of you are \nfond of gardening. There is a rose bush or a jasmine plant of a \u201cchickoo\u201d shrub in that garden \nwhich you much prize. Do you allow that plant to look after itself, and do you simply admire the \nrose or the jasmine flower or eat the \u201cchickoo\u201d fruit? Ah, you know better than to do that! If you \ntake me round to your garden, I shall be certain to see the rose leaves clipped off, the delicate \njasmine plant well propped up, and the white parasites carefully removed therefrom, and the \n\u201cchickoo\u201d tree pruned and the fruit protected with the greatest care. All these little attentions \nhave been paid by you to these objects that give you but temporary pleasure and delight in order \nto ensure the best results. Are we not willing and concerned that our girls should receive equal, \nif not better, care and thoughtfulness at our hands? But I must not weary you and will therefore \nnow deal with the last part of my subject.\n       \n         THIRDLY \u2014 Plan suggested \n\n\n\n          If you have followed me so far and agree that we come far short of the ideal in the present \nstatus of the Nyonyas, the next question that arises is:\u2014 How and in what direction should we \nsanction improvements? This is a practical matter, and I expect to receive suggestions and helps \nfrom you as practical men in answering that question.\n          The women must in the first place be educated, and that education must be of a wholesome \ncharacter. It should consist of elementary subjects such as Reading, Writing (whether \nin Chinese or English or both) and Arithmetic up to the work of Standard IV, Sewing and \nembroidery work under competent Nyonya mistresses, Domestic and household management, \nlessons in hygiene, in nursing and the laws of health, Music and singing, Painting &c. It would \nbe preferable to have public classes where these subjects can be taught, as the spirit of \ncompetition would thus be generated, and the keener the competition, the more excellent and \nsatisfactory would be the productions. In Christian schools, the Bible is and will continue to \nbe read and taught, but in these other schools, general rules of morality or the Confucian ethics \nmight be taught and explained. I would lay special stress on some form of moral education, so \nas to render these girls, when they become mothers, competent to impart to their children some \nelements of moral truths at a time of life when their minds receive the deepest and most vivid \nimpressions. How often have we come across and read of the greatest and best and noblest men \n\n\n\n65\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSong\n\n\n\nattributing their success and greatness in no small measure to the early training they had once \nreceived at their mothers\u2019 knees!\n        Then, as I have already remarked, we must not neglect their physical training. It is not \nnecessary for them to indulge in violent forms of exercise, such as cricket or football, but they \ncan develop their muscles in gymnastic exercises which will induce gracefulness in their \nfigure, as well as give strength and grit to their muscles. They ought to be taken out of the \nhouse as often as possible for a walk and for a blow of fresh air, especially in the morning, and \nlive a freer and more open-air life. These and other forms of exercise would keep them in good \nhealth, and drive away that unhealthy paleness which is seen on the features of so many Chinese \ngirls, and fit them to perform more satisfactorily their duties of maternity, and enable them to \npreserve their youthful appearance for a longer space of time.\n        Again, as their mental and physical education will be the means of supplying them with \nother pursuits and pleasures than those of gambling, opportunities should be given them of freer \nsocial intercourse among themselves, and you may depend on it that such meetings will by no \nmeans be dull. I have not time to give you a detailed illustration but I may mention in passing, \nthat that is just what the Parsee ladies have been doing among themselves in India, and they, \nI believe, are the only women among Oriental races whose attainments and accomplishments \nhave been spoken of in high terms by their European sisters. No member of the opposite sex is \nadmitted to these social meetings, but report has it that they are of a most enjoyable and elevating \ncharacter. We need not be jealous or saucy because we would not be allowed to take part in \ntheir amusements, but we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we have been laying the \nfoundations of happy and bright homes and families.\n         One more remark before I close. To my mind, it will be necessary that these various \nreforms should be undertaken at one and the same time. Half the value of the mental education \ngiven to our girls will be lost if we continue to keep them as we have done in strict confinement. \nIt is an axiom of education that we learn by imparting our knowledge to others, and there will be \ngreat intellectual gain when one keen mind comes into contact with another. So with physical \neducation.\n        But as I have already said in different parts of this paper, nothing in the direction of \nimprovement in the social status of the women will be of permanent value or give really \nsatisfactory results unless the movement originates from the Babas themselves and finds strong \nand continued support from that quarter. For, believe me, the father who is not himself \nconvinced of the importance and value of education whether moral, physical or intellectual, \nwill regard such education for his girls as mere waste of time and frivolous waste of energy. \nThis is a subject which we Babas ought to ponder in our minds carefully, and if we appreciate \nthe value of such education to our boys, let us be prepared to go a step further and give the \nbenefit of it likewise to our girls. Success depends on our united effort and support. No private \nor public institution, no private individual or society can hope to succeed unless it is backed up \nby the co-operation and support of a large body of enlightened and thoughtful Babas.\n\n\n\n66\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPosition of Chinese Women \n\n\n\n        And when by our farsightedness and wise policy we have brought about this state of \nthings, the husband of the Nyonya of a future generation, in lamenting her loss, may be even \nconstrained to say with Tennyson in his Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After:  \n\n\n\n                              \u201c Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,\n                                She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,\n\n\n\n                                Strong in mind and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly sweet,\n                                Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,\n\n\n\n                                Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,\n                                She that link\u2019d again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.\u201d \n\n\n\nSource: The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, March 1897: 16-23.\n\n\n\n67\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian \nSpirit of Capitalism:\n\n\n\nA Chinese-Indonesian Kyai\u2019s Business and Leadership\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou*\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Syuan-Yuan Chiou (2023). Islamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of \nCapitalism: A Chinese-Indonesian Kyai\u2019s Business and Leadership. Malaysian Journal of Chinese \nStudies 12(1): 23\u201339. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0003\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0003\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 23\u201339\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n The economic culture in Max Weber\u2019s thesis of Protestant work ethic has been used by scholars \nto explain the Chinese diaspora\u2019s economic success. The Weberian thesis still inspires the study of \nhow Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity influenced Chinese Indonesian entrepreneurs and their \nbusiness activities. On the other hand, it appears that little attention has been paid to the ways \nin which Islamic values have impacted on diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship, or to what extent \nChinese-Indonesian Muslims associate their commercial experience with interpretations of Islam. \nThis study will shift from focusing on prominent Chinese Muslim entrepreneurs to focus on how a \nChinese gang boss, Anton Medan, converted to Islam before becoming a famous Muslim preacher \nand eventually built his business and Islamic boarding school for the Muslim grassroots. This paper \nwill employ Max Weber\u2019s thesis of Protestant work ethic to critically analyse this phenomenon. \n\n\n\n Keywords: Indonesia, Chinese-Indonesian Muslim entrepreneurs, diasporic Chinese \n                 entrepreneurship; Protestant work ethic \n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\n In the study of diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship in Indonesia, the economic culture \ndescribed in Max Weber\u2019s thesis of Protestant work ethic has been applied to explain the economic \nsuccess of the Chinese (Redding, 2013). However cultural theories are easily criticised as assuming \nan all-encompassing cultural homogeneity of overseas Chinese by ignoring their diverse ethnic \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n24\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nand geographic backgrounds as well as overlooking their culture that may have undergone \nintergenerational or interregional changes (Chuah et al., 2016). Despite that, the Weberian thesis \nstill inspires the study of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity influence on Chinese-Indonesian \nentrepreneurs and their business activities (Koning, 2018). Nonetheless, not much attention is paid \nto whether Islamic values may have impacted diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship, or to what extent \nChinese-Indonesian Muslims associate their commercial experience with their interpretations of \nIslam. \n This paper does not aim to argue how Islamic ethics facilitate ethnic Chinese business. \nInstead, it will examine how conversion to Islam may become a social capital or symbolic capital \nfor Chinese-Indonesian Muslims to express themselves freely among the indigenous Muslim \ncommunity. The economic and religious mobility of Chinese-Muslim businessmen has shown that \ntheir conversion has raised their social and religious status and grant them access to participate in \nMuslim businesses, as well as charitable, political, and religious affairs. This two-way interchange \nbetween the economic and religious spheres have facilitated their social mobility beyond the typical \nsocial trajectory of ethnic Chinese, in which they are seen as a minority, only able to achieve \nsuccess in commercial activities. As such, their conversion to Islam can be seen as a \u201ctwo-way \nsocial kinetics.\u201d Their religious conversion can therefore be a form of social mobility between the \neconomic and religious spheres, or what Pierre Bourdieu (2018) refers to as \u201cconversion of capital.\u201d \nMuslim businessmen\u2019s commercial experience informs how they apply their pragmatic ideas and \nentrepreneurship to manage religious affairs; but their commercial experiences should not be \nsimply attributed to their Islamic virtues. In some conditions, their Islamic virtues motivates them to \nengage in Islamic economic discourses and perform economic practices with an Islamic orientation.  \nNonetheless, it cannot be naturally assumed that Islamic virtues is the most fundamental factor \nfacilitating business success, since many ethnic-Chinese Muslim businessmen were successful \nbefore they converted to Islam. By becoming Muslim, they actively involved in Muslim affairs and \nother activities, thus we need to consider how they expanded their influence outside of commercial \nactivities through the legitimacy obtained from their Muslim identity and religious faith (Chiou, \n2015; 2020).\n This study intends to shift the focus from prominent Chinese Muslim entrepreneurs to explore \nhow a Chinese gang boss, Anton Medan, converted to Islam, became a famous Muslim preacher, \nand eventually built his workshops and Islamic boarding school for the Muslim grassroots. This \nstudy employs Max Weber\u2019s thesis of Protestant work ethic in the analysis of this phenomenon. \n\n\n\nFrom a Gang Boss to a Kyai1\n\n\n\n Anton Medan (1957-2021) was born into a Chinese family in Tebing Tinggi, North Sumatra \nin 1957.2 When his family became poverty stricken during the anti-communist and anti-Chinese \n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nmovements of the 1960s, he was forced to earn his livelihood on the streets, and became a criminal \nat the age of 13.3 He arrived in Jakarta in the 1980s, and soon became involved in a series of crimes, \nincluding robbing jewellery stores and banks. In 1986 he led a mob in burning down the Jakarta \npolice headquarters to protest against the judiciary system. As for schooling, Medan only received \nsome limited informal education while in jail.  \n Although Medan nominally converted to Islam in 1979 because he wanted to marry a Muslim \nwoman, he did not become a practising Muslim until 1991. He was sent to jail several times, \nand when he was incarcerated in Cipinang Prison (LP Cipinang) he took an interest in various \nreligions.4 \n In 1983, because of a conflict with another prisoner, he was moved to the minimum-security \nprison at Cianjur, which only held convicts who had committed minor crimes. When the month of \nfasting came, Medan closely observed for the first time how Muslims fasted. Cianjur was not a big \ncity, so the prison was close to the people (Raharjo, 1997, IV). Every day, the loudspeakers attached \nto the top of the prison mosque announced pengajian (study sessions for learning Islam) were being \nheld, and he recalled his talks with Tony Ardhie about the oneness of God or tauhid when he was in \nCipinang.5 One night, he heard the performing of takbiran (collective recitation of the Quran) and \nwas so touched that he cried for only the second time during his adult life.6  He was subsequently \nmoved to Subang prison, and then Cirebon prison.\n At Cirebon he met Azhar, Edy, Soni, and their fourteen friends, all imprisoned for attacking the \nCicendo police station in Bandung. They were followers of Imron, who hijacked a Garuda Airlines \nflight and forced the airplane to land at Don Muang Airport, Thailand. In the prison they often \nread books on Islam, practised zikir (chanting the names of Allah) in the mosque, and counselled \nother prisoners. One day, Medan came to their cell, attracted by their calmness despite the difficult \nconditions in the prison. They told Medan about Jesus, who was calm even during the Crucifixion. \nThey also told him stories about other saints; most of whom were persecuted by secular political \nauthorities (Raharjo, 1997, IV).7  Medan began to study the Quran and the Hadith and came to \naccept that the Quran is the only original word of God (Raharjo, 1997, IV). Although he was \nconvinced that Islam is the only true religion, he felt that he was not ready to live according to \nIslamic law and its many prohibitions (Raharjo, 1997, IV).\n\n\n\nRunning the Casino Business\n After two years at Cirebon Prison, following some incidents, he was moved to Kuningan Prison \nwhere he learned how to perform salat (Islamic worship) from a convict who diligently performed \nit every day. After being released from prison on 17 August 1986 under a general amnesty, Medan \nsoon returned to his old livelihood in the Indonesian underworld. At the risk of his life, he struggled \nwith and eventually displaced Hong Lie, who ran illegal casinos. News quickly spread among \n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n26\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ncasino owners, and Medan reached the peak of his power. Three days later, casino owners came to \nsee Medan to pay their respects and offer tribute to their new boss. Some casino owners also asked \nMedan to manage their illegal casinos. All of this made him very happy because he could earn a \nhuge amount of money and offer jobs to his jobless friends and relatives (mostly his brothers). \nMedan usually received 15% of the profits from every casino that he managed, and he also opened \nhis own gambling den. Although it was not as big as the casinos that he managed, and it had to move \nto a new place from time to time, his casino was always full of gamblers (Raharjo, 1997, V). 8 \n Becoming rich meant that he had to defend himself against his old enemy, Hong Lie, who was \nseeking revenge. He was also involved in unlawful debt collection and managed brothels (Raharjo, \n1997, V).9  Medan\u2019s extensive network included important government figures and lawyers. As \nmore ex-prisoners approached him for jobs, he decided to start a grocery business.10  \n As senior police officers who had co-operated with Medan gradually retired, his unlawful \nenterprises encountered more difficulties. At the same time, Hong Lie, now under the protection of \nanother gang boss, was growing stronger. One night, the police raided Medan\u2019s casinos and arrested \nhim together with 366 gamblers. He was incarcerated at Mabes Polri Prison for four months before \nbeing moved to Salemba Prison where he used his wealth to arrange for luxurious facilities. He had \na telephone, stayed in a luxurious cell, and his wife could visit him every night. After undergoing \nseveral trials and was given a nine-month jail term, the sentence was not served again as he had \nalready completed it at Salemba and was subsequently released from jail (Raharjo, 1997, V).\n By now, Medan felt tired and tried to get out of the gambling world by starting a legal business. \nHe first tried but failed in the mineral water business. He then ventured into the traditional herbal \nmedicine business but failed again. The next attempt was in sand mining on Rengat Island, Riau. \nThe business went well initially but came to a stop when the government suddenly decided to turn \nRengat into a tourist site. \n Unable to sell the sand-mining heavy machinery that was smuggled from Japan, Medan went \nback to gambling as a player. He had lost money gambling in Genting Highlands, Malaysia, and \nLas Vegas. In 1991 and at age 34, he became bankrupt and resorted to borrowing from a jangket (a \nperson who lends money to gamblers) (Raharjo, 1997, V).\n\n\n\nPreaching Islam to Prisoners\n Broke and dejected and out of work, Medan began to socialise and built good relationships \nwith his neighbours. He and his wife met K. H. Zainuddin, a well-known preacher. The meeting led \nhim to change himself to live as a good and honest person. Having embraced Islam again, he was \nactively involved in social events and attended talks given by Muslim preachers such as K.H. Noer \nMuhammad Iskandar, K.H. Dr. Manarul Hidayat, and Rhoma Irama. A year later, he decided to \nsend his children to a pesantren (Islamic boarding school), and in 1992 he underwent circumcision \n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n27\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n(Raharjo, 1997, VI). His decision was not endorsed by all his family members and he was even \npersuaded to go back to operating casinos.11  But he was determined to leave the \u201cdark life\u201d behind \nand get closer to God (Raharjo, 1997, VI).\n He later went on the hajj, received guidance from several ustad, and was inspired by the \nspiritual journey. He began to address to groups of people and proved to be witty. After his visit to \nMecca, Medan experienced what he regarded as a miracle when a festering wound in his leg healed \nafter he washed it with the water from the Zam Zam well in Mecca. He also received guidance from \nother preachers who willingly listened to his aspirations. The news about Anton\u2019s repentance and \nhajj spread among the prisoners and ex-convicts, many of whom contacted him for guidance. Eager \nto assist his former partners in crime, realised the need to create opportunities for them to repent \nand to turn themselves around (Raharjo, 1997, V). \n On 10 June 1994, he established a centre providing temporary shelter, religious teachings, \nand occupational training for ex-convicts called Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin.12  Medan served as the \ngeneral chairperson and he also established five branches located according to the administrative \ndistricts of Jakarta. Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin also held open pengajian and religious sermons in \nareas frequented by ex-convicts. Pengajian were even held in red light districts and among the \nparticipants were prostitutes who were good at reading the Quran. Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin also \nheld dakwah (propagation) in prisons. At-Ta\u2019ibin means \u201cpeople who repent\u201d or \u201cthose who go \nback to the righteous path\u201d (Raharjo, 1997, V: 55-65).\n Medan also invited Ustad K.H. Zainuddin and Kyai Noer to give sermons in prisons. By \nobserving how they preach, he learned how to be a da\u2019i (Muslim preacher) and was always given \na chance to get on the podium before the sermon started. At first, Medan spoke for about ten \nminutes, and only told the audiences about his life story and conversion experience. Then Zainuddin \nsuggested that he integrate a few points of Islamic doctrine into his sermon. As he honed his public \nspeaking skills, he took preaching in prisons as his goal. Practising in his bedroom, he would stand \non his bed and give a speech. Although he tried hard, some ustad or kyai still did not believe that he \nwas capable of preaching in front of a large group of people (Raharjo, 1997, VI).\n A plan was proposed to establish a foundation known as Yayasan At-Ta\u2019ibin Indonesia (YAI \nor At-Ta\u2019ibin Indonesia Foundation) to promote the Majelis. But for various reasons the plan had \nto be abandoned and disagreements led some to leave Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin.13 Despite a lack \nof funding, Medan kept preaching in prisons, and also began receiving numerous invitations to \npreach in other venues outside Jakarta.14  Later, he began to receive invitations to give sermons at \npengajian sessions (Raharjo, 1997, VI).  \n Medan preferred to preach outside the mosque because he thought that those who came to the \nmosque to hear his sermons were already pious Muslims. Instead of talking about such weighty \ntheological ideas such as ibadah (religious obligation), heaven, and hell, he usually only shared his \n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n28\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nexperience of prison life and his subsequent conversion. He said he is neither a proselytiser (juru \ndakwah) nor an ustad, but was training to be a proselytiser (Raharjo, 1997, VI). Many journalists \ninterviewed him, and he was often invited to preach to politicians, universities students, businessmen, \ncompany owners, and even policemen. When listening to Medan\u2019s speech, audience members often \ncried, protested, or laughed (Raharjo, 1997, VI).\n Two years after Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin was established, Medan felt that he had not been \nable to solve its financial problems and went to visit Kyai Zainuddin and Kyai Noer to ask for help. \nTogether they came up with a plan to make gerobaks (two-wheel vendor\u2019s carts), each with a label \nreading \u201cPembinaan Mantan Narapidana dan Tunakarya\u201d (Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin Foundation \nfor Former Prisoners and the Unemployed). \n In 1997 Medan was included on a journalist\u2019s list of preachers who were unqualified to preach \nIslam. The report commented that because of his background as an ex-prisoner and violent criminal, \nhe was not suitable to preach, especially on TV.15   \n During the anti-Chinese riots of May 1998, Medan was suspected of being an instigator, and \nwas investigated by the Jakarta police; he denied the accusation.16 In Kafil Yamin\u2019s book (2004) \nRevolusi Kaum Napi: Catatan Kesaksian Anton Medan, Medan claimed he was offered five billion \nrupiah by a high-ranking member of the military to have his subordinates provoke the riots, but he \nrefused.17 Knowing that trouble was brewing, he claimed that he sent his subordinates to protect \nvarious Chinese neighbourhoods, Chinese temples, churches, stores, and houses. On 13 and 14 \nMay, he ordered his subordinates to cause the mob to attack alternative targets.18 After the riots, \nprotesting students gathered around the parliament building. After being informed that the army \nmight slaughter the students, he decided to mobilise four thousand people to join the students to \nstrengthen their rampart. He also invited his religious teacher, K.H. Zainuddin, to go to the scene \nand to express his support for the students.19  \n\n\n\nRehabilitating Ex-prisoners\n Medan is seen as an activist promoting the rights of prisoners and ex-convicts and had criticised \ncorruption and ignorance in the prison administration of Indonesia. In March 2001, Tommy Suharto, \nex-President Suharto\u2019s son, was about to be jailed at Cipinang Prison. To accommodate Tommy \nSuharto, the prison administration decided to renovate the prison and moved several prisoners to \nother places. This provoked a serious riot. Medan went to the prison to mediate, and criticised the \nprivileges enjoyed by elite prisoners. \n Medan was known for his religious education and for helping ex-convicts to re-enter the society. \nHe later established an Islamic boarding school, and became a kyai. Yet, Medan\u2019s transformation \nfrom a former gang boss to preacher and kyai was open to doubt, especially in how he managed his \nbusiness, the ex-convicts centre, and the Islamic boarding school.\n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n29\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n The Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin Centre in Cibinong, approximately 80 kilometres from Jakarta, \nfunctioned as a residential centre which offered ex-convicts occupational training to assist them  \nre-integrate into society by securing proper jobs. Medan claimed that he also arranged weekly \npengajian for the programme\u2019s participants.\n The facilities at the centre were very basic, featuring a large workshop where ex-convict \nworkers manually printed banners and billboards for Medan\u2019s advertising business. There were \n70 workers, labouring from 6:00am until sunset prayers. He did not want to create an environment \nwhich was more comfortable than what they would have to face after they left. Ex-convicts usually \nstayed in the centre for one year. If they successfully learned a skill, they could then open their own \nshops after they left. Two thousand ex-convicts had \u201cgraduated\u201d from the At-Ta\u2019ibin centre. Medan \nalso refused to accept donations to preserve the centre\u2019s financial independence. \n Medan initiated the banner business in 1997 after a journalist asked him to help solve a \nproblem. The journalist\u2019s banners to promote a magazine were always carried away by a group of \nstreet hoodlums (preman) named Pemuda Pancasila. Medan negotiated with them and they agreed \nnot to take away the banners again.20 Advertising turned out to be profitable. At its height, the \nbusiness employed 200 ex-convicts working at his Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin Centre.21  Inspired by \nthe success of Majelis Taklim At-Ta\u2019ibin, he planned to build a more ambitious rehabilitation park \nwhich included factories, a meeting hall, and a football field. He realised that nobody would choose \na life of crime but were forced into it due to a lack of economic opportunities. He also believed that \nputting criminals into jail did not solve the problem but would make it worse.\n In 2005, Medan had established several other businesses, including a small construction \ncompany and a chicken farm. He devised a three-stage training programme for ex-convicts. All ex-\nconvicts went through the same stages. Construction work was for the first level; farm work came \nnext; and banner-making was for the final level. At a higher level were administrative jobs (Yamin, \n2004)\n \nBecoming a Kyai\n Medan\u2019s growing wealth from his businesses enabled him to establish an Islamic boarding \nschool. Aware of his limited formal education and taking the Prophet Muhammad as his role model, \nhe reasoned that the Prophet did not receive much formal education but became a great religious \nleader. He wished to help the young to receive a viable vocational training in order to be able to help \ntheir families and country. Medan realised that the colonial government emphasised book learning \nin the pesantren, while religious schools prioritised the teaching of Islam. Many Muslim students \ngraduated before the age of 20 and tended to get married shortly after. As a result, it is important for \nMuslim students to learn vocational skills. Medan therefore emphasised the importance of practical \nknowledge and having a career plan in mind before graduation. Hence, in 2005, he established a \n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ntraining centre or pesantren. Named as At-Ta\u2019ibin, it also featured a Chinese-style mosque and his \npersonal grave.22 Medan\u2019s concept of education and the purpose of what he did were reflected in \nthe school motto: \u201cMake yourself useful, establish your faith, straighten your mind, achieve your \ngoals. Remember, death is not what you should worry about. It\u2019s what happens after death that you \nmust prepare for.\u201d23  Like other such centres in Indonesia, it offered occupational education in the \ncurriculum such as tailoring and woodworking. The products of students were then sold and the \nrevenues went into supporting tuition and for other purposes.\n Medan saw the entrepreneur as a wirausaha, a compound word consisting of two words: \nwira and usaha. The former means \u201chero\u201d or \u201cheroism\u201d and the later means \u201ctalent.\u201d He regarded \nentrepreneurship as a person\u2019s talent bestowed by God. He believed that business success was \ndetermined by God and was accorded with moral principles. The educational mission at At-Ta\u2019ibin \nwas to teach students to recognise and develop the gifts bestowed by God. Consequently, while \nthe curriculum of other such schools stressed the importance of Islamic law, the Hadith, and Tafsir \n(exegesis of the Quran), the five main subjects at At-Ta\u2019ibin were worship, entrepreneurship, \nlanguage, environmental science, and occupational training.24 The language curriculum included \nArabic, Chinese, English, and Japanese. Religious studies were confined only to the Quran and the \nHadith. Although commonly used by other pesantren, the yellow book (kitab kuning; textbooks \nused in Islamic boarding school) was not amongst the teaching materials. \n When asked for his opinion about combining business and dakwah, he expressed some \nreservations, saying:\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s better if business is business, and preaching Islam is preaching Islam. So, don\u2019t use religion \nas a mean for doing business; it\u2019s not allowed. In this case [Jahja\u2019s approach], if preaching \nIslam is mixed with doing business, it will endanger religion itself. 25\n\n\n\n However, Medan agrees with Syafii Antonio\u2019s approach, because \u201che teaches people to do \nbusiness with an ethical base. I admire his approach, but I cannot imitate him, due to my lack \nof higher education.\u201d26 Assuming a dual identity as a preacher and businessman, his view on the \nrelations between business and dakwah was:\n\n\n\nIf the economic condition of a preacher is not good, then there will be problems. If a preacher \nhas his own business, he neither begs money nor depends on the government, and can feel \nindependent and active. He will also be more qualified to offer unbiased advice to people \nbecause he won\u2019t be constrained by the people who donate money to him\u2026 Most preachers \ndon\u2019t have their own business, and only offer religious talks. Because of that, when their talk \nis finished, then everything is over; there is a beginning but no sense of completion. I don\u2019t \n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n31\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nwant to be such a preacher\u2026 If the economy becomes stronger, then Islam can become more \nprosperous.\n\n\n\n Medan\u2019s conversion experience and preaching of Islam linked two interesting issues \ntogether. These were the conversion to Islam in prison, and how Islamic teachings be applied to \nthe programme for ex-convict rehabilitation (Hamm, 2009; Spalek and el-Hassan, 2007; Dannin, \n2002). Moreover, his experience as the leader of a gang allowed him to be more \u201cpragmatic\u201d \nthan other kyai, and he knew how to hire ex-convicts to work for him.27 He built his Islamic \nboarding school using the profits from his business affiliated with a so-called training centre for ex-\nconvicts, and applied his pragmatic ideas to his pesantren. However, his opinions on public affairs \nwere sometimes controversial. He once advocated that the Indonesian government should legalise \ncasinos in a special region, reasoning that Indonesian gamblers still patronised casinos in Malaysia \nand Singapore which earned taxes that could be made by Indonesia if gambling was legalised. \nDespite arguing that Muslims should not be allowed to gamble or manage the casinos, his idea \nreminded many of his sordid past. Not surprisingly, Muslim leaders were strongly opposed to his \nopinion on this issue.28 \n\n\n\nEpilogue\n Medan\u2019s success in business and religious preaching attracted much attention from the media. \nOn one hand, he was elected as the Chairman of the Indonesian Chinese Islamic Association \n(PITI, Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia) from 2012 to 2017. In his inauguration speech, PITI \nwas a Muslim organisation \u201cto unite Chinese Muslims, open to the public, does not approve \ndiscrimination against Javanese, Sundanese, and other Chinese. In fact, Islam frees humans from \ndiscrimination.\u201d29 On the other hand, he became an activist, frequently speaking for issues such as \nthe human rights of prisoners and the process involved in detaining criminal suspects. Additionally, \nhe supported Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) as Governor of DKI Jakarta in 2014 when Joko \nWidodo was elected the new president. Some Islamic mass organisations rejected Ahok for his \nChristian background. He argued that \u201cthe leader of the ummah must be a Muslim because he is \nthe one who leads the congregation to determine matters of worship and those related to rituals, \n[but] the leader of the nation must be a plural leader. According to the law and the constitution, \nnational leaders are chosen based on competence and track record.\u201d30 However, in contrast to his \npositive image as an activist for human rights and anti-racism, he maintained close connections \nwith conservative Muslim circles, including making visits to families of the convicted Bali bomber \nand a hard-line Muslim organisation, the Islamic Defenders\u2019 Front (FPI, Front Pembela Islam) \n(Hew, 2017). Medan eventually passed away from a combination of stroke and diabetes on 13 May \n2021, and was buried in the grave in his Islamic boarding school. \n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n32\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nConclusion: Rethinking the Weberian Thesis\n\n\n\n In the past two decades, discourses on promoting Islamic economics and the rise of the \nMuslim middle class have been flowering among the Indonesian Muslim community. One of the \nsignificant aspects in the development of discourses on Islamic economic modernity is identified \nas \u201cmarket Islam,\u201d which emphasises \u201cits articulation with Islamically tinged consumerism and its \nconnection to neo-liberal, globally integrated economic development\u201d (Howell, 2008: 43).31  This \nalso highlights how Islamic ethics is \u201ca combination of religious practice and business management \nknowledge\u201d that is \u201cdesigned to merge Muslim religious practice and capital ethics\u201d for creating a \nMuslim as \u201ca self-regulating subject\u201d who is able to achieve the goals of \u201cenhancing productivity \nin an increasing global market\u201d (Rudnyckyj, 2009, 183, 185, 195, 197). It is easy to assume that \nIslamic ethics works like the Protestant work ethic which then allows the application of Weberian \nthesis to analyse how Islamic ethics would contribute to the development of capitalism. It cannot \nbe denied that Islamic ethics may offer spiritual resources for facilitating economic development \nin a certain socio-historical context. However, considering Anton Medan\u2019s appropriation of Islam, \nwe see some interesting ways of practising Islamic economics that reminds us to not mechanically \napply Max Weber\u2019s thesis without considering the limitations of cultural essentialism. \n Anton Medan was a gang boss and a businessman before he became a famous preacher. In \naddition to being a preacher, he also managed an occupational training programme for ex-convicts. \nHe was proud of his double career as a preacher and businessman. In addition, he claimed that \nthe idea of Islamic economics had been applied to the curriculum of his pesantren. Medan held \nsound reasonable ideas on how to apply Islamic work ethics to business to get practical results. \nBut his personal educational background and interest was not in a high-level approach such as \napplying Islamic economics to build an Islamic banking system and new Islamic business schools, \nor propagating Islamic economics and management to Muslim business elites, or transforming \nthe new subjectivity of new white-collar Muslims who would spur the further development of \nan Islamic economy and society. In contrast, he focused on the grassroots Muslim community, \nincluding ex-convicts. His method was simple: give them a job and encourage them to work by \nlearning some low-level skills to cultivate Muslim work ethics, occupational skills, and labour \ndiscipline. Medan claimed that Islamic teachings were the basis of the job training provided for \nhis ex-convict workers, although there were suspicions of exploitation. He was a well-known \nbut controversial kyai, who even suggested that Indonesia should establish casinos that could be \nmanaged in a way that did not contradict Islamic law. \n In The Religion of China (1968), Max Weber argues that the value system of Confucianism \nwould deter the development of modern Western capitalism in China. Decades later, the Weberian \nthesis of Protestant work ethic was modified to argue that Confucian ethics may be equivalent to \nProtestant ethics in promoting the development of capitalism in East Asia. The idea of Confucian \n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n33\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ncapitalism has been promoted since the 1980s, and is earlier than the idea of Islamic capitalism, \nwhich has been promoted for economic development in Muslim Southeast Asia since the 1990s. \nThe Weberian thesis is an important inspiration from a culturalist perspective, and has been \nappropriated by scholars who promote Islamic economics and management. \n However, when applying the notion of \u201cIslamic ethics\u201d to explain the so-called Islamic capitalist \npractice, including work ethics, Islamic banking and finance, Islamic corporate governance, and so \non, we should caution against a politics of theoretical knowledge. The thesis of cultural/religious \nvalues and Asian modernisation is a case in point. Adapted from the modernisation theories of \nscholars such as Geertz and Peacock, this thesis was repackaged as \u201cspiritual capital\u201d by Peter \nBerger and Gordon Redding (2010) and was applied to the case of Indonesia by Robert Hefner \n(2010). No one can deny that religious ethics offers spiritual resources as a positive momentum to \nnourish civil society or the public sphere. However, I argue that such thinking easily overlooks the \ncomplexity and potential manipulation of religious values that need to be addressed with a dialectic \nof social critique. By doing so, we need to examine the \u201celective affinity\u201d between religious ethics \n(values) and the \u201cspirit of capitalism\u201d to understand how Islamic economic ethics was selectively \napplied and articulated by Anton Medan. E. P. Thompson (1966) has criticised Weber for only \nconsidering how Protestant ethics was transformed as a capitalist entrepreneurial mentality, while \nignoring how the same religious ethics worked on English proletarians in a different way:\n\n\n\nPuritanism contributes to the psychic energy and social coherence of middle-class groups \nwhich felt themselves to be \u2018called\u2019 or \u2018elected\u2019 and which were engaged (with some success) \nin acquisitive pursuits. How can then such a religion appeal to the forming proletariat in a \nperiod of exceptional hardship, whose experiences at work and in their communities favoured \ncollectivist rather than individualistic values, and whose frugality, discipline or acquisitive \nvirtues brought profit to their masters rather than success to themselves? (Thompson, 1966, \n356)\n\n\n\n Thompson argues that Methodism had successfully developed an ideological tool to subdue the \n\u201clazy and non-disciplined\u201d English proletariat into the industrious workers ready for the needs of \nindustrial capitalism. The proletarians of the Industrial Revolution were full of passion, self-abuse, \nand suffering, in contrast to the middle-class Protestants. Thompson questions why Methodism led \nto a double effect on two classes during the Industrial Revolution (Peltonen, 2008).\n Therefore, in examining the relationship between religion-cultural values and economic \ndevelopment, I suggest we take Stuart Hall\u2019s \u201carticulation\u201d to re-interpret Weber\u2019s concept of \n\u201cselective affinity\u201d and critically examine how religious values are linked, motivated, or manipulated \nto construct a believer\u2019s subjectivity in a certain socio-historical context. \n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n34\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n Stuart Hall finds that Weber\u2019s argument of The Protestant Ethics can be an important extension \nof the Marxist theory of ideology. He tried to apply his concept of articulation to illuminate a \ncomplex historical relationship of \u201celective affinity\u201d between Puritan ideas (ideology) and \u201cthe \nstructure of the rationalisation of capital accumulation necessary to the development of capitalism\u201d \n(Hall, 1977: 17).32 In his earlier argument, he contends that in the logic connecting ideologies and \neconomic forces, \u201cideologies have their own, complex, internal articulation whose specialty must be \naccounted for\u201d (Hall, 1977: 17). His vague idea of articulation is further clarified later on by adding \na few points related to my study (Chiou 2013). He considers articulation as a process of a subject \ninterpolating a certain discourse or ideology, in which the linkage \u201cis not necessary, determined, \nabsolute and essential all the time.\u201d Instead of asking such a question, he suggests exploring \u201cunder \nwhat circumstances can a connection be forged or made.\u201d Thus, he asserts that his idea is \u201cboth \na way of understanding how ideological elements come, understand certain conditions, to cohere \ntogether, within a discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at \nspecific conjunctures, to certain political subjects\u201d (Grossberg, 1986: 53). For instance, taking \nreligion as an example, Hall explains how religion can articulate subjects or other social instances:\n\n\n\nIt (religion) exists historically in a particular formation, anchored very directly in relation \nto several different forces. Nevertheless, it has no necessary, intrinsic, trans-historical \nbelongingness. Its meaning\u2014political and ideological\u2014comes precisely from its position \nwithin a formation. It comes with what else it is articulated to. Since those articulations are not \ninevitable, not necessary, they can potentially be transformed, so that religion can be articulated \nin more than one way\u201d (Grossberg,1986: 54).\n\n\n\n Therefore, in illuminating Weber\u2019s methodological concept of \u201celective affinity\u201d in view of \nHall\u2019s articulation, we can take a more flexible and critical attitude to examine Islamic economics, \nreflecting on how Islamic ethics are \u201ccontingently\u201d applied and re-interpreted for various purposes \nto articulate different Islamic practices. On the one hand, it is important to be aware of multiple \nlinkages between Islamic economic discursive practice and agendas of building a Muslim new \ncapitalist working subjectivity. On the other hand, concomitantly, we can explore the \u201chistorically \naccumulated forces\u201d of how and why the discourses of Islamic economic modernity are created and \npromoted to respond to macro-economic developments in Indonesia. As F. Osella and C. Osella \nsuggest, \u201carticulations between economic and religious practices remain contingent and contextual \nand any possible outcomes (including \u2018rationalisation) are unpredictable\u201d (2009: 215).\n However, if we confine the Weberian thesis to the elective affinity between values and actions, \nwe cannot help but explore the meaning of social mobility in a Chinese-Indonesian businessman\u2019s \nconversion. Through their conversion to Islam, the Chinese-Indonesian Muslim businessmen and \n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nsome preachers have traversed the commercial and religious spheres. The question remains: what \nis the sociological meaning of their social mobility and religious conversion in the transformation \nof Indonesian Muslim society? \n\n\n\n* Dr. Syuan-Yuan Chiou [\u90b1\u70ab\u5143] is Associate Professor, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. \n   Email: schiou@nccu.edu.tw\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAspinall, E., van Klinken, G. A., Feith, H., & Van Klinken, G. (Eds.). (1999). The last days of \n President Suharto (No. 49). Monash Asia Institute, Monash University.\nBerger, P. L., & Redding, G. (Eds.). (2010). The hidden form of capital: Spiritual influences in \n societal progress. Anthem Press.\nBourdieu, P. (2018). The forms of capital. In The sociology of economic life (pp. 78-92). Routledge.\nChiou, S.-Y. (2013). A controversy surrounding Chinese Indonesian Muslims\u2019 practice of Imlek \n Salat in Central Java. Chinese Indonesians reassessed: history, religion and belonging (pp. \n 200-222). London: Routledge.\nChiou, S.-Y. (2015). 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Modulations of active piety: Professors and televangelists as promoters \n of Indonesian \u201cSufism.\u201d In Greg Fealy & Sally White (Eds.), Expressing Islam: Religious life \n and politics in Indonesia (pp. 40\u201362). ISEAS.\nKoning, J. (2018). Chinese Indonesians: Businesses, ethnicity, and religion. In R. Hefner (Ed.), \n Routledge handbook of contemporary Indonesia (pp. 177\u2013186). Routledge.\nOsella, F., & Osella, C. (2009). Muslim entrepreneurs in public life between India and the Gulf: \n making good and doing good. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15, S202\u2013S221.\nPeltonen, M. (2008). The Weber thesis and economic historians. Max Weber Studies, 8(1), 79\u201398.\nRaharjo, S. Budhi. (1997). Anton Medan: Pergolakan Jiwa Seorgang Mantan Terpidana [Anton \n Medan: An ex-convict\u2019s upheaval of soul), Vol. I\u2013VI. Pustaka Firdaus.\nRedding, G. (2013). The spirit of Chinese capitalism (Vol. 22). Walter de Gruyter.\nRudnyckyj, D. (2009). Market Islam in Indonesia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, \n 15, S183\u2013S201.\nRyter, Loren. (1998). Pemuda Pancasila: The last loyalist free men of Suharto's order? Indonesia, \n 66, 45\u201373.\nSidel, J. T. (2007). Riots, pogroms, jihad: Religious violence in Indonesia. NUS Press.\nSpalek, B., & El\u2010Hassan, S. (2007). Muslim converts in prison. The Howard Journal of Criminal \n Justice, 46(2), 99\u2013114.\nThompson, E. P. (1966). The making of the English working class. Vintage.\nvan Dijk, C. K. (2021). A country in despair: Indonesia between 1997 and 2000. Brill.\nWeber, M. (1968). The religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. New Free Press.\nYamin, Kafil. (2004). Revolusi kaum napi: Cata kesaksian Anton Medan. [Ex-convict's revolution: \n Testimony of Anton Medan.] Matahari Media Komunika.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\nKyai is a title to address a Muslim clerk who has an important position affiliated with Islamic \ninstitutes. In the case of Anton Medan, it means the head of an Islamic boarding school \n(pesantren).\nAnton Medan is his nickname. His Muslim name is Ramdhan Effendi. \u201cAnton\u201d was given to \nhim by one of his friends.\nMedan beat a person to death in Medan, Sumatra, when he was 13 years old. He was working \nat a bus station and his money was stolen by someone. He confronted the thief and demanded \nthe money back. He hit the person when he refused to pay up. The person eventually died in the \n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n37\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nhospital. Medan was then put in a prison in Medan (Raharjo, 1997, I). Anton Medan\u2019s life story \nup to 1997 is recorded in a six-volume biography written by a hired author S. Budhi Raharjo. \nWai Weng Hew (2017) also produced a short biographic account on Anton Medan.\nInfluenced by other convicts, he took an interest in various religions, including traditional \nChinese religions and Buddhism (Raharjo, 1997, VI). In an event held by Batu Pejuru Church \nin the prison in which Christians distributed free food and stamps to the convicts, Anton Medan \nmet Kho Liong, a convict who was later sentenced to death for murder. Medan learned a lot \nabout Christianity and was baptised as a Christian (Raharjo, 1997, VI). He later converted to \nBuddhism and then became a Christian again (Raharjo, 1997, VI). He read the Bible, attended \nchurch regularly and consulted with a Christian prisoner and priests (Raharjo, 1997, VI).\nFrom my conversation with Martin van Bruinessen, Tony Ardhie converted from Christianity \nto Islam and became a well-known radical preacher in student circles in the late 1980s and was \nsentenced to prison for his sermons.\nThe first time was when his mother visited him at the juvenile detention facility in Binjai, North \nSumatra.\nMedan often discussed religious faith with them. He held that the fundamental difference \nbetween Islam and Christianity is that in Christianity each baby is born with original sin \ninherited through Adam; in Islam, however, each person is born pure. Azhar and his friends \nkept telling Medan that God is God, human is human, and religion is common sense. That\u2019s \nwhy Islam does not call Jesus or \u201cNabi Isa\u201d the son of God, because he was born as a human. \nThis understanding of Islam and Christianity made him rethink the concept of God with \ncommon sense. He was told, furthermore, that no one could wipe out his sins except himself, \nby repenting before God (Raharjo, 1997, VI).\nMedan had then reverted to worshipping Chinese deities for various reasons, including a \nbelief, as foretold by a fortune teller, in the possibility of a divorce with wife when he was \n33 years old. He installed an altar in his house and kept a special room for burning incense, \nand made offerings to the God of Gamblers to protect his gambling business and casinos \n(Raharjo, 1997, V).\nAs Medan\u2019s business grew, many of his friends from jail came to him for jobs. Besides casinos, \nhe also ran bars, karaoke clubs, and erotic massage parlours. Each outlet was run by a manager, \na security staff (some of whom were former police officers), and a public relation person \nresponsible for maintaining good relationships with reporters, police officers, and others. His \nstaff would scrutinise crime reports in the newspapers and would entice the reporters not to \nwrite about his business. He would find a way to protect his staff in police custody, often by \nbribing senior officers (Raharjo, 1997, V).\nMonths before Ramadan, he would stock up on staple items such as sugar, flour, and rice to sell \n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n38\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nthem for at high prices. He did the same thing in cement trading (Raharjo, 1997, V).\nAnton\u2019s brothers and mother moved from Medan to live with him in Jakarta, regularly cooked \nand consumed pork in the house.\nIn the Jakarta region, majelis taklim (teaching association) is the common term for regular \npengajian or religious study groups, especially those for women.\nThe proposed programmes of YAI had generated some controversy and was never officially \nestablished.\nWhen he received an invitation to preach outside Jakarta, he would also preach in the prisons \nof that region.\nMedan and his friends had an appointment with the journalist concerned to explain that he only \npreached to prisoners and prostitutes but not on TV. The journalist agreed to revise the article \n(Raharjo, 1997, V).\nSee Asiaweek, 24 July 1998, collected in Edward Aspinall, Herb Feith, and Gerry van Klinken \n(1999); Kees van Dijk (2002); Loren Ryter (2001); and John T. Sidel (2006).\nThis book is not an abridged edition of his biography, but by a different author to cover events \nof May 1998.\nLiem Sioe Liong\u2019s house was the substitute target.\nLoren Ryter (1998) received a similar account in an interview with Medan, but Ryter finds his \nstatements dubious.\nRyter (1998) defines preman as extortionists and illegal debt-collectors, who might also work \nas parking attendants or nightclub security guards when not outright violating the law.\nSee: https://pantau.or.id/liputan/2001/12/spanduk-billboard-dan-anton-medan/\nOn a visit to his pesantren, I noticed that he built his mosque and grave at the same time. He \nsays that the sight of a grave reminds his students that the life of a human being is very short.\n\u201cAgar dirimu bermanfaat, mantapkan imanmu, luruskan niatmu, tingkatkan prestasimu raih \ncita-citamu. Ingat, kematian bukanlah yang mesti kau risaukan. Melainkan jalan menuju mati \nitulah yang harus kau siapkan.\u201d See: https://jakarta.tribunnews.com/2019/02/05/melihat-\nkeindahan-pondok-pesantren-berbalur-budaya-tionghoa-yang-didirikan-anton-medan.\nFor his ideas on establishing the Islamic boarding school, see: http://muhshodiq.wordpress.\ncom/2009/08/31/fondasi-nilai-nilai-anton-medan/; and http://berita.liputan6.com/sosbud\n/200511/112053/Metode.Kreatif.Ponpes.At.Taibin\nJunus Jahja (1927\u20132011), a well-known ethnic Chinese activist and intellectual, promoted the \nassimilation of ethnic Chinese into mainstream Indonesian culture. He encouraged the Chinese \nto move out of their ethnic enclaves, erase their cultural and religious identity, and completely \nassimilate into the Indonesian society. The other significant dakwah (preaching Islam) strategy \nwas the launching of a programme called \u201cDakwah through Doing Business and vice versa.\u201d \n\n\n\n11\n\n\n\n12\n\n\n\n13\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\n17\n\n\n\n18\n19\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n21\n22\n\n\n\n23\n\n\n\n24\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\nSyuan-Yuan Chiou\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n39\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nHe encouraged non-Muslim Chinese businessmen to hold meetings with pribumi (indigenous \nIndonesian) Muslim merchants, hoping that via such meetings, ethnic Chinese businesspeople \nwould exchange their business skills for the pribumi\u2019s religious knowledge, and vice versa. \nJunus\u2019s two-pronged dakwah strategy raised some pertinent issues regarding the dissemination \nof religious knowledge to Chinese Indonesians for their conversion to Islam, and whether the \nconverts would enjoy the full status of Indonesian citizenship, while retaining their economic \nsuperiority. See Chiou (2015).\nSyafii Antonio (1965-) is a highly influential Chinese-Indonesian Muslim and has been \nengaged in establishing the Islamic banking system since 1990s. He has published several \nbooks to promote Islamic banking and Islamic management. In particular, he established new \nbusiness schools based on his special curriculum combining knowledge of Islamic law and \nmodern business administration.\nFor instance, he once supported the idea that Indonesia should legalise casino business that \nlater cause some controversies. See: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/indonesia-\nissues-of-mafia-money-laundering-and-gambling.267070/\nSee: http://us.detiknews.com/read/2010/07/03/070139/1392108/10/anton-medan-lokalisasi-\njudi-pakai-keppres-dan-di-tempat-terpencil.\nSee: https://www.newsgemajakarta.com/2012/10/anton-medan-resmi-dilantik-jadi-ketua.html\nSee: https://www.satuharapan.com/read-detail/read/anton-medan-ormas-tolak-\nbasuki-tak-paham-alquran.\n\u201cMarket Islam\u201d is originally addressed by French scholar Patrick Haenni. This quote is from \nJulia Day Howell. This concept has been further elaborated by Daromir Rudnyckyj\u2019s article \n\u201cMarket Islam in Indonesia\u201d (2009).\nIn his earlier view, he considers that \u201celective affinity\u201d can avoid a mechanical    economic \ndeterminism but still adheres to how ideas can be generated in a class without falling into an \nindividual psychologism.\n\n\n\n26\n\n\n\n27\n\n\n\n28\n\n\n\n29\n30\n\n\n\n31\n\n\n\n32\n\n\n\nIslamic Ethics and the Chinese-Indonesian Spirit of Capitalism\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\nEnglish Mandarin Tamil Malay\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2\n3\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 1-17\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and \nChinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia\n\n\n\nCHIN Yee Whah* and LEE Yok Fee**\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThe paper deals with the role of the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industries \nof Malaysia (ACCCIM) that represents 17 constituent members located separately in the 13 states \nof the nation. It will examine how ACCCIM attempts constantly to enhance and create a favourable \nenvironment for enterprise development for the Chinese business community. The paper will analyse \nthe intensity of ACCCIM in fostering better domestic business opportunities through joint ventures \nthat involve other ethnic groups in the multiracial and multicultural context of Malaysia and to exert its \ninfluence on state economic policies. Its role in assisting the Chinese business community to expand \ntheir markets by various means and in weathering the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis and the current \nglobal financial crisis will be discussed. \n\n\n\nKey words:  Chinese Chambers of Commerce, Malaysian Chinese business, and business development\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nThe Chinese business community has traditionally established chambers of commerce \nin towns and cities throughout Malaysia to serve their commercial interests. To date, 17 such \nchambers have been set up, with one in each state, three towns and a region.1 At the apex \nof these organizations is the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industries of \nMalaysia (ACCCIM) located in Kuala Lumpur. Much of the materials on which this study is \nbased are derived from published and unpublished sources of ACCCIM, reports in the local \npress and other relevant published sources. \n\n\n\n*  Dr. CHIN Yee Whah is Associate Professor at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains \nMalaysia, Penang. E-mail: ywchin@usm.my \n\n\n\n**  Dr. LEE Yok Fee is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, \nSelangor. E-mail: yokfee@yahoo.com\n This is the revised version of a paper presented at the 16th World Congress of the International \nUnion of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), Kunming, China, 27-31 July, \n2009. Thanks are due to Universiti Sains Malaysia for funding under the Research University \nGrant (1001/PSOSIAL/816006). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nThe Chinese community in Malaysia has organized several thousand associations to \nmeet the legitimate needs of a variety of groups based on such affinities as clans, dialects, \nculture, education, religions and occupations. With the Chinese being commonly engaged in \ncommerce and trade, associations that are affiliated to different occupations and businesses \nare also an inseparable part of Chinese society. Among them, only the chambers of commerce \ncater to the specific interests of the general business community and they exert an influence \nthat goes beyond their number. The national chamber of commerce is the most influential \nand its president is invariably a prominent entrepreneur and whose position is equated with \nthat of an acknowledged community leader of the Chinese. ACCCIM therefore enjoys an \nexalted place in the hierarchy of Chinese social organizations. How it fulfills its own role in \nan effective manner to serve the business community and how it is perceived by the Chinese \ncommunity in general are crucial to its own image as an elite body that is worthy of the \nname. \n\n\n\nThe literature on Chinese chambers of commerce in Malaysia is sketchy. The most \ncommon source of information is still the occasional publications of the various chambers \nthat commemorate specific anniversaries. Among the few studies that have been completed on \nthis subject include those by Shinozaki (2006 and 2009) and Yeoh (2007). Shinozaki\u2019s studies \ndelved into the early history while Yeoh dealt with the broader study of nation building in \nwhich the role of Chinese chambers of commerce in business corporation was portrayed as a \nresponse to a communal dilemma of economic marginalization and an attempt in reasserting \nethno-identity. \n\n\n\nThe primary role of ACCCIM is to work towards enhancing and creating a favourable \nenvironment for enterprise development among the Chinese business community. This \nChamber too contributes to the task of promoting domestic business opportunities through \njoint ventures with other ethnic groups in multiracial and multicultural Malaysia. Being \na nationwide organization, ACCCIM enjoys sufficient economic clout to nurture close \nrelationships with the State and to have a say in national economic policies. In the wider \ncontext of regional and global business, ACCCIM\u2019s role is to promote the interests of the \nChinese business overseas and explore ways to expand markets by exploring business \nopportunities abroad. During times of economic stress such as the 1997/98 Asian financial \ncrisis and also the current global financial crisis, ACCCIM would seek ways to assist its \nmembers. These roles and issues will form the basis of discussion in the paper. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          3\n\n\n\nThe Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Brief\n\n\n\nACCCIM is the parent organization of individual Chinese Chambers of Commerce \nestablished by the business community at the local level. The first such chamber was \nestablished in Penang in 1903. Others followed in quick succession in Kuantan town in \nPahang (1903), Selangor (1904), Singapore (1905), Perak (1907), Batu Pahat town in Johor \n(1908) and Sandakan town in Sabah or British North Borneo (1909). By 1936, eight more \nchambers of commerce had appeared (\u84e7\u5d0e\u9999\u7e54/Shinozaki, 2009: 303). ACCCIM is the \nearliest national level Chinese organization to have a complete regional representation in the \ncountry (ACCCIM, 2009: 128). In 2006, ACCCIM represented 28,352 Malaysian Chinese \ncompanies, individuals and trade associations, and the Chinese business community in \ngeneral. In terms of companies, more than nine-tenths of these members comprise of small \nand medium size enterprises (SME) category.\n\n\n\nFormerly known as the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce of British Malaya, \nACCCIM was founded on 2 July 1921. After the Second World War, the Associated Chambers \nconvened its first meeting and changed its name to The Associated Chinese Chambers of \nCommerce of Malaya in 1947. Its declared objective was to establish close contact between \nChinese chambers of commerce in various parts of the country in order to promote and \nprotect commercial interests, to assist the agricultural, mining and manufacturing industries, \nand to maintain close liaison with chambers of commerce of other ethnic groups with the \naim of promoting prosperity and enhancing public welfare. With the birth of Malaysia and \nsubsequent separation of Singapore in 1965, the Singapore Chamber, despite being one of its \nfounder members, had to make an exit. Its official name was amended again to its current one, \nand its membership was enlarged to include the new states of Sabah and Sarawak. The link \nwith the Singapore Chamber was not completely severed but maintained through a liaison \ncommittee set up in early 1970.\n\n\n\nImproving the Domestic Business Environment \n\n\n\nThe year 1970 marked a watershed in the economic history of Malaysia. Following the \neruption of ethnic clashes in 1969, the government introduced a radical policy in the form of \nthe New Economic Policy (NEP). Launched with the expressed objectives of \u201crestructuring \nsociety\u201d and to eradicate poverty, NEP effectively restricted the economic space of Chinese \nenterprise at the same time as it expanded that of the Bumiputera (the Malays and indigenous \npopulations). The introduction of a slew of Bumiputera-biased regulations over the years \nposed serious challenges on the ACCCIM\u2019s role in protecting its members and their interests \n(Jesudason 1989: Heng 1997; Heng and Sieh 2000). The major challenge to ACCCIM was \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nhow to come out with a pragmatic response to the official initiatives particularly in respect \nto the restructuring of Malay/Bumiputera society. In a multi-ethnic society in which ethnic \nharmony could be fragile and subject to rupture upon minor provocations, ACCCIM would \nneed to opt for non-political approaches in its efforts to increase Chinese economic leverage \nin the country. \n\n\n\nLobbying for a Favourable Business Environment\nMalaysia has experienced several phases of economic development since independence \n\n\n\nin the last five to six decades. The newly-independent Federation of Malaya continued the \nearlier laissez faire policy from 1957 to 1969. The Chinese had integrated well into the \neconomy and Chinese capital was well represented in the modern sectors. In contrast, while \nthe predominantly rural Malays had made some progress, they were nevertheless less well \nintegrated and tended to lag behind those in the modern sectors. It was this unequal development \nthat was blamed for the origins of the ethnic clashes of 13 May 1969 that gave birth to the \nNEP. Under this policy, the controversial Industrial Coordination Act (ICA) and the Foreign \nInvestment Committee were established in 1975 to provide two effective mechanisms for the \nofficial regulation of business. One of the high-profile regulations was a quota system that set \nminimum limits to equity shares of new business undertakings. Enterprises that come under \nthe full impact of this regulation were new companies of Chinese and foreign investors who \nwished to operate in the Malaysian market.\n\n\n\nThe Ministry of Trade and Industry that formulated the ICA was vested with the \nunrestricted powers over licensing, ownership structure, ethnic employment, production \ndistribution quotas, content and the pricing of products, to favour Malay interests (Jesudason \n1989: 131-40). Implemented in May 1976, the ICA imposed a licensing system on \nmanufacturing firms with specific terms and conditions. Firms with less than RM100,000 \nin shareholders\u2019 funds and fewer than 25 workers were exempted from the requirement to \nemploy 30 per cent Malays or to allocate 30 per cent of their equity for Malay interests. \nThe ACCCIM perceived the ICA as an instrument that undermined the basis of the Chinese \nbusiness system, particularly the family business that formed the majority of Chinese \nenterprises. In 1971, a survey of manufacturing establishments had confirmed that 65 per cent \nof the firms were typical family businesses run on a sole proprietorship or partnership basis \n(Jesudason 1989: 139). It was obvious that almost all Chinese family businesses would come \nunder the jurisdiction of the ICA. Naturally, the Chinese business community felt threatened \nand questioned why they had to give up a substantial part of their family business that they \nhad built diligently over the years to Malay \u201cpartners\u201d. Sensing the long-term implications of \nthe ruling, ACCCIM led the Chinese business community in a campaign, objected to the ICA \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          5\n\n\n\nas it argued that the Act was aimed primarily at the Chinese business community (Jesudason \n1989; Hara 1991; Yasuda 1991). \n\n\n\nACCCIM then lobbied for support to persuade the private sector to adopt its position \nto seek the repeal of the ICA. However, it failed to secure the support of the Malaysian \nInternational Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the National Chamber of Commerce \nand the Malay Chambers of Commerce. The Federation of Malaysian manufacturers took \nan intermediate position, recommended that the cut-off point for exempting firms from the \nICA be raised to RM1 million in shareholders\u2019 funds (Jesudason 1989: 140). Ultimately the \ngovernment amended the ICA in April 1977 to exempt firms with less than RM250,000 in \nshareholder funds and RM500,000 in fixed investment from the equity condition. It was only \nin1986 that the limit of RM1 million in invested capital received officially sanction.\n\n\n\nACCCIM veers away from politics but insists on safeguarding the economic interests \nof its members and the business community. To play this role, it has found it necessary to \nexert its influence on certain government policies. Politically, Chinese-based political parties \nsuch as the Malaysia Chinese Association (MCA) and Gerakan which are coalition partners \nin the government have lost much of their influence and are not able to act from a position \nof strength. ACCCIM seeks to minimize the impact of the declining political clout of the \nChinese to fill the vacuum by its action. In 1978, during the conference of the Associated \nChinese Chambers of Commerce, ACCCIM made known its displeasure with government \nbureaucrats who were arrogant, inflexible, and uncooperative. It was critical of the many state \nenterprises for their poor performance and for wasting public funds; and voiced the opinion \nthat the NEP was bringing only transitory gains for some Malays (Jesudason, 1989: 133). \n\n\n\nThe NEP ended officially in 1990 and was replaced by the more liberal National \nDevelopment Plan (NDP) that would run from 1991 to 2000. Under the NDP, the government \nadopted more liberal policies and promoted state-business and inter-ethnic cooperation \nat the corporate level (Gomez, 2003). It also encouraged joint-ventures among small and \nmedium enterprises (SMEs) (Chin, 2004 and 2007). The three decades of social engineering \nprogrammes under the NEP, whose policies were basically continued by the NDP, have \nwitnessed a significant restructuring of the Malaysian society and the economic transformation \nof the Malays. At the same time, there were visible changes in the attitude and stance of the \nChinese business community toward their Malay counterparts and in their general acceptance \nof the extension of the NEP (Chin, 2003 and 2004). \n\n\n\nACCCIM plays a pivotal role in important official bodies such as the National Economic \nAction Council, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and the Central Bank. It \ncontributes professionally to the formulation of policies, in assessing the effects of recent \neconomic crises upon Chinese business; in assisting SMEs to adapt to the new global situation, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nand in encouraging members to avail themselves of various schemes and incentives provided \nby government (ACCCIM 1997a; 1997b; 1999; 2001a and 2001b). \n\n\n\nCrossing the Ethnic Divide in Business\nAlthough the NEP ended officially in 1990, the restructuring of society continues \n\n\n\nunabated. Several methods of strategy implementation were amended under the NDP to \nimprove Bumiputera capability to create and manage their own wealth (Malaysia, 1991: vi). \nOne of the primary objectives of the NEP that continued into the NDP was the creation of \na Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community (BCIC). This was to be realized by \nmeans of a new strategy in which Bumiputera businessmen would receive official support \nin the award of contracts for timber logging, licenses and partnerships, and the setting of \nquotas in a range of economic activities (Malaysia, 1991: 12). It was in the context of such \ngovernment strategies and changing political scenarios that ACCCIM and the Chinese \nbusiness community responded in a rational and pragmatic move to foster partnerships with \nBumiputera entrepreneurs. This is articulated by ACCCIM in a working paper on Bumiputera \nand non-Bumiputera partnerships in the Third Bumiputera Economic Congress in 1992 \n(ACCCIM, 1992: 1).\n\n\n\nBeginning from 1995, following the establishment of the Genuine Joint Venture \nPromotion Council by the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development with the co-operation of \nthe Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia (MCCM) and ACCCIM, serious attention was \ntaken to promote \u201cgenuine joint ventures\u201d in the late 1990s. The role of the Council is to \nencourage integration and close cooperation to expand and share experience, knowledge, and \nexpertise between Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera. In late 1997, the Council was enlarged \nto include the Malaysian Associated Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MAICCI), \nthe Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and representatives from a consortium of 20 \ncommercial banks (Ministry of Entrepreneur Development, 1998: 34-5). This partnership \nthat connects the major ethnic groups, the public and private sectors represented a new \napproach to accelerate the formation of a BCIC as outlined in the Second Outline Perspective \nPlan of 1991-2000 (OPP2).2 This multi-party partnership matches with Searle\u2019s (1999) \nnotion of \u201ccapital integration\u201d. In other words, \u201cfinancial and ownership integration\u201d allows \nBumiputera business access to government financial aids, easy bank loan and partnerships \nwith government-linked corporations. Such integration helps to accelerate the formation of \nthe BCIC. \n\n\n\nGenuine joint ventures were initiated in three different years in 1995, 1997 and 1998. \nUnder the aegis of the Ministry of Enterprise Development in late 1995, 12 agreements were \nconcluded on genuine joint ventures that involved the integration of capital, ownership, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          7\n\n\n\nexperience and skills between MCCM and ACCCIM (Dataniaga, No. 15, January 1996: 12). \nThe estimated project costs for the 12 ventures were about RM30 million. The year 1997 \nsaw the approval of 38 joint venture projects by the Council. These were major projects that \ncost a total of RM500 million (ACCCIM 1997c: 66; Ministry of Enterprise Development, \n1998: 35). The Asian financial crisis that erupted in 1997 crippled the financial resources of \nmany governments in East Asia and there were widespread difficulties in securing bank loans. \nHence only two joint ventures were formed in 1998. By 2000, the Council had approved 54 \njoint ventures (Ministry of Enterprise Development, 2000: 36). \n\n\n\nThe majority of the joint venture companies established between 1995 and 1998 were \nSMEs. Manufacturing was the primary focus of 61 per cent of the 54 partnerships, while 19 \nper cent were involved in construction and property development, 13 per cent in services and \n7 per cent in other sectors (Ministry of Entrepreneur Development, 2000: 36). Bumiputeras \ndominated the partnership in the early phase in 1995. Out of the 12 joint ventures, Bumiputeras \nheld the majority share in ten of the partnerships. In the second phase in 1997, Bumiputera \ncontrolled 19 of the 38 joint ventures by holding more than 51 per cent of the share equity, 15 \nwere controlled by non-Bumiputera partners, and four were held in equal shares. These joint \nventures included manufacturing concerns in which Chinese entrepreneurs had been reluctant \nto risk their investments because of the stringent conditions imposed by the ICA ruling. The \nwillingness to invest in the manufacturing sector through partnerships was an indication of the \nshift in the business strategy of Chinese entrepreneurs. Judging from the equity distribution \nof these joint ventures it is clear that the Bumiputera partners are no longer inactive \u201csleeping \npartners\u201d. Many have become owners and managers and beginning to create an impact in \nthe Malaysian business scene. Hence, attempts to nurture joint ventures have yielded desired \nresults in keeping with government intentions and the elimination of the so-called \u201cAli-Baba\u201d \narrangement by which \u201cAli\u201d the Bumiputera partner remained inactive and gained little in \nterms of experience but only easy monetary rewards while \u201cBaba\u201d the Chinese partner was \nleft to run the business. The true joint venture encourages the development of expertise and \nthe sharing of technology between the Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera partners (New Straits \nTimes 26 December 1998: 17). \n\n\n\nBumiputera partners often bring with political connections and access to certain sources \nof capital. Through the Joint Venture Council, a financial scheme with an allocation of \nRM700.00 million (as at October 1997) was created to promote Bumiputera joint ventures. \nTwenty domestic banks have come forward to form a reliable consortium to provide banking \nfacilities. A joint-venture company with at least 30 per cent Bumiputera shareholding is \neligible to apply for funds to inject capital into the project (Majlis Galakan Usahasama \nTulen, 1997). These and other favourable services and facilities have contributed much to the \nsuccess of these joint ventures.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nExpanding the Chinese Economic Space\nIn the heady days following the launching of the NEP amidst much anxiety among \n\n\n\nthe non-Bumiputera communities, the Chinese political party in the government coalition \nresponded by establishing a vast holding company. The setting up of Multi-Purpose Holdings \nBhd (MPH),3 in 1975 was meant to be a community business concern based on the mobilization \nof savings of ordinary members of society. This was then looked up as a bold and innovative \nstrategy to cushion the likely damaging effects of NEP policies on Chinese businesses. \nMany other Chinese organizations such as clan and dialect associations too started their own \n\u201ccommunity\u201d corporations in an euphoric mood of expectation (see Yeoh, 2007). Joining the \nband wagon was ACCCIM and several other regional chambers of commerce in an attempt \nto increase Chinese economic leverage. Under the leadership of the late Tan Sri Wee Boon \nPing, ACCCIM successfully convinced the Chinese business community to pool resources to \ninitiate major enterprises. It was this initiative that led to the establishment of Unico Holdings \nBhd. ACCCIM incorporated Unico Holdings Bhd in May 1981 to provide a non-political \nalternative to the controversial MPH. Indeed, the honour of launching Chinese \u201ccommunity\u201d \ncorporations goes not to ACCCIM but to the Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce which \nwas the first to set up the Penang Commercial and Industrial Development Bhd in 1973, \nfollowed in 1975 by the Chinese Commercial Association of Kuantan, Pahang, which set \nup Chunghua Holdings Bhd. Soon after ACCCIM\u2019s lead, the Kedah Chinese Chamber of \nCommerce incorporated the Keat Hua Holdings (Kedah) Bhd in September and a group of \ncompanies in Kepong town outside Kuala Lumpur with the Kepong Commercial Holdings \n(M) Bhd in July (Yeoh, 2007: 207). \n\n\n\nAlthough Unico Holdings was born as one of the many holding companies formed \nby the Chinese community in the 1980s, ACCCIM looks upon itself as the leader in the \ncorporatization movement by virtue of its status as the highest body for the Chinese business \ncommunity in the country. Its action was naturally a bold effort to face the economic challenges \nposed by the onset of the ethnically biased policies of the NEP. It shares the same ideals of \nMPH to pool the resources of grass-root communities to achieve economic self-reliance by \nmeans of holding companies. \n\n\n\nUnico Holdings Bhd was formally incorporated on 21 May 1981 with an authorized \ncapital of RM100 million (ACCCIM, 2008c). A month later, the 35th Annual General Meeting \nof ACCCIM ratified the incorporation of the holding company and delegated to the Standing \nCommittee authority to take charge of the matter. On 28 July 1984, ACCCIM and Unico \nHoldings formed a special committee to launch a nationwide campaign for the public issue \nof 49,404,998 ordinary shares of RM1.00 each to members of the public. This committee \nand ACCCIM issued a joint statement entitled \u201cStriving for Excellence and Creating New \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          9\n\n\n\nOpportunities\u201d in the local Chinese press in conjunction with the public issue. The exercise \nreceived overwhelming response from the Chinese community and 25,184 applications for \nsubscription of shares in Unico Holdings were received within a space of two months, the \nmajority was submitted by small shareholders. By 1986, Unico had a paid-up capital of RM50 \nmillion and an oil palm in Sabah (see Yeoh, 2007). Unico is one of the major companies \nfounded by the Chinese business community that survived until today. However, in 2007 it \nwas involved in a well-publicized dispute among shareholders regarding its corporate exercise \nto dispose of its 29 per cent stake in Unico-Desa Plantations Berhad.\n\n\n\nReaching Out Through International Networking\n\n\n\nACCCIM is a major focal point for the local business community as well as government \nofficials to organize delegations to explore commercial and investment opportunities abroad. \nSimilarly, it is also the point of connect for foreign trade delegations and governments. \n\n\n\nACCCIM is assuming an increasingly important role since the outbreak of the 1997 \neconomic crisis. To revive the economic fortunes of local businesses, it is taking initiatives \nto expand economic opportunities by widening its business networks overseas. The primary \nobjectives of establishing business networks are to promote Malaysia products and services, \nto import suitable products and expertise, to identify joint-venture partnerships, and to create \navenues for business and investment. ACCCIM is targeting its networking efforts beyond \nSoutheast Asia to reach out to the booming economies in East Asia, especially China including \nTaiwan and Hong Kong, and countries in South Asia or even Africa. Adopting a proactive \nstance in the global business arena, ACCCIM encouraged the Malaysian Chinese business \ncommunity to integrate into the global network by hosting the Seventh World Chinese \nEntrepreneurs\u2019 Convention in Kuala Lumpur in July 2003.\n\n\n\n Traditionally, China and its territories of Hong Kong and Taiwan have been the \nmajor trade partners of Malaysian Chinese business. Commercial ties go back centuries in \ntime and have been building up in volume and value with accelerating speed in the recent \npast. Business contacts and transactions were not interrupted even during the Cold War period \nwhen trade relations with China and other countries were few and irregular. China is a vast \ncountry comprising not one but many markets at the regional and local levels.\n\n\n\nAs a key business-based, non-governmental organization in Malaysia, ACCCIM has \nbeen taking the lead in fostering closer ties with China and its provinces and cities. As \nACCCIM realized the business potentials in many other parts of China, it would seek out \nopportunities by establishing ties in various provinces and cities. In its 2001 visit to the Sixth \nWorld Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention in Nanjing, it sought to enhance cooperation and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nfriendly relationships with entrepreneurs in China and other parts of the world, to study the \neconomic development of Jiangsu province particularly the Nanjing region, and to exploit \nthe growing business opportunities make available by the open-door and reform policies \nof China (ACCCIM, 2001a: 30-32). A similar mission also visited the Sixth International \nFruit and Vegetable Exposition in the densely-populated and rich agricultural province of \nShandong in North China. Delegates were able to focus on the possibilities of investing in the \nagricultural business in the province and exchanged views with its Agriculture Department \n(ACCCIM, 2004d: 25-26).\n\n\n\nRegular visits and MOU signed by ACCCIM have opened up new investment avenues \nabroad. At the same time, the business community is able to weight the pros and cons in the \nrelocation of production plants in search of the most cost-effective location outside Malaysia. \nThis is particularly important in the era of globalization as more ACCCIM members seek to \nre-locate their manufacturing sites from Malaysia to other countries to remain competitive. \nIt is a fact that Malaysian investments in China have been pioneered by the Chinese business \ncommunity. These investors include large conglomerates, small and medium enterprises as \nwell as the private entrepreneurs. In the period from 1985 to 2005, the Malaysian private \nsector has invested US$3.832 billion in China.4 The Chinese Embassy in Malaysia states that \nby the end of June 2002, a total of 2,359 Malaysian companies and individuals have invested \nin numerous projects in China. The Embassy confirms that about 90 per cent of Malaysian \ninvestments in China have come from local Chinese businesses (Lee and Lee 2006: 167).\n\n\n\nThe economic spillover effects from China and Vietnam\u2019s recent entry into the World \nTrade Organization has transformed them as new favourable destinations for foreign \ninvestment. The surge in labour costs in major cities such as Shanghai, Bejing and Tianjing in \nrecent years has forced Malaysian as well other businesses and investors to seek more cost-\neffective production sites elsewhere in and outside China. Vietnam has found to be a viable \nalternative to China and Malaysian investments have escalated accordingly. In the 1988-2006 \nperiod, Malaysian businesses have invested US$1.6 billion in 190 projects in Vietnam in \nconstruction, oil and gas, banking and tourism. In the last seven years from 2000 to 2006, \nMalaysian investment in Vietnam had accelerated to reach an amount of RM892 million \n(Bank Negara Malaysia, www.bnm.gov.my). \n\n\n\nACCCIM also plays a pivotal role in creating opportunities for joint ventures in heavy \nindustry. In June 2004 the ACCCIM put forward a proposal for a Malaysia-China joint \nventure in the automobile industry. ACCCIM argued that China has proven that its production \ntechnology in producing cars, motorcycles and trucks is on par with that of developed countries. \nChina too has an edge in being a lower-cost producer. ACCCIM therefore proposed that \nMalaysia explored the possibility of automobile technology transfer from China in the form \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          11\n\n\n\nof joint research and development for the industry (The Star, 14 June 2004). The ACCCIM \nsuggestion received the favourable response from the Malaysian national carmaker, Proton \nHoldings Bhd which made known its decision to consider partnering with Chinese automobile \ncompanies to capture a share of the large China market.\n\n\n\nIn May 2006, Proton\u2019s subsidiary Otomobil Nasional Sdn Bhd entered into an \nunderstanding with Chery Automobile Co Ltd and Alado Corp Sdn Bhd.5 At the same time, \nProton and Lotus Engineering (M) Sdn Bhd, a company within the Proton group, also entered \ninto an understanding with Jinhua Youngman Automobile Group Co Ltd to undertake a joint \nfeasibility study on designing, developing and selling completely knocked down (CKD) \nvehicles in China. The agreement has the potential to let Proton take a step forward, through \nits subsidiary to manufacture cheaper versions of Lotus cars and to expand its engineering \ncapability to the Asian region.  \n\n\n\nACCCIM is also taking the lead to spearhead the search for business and trade partners \noutside traditional markets from the 1990s. It has dispatched trade missions to such non-\ntraditional trading nations as Mauritius and Bangladesh.\n\n\n\nThe trade mission to the Mauritius in 1999 was the outcome of the ACCCIM strategy \nto widen links and contacts in new markets. The main objectives of the mission were to set \nup business ties and to study the economic situation and prospects of Mauritius, including \na better understanding of its business environment and the possibility of tapping potential \ninvestment opportunities in the South African region. One of the results of the mission was the \nconclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Chinese Business Chamber \nof Mauritius. Individual deals among delegates and Mauritius businessmen netted US$7 \nmillion in purchase orders for Malaysian products, and an additional US$2 million from other \nbusiness proposals (ACCCIM, 1999d: 68-71). The Mauritius Chinese Business Chamber paid \na return visit to Malaysia in 2005 to further strengthen bilateral ties (ACCCIM, 2005: 28). \nThese business interactions form part and parcel of the process of quanxi or personal ties \nthat have traditionally been depended upon to enhance business transactions among Chinese \nentrepreneurs. \n\n\n\nACCCIM turned its attention to Bangladesh in 2006 by organizing a trade and investment \nmission to Dhaka. The delegates were briefed on doing business in Bangladesh and conducted \nnumerous business meetings to build up ties and contacts. ACCCIM gained a foothold in \nthe country by signing three MOUs with the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, \nNational Association of Small and Cottage Industries of Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh-\nMalaysian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCCIM, 2006b: 32-33). This was followed \nby a trade and investment mission in 2008 to participate in the Showcase Malaysia 2008 in \nDhaka and to seek new business opportunities and cooperation (ACCCIM, 2008b: 26). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n12          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\nACCCIM also cast its attention to other smaller South Asian markets such as Nepal \nin 2003 and Sri Lanka in 2006 (ACCCIM, 2003b: 49 and 2006d: 49). Its trade mission to \nColombo met potential partners in the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka, Ceylon \nChamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka, and Federation of Chamber of Commerce & Industry of \nSri Lanka. The outcome was the signing of MOUs with two of the organizations to promote \ntrade relations. \n\n\n\nServing Its Members and the Government\n\n\n\nACCCIM seeks to enhance its own role and functions as well as to improve its service to \nits members. One of these is to disseminate the latest information through its monthly bulletin \nand the annual report of its own industrial survey. \n\n\n\nACCCIM conducts annual surveys on the economic situation of Malaysia. These \nreports are not meant to serve the narrow interests of Chinese business community on basic \nissues of business development in the country and the national economic outlook, but also \nas a means to assist the government and the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) to \ngauge the economic situation faced by Chinese business, to collect feedback and opinion \nfrom the business community on various measures taken by the government and NEAC, \nand for businesses to take steps to adjust to policies or to formulate new ones. The reports \nalso provide the basis for ACCCIM to submit their views to the government. In mid-2009, \nACCCIM\u2019s Socio-Economic Research Centre (SERC) established eight key focus groups to \norganize, deliberate and collate views, inputs and suggestions to the NEAC (ACCCIM 2009a: \n12). The latest attempt by ACCCIM is to enhance SERC in specialized areas of research. It \nhas thrown its full weight and influence as the most financially powerful body among the \nChinese to strengthen the research centre. The centre would tap the expertise of local and \nforeign specialists to conduct comprehensive and in-depth studies on issues and problems \nencountered by Malaysian SMEs, to assist the business community effectively and to prepare \nproposals addressed to related government departments (ACCCIM 2010). \n\n\n\nOfficial statistics confirm that there were 523,132 SMEs in the manufacturing, services \nand agriculture sectors in the country in 2005. An estimated 80 per cent or more were \nestablished by the Chinese business community. Considering the fact that SMEs play such a \ncrucial role in the national economy, ACCCIM takes upon itself to conduct a survey on these \nenterprises and to report on the findings. The primary objectives the survey are to gather the \nlatest information and statistics on selected SMEs and to analyse their problems, to ascertain \ntheir awareness of special official facilities or services that cater to the needs of SMEs, to \nform the basis of their submission of views and requests to various government agencies, and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          13\n\n\n\nto provide the database in the formulation of common action plans and strategies (ACCCIM, \n2008a:17-19). \n\n\n\nThe plethora of official policies and regulations on economic matters is often intimidating \nto the average business person. The implementation of specific policies or rulings may be \npoorly understood by a section of the Chinese business community. ACCCIM sees the need to \nstep in to provide assistance to convey and to clarify policies that affect Chinese business. In \n2002, in its seminar on the export promotion incentives offered by the government, it sought \nto raise the general awareness of relevant businesses on the incentives that were offered, the \nconditions for eligibility, and procedures in submitting applications (ACCCIM, 2002a: 35). \nSimilarly, the business community was briefed on the Third Industrial Master Plan to make \nknown the importance and implications of the plan (ACCCIM, 2006c: 6). \n\n\n\nACCCIM organizes lectures and talks to raise the awareness of the Chinese business \ncommunity on the latest developments that have a bearing on the businesses of its members. \nA major subject of concern is that of taxation. ACCCIM has worked towards propagating \nand disseminating knowledge on individual self-assessment tax system that came into force \nin 2004. Its work, through seminars and talks, was to enable individuals, companies and \npartnerships to understand the new tax system and the impact on their businesses (ACCCIM, \n2003a: 39-42). Related to the issue of taxation is that of tax audit on which ACCCIM \norganized nationwide seminars in 2007 and 2008 for the benefit of the business community \n(ACCCIM, 2007: 24-25). Efforts in information dissemination would also cater to the interests \nof businesses in specific sectors. A seminar was specifically organized in 2006 to focus on the \nsubject of tax incentives for agricultural enterprises. In its concern over the often exuberant \nreaction to the local share market, ACCCIM sought to enlighten the average investors by \nsponsoring talks on the fundaments of investing in shares and to appreciate the risks, profits \nand rights involved (ACCCIM, 2004c: 31). \n\n\n\nOne of the critical factors that determines the fate of SMEs is capital. Most of the SMEs \nrely on their own internally-generated funds and those sourced from friends and family \nmembers. Even though they are viable businesses, they face some common obstacles in \ntheir attempts to obtain loans from banks. These obstacles include the lack of collateral, \ninsufficient loan documentation, and lack of financial track record. To help SMEs to improve \ntheir access to financial institutions, ACCCIM organized nationwide seminars on SMEs \nfinancing and related problems for its members. Many were able to benefit from the lectures \nand explanations provided by speakers from Bank Negara (Central Bank of Malaysia), Credit \nGuarantee Corporation, the Association of Banks in Malaysia, and ACCCIM itself (ACCCIM, \n2004a: 22).\n\n\n\nACCCIM complements its role in enlightening the business community with a training \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n14          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\ncomponent in its functions. Business enterprises are subject to constant and dynamic changes \nin the business environment. Adaptation to such changes is crucial to remain competitive. \nTraining to upgrade skills and knowledge is an integral part of competitive and even more \nso to cushion the impact of economic downturns. The programme of workshops, talks, \nand seminars that has become part of ACCCIM\u2019s service to its members and the business \ncommunity has helped to promote business development, especially for SMEs. \n\n\n\nOn the need to raise general awareness on the Knowledge Economy (K-Economy) among \nSMEs, ACCCIM in 2001 conducted a series of seminars on the K-Economy Master Plan \nformulated by government and to help SMEs to adopt appropriate actions to accommodate \nthe demands of the K-Economy. These seminars were held in major towns in conjunction \nwith constituent Chambers of Commerce (ACCCIM, 2001b: 33). To prepare the SMEs to \nface the challenges of globalization, ACCCIM conducted workshops to upgrade skills in the \nuse of information and communication technologies so as to become more competitive in the \nincreasingly globalized world (ACCCIM, 2004b: 23).\n\n\n\nThe ACCCIM is often alert and sensitive to the development of business environment in \nthe country, especially towards economic policy by the government. In response to the official \nregulation on the mandatory training for company directors that was introduced in 2001, \nACCCIM was able to persuade the government to adapt the ruling to accommodate the needs \nof different company directors. It suggested that the programme should not be mandatory and \nthat it could conduct in Chinese language to benefit sections of Chinese company directors. A \nyear later, ACCCIM was also granted the training right for the Corporate Directors Training \nProgram by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (ACCCIM, 2002b: 36-38). \n\n\n\n \nConclusion\n\n\n\nAs an economic-based, non-governmental national organization, ACCCIM wields \nconsiderable influence in the eyes of the Chinese community and the government. Its major \nconcern is to foster an economic environment that is conducive to the conduct of business. To \nattain this objective, it has to assume an effective leadership role and in promoting the general \ninterests of its members and the Chinese community in general. It has to take a proactive \nstance in meeting new challenges posed by changing political and economic circumstances. \n\n\n\nACCCIM has performed well in the discharge of the mandate to work for the benefit \nof its members and the business community. It is constantly alert to new situations and to \nformulate appropriate response strategies. Its role as a lobby for or against specific policies \nhas generally been effective as it builds up the trust of the government. Its range of services \nand undertakings has expanded with the years to meeting changing needs. To the SME sector \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          15\n\n\n\nwhose members are well represented in ACCCIM, the Chamber is like a custodian that casts \na safety net for their protection. At the same time as it undertakes the task of creating regional \nbusiness networks, it is also building up a programme of essential and practical services for \nthe benefit of its members \n\n\n\nIn the 1970s when economic activities were organized along ethnic lines, ACCCIM had \nbeen critical of the policies of the NEP like many other non-Bumiputera organizations. As \nthe social conditions and economic policies and prospects change with the times, ACCCIM is \nshifting to a more accommodating approach by working with government bodies and Malay \nentrepreneurs to expand business opportunities. The trend towards inter-ethnic businesses \naugurs well for the future as such partnerships are seen to bring benefits to the Chinese business \ncommunity as well as to Bumiputera entrepreneurs for the overall success and prosperity of \nthe country.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  These are the 13 chambers in the states and four in the towns of Batu Pahat, Kluang, and Klang \nand the North Perak region (ACCCIM, 2006). \n\n\n\n2  New Economic Policy (1971-90) refers to the First Outline Perspective Plan (OPP1). Four of \nthe country\u2019s five-year plans from the Second to the Fifth were implemented under OPP1. OPP2 \nrefers to the National Development Plan (1991-2000), which include the Sixth and Seventh \nMalaysia Plans. Meanwhile, the Eight Malaysia Plan (2001-05) occupies the first five years of \nOPP3 or the Vision Plan (2001-10).\n\n\n\n3  MPH\u2019s role was to pool Chinese economic resources and compete, in the way small enterprises \ncould not, with large Malay corporate organizations (see Jesudason, 1989: 155-159). \u201cBhd\u201d \nstands for \u201cBerhad\u201d or \u201cLimited Company\u201d in Malay.\n\n\n\n4  Investments shown in the China Statistical Yearbook are the actual amounts invested. Figures \ngathered by the Chinese authority could possibly include Chinese Malaysian investment in China. \nThis would include Malaysians who use Hong Kong as a base for their investment and business \noperation in China. A good case is the business group controlled by Robert Kuok.\n\n\n\n5  Proton\u2019s target was not only to raise its domestic market share to 45.8 per cent in the 2007 \nfinancial year, but also to earn 8.6 per cent of its revenue from exports, compared with 5.2 per \ncent in its 2006 financial year. According to China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, \nChina\u2019s vehicle sales hit 5.76 million units in 2005, or an increase of 13.5 per cent from the \npreceding year. In the first quarter of 2006, China sold 1.25 million passenger cars, or 54 per cent \nmore than the previous first quarter (The Star 24 May 2006).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAssociation of Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ACCCIM) 1997a. ACCCIM \nMemorandum on issues, proposals and recommendations on employment of foreign workers, \nACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 23-25.\n\n\n\n----- 1997b. Memorandum for international trade and industry dialogue, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 27-31.\n----- 1997c. Progress report on genuine joint-ventures, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 3: 66-73.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n16          Chin and Lee\n\n\n\n----- 1999a. Courtesy call by the Delegation of the China International Trade Promotion Committee, \nACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 62 (in Chinese).\n\n\n\n----- 1999b. Courtesy call by Ms Guo Li, Chief of the Asia Bureau of the Department for Foreign Trade \nand Economic Cooperation, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 63 (in Chinese). \n\n\n\n----- 1999c. Courtesy call by Mr Guo Dong Po, Deputy President of China Overseas Exchange \nAssociation and Head of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Department of the State Council, ACCCIM \nBulletin, No. 2: 64 (in Chinese). \n\n\n\n----- 1999d. ACCCIM Trade and Investment Mission to Mauritius, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 68-71. \n----- 1999e. Performance of the SMIs in the manufacturing sector, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 5: 28-29.\n----- 2001a. ACCCIM delegation to Nanjing, China in conjunction with the 6th World Chinese \n\n\n\nEntrepreneurs Convention, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 30-32.\n----- 2001b. ACCCIM National Promotional Programme on K-Economy, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 33.\n----- 2001c. Performance of small and medium enterprises, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 9-10.\n----- 2001d. Position paper on SMIs and a recipe for faster development to meet challenges of \n\n\n\nglobalization and liberalization, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 5: 10-15.\n----- 2002a. Government export incentives, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 35 (in Chinese). \n----- 2002b. Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs grant ACCCIM Corporate Directors\u2019 \n\n\n\nTraining Programme (CDTP) training right, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 5: 36-38.\n----- 2003a. Nationwide talk on the 2004 income tax personal assessment system, ACCCIM Bulletin, \n\n\n\nNo. 2: 39-42 (in Chinese). \n----- 2003b. ACCCIM Trade and Investment Mission to Nepal, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 3: 49. \n----- 2004a. Nationwide talk on the problems facing the capitalization of SMIs, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. \n\n\n\n1: 22 (in Chinese). \n----- 2004b. Seminar on how to utilize information and information technology to raise international \n\n\n\ncompetitiveness, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 1: 23 (in Chinese). \n----- 2004c. Press conference on educational talk on investing in trusts, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 31 \n\n\n\n(in Chinese). \n----- 2004d. ACCCIM Agricultural Study Group to Shandong Province, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 22-\n\n\n\n24 (in Chinese). \n----- 2005. Visit of the Mauritius trade delegation, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 3: 28 (in Chinese).\n----- 2006a. 2006-2008 Hand Book. Kuala Lumpur: ACCCIM.\n----- 2006b. Trade and Investment Mission to Dhaka, Bangladesh, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 3: 32-33. \n----- 2006c. Joint ACCCIM-Kuala Lunpur/Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce Briefing on the \n\n\n\nThird Malaysian Industrial Master Plan, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 6 (in Chinese).\n----- 2006d. Trade and Investment Mission to Colombo, Sri Lanka, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 4: 49.\n----- 2007. Nationwide Seminar on Tax Audit, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 24-25.\n----- 2008a. Highlights on Report of ACCCIM Second SMEs Survey, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 17-19.\n----- 2008b. ACCCIM Trade and Investment Mission to Bangladesh, ACCCIM Bulletin, No. 2: 26.\n----- 2008c. The Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM) \n\n\n\nRebuttal and Clarifications on the \u2018Letter to Shareholders by Unico Holdings Bhd\u2019. http://www.\nacccim.org.my/html/modules/news/article/php?storyid=159 (retrieved on 24 July 2009).\n\n\n\n----- 2009. 62nd Annual Report (2008-2009). Kuala Lumpur: ACCCIM. \n----- 2009a. NEAC-ACCCIM Focus Groups, ACCCIM Bulletin, Issue No. 4: 17-19.\n----- 2010. President Speech: Media Conference on the Report of ACCCIM 2010 SMEs Survey. http://\n\n\n\nwww.acccim.org.my/html/modules/news/article.php?storyid=240 (retrieved on 13 March 2010).\nBank Negara Malaysia, www.bnm.gov.my\nDepartment of Statistic, Malaysia 2005. Census of Establishments and Enterprises, 2005, Putrajaya.\nCHIN Yee Whah 2007. Knowledge management: business development in Chinese-Bumiputera \n\n\n\npartnerships in Malaysia, Journal of Asian Business, 22(2)/22(3)/23(1): 189-212.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChambers of Commerce and Chinese Business Enterprise in Malaysia          17\n\n\n\n----- 2004. Ethnicity and the transformation of the Ali-Baba partnership in the Chinese business culture \nin Malaysia. In The Challenge of Ethnicity: Building a Nation in Malaysia, edited by Cheah Boon \nKheng, Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International: 54-88\n\n\n\n----- 2003. The \u2018Bumiputera Policy\u2019: views from the Chinese business community, Kajian Malaysia, \nXXI (1 & 2): 363-377. \n\n\n\nGOMEZ, E.T. 2003. Affirmative action and enterprise development in Malaysia: The New Economic \nPolicy, business partnerships and inter-ethnic relations, Kajian Malaysia, 21 (1&2): 59-104.\n\n\n\nHARA, Fujio 1991. Malaysia's New Economic Policy and the Chinese business community, The \nDeveloping Economies, 29 (4): 350-370.\n\n\n\nHENG Pek Koon 1997a. The New Economic Policy and the Chinese community in Peninsular Malaysia, \nDeveloping Economies, 35 (3): 262-92.\n\n\n\nHENG Pek Khoon and SIEH-LEE Mei Ling 2000. The Chinese business community in Peninsular \nMalaysia, 1957-1999. In The Chinese in Malaysia, edited by Lee Kam Hing and Tan Chee Beng, \nShah Alam: Oxford University Press.\n\n\n\nJESUDASON, James V. 1989. Ethnicity and the Economy: The States, Chinese Business, and \nMultinationals in Malaysia, Singapore: Oxford University Press.\n\n\n\nDataniaga. 1996, No. 15 January.\nLEE Poh Peng and LEE Kam Hing 2006. China\u2019s economic rise and its impact on Malaysian Chinese \n\n\n\nbusiness. In Southeast Asia\u2019 Chinese Business in An Era of Globalization: Coping with the Rise \nof China, edited by Leo Suryadinata, Singapore: ISEAS: 162-190. \n\n\n\nMajlis Galakan Usahasama Tulen 1997. Guidelines for Bumiputera and Non-Bumiputera Genuine \nJoint-Ventures (second edition).\n\n\n\nMalaysia 1991. The Second Outline Perspective Plan 1991-2000. Kuala Lumpur: National Printing \nDepartment.\n\n\n\nMinistry of Entrepreneur Development (MED) 1998. Annual Report.\n----- 2000. Annual Report.\nNew Straits Times 26 December 1998.\nThe Star 14 June 2004. Proton, China firms study deal. \nSEARLE, P. 1999. The Riddle of Malaysian Capitalism: Rent-seekers or Real Capitalism? NSW: Allen \n\n\n\nand Unwin.\nYEOH, Emile Kok-Kheng 2007. Identity and economic development in a multi-ethnic society: \n\n\n\nMalaysian Chinese and the making of the nation. In Malaysian Chinese and Nation-building: \nBefore Merdeka and Fifty Years After, Volume 1, edited by Voon Phin Keong, Kuala Lumpur: \nCentre for Malaysian Chinese Studies: 187-222. \n\n\n\nSHINOZAKI, Kaori 2006. The formation of the Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 1903: \nprotecting Chinese business interests in the two states, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the \nRoyal Asiatic Society, 79 (1): 43-65. \n\n\n\nYASUDA, Nobuyuki 1991. Malaysia's New Economic Policy and the Industrial Co-ordination Act, \nThe Developing Economies, 29 (4): 330-349.\n\n\n\n\u84e7\u5d0e\u9999\u7e542009\u3002\u201c\u534e\u4eba\u5546\u52a1\u5c40\u201d\u7684\u6210\u7acb\uff1a\u5546\u4e1a\u4e0e\u8d38\u6613\u53d1\u5c55\u7684\u50ac\u5316\u56e0\u7d20\u3002\u8f7d\u6587\u5e73\u5f3a\u3001\u8bb8\u5fb7\n\u53d1\u4e3b\u7f16\uff0c\u300a\u52e4\u4fed\u5174\u90a6\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u7684\u8d21\u732e\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u534e\u793e\u7814\u7a76\u4e2d\u5fc3\uff1a301-328 \n(SHINOZAKI, Kaori 2009. The establishment of \u201cChinese Business Departments\u201d: factors \nbehind the development of commerce and trade. In National Prosperity Through Industry and \nThrift: Contributions of Malaysian Chinese, edited by Voon Phin Keong and Khor Teik Huat, \nKuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies: 301-328.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 103-105\n\n\n\nBook Reviews\n\n\n\nWar Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore, edited by Kevin Blackburn \nand Karl Hack, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2012, 476 pages (Softcover \nISBN: 978-9971-69-599-6)* \n\n\n\nWith re-writing of history textbooks an issue of current concern in this country, War \nMemory edited by Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack is a very timely publication. This is a \nwell-researched and readable study explaining how events of World War Two and the \nJapanese Occupation are remembered differently by various people, and how some of these \nmemories alter with the passage of time. The writers argue that individuals, communities and \nthe state shape, and reshape war narratives and that efforts to create a collective memory out \nof divergent recollections have not been easy. War Memory is a cogently argued reminder \nthat history is constructed out of a multitude of sources and how data are selected and used \ndetermine the slant and contestability of the resulting perspectives. \n\n\n\nDrawing from the recollections of those who lived through the war years, War Memory \nrevisits momentous events of the Japanese Occupation. There was the fall of Singapore on \n15 February 1942 and the surrender of more than 100,000 Allied troops. Then in the months \nfollowing, there were the massacres by Japanese troops of thousands of Chinese in the terror-\nfilled Sook Ching (Su Qing) or \u201cpurging campaign\u201d against those suspected of pre-war anti-\nJapanese activities. In Johor alone, it was claimed that some 25,000 were executed by the \nJapanese. No one is sure of the total number of those massacred but, as War Memory points \nout, the scale of brutality and killings is beyond dispute. No less tragic were the tens of \nthousands more, mostly Indians but also Malays, who were taken from rubber estates and \nsent to build the Thai-Burma Railway where diseases, lack of food, and hard toil killed many. \n\n\n\nThere were chilling accounts of young men being picked up by Japanese secret police \nand never to be seen again, and of young girls seized from respectable families to work \nas comfort women for the Japanese military. More poignantly and often forgotten were the \nthousands left as widows and orphans when their menfolk were taken away and had to fend \nfor themselves, mostly in poverty. For the rest of the population, life under Japanese rule was \none of hardship with shortages of food and essentials.\n\n\n\n*  An edited version of this review was published in The Star, 23 December 2012\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n104          Lee\n\n\n\nThere are other memories of the war, of acts of bravery even as Japanese troops marched \ndown Malaya. Allied forces that included Indian soldiers, the newly-formed Malay Regiment \nand the Dalforce unit consisting of local Chinese, were portrayed as putting up a valiant \nfight. Sustained resistance against the Japanese was carried out in the jungle by members \nof Force 136 and the Malayan People\u2019s Anti-Japanese Army that was linked to the Malayan \nCommunist Party.\n\n\n\nBut there were those who co-operated with the Japanese. As War Memory reminds us, \nsuch collaboration was often the result of coercion and of desperation to survive. Others, \nhowever, were driven by pursuit of separate nationalist goals. Those in the Kesatuan Melayu \nMuda embraced Japanese promise of political independence while Indian Nationalist Army \n(INA) members in Malaya and Singapore expected Japanese liberation of India from British \nrule.\n\n\n\nAt the end of the war, the returning British in efforts to restore imperial pride and \npower reconstructed a war narrative where the 1942 surrender and British war prisoners were \ndepicted with imageries of stoicism and heroism. For the post-independence Malaysian state \nin later years seeking to consolidate Malay unity and nation building the emerging theme \nin the war narrative was Malay nationalism. In the Malay Regiment and Lt Adnan Saidi \nwho resisted the invading Japanese were found war heroes held up as embodying the Malay \nmartial tradition of Hang Tuah.\n\n\n\nBut in the narrative set out by the state, where is to be placed the communist-led \nresistance movement, once war allies of the British, but whose ideology especially during \nthe Emergency was deemed a threat to the country and to nation building? And what \nabout other individuals and communities who want their experience of victimhood to be \nacknowledged and compensated? And with Japan emerging as a major economic power, \nhow did governments deal with demands for war compensation arising out of war memories \nwithout harming growing Japanese trade and investments?\n\n\n\nThere is therefore not one memory but multiple historical narratives, divergent and \nseemingly irreconcilable, of the Japanese Occupation period. And even these have, over the \nyears and in changing circumstances, undergone revision when facts were either exaggerated \nor suppressed and myths created. \n\n\n\nWar Memory draws attention to this continuing contestation of state and the non-state \nnarratives. But the intensity of the debate, the book notes, has lessened in recent years with the \nobservance of what is described as plural commemoration of World War Two anniversaries. \nThose left out of the official commemoration are able to organize private memorial services \nfor Sook Ching victims and there is some public and unhindered discussions of the role \nof left-wing anti-Japanese resistance movements. But noticeably neglected in this plural \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews           105\n\n\n\ncommemoration are victims and survivors of the \u201cDeath Railway\u201d and this is because, as War \nMemory suggests, the dominant memory of the war among many urban Indians is that of the \nINA-inspired national awakening.\n\n\n\nAs an exercise in history writing, War Memory demonstrates how the use of a variety of \nresearch approaches enables and enriches the reconstruction of the past. The writers taught at \nthe Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and in their courses encouraged students \nto interview and collect stories of the Second World War from those of an earlier generation. \nThe writers also organized forums where war survivors spoke of their experiences. Beyond \nthese, they examined artefacts such as films, memorials, monuments and literary works to \ncapture the moments and meaning of an era that is fast fading from the memory of many. \n\n\n\nThe war years was a defining period in Malaysia\u2019s history and how events of those \ntimes were remembered has determined the course of nation building in this country and will \ncontinue to do so. In this excellent study War Memory brings out the persistence of multiple \nmemories and the challenge of constructing a national narrative that is inclusive yet authentic. \nIt is a book of high scholarly standard and should contribute to an informed discussion of \nhistory-writing in Malaya.\n\n\n\nLEE Kam Hing\nUniversity of Malaya\n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 83-102\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of \nMalaysian Chinese Youth\n\n\n\nHelen TING Mu Hung*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThe majority of the current generation of Malaysian Chinese youth go through Mandarin primary \neducation and Malay-medium secondary schooling in the Malaysian public education system. Hence \nan average Malaysian Chinese youth knows, at varying levels of proficiency, at least three languages \nnamely, Mandarin, Malay and English. \n\n\n\nDrawing on the findings of three survey data collected in a local public university, this study \ndiscusses the reality and perceptions of Malaysian Chinese university students on various aspects of \nthis linguistic dimension of education. It analyses their concerns with regard to language and education \nfrom the point of view of social mobility and cultural preservation. \n\n\n\nTheir perspective on the multilingual education system in Malaysia in relation to national \nintegration is explored in one of the surveys. It is suggested that the national education system was \nregarded not only as serving the function of nation building, but the unique multilingual character of the \ninstitution in itself was also consciously or unconsciously perceived to be constitutive of the Malaysian \nnational identity. The majority of the respondents approved of the vernacular education and regarded \nit as an institution which helped to preserve the cultural diversity of the population. Besides literacy in \nMandarin, Chinese primary schools were also expected to transmit Chinese values and culture to their \npupils. In this context, the preservation of cultural identity was regarded as going hand in hand with \nthe fostering of national unity, and the reality of linguistic and cultural diversity was embraced as \u201ca \nnational asset\u201d.\n\n\n\nKey words:  language-in-education, Malaysian Chinese, ethnic identity, mobility, national identity\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nMalaysian parents who enrol their children in public primary schools may choose from \namong three languages as the medium of instruction, namely Malay, Mandarin or Tamil. \nThis is a unique feature of the country. Malay-medium schools are called national schools \nwhile the Mandarin- and Tamil-medium primary schools are called national-type schools \n\n\n\n*  Dr. Helen TING Mu Hung is Research Fellow, Institut Kajian Malaysia dan Antarabangsa (IKMAS), \nUniversiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). E-mail: helenting2013@gmail.com\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n84          Ting\n\n\n\nor informally as the vernacular schools. They are often referred to respectively as Malay, \nChinese and Tamil schools as well, though these schools are open to all Malaysians regardless \nof ethnicity. Despite using different medium of instruction, they share a common teaching \ncurriculum. At the secondary level, 60 Mandarin-medium schools exist but operate outside \nthe Malaysian public school system. Currently, their intake constitutes around 3 per cent of all \nthe secondary students in Malaysia (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2012a: chapter 3-22). \nHence an overwhelming majority of the pupils who go through national-type primary schools \nattend secondary schools taught in the Malay medium.\n\n\n\nMalaysian pupils start learning Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language or the national \nlanguage) and English in kindergarten and primary one regardless of the type of school they \nenrol in. While national primary schools teach all subjects in the Malay language, students \nstudying in vernacular schools learn it as a subject taught as a second language. The level of \nMalay language proficiency attained by vernacular primary school pupils is evidently not \ncomparable to that in national schools. Moreover, there are comparatively few chances of \nspeaking the language in vernacular schools as its usage is largely confined to the classroom.\n\n\n\nHowever, an overwhelming majority of vernacular school pupils continue their \nsecondary education in Malay medium from Forms One to Upper Sixth for the next five \nto seven years. In principle, given good linguistic coaching and adequate opportunities for \npractice, they may be proficient in the Malay language when they finish secondary school. \nIn effect, all secondary students are required to score a credit for the national language at the \nForm Five public examinations, without which they cannot further their studies in public \nuniversities.1\n\n\n\nGiven this situation, an average Malaysian Chinese student will have learnt some \nChinese (Mandarin), Malay and English; in addition to speaking one or more Chinese dialects. \nHowever, many will discontinue the study of Mandarin as a subject in secondary schools for \nvarious reasons. It is hence a possibility that their best language (in particular for writing \ncompetency) may be the Malay language. \n\n\n\nDrawing on the findings extracted from three non-random surveys conducted in the \nUniversity of Malaya, this study will discuss the reality and perceptions of Malaysian Chinese \nuniversity students on various aspects of this linguistic dimension of education. It will look at \ntheir concerns with regard to language and education and from the point of view of mobility \nand cultural preservation. One survey also seeks the views of respondents on what they think \nof the multilingual education system of the country in relation to national integration. \n\n\n\nThe surveys were conducted respectively in 2000, 2002 and 2003. The first two surveys \nwere conducted by the University of Malaya Chinese Language Society (CLS) exclusively \namong Chinese students. The purpose was to understand the perspective of Chinese university \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           85\n\n\n\nstudents on issues pertaining to language, education, ethnicity and nation. The president of \nthe CLS has kindly made available the electronic version of press clippings for the 2000 \nsurvey findings and unpublished, raw statistical tabulations of the 2002 survey (\u9a6c\u6765\u4e9a\u5927\u5b66\n\n\n\n\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a/University of Malaya Chinese Language Society, 2002). The findings of the 2000 \nsurvey, based on a sample of 500 respondents, were the subject of discussion by a three-\nmember panel forum. These discussions and basic statistical information were published in \nthe form of a series of articles in a local Chinese press (\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u62a5\u300b/Nanyang Siang Pau, \n2001a,b,c,d,e,f; \u9648\u5229\u826f/Tan Lee Liang, 2001; \u9648\u4e9a\u624d/Chan Ah Chye, 2001). CLS conducted \na second survey in November 2002 covering similar themes with a modified questionnaire and \nan enlarged sample of more than a thousand. The results were released in a forum discussion \nin January 2003. \n\n\n\nThe author conducted a separate questionnaire survey with open-ended questions in \nJuly and August 2003 and gathered a sample of 197 respondents of various ethnic groups. The \nunpublished findings of the 2003 survey (and the CLS survey data) form part of the analysis \nin my thesis (Ting, 2007). In this study, discussion is confined to the responses of the 54 \nChinese respondents in the sample aged between 21 and 26 years. Despite this comparatively \nsmall sample, the questions are posed in a different manner and respondents answered freely \nto open-ended queries. Hence the semi-qualitative survey data capture a different dimension \nof the same issues concerned. The discussion based on data of the three surveys is meant to \nbe indicative as these surveys were conducted non-randomly and the questionnaires were \nformulated differently. For the sake of convenience, this study will refer to the three surveys \naccording to the year they are conducted.\n\n\n\nSocio-historical Overview\n\n\n\nIn the states that make up Malaysia, a multilingual education system began to appear in \nthe late nineteenth century. During the British colonial era, schools teaching modern secular \nsubjects emerged to cater for the needs and interests of the various ethnic communities. While \nschools teaching in English and Malay languages were set up by the British administration \nand Christian missionaries, the Chinese founded community schools teaching in the major \nChinese dialects until 1920 when they were gradually being replaced by Mandarin. Major \nrubber plantation owners were under legal obligation to establish Tamil schools for the \nchildren of migrant workers from Tamilnadu. Islamic reformers also sought to establish \nmodern-style Islamic madrasah to replace the traditional Quranic schools from the early \ndecades of the twentieth century. At the time of independence of Malaya in 1957, Malaya \nhad 2,198 primary schools teaching in Malay, 1,342 Mandarin-, 908 Tamil- and 486 English-\nmedium primary schools; at the secondary level, there were 86 Mandarin-medium schools in \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n86          Ting\n\n\n\n1958 (\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u603b\u4f1a/UCSCAM, 2004: 1267 and 1271), two Tamil schools \nand many English schools distributed in most of the towns.\n\n\n\nThe 1956 Razak Report accepted the maintenance of multilingual primary education as \na way to preserve and sustain the growth of the language and culture of different communities \nin Malaya. The status of national-type primary schools was guaranteed with the enactment \nof the 1957 Education Ordinance. In 1961, Chinese-medium secondary schools were given \nthe option to change its medium of instruction to either English or Malay as a condition for \nreceiving the per capita aid of the government, with the promise that the teaching of Mandarin \nas a subject would continue. These schools are now known as \u201cnational-type secondary \nschools\u201d or Sekolah Menengah Jenis Kebangsaan (SMJK).2 From 1970, English-medium \nschools experienced a gradual transition to Malay medium starting from pupils in primary \none. By 1982, this change was complete, having been extended to the upper sixth form or pre-\nuniversity grade. Schools that converted from the Mandarin medium were formerly known as \n\u201cChinese-conforming schools\u201d while those converted from the English medium were called \n\u201cEnglish-conforming schools\u201d.\n\n\n\nWith the tightening of the official education policy that gives priorities to the Malay \nlanguage, the number of Chinese primary schools in Peninsular Malaysia declined from their \nprevious number to 1,034 by 1970, though the enrolment had increased from 361,208 in 1957 \nto 399,302 in 1970. In the same year, there were 352 Chinese primary schools in the states \nof Sabah and Sarawak (UCSCAM, 2004: 1267-8). Despite the steady increase in enrolment, \nthe total number of Chinese primary schools was on a gradual decline until recent years. As \nof last January, 1,294 Chinese primary schools are catering for 591,121 pupils in the country \nwhile 523 Tamil primary schools are serving the needs of 97,884 pupils (Table 1). In contrast, \nthe 5,906 Malay-medium national schools boast an enrolment of 2.1 million pupils (Ministry \nof Education Malaysia, 2012b: 6, 8).\n\n\n\nTable 1. Number of Primary Schools and Pupils in Various Streams, 1970, 2000 and 2012\n\n\n\nSchool\n\n\n\n1970 2000 2012\nNo. of \nschools\n\n\n\nNo. of \npupils\n\n\n\nNo. of \nschools\n\n\n\nNo. of \npupils\n\n\n\nNo. of \nschools\n\n\n\nNo. of \npupils\n\n\n\nSRK  4,277* 1,046,513 5,379 2,216,641 5,906** 2,115,400\nSRJK (C) 1,386  439,681 1,284  622,820 1,294  591,121\nSRJK (T)  657  79,278  526  90,280  523  97,884\n\n\n\nSRK = Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan (National primary school in Malay medium)\nSRJK = Sekolah Rendah Jenis Kebangsaan (National-type primary school in Chinese (C) or Tamil (T))\n*  The figure includes English-medium schools affected by the language switch in Primary One in 1970.\n**  The figure includes 5,859 regular national schools and other miscellaneous \u201cspecial schools\u201d and a \n\n\n\nfew religious schools. \nSources: Compiled from UCSCAM (2004: 1266-8) and Ministry of Education Malaysia (2012b: 6, 8)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           87\n\n\n\nThe decision to maintain separate language streams in the education system at the time \nof independence is the result of a combination of historical factors, pragmatic considerations, \nand political compromise to meet conflicting claims and pressure from the three communities. \nIn subsequent decades, interethnic contentions have surfaced from time to time whenever \nnew measures taken by the government or education ministry officials were perceived to \nmake attempts to erode the position of vernacular education. On the other hand, layman \nassumptions not grounded on empirical evidence about the role of national-type schools are \nquite prevalent, in particular with regard to its impacts on national cohesion. The discussion \nthat follows hopes to contribute in a small way to deconstructing some of the misconceptions \nand to understanding the complexity of this linguistic dimension on the ground. \n\n\n\nCompetence of Malay Language and Educational Background\n\n\n\nThe 2000 and 2002 surveys queried the language competence at the spoken and written \nlevels among Chinese university students and uncovered some rather unexpected results. \nThey suggested that the linguistic competence of the respondents may depend more critically \non their immediate linguistic environment, such as the family, ethnicity of friends and the \nbackground of the residential area, than the formal language of the school. In addition, there \nmay be differences between the oral and written aspects of their linguistic capability.\n\n\n\nAround 19 per cent of the respondents from both surveys studied in Malay medium \nonly while the rest received Chinese primary education and then completed their secondary \neducation in Malay. At the spoken level, both surveys revealed that a majority of their \nrespondents\u2019 best spoken language was Mandarin (61 per cent in 2000 and 65 per cent in \n2002). The next best spoken language was a Chinese dialect (14 per cent in 2000 and 16 \nper cent in 2002), followed by English (6 per cent in 2000 survey and 12 per cent in 2002). \nThe 2002 survey found that among those from Chinese primary schools, more than 75 per \ncent confessed that they were most conversant in Mandarin. The 2002 survey indicated that \nMalay was the second best spoken language among 36 per cent of the respondents and a \nChinese dialect among another 33 per cent. As for their third best spoken language, 43 per \ncent identified Malay while 30 per cent said it was English. \n\n\n\nA surprising revelation of the 2002 survey is that, among those who acquired their \nprimary and secondary education in Malay schools (Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan or SRK \nand Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan or SMK), only a tenth confirmed that Malay was their \nbest spoken language. Instead, almost half considered that their first language was English, \nanother fifth could best express themselves in a Chinese dialect, while 16 per cent were most \ncomfortable in Mandarin. On the other hand, 44 per cent reported that Malay was their second \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n88          Ting\n\n\n\nbest spoken language, 23 per cent English, and 19 per cent a Chinese dialect. The proportion \namong Malay school goers who reported Malay as the second best spoken language is in fact \nonly about 5 per cent above those who completed primary education in Mandarin and then \nsecondary education in Malay-medium secondary schools or SMK (as distinguished from the \nSMJK). Among the latter group, 38.7 per cent reported that their second best spoken language \nwas Malay. The importance of linguistic environment is attested to by the difference between \nstudents from SMK and SMJK. Although the Malay language is taught in these schools, \nthere are generally more Chinese students in SMJK than SMK as the learning of Chinese is \navailable in the former. Of the SMJK students, 28 per cent stated that Malay was their second \nbest language compared with 42 per cent that identified one of the Chinese dialects. Another \nproof of the importance of environment in the mastery of language is that around 30 per cent \nof those who had gone through their entire education in Malay regarded Malay only as their \nthird best spoken language, presumably after English and the family dialect. \n\n\n\nIn the absence of the details of education background from the 2000 survey, the same \npattern may be inferred from the overall results as reported in a local Chinese press. Only \n4 per cent regarded Malay as their best spoken language, compared with 6 per cent for \nEnglish and 14 per cent for a Chinese dialect; yet 19 per cent of the respondents were from \nnational schools. In the 2002 survey, the majority among those who attended Chinese primary \nschools indicated Chinese as their best written language, being 68 per cent among those who \ncontinued in SMJK and 64 per cent in SMK. On the other hand, 38 per cent of those attended \nSRK and SMK best expressed themselves in writing in English. After Chinese or English (for \nthose attending SRK), Malay language is ranked as the next best written language among all \nthe respondents. About 29 per cent of the Chinese-educated students who went on to SMK \nregarded Malay as their best written language, at par with the 30 per cent who attended only \nMalay schools. In this regard, again SMJK lagged slightly behind: only 23 per cent among \nthose Chinese-educated students who continued in SMJK regarded Malay as their best written \nlanguage. This trend is generally confirmed by the results of the less detailed 2000 survey, in \nwhich 53 per cent regarded Chinese as the best written language, followed by Malay with 30 \nper cent, and English trailing with only 8 per cent.\n\n\n\nThese findings illustrate eloquently that we cannot assume in a simplistic way that \nthe mastering of a language could be attained automatically if it is used as a medium of \ninstruction.3 In actual fact, we found that a comparable proportion of those who enrolled in \nChinese primary schools acquired a reasonable level of proficiency in the Malay language \ncompared with their counterparts who studied only in the Malay medium. Moreover, the \neducation experience in Singapore illustrates that even if a student could master a language \nwith reasonable proficiency and obtain good grades in examinations, this ability could be lost \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           89\n\n\n\nrapidly in the absence of an appropriate linguistic environment for its use.\nIn fact, anecdotal evidence indicates that the cultural environment of national schools \n\n\n\nmay differ according to its geographical location. A lecturer explained that even though his \nfirst child attended a national school, he realized later on that the majority of the pupils were \nChinese, and they conversed among themselves in Chinese dialects. Despite the substantial \nMalay presence in his district of residence, its spatial concentration resulted in most Malay \nchildren attending the national school near their area of residence. If that is the case, it is \nunlikely that the ethnic composition of the enrolment in a national school and a national-type \nschool is substantially different in a residential area with a high concentration of the Chinese \ncommunity. Similar situations may occur in secondary schools in areas where different ethnic \ncommunities are spatially segregated.\n\n\n\nInternal Differences and Student Self-Selection of Schools\n\n\n\nWhy do a high proportion of Chinese youths who went through their entire schooling in \nMalay medium regard their best spoken language as English rather than Malay? A plausible \nexplanation is the heterogeneous background of the so-called Malay-medium schools arising \nfrom differences in their history. It is a fact that in the Convent schools oral English is often \nspoken even though lessons are taught in Malay. Similarly, an average SMJK which was \npreviously a Chinese secondary school that had accepted conversion into the Malay medium \nstill preserves its predominantly Chinese-speaking environment. The social ambience of \ndifferent schools is influenced by their history and hence differs according to their spoken-\nlanguage environments.\n\n\n\nThis historical continuity is maintained due in part to a certain degree of correlation \nbetween the pupils\u2019 socio-economic background and family cultural orientation and the type \nof school they enrolled in. Past studies have pointed out that, in the choice of schools, there \nis a certain degree of unconscious self-selection by students according to their parents\u2019 social, \ncultural and economic profile. In his study on the effects of schooling on national identity and \nintegration, Yew (1982: 206-207) differentiated between students studying in what he called \nEnglish-conforming schools (formerly English-medium turned Malay-medium secondary \nschools) and Chinese-conforming schools (the SMJK). He found that, compared with SMJK \nstudents, the English-conforming school students tended to have more exposure to English \nlanguage, enjoyed a higher socio-economic status, had more Westernized family background, \nperceived themselves to be more proficient in the national language, and had more interethnic \ninteraction. Yet these two groups of students were from schools that are to all intents and \npurposes Malay-medium schools. \n\n\n\nJohn Bock (1970) in his large-scale survey studies found that the Chinese and Malay \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n90          Ting\n\n\n\nstudents from English-medium secondary schools with enrolments of mixed ethnicity were \nmore \u201cnational\u201d (or less \u201ccommunal\u201d) in orientation than their counterparts in Malay-medium \nor Chinese-medium schools. Students of Chinese-medium secondary schools tended to rank \nlow in their \u201cnational orientation\u201d. Nonetheless, when he probed further, he found that over \ntwo-thirds of the difference in the national/communal orientation between students of the \nsame ethnicity but attending different types of schools could be attributed to social or sub-\ncultural variables such as the family\u2019s \u201cplace of residence\u201d, \u201cfather\u2019s language of education\u201d, \nand \u201cother language spoken within the family\u201d (Bock, 1970: 332-334). Bock noted that these \nvariables appeared to determine the students\u2019 accessibility to the contemporary \u201cnationalising \nmessage of the predominantly English-speaking governing elite of Malaysia\u201d, more than \ntheir social class or the type of school they attended. In effect, Malay students studying in \nhomogeneous Malay-medium secondary schools were similarly found to be low in their \n\u201cnational\u201d orientation. Bock\u2019s findings cautioned us not to make simplistic generalizations \nabout the effects of schooling and medium of instruction on national unity and integration, \nas the socializing effects of the students\u2019 social circle outside schools are as critical as, if not \nmore than, the impacts of the schooling environment. \n\n\n\nThe findings of Bock (1970) might give the impression that parents who enrolled \ntheir children in English-medium schools were more \u201cnational\u201d in their orientation and \nless \u201ccommunal\u201d than those who opted for Chinese schools. In fact, the assumption that \n\u201cless communal\u201d necessarily implies \u201cmore national\u201d is probably flawed. Yew and Bock \ndemonstrated that these parents in the 1960s and 1970s tended to be Anglophiles, generally \nhad a more Westernized outlook and tended to belong to the higher socio-economic stratum \nof society. Their choice of English-medium schools might have had more to do with their \ngenerally negative perception of social and economic inferiority used to be associated with \nChinese education (see, for instance, Colletta and Wong 1974). This issue will be explored \nbelow in the context of the CLS survey findings on the choice of language for schooling.\n\n\n\nLanguage: Between Social Mobility and Cultural Preservation\n\n\n\nThe perceived importance of English proficiency in social mobility among Chinese \nuniversity students was captured clearly by the results of the 2002 CLS survey. Respondents \nwere asked to list, in order of priority, three languages that they regarded as important. An \noverwhelming 78 per cent identified English and 14 per cent Chinese as the most important; \n63 per cent chose Chinese and 18 per cent Malay as the second most important language that \nthey should learn; followed by 73 per cent that placed Malay and 17 per cent Chinese as their \nthird choice. It is clear that the respondents generally viewed English as the most desirable \nlanguage to master, followed by Chinese and Malay. A similar trend was also discerned in \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           91\n\n\n\nthe 2000 survey which sought the respondents\u2019 choice on the most important language. A \nclear majority of 69 per cent opted for English, 15 per cent for Chinese and only 1 per cent \nfor Malay. \n\n\n\nThe 2000 survey sought to know from respondents the language stream of education \nthey would prefer if given a choice. Six out of ten opted for Chinese while another three \npreferred English, with only one in fifty choosing Malay. The rest either did not respond \nor their responses were classified as \u2018others\u2019.4 The 2002 survey is more nuanced, requiring \nthe respondents to choose separately the medium of instruction preferred for their primary, \nsecondary and tertiary education. For primary education, almost 80 per cent preferred Chinese \nand about 16 per cent English. At the secondary level, 60 per cent chose English, 17 per cent \neach for Chinese and Malay. As for tertiary education, the choice was clear, with English as \nthe overwhelming favourite with a 90 per cent response rate, while Chinese and Malay were \nrelegated to 5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. These responses indicate that there was \na graduate shift in the earlier pattern of self-selection of students in relation to the parental \nsocio-cultural background. The extent of this change may be better appreciated if we examine \nthe figures according to the educational background of the respondents.\n\n\n\nThe 2002 CLS survey found that only 14 per cent among its wholly Malay-educated \nrespondents would choose Malay secondary schools if given a choice compared with 20 per \ncent among those from Chinese primary schools. In other words, the wholly Malay-educated \nrespondents were less disposed to choose Malay-medium secondary education compared \nwith those who received primary education in Mandarin. The proportion of the former group \nwho would choose English medium secondary school was also the highest: 75 per cent. \nBesides their Anglophile cultural background, the determinant factor is perhaps the perceived \nimportance of mastering English for social mobility. English-medium secondary schools were \nalso the most popular choice among respondents who studied in Chinese primary schools. \nAmong them, 63 per cent of those who attended SMK and 49 per cent who attended SMJK \npreferred a secondary education in English.\n\n\n\nInterestingly, respondents who attended Chinese primary schools and proceeded to \nSMJK were comparatively more disposed to having their secondary education in Chinese \nschools (30 per cent). This figure is three times more than those who completed Chinese \nprimary education and continued in SMK (10 per cent) and five times more than those \nwho were wholly educated in Malay schools (6 per cent). Three most cited reasons (they \nwere allowed to give more than one reason) for choosing Chinese secondary schools were \nsentimental attachment (68 per cent), utility (57 per cent) and educational approach of the \nschool (52 per cent).\n\n\n\nThese figures testify to a greater sense of pragmatism among the Chinese student \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n92          Ting\n\n\n\nrespondents than their instinctive desire for cultural conservatism. This was confirmed by the \nattitude of the respondents towards language learning, which appeared to be determined more \nby its utility above other considerations. The 2002 survey stipulated that respondents identify \nthe reasons for their linguistic preferences in education. Three out of four were motivated to \nlearn English for its usefulness, while one in three cited the same reason for learning Chinese, \nand 30 per cent for learning Malay. The respondents were very clear in their perception of \nthe specific social role of each language. The dominant attitude among 58 per cent towards \nthe learning of the Malay language was because they were \u201casked to do so\u201d while 44 per cent \nlearned Chinese out of their interest in the language. The learning of the national language \nwas not for any economic motive as it was not seen to help them in their social mobility. \nThis attitude prevailed even among those who received their education entirely in the Malay \nmedium.\n\n\n\nDoes educational background matter when it comes to preference for the type of school \nand assessment of the importance of languages? Both the 2000 and 2002 surveys showed that \nmore than two thirds of the respondents regarded English as the most important language. \nMost of the 15 per cent of respondents who considered Chinese as the most important language \nwent through Chinese primary schools. In both surveys, only 1-2 per cent thought it to be of \nforemost importance to master Malay, though there was a general consensus in the 2002 \nsurvey to acknowledge Malay as their third most useful language. This stark perception of the \nposition of the national language was shared by all sub-groups, regardless of their educational \nbackground. Even 55 per cent of the wholly Malay-educated respondents regarded Chinese \nas the second most important language. Both surveys confirmed that only about 3 per cent of \nthe Malay-educated respondents would choose the same educational option for themselves \nif given a choice. The gist of these findings is that educational background has little bearing \non the perception of the respondents vis-\u00e0-vis the relative economic status of the national \nlanguage.\n\n\n\nThis attitude arguably cannot be dissociated from decades of implementation of race-\nbased affirmative policies of the government known as the New Economic Policy (NEP), \nwhich has had far-reaching impact on the recruitment and promotion exercise in the public \nsector. Recruitment of Bumiputra into the various sections of Malaysian public service (in \nwhich proficiency in the national language is the most relevant) was 75-80 per cent depending \non the departments, and this figure had possibly been surpassed. In addition, the prospects \nfor promotion in the civil service have also been known, if not perceived, generally as \nracially biased (Means, 1972: 47-48). This situation has discouraged the non-Bumiputra from \nconsidering their career option in the public sector. A telling indication is that 66 per cent of \nthe 2000 survey respondents agreed with the query as to whether they felt like a \u201csecond-class \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           93\n\n\n\ncitizen\u201d, even though 86 per cent of them also said that they are proud of Malaysia. Almost \ntwo-thirds (64 per cent) thought that the racial quota system of university admission should \nbe abolished, while 33 per cent thought that it should be revised, and 59 per cent also felt that \nracial bias of the university administration was \u201cserious\u201d. \n\n\n\nThe private sector tends to give more emphasis on the command of either Mandarin or \nEnglish in its recruitment policies. In addition, the relevance of English for social mobility, \nthanks to increasing economic globalization, evidently surpasses that of Mandarin. From a \npragmatic point of view, the differential attitudes of the respondents on the different languages \nare thus understandable. \n\n\n\nAs mentioned earlier, those who attended national primary schools, especially in former \nConvent schools, often grew up in a more Anglophile environment that used to be even \nslightly hostile to the speaking of Mandarin. Despite this, it is significant that 55 per cent \namong them felt that the mastering of Chinese as a second language was more important than \nthat of Malay. Among the Malay-educated respondents, 46 per cent indicated their preference \nfor Chinese primary schools in the 2000 survey, whereas in the 2002 survey, 57 per cent \nwould similarly do so if given a choice. Motivation for this switch in linguistic preference \nappeared to be a mixture of utilitarian and symbolic reasons. In the 2002 findings, 55 per cent \ncited its usefulness as well as sentimental attachment (respondents could cite more than one \nreason) for their choice of Chinese primary schools. There appears to have been a heightening \nof interest or attachment to the Chinese language in the Chinese community, especially \namong those from English-speaking background. Only 35 per cent of the Malay-educated \nrespondents in the 2002 survey stated that they would choose English primary school if given \na choice.5 \n\n\n\nIt is notable that 38 per cent of the respondents (35 per cent for the Malay-educated) \ncited educational approach of the school as the reason for their preference for Chinese primary \neducation, which implied indirectly that they probably harboured negative views on the way \nnational primary schools were run. This reason, among others, also influenced 52 per cent \nof the respondents to hypothetically prefer receiving their secondary schooling in Chinese, \nreflecting their positive perception of the quality of education provided by these schools.\n\n\n\nIssues of Concern with regard to the Education System\n\n\n\nIn the 2003 survey, the respondents were asked hypothetically what changes they would \nintroduce to the education policy of the country if they were in a position to do so. Some of \ntheir responses may indirectly provide some explanations to the observed tendency to shy \naway from national schools.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n94          Ting\n\n\n\nNot all respondents answered the open-ended question. Chinese respondents who did \nso indicated the quality of education as their foremost concern. What is meant by quality \nhere includes a whole list of different pedagogical aspects of the education system or the \ngeneral educational approach that the respondents found wanting. Their comments include \nrecommendations to \u201creduce rote learning\u201d, \u201cimplement open-book examinations\u201d, encourage \nthe \u201cright attitude\u201d for learning such as diversity, creativity, critical thinking, lifelong learning, \nholistic education including more arts and music lessons, computer skills, and a curriculum \nthat is more relevant to the job market. \n\n\n\nThe second most important category of recommendations pertained to issues relating \nto the affirmative action policy of the government. Often mentioned were such issues as the \ncriteria of university admission and financial assistance for poor students, meritocracy, racial \nquotas, and others.6 \n\n\n\nTable 2. Recommendations on Education Policy\nRecommendations Number of Respondents\nImprove quality of education 13\nAffirmative action 11\nA single national education system for all  7\nLanguage policy  7\nMore funds for greater accessibility and effectiveness  6\nNon-discrimination towards all students and schools  6\nOthers  1\nTotal 46\n\n\n\nSource: 2003 Survey \n\n\n\nThe two next popular recommendations were those that concerned the establishment \nof a single national school system and the language policy. On the issue of having a single \nnational school system, the non-consensual view was the choice of the medium of instruction. \nSome proposed either English or Malay as the sole medium of instruction, others suggested \nboth, or to \u201cincorporate all the elements of the other school systems\u201d. A few put forward a \nsystem with appropriate provisions for the learning of the mother tongues.\n\n\n\nRecommendations grouped under \u201clanguage policy\u201d included suggestions on giving \nmore emphasis on English skills in the education system as well as those that advocated the \nopposite. Others called for better access to language learning and supported the policy of \nteaching of mathematics and science in English.\n\n\n\nThe last two categories of recommendations were to \u201callocate more funds to enhance \naccessibility and the effectiveness of education\u201d, and to ensure \u201cnon-discrimination towards \nall students and schools\u201d. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           95\n\n\n\nThe category suggesting for more funds to increase accessibility and effectiveness of \neducation includes those that referred directly to the budgetary aspect of education, or those \nrecommendations with financial implications such as the call for more schools or universities, \nhigher admission rate to tertiary education, and increased accessibility to financial support \nin education. Some touched upon the proper functioning of the education system such as \nproviding better incentives to overcome teacher shortages and attract better-qualified teachers, \nto improve teaching equipment, to ensure rural-urban equity between schools, and to allocate \nmore funds for research.\n\n\n\nThe category of recommendations on \u201cnon-discrimination for all students and schools\u201d \nconsists of those who wanted to \u201cperpetuate the vernacular-stream of schooling\u201d as well as \nthose who talked about fairness in treatment in general terms.\n\n\n\nThe many categories of recommendations may be summarized into three areas of \nconcern. In decreasing order of importance, they are: the quality of education, equitable and \nfair access to education, and the role of education in nation building.\n\n\n\nRecommendations on Language Policy\n\n\n\nIn the 2003 survey, an unanticipated factor in the formulation of the questionnaire was the \ngrowing demand for English-medium education that was hitherto available only in expensive \nprivate schools.7 Without being prompted, some respondents suggested that English-medium \neducation was a better option than the present system; or that English be adopted as the \u201cfirst \nlanguage\u201d of instruction and the Malay language be a \u201csecond language\u201d of instruction; or \nsimply that a bilingual system in which both languages were used concurrently. Expressions \nof such perspective or wish sprang spontaneously from responses to various questions \nposed in the questionnaire rather than based on one or more specific questions on this issue. \nHowever, advocacy for English or bilingual education was not necessarily at the expense of \nvernacular education. Some of the respondents explicitly expressed their wish to let their \nchildren attend Chinese primary schools and subsequently English secondary schools. This \ntrend corresponds clearly with the findings of the 2000 and 2002 surveys.\n\n\n\nApart from the education policy, the respondents were also asked in the 2003 survey \nto state changes they would introduce to existing language policy should they become the \nhypothetical Prime Minister. The policy recommendations on language suggested by those \nwho responded to the open-ended questions are summarized in Table 3.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n96          Ting\n\n\n\nTable 3. Recommendations on the Role of English, Malay and other Languages\nLanguage Suggested Recommendations No. of Responses\nEnglish Strengthen learning and use of English in schools 15\n\n\n\nUse English as principal medium of instruction 11\nEncourage wider use of English in society  5\nUse both English and BM as media of instruction  4\nTotal 35\n\n\n\nMalay Strengthen learning of Bahasa Malaysia  9\nMaintain BM as the sole National language  8\nMake BM the sole medium of instruction in school  1\nTotal 18\n\n\n\nOther Languages Ensure the right to learn mother tongue  9\nMake language learning accessible to all  7\nEncourage greater use of vernacular languages  6\nEncourage master a third language  4\nMake Mandarin, Tamil and English national languages  1\nTotal 27\n\n\n\nSource: 2003 survey\n\n\n\nExpression of concern with regard to policy on English language recorded the highest \nfrequency, followed by that on the learning of mother-tongue education and then the Malay \nlanguage. Among respondents who touched on the role of English, some wanted the learning \nand use of English in schools to be strengthened, while others wanted it to be adopted as \nthe principal or one of the media of instruction in schools. Opinions on the Malay language \ntouched mainly on its role as the sole national language and the strengthening of its learning \nin schools. \n\n\n\nAmong those who put forward language policy recommendations, a considerable \nproportion of Chinese respondents mentioned specifically the learning and use of languages \nother than Malay and English. The maintenance of the right to learn the mother tongue ranks \nbefore the request to make the learning of languages accessible to all. Another important \nrecommendation was to encourage the greater use of vernacular languages in the public \nsphere.\n\n\n\nVernacular Primary Schools and Nation Building\n\n\n\nOne of the enquiries in the 2003 survey dealt with the medium of instruction in primary \neducation and the impact of multilingual education system on national cohesion. As noted \nin Table 2, some 15 per cent of the respondents would like to see the standardization of the \nmedium of instruction in primary education, though there was no consensus on what form it \nshould take. The open-ended question on multilingual education was framed in the following \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           97\n\n\n\nmanner:\n\n\n\nWhat do you think of the existence of three different media of \ninstruction in primary schools? Do you think it is good for nation-\nbuilding in Malaysia? Why?\n\n\n\nOf the 50 respondents, 36 or 72 per cent approved of the role of vernacular primary \nschools in relation to nation building. Ten thought that the existence of trilingual primary \neducation system posed an obstacle to national cohesion, while four were uncommitted in \ntheir evaluation. As for the rationale behind these responses, the most popular (22 out of 49 \nresponses) was the perceived function of the Chinese primary education in the preservation \nof Chinese culture. Many of the respondents felt that they wanted their children to attend \nChinese schools to learn their mother tongue and also their own culture and values. Some also \nmentioned that the children could then learn to interact with people from other cultures when \nthey joined Malay-medium secondary schools. \n\n\n\nThere was a general consensus that it was inherently positive to preserve the various \ncultural identities of the population, their languages and traditional values. From this \nperspective, the Chinese schools were regarded as an important social institution serving \nto maintain the continuity and authenticity of Chinese identity. The second most popular \nexpected function of the vernacular schools was the promotion of linguistic and cultural \ndiversity, which 15 out of 49 respondents saw as \u201can asset of our nation\u201d. Many of the \nrespondents would enrol their children in Chinese schools so that they could learn more \nlanguages (Table 4). \n\n\n\nTable 4. Perspective on the Role of Vernacular Primary School and Nation Building\nRole of Vernacular Primary Schools Number\nCultural preservation 22\nLinguistic and cultural diversity is a national asset 15\nPedagogical: mother tongue education is effective  5\nRight to learn the mother tongue and choice of education  4\nChinese schools provide better education  4\nReduced intercultural interaction  4\nNot good because it is important to have a common language  4\nMedium of instruction is irrelevant to ethnic division  3\nEnglish-medium school is better  2\nPromotes communalism  1\nTotal 49\n\n\n\nSource: 2003 Survey\n\n\n\nA handful argued that what was more important or relevant to national unity was \u201cthe \nattitude of mutual tolerance and understanding\u201d rather than the medium of instruction in \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n98          Ting\n\n\n\nschools. Yet a few critical respondents expressed disapproval of vernacular education as its \nmono-cultural environment does not provide opportunities for intercultural interaction. A \nhandful of others who saw vernacular education as hindering nation building also argued that \nit was important for all to have a common language for effective communication.\n\n\n\nThe last two minority reasons raised are legitimate concerns. Yet the reality on the ground \nwas more complicated than the respondents had imagined, as indicated by the 2000 and 2002 \nsurvey findings. It may be relevant here to note that a campus survey conducted in 2002 by \nthe Centre for Economic Development and Ethnic Relations of University of Malaya revealed \nthat 29 per cent of the university students surveyed cited the lack of linguistic proficiency as \na constraint for interethnic interaction. Yet it also found that more Malays were affected by \nlanguage constraints in their daily interaction than other ethnic groups. In addition, Malay \nrespondents from the predominantly Malay states and Malay neighbourhoods tended to be \naffected more than their counterparts from multi-ethnic states or neighbourhoods. It was also \nmore likely for respondents from rural areas or poorer families to be handicapped by language \nconstraints (Jahara et al., 2004: 26). \n\n\n\nConclusions\n\n\n\nAlthough the samples of the three surveys were different, there was possibly some \noverlap in terms of the respondents as the exercise was conducted within four academic \nyears (2000/1, 2002/3 and 2003/4). The observed trend as indicated by the data does seem \nto harmonize with one another, though for generalization purposes we have to bear in mind \nthat the socio-cultural and economic profile of the University of Malaya student samples is \nnot necessarily reflective of the entire cohort of Malaysian Chinese youth of their age. It does \nnonetheless challenge the simplistic assumption that if all Malaysian children were to receive \ntheir education entirely in the Malay language in an identical schooling system, the problem \nof national unity can be resolved. The majority of the university Chinese students were found \nto generally rank their oral and written linguistic proficiency of Malay as second to either \nChinese or English. The CLS surveys demonstrate that favourable linguistic environments \nin the usage of a language might be as important a social factor in determining the linguistic \ncompetence of a person as the medium of instruction in the classroom.\n\n\n\nFor the purpose of discussion here, it is useful to note that the considerable concern \nexpressed by Chinese respondents about the general quality of education in the 2003 survey \ndata was also reported by Malay and Indian respondents (Ting, 2007). The national schools \nwere perceived to be particularly unsuccessful in satisfying the anticipation for either \nincreased social mobility or quality education. This had led to many Malaysians turning away \nfrom national schools. The CLS surveys showed that more than half of the Malay-educated \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           99\n\n\n\nChinese might enrol their children in Chinese primary schools in the future. The significance \nof this finding of \u201cswitching camp\u201d should be understood in the earlier context in which the \nchoice of educational option was influenced by the cultural and socio-economic background \nof parents, a trend which no longer holds. This shift in social trends is confirmed by macro-\nstatistical data on the ethnic breakdown of students in the various educational streams, and \npublicly acknowledged by the government. The preliminary report on Malaysia Education \nBlueprint 2013-25 released by the Ministry of Education in 2012 noted with concern that the \nproportion of Chinese pupils enrolled in Chinese primary schools has increased from 92 per \ncent in 2000 to 96 per cent in 2011. Even more remarkably, the proportion of Indian students \nenrolled in Tamil schools increased from 47 per cent to 56 per cent between 2000 and 2011 \n(Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2012a: chapter 3-24).8 The government has vowed to restore \nthe \u201cmulti-racial character\u201d of national schools, the effectiveness of which is yet to be seen.\n\n\n\nThe three surveys indicate that, if viewed from the angle of social integration by \neconomic means, the Malay language was not perceived as playing a determinant role in \nenhancing social mobility. Forty per cent of the 2003 survey respondents expressed their \npreference for meritocracy and equal treatment and opportunities in education or employment, \nwhich is a clear indication of their disapproval of the race-based affirmative action policy of \nthe government (Ting, 2007: 856). The Chinese respondents appeared to largely look to the \nprivate sector for employment opportunities as indicated by their emphasis on English and \nChinese proficiency.\n\n\n\nThe survey findings point to three perceived functions of education which shaped the \neducational preference among the respondents, namely, cultural preservation, social mobility \nand national integration. The perceived function of vernacular education in fostering cultural \npreservation in one form or another among the Chinese youths appears to have increased if \nnot remained as strong as before. The CLS surveys also indicated a significantly increased \nproportion of Malay-educated Chinese respondents who wished they had attended Chinese \nprimary schools which would have enabled them to acquire literacy in Mandarin.\n\n\n\nThis expressed intention to preserve or rediscover one\u2019s own language and culture \nappears to be tempered by pragmatic considerations of social mobility, and here in particular, \neducation in the English language. The surveys revealed the overwhelming consensus of \nopinion on mastering English as the first language for socio-economic mobility. A significant \nminority in the 2003 survey was spontaneous in advocating English-medium education as \na desired option, especially for secondary or tertiary education, and in their suggestion for \nmaking English only or English and Malay as the medium of instruction in schools. This \ntrend is discerned not only among the Chinese respondents in the 2003 survey but also among \nthe Malay and Indian respondents. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n100          Ting\n\n\n\nFrom the exploration of the role of the education system as perceived by the Chinese \nrespondents in the 2003 survey, it is interesting to note that consciously or unconsciously, \nthe national education system is regarded not only as a tool for nation building, but the \nmultilingual character of the schools is also perceived to be constitutive of the Malaysian \nnational identity. The majority of the respondents who approved of vernacular education \nregarded it as a means to help preserve the cultural diversity of the population. The Chinese \nschools, for example, apart from ensuring literacy in the mother tongue, are also expected to \ntransmit Chinese values and culture to the next generation. In this context, the preservation \nof cultural identity is not regarded as something negative or detrimental to the fostering of \nnational unity. On the contrary, many appreciate the reality of linguistic and cultural diversity \nas \u201ca national asset\u201d.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  The award of O-level Grade One result is conditional on the obtaining of a credit for the Malay \nlanguage subject. Candidates who score only a simple pass in this paper were awarded a Grade \nTwo or lower, even if their overall results are outstanding.\n\n\n\n2  The SMJK usually offers Chinese language as a subject in their curriculum, in contrast to the \nSMK where it is taught only when there are 15 or more parents who formally request for it but \nthere is no guarantee that their wishes would be granted. A common reason given to reject the \nrequest is the lack of language teachers.\n\n\n\n3  This phenomenon also surfaced during the heyday of English medium education. A history \nlecturer, Khoo Kay Kim (Dewan Masharakat, 1968) noted that some of his students from English-\nmedium secondary schools (after a threefold increase in university intake within five years) could \nnot express themselves well in English. He reckoned that it was the problem of the way language \nwas being taught in school. The same dynamics with the learning of the Malay language would \npresumably apply here.\n\n\n\n4  At the time the survey was conducted, English-medium primary schools were no longer available \nto respondents (except for some international schools reserved for children of expatriates or those \nwho fulfilled specific conditions). Hence the response could be regarded as a hypothetical answer, \nor simply primary and secondary Convent schools where English is frequently used even though \nMalay is used in formal teaching.\n\n\n\n5  There were also those educated in Chinese primary schools who \u201cswitched camp\u201d, but only \naround 12 per cent or less, according to the 2002 survey (who stated that they would have \npreferred to attend an English-medium primary school).\n\n\n\n6  Among a few of the responses, it was difficult to decide whether they should be categorized \nunder affirmative action or \u201cpolicies to improve general access to education\u201d, another category of \nresponse, as many of the potential beneficiaries of the latter would be pupils from poor families, \nwhich can be construed as a form of affirmative action for the poor. It was decided that those who \nmentioned something to the effect of \u201chelp all poor students with good results\u201d are grouped under \nthe category of affirmative action. Included also is one borderline case here: \u201cgive enough loan to \nthe poor students to study, be equal/fair (sic) in giving seat in university \u2026\u201d.\n\n\n\n7  Former Prime Minister Dr. Mohamad Mahathir had floated the idea of reviving English-medium \nschools during the final years of his mandate. Sensing opposition to it from within his own rank \nand file of UMNO, he proposed the alternative of teaching Mathematics and Science in English \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLanguage, Identity and Mobility: Perspective of Malaysian Chinese Youth           101\n\n\n\nin the schools. The proposal was contested by various interest groups from all ethnic origins, both \nin its substance and in the lack of careful planning before implementation. It was nevertheless \npushed through hastily and implemented from 2003. It was abandoned in 2012 beginning with \npupils attending Primary 1.\n\n\n\n8  There is in fact an increase in non-Chinese enrolment in Chinese primary schools. In 2011, 86 per \ncent of the enrolment in the national primary schools were Malay students, 86 per cent of Chinese \nschools were Chinese students, and 96 per cent Tamil schools were Indian students (Ministry of \nEducation Malaysia. 2012a: Chapter 7-16).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nBOCK, John Charles 1970. Education and Nation-Building in Malaysia: A Study of Institutional Effect \nin Thirty-four Secondary Schools, Ph. D. thesis, School of Education, Committee on Graduate \nStudies, Stanford University.\n\n\n\nCOLLETTA, N. J. and WONG Ah Sung 1974. The education of Chinese workers\u2019 children on \nMalaysia\u2019s plantation frontier: myths and realities, Asian Survey, 14(9): 827-844.\n\n\n\nDewan Masharakat 1986. Universiti kita sekarang menurunkan standard-nya\u2026 (Our university lowers \nits standard nowadays), June.\n\n\n\nJAHARA Yahaya, TEY Nai Peng, YEOH Kok Kheng, Sulochana NAIR and LEE Hwok Aun. 2004. \nEthnic relations amongst University of Malaya undergraduates. In Ethnic Interaction and \nSegregation on Campus and at the Workplace, edited by Jahara Yahaya, Tey Nai Peng and Yeoh \nKok Kheng, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Economic Development and Ethnic Relations (CEDER), \nUniversity of Malaya, 1-74.\n\n\n\nMEANS, Gordon P. 1972. Special Rights\u2019 as a strategy for development: the case of Malaysia, \nComparative Politics, 5(1): 29-61.\n\n\n\nMinistry of Education Malaysia 2012a. Preliminary Report: Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025. \nhttp://www.malaysia-students.com/2012/ 09/pelan-pembangunan-pendidikan- malaysia.html \n(accessed on 12 September 2012).\n\n\n\nMinistry of Education Malaysia 2012b. Basic School Information January 2012. http:// emisportal.\nmoe.gov.my/mainpage.php?module=Maklumat& kategori=47&id=202&papar=1 (accessed on \n17 May 2013).\n\n\n\nTING, Helen 2007. From Ketuanan Melayu to Bangsa Malaysia? A study of national integration and \nidentity in West Malaysia, Ph. D. thesis, Institute of Political Studies of Paris [Science Po], Paris, \nFrance.\n\n\n\nYEW Yeok Kim 1982. Education, National Identity, and National Integration: A Survey of Secondary \nSchool Students of Chinese Origin in Urban Peninsular Malaysia, Ph. D. thesis, School of \nEducation, Committee on Graduate Studies, Stanford University.\n\n\n\n\u9648\u5229\u826f2001.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e09\u7bc7\u5b8c\u7ed3\u7bc7\uff1a\u9a6c\u5927\u6253\u7834\u6c89\u9ed8\u3000\u8ba9\u5927\u4e13\u751f\u53d1\u8a00\u3009\uff0c \n\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u62a5\u300b, 6 January (University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, \nNumber 3: UM breaks the silence, let university students speak up, Nanyang Siang Pau, 6 January).\n\n\n\n\u9648\u4e9a\u624d2001.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e09\u7bc7\u5b8c\u7ed3\u7bc7\uff1a\u88ab\u8d1f\u4f7f\u547d\u81ea\u6211\u97ad\u7b56\u3000\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u88d4\u751f\n\u5fc3\u7cfb\u6821\u56ed\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u62a5\u300b,6 January (University of Malaya Chinese Language Society \nsurvey report, Number 3: Realize one\u2019s mission through self-motivation, University of Malaya\u2019s \nMalaysian Chinese students and their emotional ties to the campus, Nanyang Siang Pau, 6 \nJanuary). \n\n\n\n\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u603b\u4f1a\uff08\u8463\u603b\uff092004.\u300a\u8463\u603b50\u5e74\u7279\u520a\uff081954-2004\uff09\u300b\uff0c\u52a0\u5f71\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\n\u534e\u6821\u8463\u4e8b\u8054\u5408\u603b\u4f1a\uff08United Chinese School Committees\u2019 Association of Malaysia (UCSCAM) \n2004. Commemorative Documentation for the 50th Anniversary of UCSCAM (1954-2004), \nKajang: United Chinese School Committees\u2019 Association of Malaysia. \n\n\n\n\u9a6c\u6765\u4e9a\u5927\u5b66\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a2002\u3002\u300a\u8046\u542c\u6c89\u5bc2\u5df2\u4e45\u7684\u58f0\u97f3II\u300b\u95ee\u5377\u8c03\u67e5\u2014\u2014\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u88d4\u751f\u5bf9\u8bed\u6587\u3001\u6559\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n102          Ting\n\n\n\n\u80b2\u3001\u65cf\u7fa4\u4e0e\u56fd\u5bb6\u7684\u770b\u6cd5\u63a5\u53d7\u8c03\u67e5\u8005\u7684\u6570\u636e\uff0c\u672a\u51fa\u7248\u8d44\u6599\uff08University of Malaya Chinese \nLanguage Society 2002. \u201cListening to Long-suppressed Voices II\u201d questionnaire survey: the \nviews of University of Malaya students on language, education, ethnicity and nation, unpublished \ndata)\u3002\n\n\n\n\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u62a5\u300b2001a.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e00\u7bc7\uff1a\u522b\u53eb\u5927\u4e13\u751f\u592a\u6c89\u91cd\u3009(Nanyang \nSiang Pau 2001a. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, Number 1: Let \nnot university students be too heavily burdened), 4 January.\n\n\n\n----- 2001b.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e00\u7bc7\uff1a\u63d0\u4f9b\u5927\u4e13\u601d\u8003\u7ebf\u7d22\u3009(Nanyang Siang Pau \n2001b. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, Number 2: Suggestions \nfor the consideration of universities), 4 January.\n\n\n\n----- 2001c.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e00\u7bc7\uff1a\u65e0\u6cd5\u8d70\u51fa\u60b2\u60c5\u3000\u963b\u788d\u56fd\u6c11\u56e2\u7ed3\u3009(Nanyang \nSiang Pau 2001c. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, Number 3: No \nescape from emotional ties, obstacles to national unity), 4 January.\n\n\n\n----- 2001d.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e8c\u7bc7\uff1a\u5b66\u4e603\u8bed\u2022\u90fd\u61c2\u4e00\u70b9\u534e\u4eba\u8bed\u8a00\u7e41\u6742\u4e0d\u7cbe\u3009\n(Nanyang Siang Pau 2001d. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, \nNumber 2: Learning 3 languages, knowing a little, Chinese speak a mixture of languages but with \nlittle proficiency), 5 January. \n\n\n\n----- 2001e.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e8c\u7bc7\uff1a\u5bf9\u4e2d\u534e\u6587\u5316\u4f3c\u61c2\u975e\u61c2\u3000\u4e86\u89e3\u505c\u7559\u5728\u8868\u9762\u5c42\n\u6b21\u3009(Nanyang Siang Pau 2001e. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, \nNumber 2: A little knowledge of Chinese culture, stagnating at the superficial level), 5 January. \n\n\n\n----- 2001f.\u3008\u9a6c\u5927\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4f1a\u8c03\u67e5\u62a5\u544a\u2014\u2014\u7b2c\u4e09\u7bc7\u5b8c\u7ed3\u7bc7\uff1a\u5404\u65cf\u4ea4\u878d\u95ee\u9898\u4e0d\u5927\u3009(Nanyang Siang \nPau 2001f. University of Malaya Chinese Language Society survey report, Number 3: Inter-\nethnic interaction does pose any serious problems), 6 January. \n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n*  Dr. WAN Lei is an Associate Professor at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey. E-mail: xwanlei@\nhotmail.com\n This paper is based on the materials provided by Mr. Yao Fuwei, one of Yao\u2019s grandsons, \nsources from the website of the Malaysia-Chinese Literature Centre: http://www.sc.edu.my/\nMahua/exhibition/yaotuo/biographical.htm, as well as the author\u2019s personal background \nknowledge of Yao Tao and his home village in China.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 119-135\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: \nA First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer\n\n\n\nWAN Lei*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis is a study of Yao Tuo and his literary works and an overview of some of his major creations. \nHe was born in war-time China and experienced many difficulties in his youth. He later became a writer \nand, at the age of thirty-six, settled down in Malaysia and gradually earned a name for himself as a \nMalaysian Chinese (Mahua) writer. This article discusses his literary works on war-time topics and life \nin rural China, his representative works on Malaysia and the influence of his life in Malaysia on his \nliterary works. The paper will also explore important factors that have an influence on the man and his \nworks as well as racial and political issues in relation to his life in the Malaysian context. As a writer \nwho gained fame among Chinese readers throughout the Chinese world including Mainland China, \nTaiwan and Southeast Asia, Yao Tuo\u2019s literary works have left an enduring legacy as they continue to \nwin a wide audience of readers. \n\n\n\nKey words: Yao Tuo, literary works, Mahua literature\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nYao Tuo, born in 1922 as Yao Tianping and also known as Yao Kuang, came from \n\n\n\na village in Henan province in North China. He settled in Malaysia at the age of 36, and \n\n\n\nstayed there until his death at the ripe old age of 87 in 2009. He has become known as a \n\n\n\nMalaysian Chinese (Mahua) writer in the Chinese world. The term Mahua is abbreviated \n\n\n\nfrom \u201cMalaysia\u201d and \u201cHuaren\u201d (Chinese) and Mahua literature has become a recognized \n\n\n\nfield of study in its own right. A study of Yao Tuo\u2019s life and experiences and literary creations \nwill be of interest to many as they will be able to appreciate better the significance of the \ncontributions of a first generation Malaysian Chinese writer from northern China, as opposed \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n120          Wan\n\n\n\nto those from the south. His readers would understand in greater depth the process of change \n\n\n\nof a Mainland Chinese to a Malaysian Chinese. \n\n\n\nFrom the mid-1950s to the early 1990s, Yao Tuo published many collections of short \n\n\n\nstories, essays and plays, most of which were published in Malaysia, mainly by the Jiaofeng \n\n\n\nPress, and others in Hong Kong and China. He gradually earned a name for himself as a \n\n\n\nMahua writer with a growing readership.\n\n\n\nSome amount of research has been done on Yao Tuo and his works produced in Malaysia \n\n\n\nand China. The research is available only in Chinese and English-speaking readers may be \n\n\n\nunaware of the writer and his works. This study will present a general introduction to the \n\n\n\nwriter and to provide an overview on some of his representative works as well as to examine \n\n\n\ncertain issues affecting his life in Malaysia. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s Life and Literary Works\n\n\n\nSoutheast Asia was a popular destination for large numbers of Chinese immigrants since \n\n\n\nthe time of the Ming dynasty (1364-1644). The earliest groups of Chinese who settled in the \n\n\n\nMalay Peninsula arrived during the Malacca Sultanate in the fifteenth century. But it was not \nuntil the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the inflows gathered momentum. By far \nthe majority of the Chinese migrants to Malaya came from the southern Chinese provinces \n\n\n\nof Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan. The Chinese revolution in 1911, the civil wars between \n\n\n\nthe Kuomintang and the Communist Party in 1927-36 and 1946-49, and the subsequent \n\n\n\nestablishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China drove many economic and political refugees \n\n\n\noverseas. Yao Tuo may be described as an economic as well as a political refugee because his \n\n\n\ndecision to settle down in Malaya was directly due to the civil war that erupted immediately \n\n\n\nupon the surrender of the Japanese in 1946. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo was born into a prosperous farm family just ten years after the Republic of \n\n\n\nChina was founded. He was the youngest among his three brothers and a sister. His hometown, \n\n\n\nGongxian, is situated near Luoyang, one of the five ancient capitals of China and known for \nits many imperial tomb complexes of the Song dynasty (960-1127 AD). He studied in a \n\n\n\ntraditional and private school, learning primarily the Confucian classics. It was during this \n\n\n\nperiod that he began to read classical Chinese novels and stories, and developed an interest \n\n\n\nin literature. He believed that if China was not torn by wars and destruction, he might have \n\n\n\nbecome a writer even earlier. Like almost every Chinese teenager, he soon became familiar \n\n\n\nwith popular classical Chinese literature. One can easily detect the weight of influence of \nthe classics on his writings in such titles as Jing Ke Assassinating Emperor Qin (1969) and \n\n\n\nHeroic Sons and Daughters (1984).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          121\n\n\n\nIn 1936, he studied in the County Teachers\u2019 School, but only for half a year. His marriage \n\n\n\nin 1939, at the tender age of 17, did not stop his education career. Following the outbreak \n\n\n\nof the Sino-Japanese War, he enrolled in the Central Army Military Academy in Hanzhong, \n\n\n\nShaanxi province in 1940, and graduated at the end of 1941. China\u2019s War of Resistance \n\n\n\nagainst Japanese aggression was raging in north China then. He was commissioned as a \n\n\n\nsecond lieutenant and assigned to the Nujiang River area in Yunnan province to participate \n\n\n\nin the well-known West Yunnan Anti-Japanese warfront. Injury to his left foot in a battle left \n\n\n\na mark that would constantly remind him of his glorious contributions to his motherland. By \n\n\n\nthe end of the war, his rank in the Chinese army was that of deputy company commander.\n\n\n\nYao Tuo left the army at the end of War of Resistance in 1945. Poverty forced him \n\n\n\nto seek help from a cousin in Hebei province. He soon rejoined the Nationalist Army in \n\n\n\nShandong to fall back on the only \u201cprofession\u201d for which he had been trained. The civil \n\n\n\nwar between the Kuomintang and Communists broke out in the second half of 1946. He \n\n\n\nmoved with the Nationalist army to Kaifeng, Henan province, in the second year of the civil \n\n\n\nwar. In the scramble for control of the industrial Northeast (Manchuria) between the rival \n\n\n\nparties, the Kuomintang undertook a massive transfer of troops to the region. Yao Tuo, now a \n\n\n\nmajor and a deputy regimental commander, was ordered to battlefront in the winter of 1948. \n\n\n\nThe Nationalist army was badly out-maneuvered during the entire civil war and withdrew to \n\n\n\nTaiwan in 1949. He was captured shortly after he arrived at the battlefield, but was released in \nJune 1949. His years of wartime engagements had led him to many provinces such as Henan \n\n\n\nand Shandong in North China, Liaoning in the Northeast, and Yunnan in the Southwest. \n\n\n\nThese places were to form the locational backdrop of many of his literary creations. \n\n\n\nAfter his release by the Peoples\u2019 Liberation Army, he returned home for a brief stay \n\n\n\nbefore leaving again, this time for Nanjing where he worked in a tobacco factory managed by \n\n\n\none of his brothers. The factory went into bankruptcy in 1950 and he was thrown on of job. \n\n\n\nHe made his way to Hong Kong and did odd jobs to support himself. In 1952, he changed \n\n\n\nhis name to Yao Tuo. As \u201cTuo\u201d (\u62d3) indicates opening new areas of endeavour, the man \n\n\n\nwas symbolically reborn with a fresh resolution in life. He soon secured an appointment \n\n\n\nin a magazine-publishing house called Chinese Students Weekly in 1953 as a proofreader. \n\n\n\nWithin four months, he had become its general editor. It was a calling that was to shape his \n\n\n\ndestiny in the world of Chinese literary writings. His earliest creations were inspired by the \n\n\n\nvast repertoire of ancient Chinese stories. By 1954, he had to his credit a succession of short \n\n\n\ntitles based on famous historical episodes. As China was fast becoming a \u201cclosed\u201d society \n\n\n\nwith little contact with the outside world, Yao Tuo found himself eternally separated from his \n\n\n\nfamily. In 1955, he remarried in Hong Kong. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n122          Wan\n\n\n\nIn early 1956, he brought out his inaugural collection of short stories called My Cousin, \n\n\n\npublished by the Chinese Student Weekly Press of Hong Kong. In 1957, he moved to \n\n\n\nSingapore to take charge of the same publishing house. At the same time, he took on the \n\n\n\neditorship of another popular publication called Jiaofeng Monthly Magazine. His relation \n\n\n\nwith this magazine was a lifelong association that helped him to launch into a serious literary \n\n\n\ncareer. The year 1957 coincided with the independence of the Federation of Malaya. In \n\n\n\nthe exuberance of new-found political freedom, the Chinese community saw opportunities \n\n\n\nin publications to cater for a growing population of students in Chinese schools. In 1958, \n\n\n\nJiaofeng Press was shifted to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federation, where Yao Tuo \n\n\n\nfound himself for the first time. His engagement with this publishing house had become part \nof his life. In the same year, his Meandering River Bank was published in Hong Kong by \n\n\n\nYoulian Press. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s literary creativity reached its apogee in the 1960s as he brought out in quick \n\n\n\nsuccession Four Marriage Stories in 1961 (Hong Kong International Book Press), Fond \n\n\n\nMemories of My Childhood in 1962 (Hong Kong Zhengwen Press), and Flowers Blossomed \n\n\n\nin Wuliwa in 1965 (Kuala Lumpur Jiaofeng Press). It was not until 1981 that his next title \n\n\n\nappeared as Selected Short Stories of Yao Tuo (Jiaofeng Press). The 1980s was a decade of \n\n\n\nliterary dormancy until the 1990s when several titles were issued. The first was Pink-Flowers \n\n\n\non the Wall in 1992 and Collection of Yao Tuo\u2019s Plays in two volumes in 1993 (both by \n\n\n\nJiaofeng Press), and a third title on Croaking of Frogs in 1997 (Changchun Jilin Educational \n\n\n\nPress). His last book was an autobiography in more than half a million Chinese characters in \n\n\n\nlength, entitled A Bird of Passage with Footprints on Sand and published in 2005 in Kuala \n\n\n\nLumpur by a new publication house called Red Dragonfly Press.1 Apart from the above titles, \n\n\n\nhe published several hundred short stories, essays, sketches, folklores, memoirs, criticisms, \n\n\n\nforewords and many other pieces. These were mainly published in the local Students Weekly, \n\n\n\nthe Jiaofeng Magazine, and in the local Chinese press. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo also occupied the post of the general-editor of Jiaofeng Magazine and various \n\n\n\nother positions, including the editorship of textbooks for local Chinese primary schools and high \n\n\n\nschools. He was also a founding member of \u201cThe Writers\u2019 Association of Chinese Medium of \n\n\n\nMalaysia\u201d. Yao Tuo never acquired Malaysian citizenship and remained a permanent resident \n\n\n\nof the country all his life. Malay language proficiency as a condition for citizenship was a \nhandicap that was beyond him (see\u300a\u5149\u534e\u65e5\u62a5\u300b/Kwong Wah Daily, 9 Septemer 2009). The \n\n\n\nfact that he spent the greater part of his life in Malaysia and had contributed considerably to \n\n\n\nMahua literature was sufficient to earn him the status as a well-known \u201cMahua writer\u201d. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          123\n\n\n\nLiterary Writings on War-Torn Topics and Countryside Lives in China\n\n\n\nA review of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to 1945 and the subsequent civil war until \n\n\n\nthe formation of the Republic of China in 1949 will place the works of Yao Tuo in a proper \n\n\n\nhistorical context. A general survey of the period is available in Jin Dexing/\u9773\u5fb7\u884c(1987). Prior \n\n\n\nto Japan\u2019s invasion of North China, Japanese troops had already occupied Northeast China \n\n\n\nsince 1931 and had established the puppet state of Manchukuo through political machinations. \n\n\n\nOn 7 July 1937, Japanese troops faked a plan to avenge provocations by Chinese troops near \n\n\n\nthe Marco Polo Bridge just south of Beijing. Thus began an eight-year war of aggression of \n\n\n\nthe Japanese against which the Chinese masses resisted valiantly and suffered bitterly. The \n\n\n\nnational crisis forced the Nationalist Party or Guomintang and the Communist Party to ally \n\n\n\nwith each other for the second time. The first was in the early 1920s as both parties set aside \ntheir differences to confront regional warlords who had usurped power after the downfall of \n\n\n\nthe Qing dynasty in 1911. Yet the undercurrent of inter-party rivalry and struggles was intense, \n\n\n\nand in 1927 Chiang Kai-shek, supreme commander of Nationalists, conducted a large-scale \n\n\n\nmassacre of suspected Communist members in Shanghai.2 \n\n\n\nFollowing the surrender of Japan in August 1945, a peace negotiation was held between \n\n\n\nthe two rivals and a temporary truce was engineered. However, as the two parties failed to \n\n\n\nestablish a \u201ccoalition government\u201d, the hard-gained peace lasted no more than a year before \n\n\n\na civil war broke out for the control of China. This war consumed the energies of both parties \n\n\n\nbetween 1946 and 1949 which saw the final withdrawal of the Nationalists to Taiwan and the \ndeclaration of the People\u2019s Republic of China in October 1949. By then a new international \n\n\n\npolitical and military order pitting the Soviet Union and the United States had emerged at the \n\n\n\nend of World War Two. This state of affairs would endure for several decades as international \n\n\n\nrelations were shaped by the forces of the Cold War into which both the Communists in China \n\n\n\nand the Nationalists in Taiwan were engulfed. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s personal life too was affected by rapidly changing events in China and the \n\n\n\nworld. He confessed that his short stories were primarily inspired by his own experiences \n\n\n\nand those of persons whom he was personally acquainted with. The storyline and plots were \n\n\n\nvaried for literary impact. The main reason for the creation of these short stories was to \n\n\n\nput on record the lives and thoughts of the common people of his generation, so that future \n\n\n\ngenerations would know something about the real lives of their forefathers (\u59da\u62d3/Yao Tuo, \n\n\n\n1992c: 5). \n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s penetrating portrayal of many different characters dealt with the lower \n\n\n\nclass of Chinese society. Many of these characters shared a common fate in being victims \n\n\n\nof circumstances in one way or another as he revealed the agonies of poverty, separation, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n124          Wan\n\n\n\nsufferings and sorrow, and the helpless struggles against the harsh reality of disillusionment, \n\n\n\noppression and social injustice. He was an artist in skillfully painting touching scenes and \n\n\n\nputting across messages that are hauntingly distressing. His accounts of conditions of life in \n\n\n\nwar-torn China shocked as well as gripped the sympathies of all his readers. \n\n\n\nA selection of the themes and messages portrayed by the short stories reflect the moral \nrepugnance for war and the intense celebration of the human spirit for peace and love. In \n\n\n\n\u201cThe Most Unforgettable Face\u201d included in Meandering River Bank, Yao Tuo relates a true \n\n\n\nstory between the narrator and a dying Japanese soldier in the battlefield. The soldier was \na young man freshly recruited into the Japanese army and was badly wounded in battle. \n\n\n\nUnable to bear the pain, he asked the narrator to shoot him with one more bullet and to let \n\n\n\nhim die. In the dead soldier\u2019s notebook was a note which read: \u201csecond lieutenant, Miyabo \n\n\n\nSaburo, soldier from registered students, twenty-years old\u201d. Like the soldier, too many young \n\n\n\nstudents had become unwilling victims of the militaristic and aggressive policy of wartime \n\n\n\nJapan. In \u201cMiracle\u201d, a short story in Flowers Blossomed in Wuliwa, Yao Tuo recollects a true \n\n\n\nmiracle that linked two events spanning over forty years. A Chinese soldier fighting in Yunnan \nprovince had once saved a dying Japanese soldier in a battle. Forty years later, the Japanese \n\n\n\nsoldier donated his blood in a Kuala Lumpur hospital and saved the Chinese soldier\u2019s wife \n\n\n\nwho had lost much blood in childbirth. Nothing seemed impossible in this unseen world. As \n\n\n\nthe ex-Chinese soldier left the hospital for home, he gave thanks to the kindness of the human \n\n\n\nspirit as he bathed in the warm sunshine that brightened up the peaceful and quiet land. \n\n\n\nIn yet another story entitled \u201cA Yang-Surnamed Couple\u201d, the message is one of despair \n\n\n\narising from the cruelty of political dogmas. The story is based on the Chinese army\u2019s \n\n\n\ncounter-attacks against the Japanese army in the remote Nujiang River battlefield of Yunnan \nin 1944. Yao Tuo had served as a deputy company commander of a division and witnessed the \n\n\n\nbrutality of battles that killed more than 30,000 Chinese soldiers. Yang Zhe, a soldier in the \n\n\n\nstory and whose real name was Yang Zhaoqin, was one of the author\u2019s military schoolmates \n\n\n\nfrom Henan province. He had risked punishment by marrying a woman whom he met by \n\n\n\nchance during the war. The couple had a child but was soon separated by the civil war that \n\n\n\nfollowed. Half a century later, Yang Zhe, who had remained in the Mainland, learned that his \n\n\n\nwife had re-married and was the grandmother of a big family. His son, now a government \n\n\n\nofficial in Taiwan, refuses to acknowledge his father as his current position is determined \nby his testimony that his father \u201cwas killed in battle for the country\u201d. The years of hope for a \n\n\n\nreunion with his family left Yang Zhe a hugely disillusioned man as he accepted his fate as a \n\n\n\nvictim of political differences. To the surviving soldiers, this true story of Yang Zhaoqin and his \n\n\n\nlove was especially touching as they dreamed to live a peaceful life with their beloved ones after \n\n\n\nfighting their \u201cfinal\u201d war. But it was not to be as their dreams were shattered by more wars.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          125\n\n\n\nSimilarly, Four Marriage Stories is a collection of short stories with the primary theme \n\n\n\non war-torn tragedies. One of the stories, also entitled \u201cFour Marriage Stories\u201d, tells the love \n\n\n\nstories of his fellow-soldiers who endured unimaginable hardships during the civil war only \n\n\n\nto eventually meet with disappointments and disillusionment. For example, Zhao Mingde, a \n\n\n\nhero in the story, was dispatched to the battlefront in Northeast China during the civil war just \n\n\n\na month after his marriage to his fianc\u00e9e who had waited for him for ten years. He was killed \nin battle and his wife was so traumatized that she became mad. She painted a pathetic figure \nand would grasp whoever she met to plead for the return of her husband. Zhao Chenglu, \n\n\n\nthe hero of a story in the Meandering River Bank, was a cook in the army and a fellow \n\n\n\ncountryman from Yao Tuo\u2019s native province. A loveable and cheerful person, he was afflicted \nwith mental rather than physical injuries in battle. He would develop a habit of scribbling his \n\n\n\nname all over the place, thinking that it was amusing to onlookers. Instead, it added to his \n\n\n\nhelplessness and the sympathies of those around him. \n\n\n\nA \u201cHalf Piece of Baked Cake\u201d in Meandering River Bank tells of the plight of \u201cone \n\n\n\nof my aunts\u201d, probably during the chaotic warlord period in the 1920s. This is probably the \n\n\n\nonly war-time theme by Yao Tuo that is outside the period of Anti-Japanese War and the \n\n\n\ncivil war. This \u201caunt\u201d and her husband were driven by the force of circumstance to beg for a \n\n\n\nliving. Their miseries worsened when she had to sell herself to a buyer in exchange for thirty \n\n\n\njin (equal to 15kg) of wheat in order to save her husband. She immediately used one jin to \n\n\n\nexchange for two pieces of baked cakes and gave them to her husband from whom she would \n\n\n\nsoon be separated forever. She pleaded, \u201cJust eat it, please. You have not eaten a grain of rice \n\n\n\nin the past two days.\u201d Soon after, the buyer came to take the \u201caunt\u201d away. They never met or \n\n\n\nheard from each other ever since. \n\n\n\nAnother category of Yao Tuo\u2019s works is about memories of his past as well as those \n\n\n\nclose to him. He admitted that \u201cthe backgrounds of the majority of my stories collected in \n\n\n\nthe Meandering River Bank came from China and Hong Kong. Among these stories one \n\n\n\ncan find the figure of my mother as well as many figures of my native neighbours and their \ndaily quibbling\u201d (\u59da\u62d3/Yao Tuo, 1992b: Preface). Appearing in the story also entitled the \n\n\n\n\u201cMeandering River Bank\u201d, \u201cthe figure of my mother\u201d was more than fifty years old and so \nthin that \u201cshe would be blown away by a wind\u201d. Yet she valiantly led her youngest son and \n\n\n\ntwo grandsons to collect blocks of stones to reinforce her land by the meandering river in a \n\n\n\nstruggle against the rushing waters that eroded and reduced the land each autumn. This tale is \n\n\n\na throwback to the well-known tale of \u201cThe foolish old man who moved the mountains\u201d, and \n\n\n\ndisplays the Chinese peasants\u2019 love for their land and a demonstration of their indomitable \n\n\n\nspirit. \n\n\n\nAll the stories compiled in Fond Memories of My Childhood (published in 1962) and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n126          Wan\n\n\n\nsome in Small Pink-Flowers Blossoming on the Wall (1991) illustrate the author\u2019s delightful \n\n\n\nand mischievous boyhood. His stories entitled \u201cIn the Hot Cotton Field\u201d, \u201cWatching Local \n\n\n\nOperas\u201d, \u201cWheat Harvest Season\u201d, \u201cStealing Pea Sprouts\u201d, \u201cKites in February\u201d, and \u201cVisiting \n\n\n\nRelatives\u201d are familiar to children in North China even today. The \u201cReturn of the Native\u201d is \n\n\n\na series of essays, telling an old wanderer\u2019s visits to his native town, recalling memories of \n\n\n\nhis boyhood and youth, obviously drawn from Yao Tuo\u2019s own experience. The traditional \n\n\n\nChinese literary melancholy theme over changes was repeated by Yao Tuo, but he crafted his \n\n\n\nstories with new content. Under his pen, the vast and monotonous North China Plain becomes \n\n\n\nalluringly appealing; the way of life is so profound in the cultural sense that, in spite of the \n\n\n\ndiversities of the Chinese people, readers today can still find them refreshingly nostalgic. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s Selected Mahua Literary Works\n\n\n\nThe Selected Short Stories of Yao Tuo published in 1992 is a collection of short stories \n\n\n\nfrom Malaysia. It is regarded as an outstanding contribution to Malaysian Chinese literature. \n\n\n\nThe underlying theme of the stories is centred on common characters and the ordinary people \n\n\n\nin Malaysian society. The stories portray simple and realistic daily occurrences among \n\n\n\nMalaysian Chinese, and shone of political or historical undertones and imaginary idealism. \n\n\n\nTogether, the stories reflect the author\u2019s deep perception of and concern with the life of the \ncommon people of his adopted country.\n\n\n\nYao Tuo portrays many facets of typically Malaysian life. The story in \u201cA Nine-Character \n\n\n\nLove Letter\u201d (1965) is about a young man and a girl who always take the same bus when \n\n\n\nthey travel to work in the city. In time, the boy falls secretly in love with the girl but does not \n\n\n\nhave the courage to greet her. When he finally drums up his resolve to dash a letter to her, \nhe manages only to write nine words: \u201cTo my dear girl whom I do not know.\u201d Even then, he \n\n\n\nis too nervous to hand over the one-sentence letter to the girl. When he does so in the bus, \n\n\n\nhe is shaking. When the girl calls out for him as he leaves the bus, he is so confused that he \n\n\n\nsnatches the letter back from her. To his astonishment, he finds that it is a note from her, which \nreads: \u201cTo the gentleman whom I do not know,\u201d but without the word \u201cdear.\u201d He is delighted \n\n\n\nand whistles as he walks to his office. This romantic encounter is probably repeated many \ntimes among ordinary young men and women of Kuala Lumpur who travelled by public \n\n\n\nbuses to work in the 1950s and 1960s. The writer saw these seemingly trivial encounters as \n\n\n\nthe stuff of romance that spiced up the drudgery of daily life then.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Chinese have retained some traditional and regional rites and rituals that \n\n\n\nare now forgotten in China. Some superstitious practices are illustrated in such stories as \n\n\n\n\u201cCatching a Ghost\u201d and \u201cThe Magic Spell\u201d. The former tells of a story of a \u201cghost\u201d who \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          127\n\n\n\nfrightens and drives away the audience in a cinema. The narrator, who works in the cinema, \n\n\n\ndiscovers that the \u201cghost\u201d is just an eccentric man who lives near a cemetery. As he is always \n\n\n\nchewing a betel nut, he appears to have a \u201cbloody\u201d mouth. The plot is intriguing and full of \n\n\n\nsuspense not unlike a detective story. Description of this \u201cghost catching\u201d tale is rendered in \n\n\n\na witty and humorous manner to advocate the author\u2019s anti-superstitious attitude. \n\n\n\n\u201cThe Magic Spell\u201d deals with a theme that Malaysian Chinese are familiar with. The \n\n\n\nstory tells of \u201cmy cousin\u201d who keeps a mistress. His worried wife and mother have to \u201cdrag\u201d \n\n\n\nhim back. Having failed to persuade him to come to his senses, they consult a medium and \n\n\n\npay two hundred dollars for a magic potion. The medium is certain that the man will return to \n\n\n\nhis wife if the potion is rubbed onto his clothes. Ridiculous as it may sound, the method works \n\n\n\nand the man leaves his mistress. The family is happy again and heaps praise on the medium. \n\n\n\nThe story in fact ridicules the blind belief in superstitions. The moral of the story is that the \n\n\n\nfamily ignores the real cause of the man\u2019s infidelity and instead falls back on an irrational and \nlaughable approach to its problem.\n\n\n\nYao Tuo began writing plays in the 1980s. These plays are generally considered successful \n\n\n\nin terms of their genre-transformation as they were based on the novels or short stories by \n\n\n\nother writers. For example, he transformed The Garden of Repose by the famous modern \n\n\n\nChinese writer, Ba Jin, into a three-act play called Return to Life. This original adaptation by \n\n\n\nYao Tuo is popularly regarded as his representative play and is included in Collection of Yao \n\n\n\nTuo\u2019s Plays (1993). The play touches on moral issues through the agency of a superstitious \n\n\n\nact. Readers may consider the plot as bizarre and exotic if they are not familiar with Chinese \n\n\n\nbeliefs. The play is about a Dato Ding Jinbao,3 an elderly and prosperous politician and curio-\n\n\n\ncollector, who suddenly dies while attending an important ceremony. His family and close \n\n\n\nassociates immediately begin a heated argument over who will be the appropriate legal heir \n\n\n\nto his fortune. Disturbed by what his departing spirit sees (according to Chinese beliefs), he \n\n\n\nentreats the God of the Underworld to return him to life for a mere twenty minutes so that he \n\n\n\nmay sort out his problems. He then \u201creturns to life\u201d and is furious with his family and close \n\n\n\nassociates and declares that his wealth will be donated to charity and a sum to be left to his \n\n\n\nmistress and two illegal children. Unlike other relatives, his mistress and her children are truly \n\n\n\ndevoted to him. In a dramatic change of event, the God of the Underworld, overwhelmed by \n\n\n\nthe Dato\u2019s act of generosity, decides to prolong his life for an additional thirty years. Although \n\n\n\nfurious with his young wife who is the mistress of his lawyer, he does not want to lose her. \n\n\n\nAs he calls his wife back to him, she walks away with his lawyer as the curtain falls. The \n\n\n\nplay is a reminder of mankind\u2019s greet in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure without a care for \n\n\n\nmorality and kindness.\n\n\n\nIt may surprise many that Yao Tuo, having experienced so many hardships and difficulties \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n128          Wan\n\n\n\nin his life, demonstrates a writing style that is light-hearted and humorous. The Small Pink-\n\n\n\nFlowers Blossoming on the Wall (1991) is a representative collection of essays with such a \n\n\n\nbasic theme. Originally published in local Chinese newspapers, the stories are set in Malaysia \n\n\n\nand told, with sharp perception and revealing accounts, in witty and attractive prose. \n\n\n\nHis work is a mirror of himself and reflecting Confucian tolerance, Taoist harmony and \nBuddhist flexibility to which Yao Tuo is exposed throughout his life and that provides the key \nto his philosophy in life. He does not stoop to religious preaching though he employs some \n\n\n\nreligious forms familiar to Chinese readers to convey messages through his literary works. \n\n\n\nHe confesses that: \n\n\n\nMy stories are full of trifles which have no so-called persuasive \nreligious preaching or other great purposes. I just record down the \ndaily quibbles, which may be my own experiences, for my readers \nto appreciate....I just show the absurd and incredible side of life; \nalthough I am not to preach, I teach readers after all. \n\n\n\n(\u59da\u62d3/Yao Tuo, 1992c: 5)\n\n\n\nContributions to Mahua Literature\n\n\n\nYao Tuo represents many facets of the first generation Malaysian Chinese in his literary \nwritings. Among these are the shift in mindset and political orientation. By examining his life \n\n\n\nand literary works, one discerns several distinctive features of Yao Yuo\u2019s position as a literary \n\n\n\nfigure among early Mahua writers. \nThe first concerns the language. Yao Tuo\u2019s technique of narration employs a style of \n\n\n\n\u201cplain description\u201d inherited from the great tradition of Lu Xun and his peers in modern \n\n\n\nChinese literature. Realistic characters are crafted with the use of simple and concise sentence \n\n\n\nstructures adopted by modern Chinese novelists in China. Additionally, he has an advantage \n\n\n\nover contemporary Mahua writers in his skillful use of the Northern Chinese dialect and its \n\n\n\nrich vocabulary and distinctive nuances of meaning. On the other hand, he is not familiar \n\n\n\nwith variations of the language derived from the many Southern Chinese dialects spoken by \n\n\n\nlocal-born Chinese writers.\n\n\n\nThe second feature is the different backgrounds in which Yao Tuo\u2019s works are based. \n\n\n\nHis works are divided according to the background in China and in Malaysia. The works with \n\n\n\nChina as the background include My Cousin (1956), Meandering River Bank (1958), Four \n\n\n\nMarriage Stories (1961), Fond Memories of My Childhood (1962) and Flowers Blossomed \n\n\n\nin Wuliwa (1965). Those with a Malaysian background include Selected Stories of Yao Tuo \n\n\n\n(1981), Pink-Flowers on the Wall (1992), and Collection of Yao Tuo\u2019s Plays (two volumes, \n\n\n\n1993). His style is essentially realistic, or an approach that describes life without idealization \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          129\n\n\n\nor romantic subjectivity. The realistic style is the concern with common characters in typical \n\n\n\ncircumstances in everyday life, no matter how grotesque or absurd the characters appear to \n\n\n\nbe (\u5b9b\u78ca\u3001\u5f20\u534e/Wan Lei and Zhang Hua, 2004). His China-background works belong to this \n\n\n\ngenre. However, the Malaysia-background short stories are imbued with a rich romantic tint. \n\n\n\nExoticism is one of the most prominent characteristics of romanticism, along with another \n\n\n\ncharacteristic that is associated with the supernatural. \n\n\n\nThe third feature refers to the different themes of his literary works. The China-\n\n\n\nbackground works possess two basic themes, war-torn tragedies and nostalgia. The former \n\n\n\nare represented by short stories, the latter by his collective essays mainly in Fond Memories \n\n\n\nof My Childhood (1962) and Flowers Blossomed in Wuliwia (1965). The short stories include \n\n\n\nmany figures that the author met in his youth, during the periods of war and while residing \nin Hong Kong. Although literary creations are different from true stories, his short stories are \n\n\n\nintimately connected with his autobiographical experiences. The China-background works \n\n\n\nare concerned with the tragedies of war and the sufferings of common Chinese people living \n\n\n\nunder difficult circumstances. \nOf the stories inspired by the war, Yao Tuo\u2019s purpose is to send a message that declares \n\n\n\nwars as \u201cbattles between one people and another\u201d and as an \u201cevil legacy of the past\u201d. Wars \n\n\n\nproduce nothing but innocent victims who taste the bitterness of the evils of war (\u59da\u62d3/Yao \n\n\n\nTuo, 1992c: 5). However, he does not explore the causes of the wars in modern China, or their \n\n\n\nconsequences and meanings. Yao Tuo came from a family of well-to-do peasants who longed \n\n\n\nfor nothing more strongly than a life of peace and sufficiency. His own bitter experience in \na prolong period of continuous wars had exposed him to the tragic sufferings of humanity. \n\n\n\nThese were put into sharper spiritual focus when he finally converted to Christianity. On a \nmore practical level, Buddhist influence has allowed him to view the tragedies of war as a \nkeen \u201cobserver\u201d and to craft his writings in a role to awaken society to the evils of war. \n\n\n\nThat Yao Tuo had chosen to settle in Malaysia was significant in the history of Mahua \nliterature, in that he was free to narrate his stories from the perspective of a \u201cspectator\u201d. Had \n\n\n\nhe continued to live in Mainland China or Taiwan, it would have been impossible for him to \n\n\n\ncreate his stories without being influenced by political or ideological dogmas. \nAnother theme of the China-background works concerns memories of his childhood \n\n\n\nand appears mainly in Fond Memories of My Childhood, Flowers Blossomed in Wuliwa, and \n\n\n\nsome stories in Meandering River Bank. He writes in a light tone that is removed from the \n\n\n\nwar and social turmoil to portray his youthful days with nostalgic fondness. Nostalgic tales \n\n\n\nby the first generation migrants are a throwback to the delightful \u201cgood old days\u201d and their \npersonalities and events, and recounted with a tint of happiness or sorrow. \n\n\n\nThe yearning for the past, often in an idealized form, may be triggered by one\u2019s desire to \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n130          Wan\n\n\n\nrecall an event or item of the past. Nostalgia is associated with \u201chome sickness\u201d sentiments; \n\n\n\nin which the \u201chome\u201d is a place, specifically a country, inhabited by people who are born there \nand sharing the same culture and tastes. For one who has no homeland to return to, one\u2019s \n\n\n\nwriting may be characteristically nostalgic as one invariably looks homeward while residing \n\n\n\nin a foreign land. Yao Tuo is a representative of such \u201chomeless wanderers\u201d and applies his \n\n\n\ncreative energies in producing many literary writings dealing with the theme of nostalgia for \n\n\n\nhis \u201chomeland\u201d. \n\n\n\nIt is difficult to place Yao Tuo\u2019s Malaysia-background works neatly into the general \ncategories of Mahua literature.4 As many of his works deal with \u201calien\u201d themes, one may \n\n\n\ncategorize Yao Tuo\u2019s writings as belonging to the realistic genre and at the same time showing \n\n\n\na romantic style that is absent in his China-background stories. Many of his characters have \n\n\n\ncertain eccentric and absurd streaks and behaviours. The caricature of the ordinary is the \n\n\n\nfocused embodiment of his observations and thoughtful reflections through a skillful display \nof his craft. In his victim-themed stories, the victimization never goes too far as to lead to \n\n\n\ntragic endings, and wit and humour are injected to maintain a comic streak in these stories. \n\n\n\nDescriptions of lyrical romanticism are never over-used but employed in a practical manner.\n\n\n\nGenerally, the \u201calien stories\u201d by a first generation writer are based on the writer\u2019s \nexperience in a foreign country and an attempt to identify with the local community. Evidence \n\n\n\nof this process is discernible in three stages as the writer immerses in the life of the local \n\n\n\nsociety. The first stage shows a \u201cdetached\u201d attitude as the writer, consciously or unconsciously, \ndisplays his discrimination against or indifference to local society in his literary creations; \n\n\n\nthe second stage is one of \u201cre-consideration\u201d, in which the writer revises his views on local \n\n\n\nsociety; and the third is the \u201ctolerating\u201d stage, when the writer begins to seep into local life to \n\n\n\nwrite about the \u201ceccentricities\u201d of the people around him (\u738b\u5217\u8000/Wang Lieyao, 2006). His \n\n\n\n\u201cCatching a Ghost\u201d is a representative work of the first generation writer with a disinterested \nattitude in dealing with a \u201cforeign\u201d character. The \u201cghost\u201d figure is a watchman, often viewed \nas a distant figure who has no interests in anyone. His interests were in drinking and sleeping \n(\u59da\u62d3/Yao Tuo, 1992c). As a fresh immigrant, Yao Tuo found this type of behaviour unusual \n\n\n\nand \u201cfunny\u201d.\n\n\n\nIn dealing with issues of the local Chinese community, Yao Tuo similarly treats them \n\n\n\nas \u201calien\u201d themes. In \u201cThe Magic Spell\u201d, he explores the topic of a common superstition. \n\n\n\nComing from North China, Yao Tuo is a stranger to many traditions and customs of the local \n\n\n\nChinese whose forefathers had come from South China. Superstitious practices are one of \n\n\n\nthese. Although Yao Tuo died as a Christian (\u5149\u660e\u65e5\u62a5/ Guang Ming Daily, 11 October 2009; \n\n\n\nand\u6881\u653e/Liang Fang, 2010), one can hardly detect any trace of Christian influence in his \nworks. Instead, he delves into his knowledge of Chinese beliefs and Buddhism for snippets \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          131\n\n\n\nof wisdom. He did this in The Return to Life, a play that discusses a theme on the awakening \n\n\n\nto the true nature of life. This theme is easy enough for his readers and audience to mull over. \n\n\n\nHe looks upon the role of literature as having a lasting impact of a philosophical or religious \n\n\n\nnature on his readers. \n\n\n\nIssues of Identity and Social Commitments\n\n\n\nYao Tuo experienced the many twists and turns of political and social events during \n\n\n\nseveral decades of residence in Malaysia. Although these events hardly featured in his works, \n\n\n\ntwo issues in particular will help us to gain a better understanding of the man. These are issues \n\n\n\nthat concern his identity and Chinese education in Malaysia. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese became conscious of issues of identity during the Japanese Occupation \n\n\n\nduring which they were the primary victims of military oppression. While they were \n\n\n\nunreservedly anti-Japanese in common with their compatriots in China, their allegiance was \n\n\n\ndivided between the two Chinese governments of the Kuomintang and the Communists. When \n\n\n\nthe Federation of Malaya gained independence in 1957, the undercurrent of ethnic tensions \n\n\n\npersisted among Chinese, Malays, and Indians as they contested for resources and rights \n\n\n\nthrough the hasty formation of ethnic-based political parties. A compromise was reached \n\n\n\nby which Malays would enjoy special rights and privileges in return for citizenship for and \n\n\n\nguarantees of business interests of the Chinese and Indians. \n\n\n\nAt the time of independence, there were large numbers of settlers who were non-citizens. \n\n\n\nEven in 2008, statistics confirm that there were nearly 200,000 Chinese who carried \u201cred \nidentity cards\u201d that certify their status only as permanent residents. The majority of them are, \n\n\n\nlegally speaking, stateless because their passports are originally authorized by the \u201cRepublic \n\n\n\nof China\u201d. As early as 1912, with the permit of the British government, the Kuomintang \n\n\n\nestablished its Singapore and Malaya branches. Their activities were prohibited in 1925 \n\n\n\nuntil 1930 when the Chinese government persuaded the British authorities not to brand these \n\n\n\nKuomintang branches as illegal organizations so long as they refrained from involvement in \n\n\n\nlocal politics. In 1949, the Kuomintang closed these branches and the Communists spread \n\n\n\ntheir influence through the activities of social clubs. Many who were loyal to the Kuomintang \ncontinued to retain passports of the Republic of China. This group of Chinese and their \n\n\n\ndescendents could only stay in Malaysia as permanent residents. As Taiwan declined in \n\n\n\npolitical influence in Malaysia, the issue of allegiance has gradually lost its relevance.\nWhile Yao Tuo occupied himself with writings to expose the tragedies of wars inflicted \n\n\n\non the common people, the Chinese \u201ccivil war\u201d seemed far from over as the Kuomintang and \n\n\n\nthe Communists wrangled across the Taiwan Straits. As a non-citizen, Yao Tuo carried a \u201cred \n\n\n\nidentity card\u201d as a reminder that he was an \u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d rather than of a Malaysian,5 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n132          Wan\n\n\n\ndespite his declaration of allegiance in a song entitled \u201cI Love Malaysia\u201d (\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5/ Sin \n\n\n\nChew Daily, 2009). At the time of his funeral, local Chinese politicians had appealed to \n\n\n\nthe Malaysian government to re-examine his stateless status (\u5149\u534e\u65e5\u62a5/ Kwong Wah Daily, \n\n\n\n2009). \n\n\n\nYao Tuo ended his literary creations with the publication of his autobiography, A Bird of \n\n\n\nPassage with Footprints on Sand comprising five sections. The first concerns his childhood \ndays, the second about his teenage years, the third on his difficult and challenging times of his \nfamily, the fourth on his sojourn in Hong Kong, which was the turning point in his life, and \n\n\n\nthe final one on life in Malaysia. As to why he devotes so little to his life in Malaysia which \nhe claims to be his homeland, Yao Tuo explains that: \n\n\n\nMost of my life has been in Malaysia, and until today in 1998, \nmy major work is still in Malaysia. ... But I feel the most difficult \nin writing the fifth section [of my autobiography]. Because the \ntime is long, thus the friends I have relation with are many. I feel \nit difficult to choose putting them into my writings....so I decide \nnot to compose this section; or maybe even the in future I will not \nwrite about this. \n\n\n\n(recounted by\u674e\u9526\u5b97/Li Jinzong, 2009)\n\n\n\nEven then, the last section was added almost for the sake of completeness (\u674e\u9526\u5b97/Li \n\n\n\nJinzong, 2009). Although Yao Tuo does not touch on the political and racial issues in Malaysia \n\n\n\nin his autobiography, one may discern that, in his subconscious mind, he feels alienated by \n\n\n\nhis status as a \u201cred identity card\u201d holder and looks upon himself as an \u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d. \n\n\n\nDespite having spent years of living in Malaysia until his final days, his was a case of the fate \nof many first generation settlers in an \u201calien country\u201d.\n\n\n\nA political aspect of life in Malaysia that Yao Tuo does not detach himself is that which \n\n\n\nconcerns Chinese education. Many Chinese children study in Chinese primary schools that \n\n\n\nare recognized as an integral part of the national education system. They then continue to \n\n\n\nstudy in government-run secondary schools or in independent Chinese high schools. The \n\n\n\nformer uses the national language (Malay) as the medium of instruction and the latter insists \n\n\n\non teaching some subjects in Chinese. These independent high schools are completely funded \n\n\n\nby the Chinese community.6 The British colonial administration (1786\u20131957) had allowed \n\n\n\nthe different ethnic groups to run vernacular schools. Despite the harsh fact that students \n\n\n\nof Chinese schools are shut out of the civil service and that funding is a perpetual problem, \n\n\n\nChinese education has managed to thrive. The primary rationale for the maintenance of \n\n\n\nChinese schools relates intimately to the issue of cultural and ethnic identity. The Chinese \n\n\n\ncommunity is also wary of the government\u2019s intention to convert all primary schools into \n\n\n\n\u201cnational schools\u201d as its \u201cfinal goal\u201d in which the national language would be used as the sole \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          133\n\n\n\nmedium of instruction (Kuek, not dated).\n\n\n\nYao Tuo\u2019s contributions to Chinese education in Malaysia have been immense. He \n\n\n\njointly compiled many Chinese textbooks for primary and independent Chinese high schools, \n\n\n\nand published Chinese textbooks through his Youlian Press (\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5/Sin Chew Daily 2009). \n\n\n\nThese textbooks include Chinese Language (Grades 1-6, 1970-80), Mathematics, Ethics, and \n\n\n\nHumanity and Environment (Grades 1-6, 1980-1996), Literary Readings (4 volumes, for \n\n\n\nTeachers\u2019 Training, 1985-87), Chinese Language for Mara College7 (1985 to the present) \n\n\n\nand national schools (Grades 3-6, published in 1983), Selected Loose-Leaf Works from the \n\n\n\nYoulian Press with 640 essays (Mahua Literature Centre, http://www.sc.edu.my/Mahua/\n\n\n\nexhibition/yaotuo/biographical. htm). \n\n\n\nIn addition, Yao Tuo published the popular Chinese Students Weekly for thirty years \n\n\n\nbetween 1955 and 1984. The Jiaofeng Magazine appeared in November 1955 and continued \n\n\n\nuntil February 1999, lasting four decades and a half and spanning 488 issues. This magazine \n\n\n\nhas become a lasting legacy of Mahua literature. It is also the most durable periodical in the \n\n\n\nhistory of Chinese publication in Malaysia. Many contemporary Mahua writers have been \n\n\n\ninfluenced and inspired by these two publications. \nAn idea of the influence of Yao Tuo and his publishing house on the Chinese society \n\n\n\nin Malaysia may be gauged from the comment of a local Chinese writer: \u201cif there were no \n\n\n\nYao Tuo and his Youlian Press that provoked the democratic thought in the chaotic years of \n\n\n\n1960s, what the Chinese political and cultural conditions would be like in today\u2019s Malaysia \n\n\n\nis beyond one\u2019s imagination\u201d (\u5e84\u82e5/Zhuang Ruo, 2009). This is because his publications \n\n\n\nand magazines nurtured countless number of children and teenagers in a literary fairyland. \n\n\n\nIt is this generation of readers who have created the present-day social milieu of the Chinese \n\n\n\ncommunity in Malaysia (\u5e84\u82e5/Zhuang Ruo, 2009). \n\n\n\nYao Tuo also participated in and contributed to cultural events that enrich the cultural life \n\n\n\nof Malaysia. He was a convener and general supervisor of the opera \u201cHan Li Bao\u201d in 1967. \n\n\n\nHan Li Bao was a legendary Chinese princess who was married to the Sultan of Malacca \n\n\n\nduring the Ming dynasty. The legend has special meaning to the traditional friendship and \n\n\n\nrelations between China and Malaysia. He also founded the Malaysian Chinese Calligraphy \n\n\n\nSociety in an attempt to promote this art in Malaysia. Through his own company that dealt \n\n\n\nwith the arts, he made efforts in various ways to sustain the continuity and heritage of Chinese \n\n\n\nculture in Malaysia. \n\n\n\nYao Tuo was duly recognized and richly rewarded for his literary achievements, \n\n\n\ncontributions to Chinese education, and the propagation of Chinese culture in Malaysia. He \n\n\n\nwon the third \u201cMalaysian Chinese Literature Prize\u201d and the thirty-fifth \u201cLiterature Prize of \nChina Literary Association\u201d of Taiwan in 1994. In the following year, he was awarded the prize \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n134          Wan\n\n\n\nfor \u201cMemorable Years for Senior Writers\u201d by the Writers\u2019 Association of Chinese Medium of \n\n\n\nMalaysia. In 1996 and 1997, he was twice awarded with prizes in Taiwan again, namely, the \n\n\n\n\u201cLiterature Prize and Literature Medal\u201d from the Literature Foundation of the Asian Chinese \n\n\n\nWriters\u2019 Association and the \u201cThe Second-Degree Prize of the Education Ministry\u201d. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nTo discuss Yao Tuo, the outstanding first generation Mahua writer, requires an appreciation \nof modern Chinese politics and history, Chinese cultural traditions in China and its heritage \n\n\n\nin Malaysia, and issues concerning ethnicity, politics and education in Malaysia. He passed \n\n\n\naway recently but left behind a rich legacy as an accomplished writer and a concerned social \n\n\n\nactivist with a special background and extensive experience in times of war and peace in three \n\n\n\ndifferent countries and territories. Research work on Yao Tuo and what he stands for is just \n\n\n\nat its initial stage and rather limited in both language and scope. His unique life history and \n\n\n\nhis remarkable achievements and contributions to Mahua literature, education and cultural \n\n\n\nlife constitute an immensely attractive area of academic exploration. It is hoped that future \n\n\n\nresearch efforts will lead to the publication of in-depth studies on this literary pioneer of \n\n\n\nMahua literature.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  For a list of Yao Tuo\u2019s books and date of publication, see the Biographies of One Hundred \nMalaysian Chinese Writers\u201d in http://www.worldchinesewriters.com/my/index.php?option= \ncom_content& task=view&id=106&Itemid=2 \n\n\n\n2  The anti-Communists raids and executions were carried out on a large scale in 1927 and 1928. \nSee an example in \u201cCommunists in Liang Hu Provinces\u201d in North-China Herald, Shanghai: \nMarch 17 1928. \n\n\n\n3  \u201cDato\u201d is a title awarded by the Sultan or Governor of individual states in Malaysia to persons \nwho are deemed to have contributed their service to society and country.\n\n\n\n4  Modern Mahua literature has been categorized into five periods. These are the Initial Period \nbeginning with China\u2019s New Literature Movement in 1919 until the breakout of the Anti-\nJapanese War in 1937; the War Literature Period between 1937 and the immediate post-war \nyears to 1948; the Post-war Period from 1949 when New China was established to 1964 when \nMalaysia tightened its internal security laws; the \u201cLow-tide Period\u201d from 1964 till 1974 when \nChina and Malaysia normalized diplomatic relations, and the Contemporary Period from 1974 till \nthe present. For details, see Meng Sha, 1986, also Fang Beifang, 1987. \n\n\n\n5  The People\u2019s Republic of China divides Overseas Chinese into two categories. The first are \n\u201cChinese nationals\u201d who are permanent residents in foreign countries but bear the passports of the \nPeople\u2019s Republic of China. The second category refers to \u201cHua ren\u201d, or people of Chinese stock \nwho have become citizens of foreign countries. The \u201cRepublic of China\u201d in Taiwan, however, \nconsider Chinese people living outside Chinese territory as \u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d. \n\n\n\n6  This educational system is supported and coordinated by the United Chinese School Teachers\u2019 \nAssociations of the Federation of Malaysia (Jiaozong) and the United Chinese School Committees\u2019 \nAssociation of the Federation of Malaysia (Dongzong), commonly known as Dong Jiao Zong.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYao Tuo: A First Generation Malaysian Chinese Writer          135\n\n\n\n7  Mara College is a government-funded college exclusively to train Malay and other Bumiputera \nstudents in academic and vocational subjects. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nKUEK, Florence (n.d.). Chinese education in Malaysia: a reflection of its past and future direction. In \nwww.cornerstone-msc.net/kairos/view_file.cfm?fileid=24 (retrieved on 26 October 2010.\n\n\n\n\u65b9\u5317\u65b91987\u3002\u3008\u9a6c\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u4e03\u5341\u5e74\u7684\u56de\u987e\u4e0e\u524d\u77bb\u3009\u8f7d\u6234\u6653\u534e\u3001\u67ef\u91d1\u5fb7\u7f16\u300a\u65b9\u5317\u65b9\u6587\u827a\u5c0f\u4f26\u300b\n(FANG Beifang 1987. Seventy years\u2019 review and the future of Mahua literature. In Fang Beifang\u2019s \nCritical Collections, edited by Dai Xiaohua and Jin Jinde), Kuala Lumpur: Taiping Printing Co: \n7-13\u3002\n\n\n\n\u300a\u5149\u660e\u65e5\u62a5\u300b11 October 2009\u3002\u3008\u59da\u62d3\u4e3e\u6ba1\u5b66\u62a5\u8bfb\u8005\u544a\u522b\u5f0f\u732e\u5531\u3009(Guang Ming Daily 2009. Yao \nTuo\u2019s funeral held: the Students\u2019 Weekly readers singing mournful songs) 11 October.\n\n\n\n\u9773\u5fb7\u884c 1987\u3002\u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u9769\u547d\u53f21840-1956\u300b, \u5f00\u5c01: \u6cb3\u5357\u5927\u5b66\u51fa\u7248\u793e (GE Dexing 1987. The History \nof Chinese Revolution, 1840-1956, Kaifeng: Henan University Press). \n\n\n\n\u674e\u9526\u5b97 2009\u3002\u3008\u96ea\u6ce5\u9e3f\u722a\u7684\u6587\u575b\u70b9\u6ef4\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\u5831\u300b(LI Jin Zong 2009. Dribs and drabs in \nthe literary field, Nanyang Shangpao), 20 May.\n\n\n\n\u6881\u653e2010\u3002\u3008\u6d41\u6c34\u00b7\u66ae\u79bd\u2500\u2500\u5074\u5beb\u59da\u62d3\u7238\u7238\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u4e16\u754c\u65e5\u62a5\u300b(LIANG Fang 2010. Flowing \nwaters and resting flocks: in memory of a Father Yao Tuo, World Daily), Los Angeles and Jakarta, \n26 October.\n\n\n\n\u9a6c\u534e\u4f5c\u5bb6\u534f\u4f1a\u7f51\u7ad9/Website of the Writers\u2019 Association of Chinese Medium of Malaysia. http://www.\nworldchinesewriters.com/my/\n\n\n\n\u9a6c\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u9986\u7f51\u7ad9/Website of Malaysia-Chinese Literature Centre. http://mahua.sc.edu.my/\n----- http://www.sc.edu.my/Mahua/exhibition/yaotuo/biographical.htm \n\u5b5f\u838e 1986\u3002\u300a\u9a6c\u534e\u6587\u5b66\u6742\u788e\u300b(MENG Sha 1986. Sketches on Mahua Literature), Petaling Jaya: \n\n\n\nIntellect Publication Sdn Bhd.\n\u59da\u62d3 1992a. \u300a\u7f8e\u4e3d\u7684\u7ae5\u5e74\u300b(YAO Tuo 1992a. Fond Memories of My Childhood), Kuala Lumpur: \n\n\n\nMalaya Book Co.\n----- 1992b\u3002\u300a\u5f2f\u5f2f\u7684\u5cb8\u58c1\u300b(YAO Tuo 1992b. Meandering River Bank), Petaling Jaya: Malaya \n\n\n\nPublishing and Printing Co.\n----- 1992c\u3002\u300a\u59da\u62d3\u5c0f\u8bf4\u9009\u300b(YAO Tuo 1992c. Selected Short Stories of Yao), Kuala Lumpur: Malaya \n\n\n\nBook Co.\n----- 1992d\u3002\u300a\u59da\u62d3\u620f\u5267\u96c6\u300b(YAO Tuo 1992d. Collections of Yao Tuo\u2019s Plays), Kuala Lumpur: \n\n\n\nMalaya Book Co.\n----- n.d. \u3008\u6587\u5b66\u7684\u9a6c\u524d\u5c0f\u5352\u3009(YAO Tuo n.d. A foot soldier in the literature battlefield). In http://www. \n\n\n\nworldchinesewriters.com/my/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 106&Itemid=2\n\u5b9b\u78ca\u3001\u5f20\u534e 2004\u3002\u3008\u59da\u62d3\u7684\u6587\u5b66\u521b\u4f5c\u4e0e\u98ce\u683c\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u4fe1\u9633\u519c\u4e1a\u9ad8\u7b49\u4e13\u79d1\u5b66\u6821\u5b66\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u516d\n\n\n\n\u671f\uff1a48-50 (WAN Lei and ZHANG Hua 2004.Yao Tuo\u2019s literary creations and styles, Journal of \nXin Yang Agricultural College, 6: 48-50).\n\n\n\n\u738b\u5217\u8000 2006\u3002\u3008\u4e1c\u5357\u4e9a\u534e\u6587\u6587\u5b66\u7684\u2018\u5f02\u65cf\u53d9\u4e8b\u2019\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6587\u5b66\u6279\u8bc4\u300b\uff0c\u5317\u4eac\uff0c\u7b2c6\u671f\uff1a166 \n(WANG Lie Yao 2006. \u2018Alien stories\u2019 in Southeast Asian Chinese literature, Literary Criticisms, \n6: 166).\n\n\n\n\u300a\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5\u300b2009\u3002\u3008\u672c\u5730\u6587\u575b\u8006\u8001\u59da\u62d3\u75c5\u901d\u3009(Sin Chew Daily 2009. Local famed writer Yao \nTuo passed away), 7 Octobter. \n\n\n\n\u5e84\u82e5 2009\u3002\u3008\u5982\u679c\u6ca1\u6709\u59da\u62d3\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u5831\u300b(ZHUANG Ruo 2009. If there were no Yao, Sin \nChew Daily), 14 October.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 67-81\n\n\n\nREFERENCE MATERIALS\n\n\n\n Report on the Census of the Federated Malay States, \n1901 (Part 1) \n\n\n\n1. The following table shows the total male and female population of the Federated Malay  \n    States in 1891 and 1901, respectively and the total increases in the number of persons: \u2014\n\n\n\n   \n* 1,397 Sakai aboriginals are included in this table. \n\n\n\n2. Having regard to the proportional increases of the total population between State and State\n    in the Federation at the present Census, quite undoubtedly the most striking feature is the    \n    very great increase in the total population of the State of Perak. In 1891 the total population of \n    Perak was 214,254 persons. At the present Census the total population is 329,665 persons,\n    or an increase of 115,411 persons. In 1891 the total population of Perak (214,254 persons) \n     was 9,999 persons more than that of the total population of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and \n    Pahang combined (Selangor 81,592, Negri Sembilan 65,219, Pahang 57,444, or a combined \n    total of 204,255 persons).   \n           At the present Census the total population of Perak (329,665 persons) only falls short    \n    of the total population of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang combined (Selangor 168,789,           \n    Negri Sembilan 96,028, Pahang 84,113, or a combined total of 348,930 persons) by the\n    number of 19,265 persons.\n           In other words, in 1891, out of a total population in the Federated Malay States of      \n    418,509 persons, the population of Perak accounted for 214,254 persons.\n           At the present Census in 1901, out of a total population in the Federated Malay States of      \n    678,595 persons, the population of Perak now accounts for 329,665.\n\n\n\nPerak        \nSelangor       \nNegri Sembilan\nPahang         \nGrand Federal            \n       total            \n\n\n\n156,408\n  67,051\n  40,561\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n57,846\n14,541\n24,658\n57,444\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n214,254\n  81,592\n 65,219\n 57,444\n\n\n\n418,509\n\n\n\n239,556\n136,823\n  64,565\n  46,746\n\n\n\n487,790\n\n\n\n90,109\n31,966\n31,463\n35,970\n\n\n\n189,508\n\n\n\n329,665\n168,789\n96,028\n\n\n\n*84,113\n\n\n\n678,595\n\n\n\n 83,148\n 69,772\n 24,004 \n\n\n\n32,263\n17,425\n 6,805\n\n\n\n 115,411\n87,197\n30,809\n26,669\n\n\n\n \n260,086\n\n\n\n      35\n      51.7\n      32\n      31.7\n\n\n\n      38.3\n\n\n\nState\nMales Females Total Males Females Total Males Females\n\n\n\nTotal \nincrease \npersons\n\n\n\nIncreased \npercentage\n\n\n\n1891 1901 1901, Increase\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026 \u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026 \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n3.  The following table exhibits, by comparison, the proportional size of the total population \n     of Perak compared with that in Singapore, Penang and Hongkong as shown by the recent  \n     Census: \u2014\n\n\n\n* Not including population of new territory, Kan Lung, which is about 100,000 persons.\n\n\n\n4.  The total increase in the Federated Malay States since 1891 is 260,086 persons, or an increase \n     of 38.3%. In the three Western States of Perak, Selangor and Negri Sembilan, males have\n     increased by 176,924 and females by 56,493. Returns are not available for making these       \n      comparisons in Pahang. The greatest proportional increase is that of Selangor, being an       \n    increase of 87,197 persons, or an increase of 51.7%.\n5.  The following table shows the total population and the increases in the various races in \n    1891 and 1901 for the Federated Malay States: \u2014\n\n\n\n   * Exclusive of floating population.\n\n\n\n6.  The highest proportional increase is that of the Tamils and other Indians, who have increased\n     from 20,154 in 1891 to 58,211 in 1901, being a great accession equal to 189.5%. \n            The Europeans have doubled and show an increase of 98.3%, and the Eurasians have  \n     trebled themselves with an increase of 169.8%.\n            The Chinese have nearly doubled in numbers with an increase of 136,310 persons, or an\n     increase of 83.4%.\n           The Malays show a very satisfactory normal increase of 80,935 persons, or 34.5%.\n           The great accessions to the European, Chinese and Tamil population are most largely the \n     product of an expanding immigration in a prosperous and flourishing country.\n           The increases amongst the Malays are due entirely to natural growth and general well-being \n      and advance.\n\n\n\nState of Perak           \u2026           \nSettlement of Singapore                   \n             \u201d         Penang    \nColony of Hongkong         \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\nTerritory Census, 1901\nTotal number of population\n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n329,665     \n228,555\n248,207\n283,975*\n\n\n\nEuropeans and Americans     \u2026         \u2026          \u2026\nEurasians      \u2026         \u2026        \u2026         \u2026          \u2026\nMalays and other Natives of the Archipelago\nChinese        \u2026          \u2026        \u2026         \u2026          \u2026\nTamils and other Natives of India      \u2026          \u2026\nOther Races  \u2026          \u2026        \u2026         \u2026          \u2026\n\n\n\nRace Increase\nper cent\n\n\n\n717\n564\n\n\n\n231,551\n163,429\n20,154\n1,073\n\n\n\n1,422\n1,522\n\n\n\n312,486\n299,739\n\n\n\n58,211\n2,582\n\n\n\n       705\n       958\n  80,935\n136,310\n  38,057\n     1,509\n\n\n\n  98.3\n169.8\n  34.5\n  83.4\n189.5\n140.6\n\n\n\nTotal increase, \n19011891* 1901*\n\n\n\n6968\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n7.  The following table shows (exclusive of the floating population and prisoners) the total         \n     distribution of the increases of the races in each State in the Federated Malay States in 1891           \n     and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n     * Exclusive of floating population and prisoners. \n\n\n\n     * Exclusive of floating population and prisoners.\n\n\n\n6968\n\n\n\nPerak   \nSelangor    \nNegri Sembilan     \nPahang        \n                                           Total     \u2026\n\n\n\nPerak   \nSelangor         \nNegri Sembilan\nPahang \n                                           Total     \u2026       \n                 \nPerak\nSelangor     \nNegri Sembilan \nPahang  \n                                           Total     \u2026\n\n\n\nState Increase\nper cent\n\n\n\n364\n190\n  61\n102\n717\n\n\n\n288\n167\n  68\n  41\n\n\n\n        564\n\n\n\n103,389\n  26,578\n  48,480\n  53,104\n 231,551\n\n\n\nTotal increase, \n19011891* 1901*\n\n\n\n  661\n  487\n  140\n  134\n1,422\n\n\n\n  591\n  576\n  309\n    46\n1,522\n\n\n\n141,723\n  40,384\n  56,917\n  73,462\n 312,486\n\n\n\n297\n297\n  79\n  32\n705\n\n\n\n303\n409\n241\n    5\n958\n\n\n\n38,334\n13,806\n  8,437\n20,358\n80,935\n\n\n\n  81.6\n156.3\n129.5\n  31.4\n   98.3\n\n\n\n105.2\n244.9\n363.2\n  12.2\n169.8\n\n\n\n37.1\n51.9\n17.4\n38.3\n34.5\n\n\n\nEuropeans and Americans\n\n\n\nEurasians\n\n\n\nMalays and other Natives of the Archipelago\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\nPerak  \nSelangor          \nNegri Sembilan    \nPahang           \n                                           Total     \u2026\n\n\n\nPerak   \nSelangor        \nNegri Sembilan    \nPahang        \n                                           Total     \u2026       \n                 \nPerak   \nSelangor          \nNegri Sembilan     \nPahang  \n                                           Total     \u2026\n\n\n\nState Increase\nper cent\n\n\n\n93,953\n50,844\n15,391\n  3,241\n\n\n\n   163,429\n\n\n\n14,862\n  3,592\n  1,117\n     583\n20,154\n\n\n\n   377\n   221\n   102\n   373\n1,073\n\n\n\nTotal increase, \n19011891* 1901*\n\n\n\n  149,375\n108,768\n  32,901\n    8,695\n299,739\n\n\n\n34,710\n16,748\n  5,526\n  1,227\n58,211\n\n\n\n1,235\n   613\n   185\n   549\n2,582\n\n\n\n55,422\n57,924\n17,510\n  5,454\n\n\n\n    136,310\n\n\n\n19,848\n13,156\n  4,409\n     644\n38,057\n\n\n\n   858\n   392\n     83\n   176\n1,509\n\n\n\n    58.9\n113.9\n113.7\n168.3\n  83.4\n\n\n\n133.9\n366.2\n394.7\n110.5\n189.5\n\n\n\n227.6\n177.3\n  81.3\n  47.2\n140.6\n\n\n\nChinese\n\n\n\nTamils and other Natives of India\n\n\n\nOther Races (Africans, Annamese, Arabs, etc.)\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n8.  As regards the distribution of the various races in each State, it is to be noticed that the \n     Chinese now outnumber the Malays of all classes in Perak and Selangor by 7,652 persons, \n     and 68,384 persons, respectively. In other words, the Chinese in these two States combined \n     outnumber the Malays of all classes, native and foreign born, by 76,036 persons.\n           The greatest proportional Chinese increase is that in Selangor of 57,924 persons, or an\n     increase of 113.7%. Perak is very nearly as large an increase with 55,422 persons, or an \n     increase of 58.9%. Europeans have increased in Selangor by 156.3%.\n           The Malays have grown in Selangor by 13,806 persons, and show 51.9 increase per cent \u2014\n     the highest proportional increase amongst the Malays.\n           The Tamils have, proportionally, grown most in the Negri Sembilan (showing a total       \n     increase of 4,409 persons, or an increase of 394.7 per cent) and in Selangor (showing a \n     total increase of 13,156, or an increase of 366.2 per cent). In Perak the Tamils have increased       \n     by 19,848 persons, or 133.9%.\n           The largest increase amongst the minor races is that of the Japanese. In 1891 there were  \n     only 90 persons. In 1901 the Japanese have grown to 535 (males 87, females 448) persons. \n     The largest number of Japanese live in Selangor.\n           The next largest increase is that of the natives of Ceylon, who, as British subjects are \n     welcome immigrants. They have increased from 332 persons in 1891 to 584 persons in   \n     1901.\n           It is to be noticed that there are now 579 Arabs in the Federated Malay States, and that     \n    Pahang accounts for 236 of that number.\n           There were only 10 Siamese in the Federated Malay States in 1891. In 1901 the Siamese          \n     number 548 persons, 446 of which number live in Perak.\n9.  In the following table is shown the increases and decreases of the total male and female \n     population in each district in each State of the Federation for 1891 and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n7170\n\n\n\nLarut          \nMatang      \nKuala Kangsar  \nUpper Perak     \nKinta          \nLower Perak    \nBatang Padang \nKrian     \nSelama \nNew Territory  \n\n\n\n41,587\n7,476\n\n\n\n16,135\n1,516\n\n\n\n49,654\n14,603\n7,067\n\n\n\n16,089\n2,281\n\u2026\n\n\n\n7,763\n2,735\n\n\n\n12,780\n1,350\n8,933\n\n\n\n10,648\n3,385\n8,609\n1,643\n\u2026\n\n\n\n49,350\n10,211\n28,915\n2,866\n\n\n\n58,587\n25,251\n10,452\n24,698\n3,924\n\u2026\n\n\n\n32,546\n10,097\n21,878\n2,183\n\n\n\n103,234\n17,889\n17,409\n30,833\n1,890\n1,597\n\n\n\n9,928\n4,650\n\n\n\n15,234\n1,738\n\n\n\n19,503\n12,731\n5,497\n\n\n\n17,863\n1,725\n1,240\n\n\n\n42,474\n14,747\n37,112\n3,921\n\n\n\n122,737\n30,620\n22,906\n48,696\n3,615\n2,837\n\n\n\n\u2026\n44.42\n28.34\n36.81\n\n\n\n109.49\n21.26\n\n\n\n119.15\n97.16\n\u2026\n\n\n\n13.93\n\n\n\n7.89\n\n\n\nState\nMales Females Total Males Females Total\n\n\n\nTotal \nincrease\nper cent\n\n\n\nTotal \ndecrease \nper cent\n\n\n\n1891 1901\n\n\n\nPerak\n\n\n\nDistrict\n\n\n\n \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States 7170\n\n\n\n10.  DECREASES: PERAK\u2014In the Larut district the Chinese population has decreased by \n       11,246, or 27%, but the total decrease for all nationalities there is only 1,775. This decrease           \n       is due to the Chinese miners emigrating from Larut to the Kinta Valley.\n              In the Selama district there is a falling off of 306 persons, due to miners leaving. \n       DECREASES: NEGRI SEMBILAN\u2014In the Tampin district there is a decrease of 3.71% \n       (18,835 in 1891 as against 18,136 in 1901). This is due to the Chinese abandoning certain   \n       tapioca plantations owing to the low price of that produce and to the recent emigration of  \n       Malays consequent on bad harvests.\n11.  The following table shows the increases in the population of each State in the Federated  \n       Malay States according to age in 1891 and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\nEuropeans     \nEurasians    \nChinese       \nMalays, etc. \nTamils, etc. \nOther Races \nFloating Population\nPrisoners     \n\n\n\n293\n190\n\n\n\n91,681\n65,103\n12,895\n\n\n\n331\n775\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n71\n98\n\n\n\n2,272\n38,286\n1,967\n\n\n\n46\n246\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n364\n288\n\n\n\n93,953\n103,389\n14,862\n\n\n\n377\n1,021\n\u2026\n\n\n\n522\n353\n\n\n\n143,167\n92,804\n30,302\n1,034\n1,323\n\u2026\n\n\n\n139\n238\n\n\n\n6,208\n48,919\n4,408\n\n\n\n201\n47\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n 661\n591\n\n\n\n149,375\n141,723\n34,710\n1,235\n1,370\n\u2026\n\n\n\n  229\n163\n\n\n\n51,486\n27,701\n17,407\n\n\n\n703\n548\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n    68\n140\n\n\n\n3,936\n10,633\n2,441\n\n\n\n155\n199\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\nPerak\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nState Over \n15\n\n\n\nUnder \n15\n\n\n\nTotal\npersons\n\n\n\n1891 1901\nRace Over \n\n\n\n15\nUnder \n\n\n\n15\nTotal\n\n\n\npersons\nOver \n15\n\n\n\nUnder \n15\n\n\n\nTotal\npersons\n\n\n\nIncrease\n\n\n\n   297\n303\n\n\n\n55,422\n38,334\n19,848\n\n\n\n858\n349\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur   \nUlu Selangor     \nKlang          \nKuala Langat       \nKuala Selangor  \nUlu Langat   \nSeremban    \nCoast           \nJelebu          \nKuala Pilah         \nTampin                \nU.Pahang      K.Lipis              \n                      Raub and\n                      Bentong                 \nTemerloh    \nPekan        \nKuantan     \n\n\n\n38,712\n9,903\n4,319\n3,150\n4,358\n6,609\n\n\n\n10,449\n2,718\n4,067\n\n\n\n12,301\n11,026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n5,074\n1,715\n1,744\n1,660\n2,942\n1,406\n4,254\n\n\n\n746\n1,368\n\n\n\n10,481\n7,809\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n43,786\n11,618\n6,063\n4,810\n7,300\n8,015\n\n\n\n14,703\n3,464\n5,435\n\n\n\n22,782\n18,835\n\n\n\n22,430\n\n\n\n15,247\n15,056\n\n\n\n4,711\n\n\n\n63,835\n35,976\n13,606\n4,806\n5,831\n\n\n\n11,923\n24,975\n6,295\n6,168\n\n\n\n17,338\n9,789\n\n\n\n12,644\n\n\n\n10,193\n9,014\n9,500\n5,395\n\n\n\n13,399\n4,711\n4,504\n2,578\n3,713\n3,008\n6,159\n2,056\n2,086\n\n\n\n12,815\n8,347\n\n\n\n10,733\n\n\n\n4,104\n9,696\n9,033\n2,404\n\n\n\n77,234\n40,687\n18,110\n7,384\n9,544\n\n\n\n14,931\n31,134\n8,351\n8,254\n\n\n\n30,153\n18,136\n23,377\n\n\n\n14,297\n18,710\n19,930\n7,799\n\n\n\n 76.4\n250.2\n198.7\n53.5\n30.7\n86.3\n\n\n\n111.75\n141.75\n51.87\n32.35\n   \u2026\n\n\n\n67.9\n       \n\n\n\n    22.7 \n32.3\n65.5\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3.71\n\n\n\nSelangor\n\n\n\nNegri                  \nSembilan\n\n\n\nPahang\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nState\nMales Females Total Males Females Total\n\n\n\nTotal \nincrease\nper cent\n\n\n\nTotal \ndecrease \nper cent\n\n\n\n1891 1901\nDistrict\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n               Very little can be gathered from this table as no reliable returns were taken in Selangor,    \n       Negri Sembilan and Pahang in 1891. \n              In Perak there is a very satisfactory increase of 3,936 Chinese and 2,441 Tamils under     \n       15 years of age, which is some little evidence of the population becoming more settled.\n12.  In the following table is exhibited the total area of each State and the Federated Malay \n       States in square miles and the number of population per square mile at the Census in 1891  \n       and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n7372\n\n\n\nEuropeans  \nEurasians   \nChinese      \nMalays, etc. \nTamils, etc. \nOther Races\nFloating Population\nPrisoners    \n\n\n\nEuropeans \nEurasians   \nChinese      \nMalays, etc. \nTamils, etc. \nOther Races\nFloating Population\nPrisoners \n\n\n\nEuropeans    \nEurasians   \nChinese        \nMalays, etc. \nTamils, etc. \nOther Races \nFloating Population  \nPrisoners   \nTotal \u2026\n \n\n\n\nSelangor\n\n\n\n190\n167\n\n\n\n50,844\n26,578\n3,592\n\n\n\n221\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n61\n68\n\n\n\n15,391\n48,480\n\n\n\n1,117\n102\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n102\n41\n\n\n\n3,241\n53,104\n\n\n\n583\n373\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n418,509\n\n\n\n413\n369\n\n\n\n102,869\n27,323\n14,746\n\n\n\n530\n869\n313\n\n\n\n122\n180\n\n\n\n31,945\n33,854\n4,799\n\n\n\n158\n50\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n122\n34\n\n\n\n8,437\n45,709\n1,156\n\n\n\n382\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n543,885\n\n\n\n74\n207\n\n\n\n5,899\n13,061\n2,002\n\n\n\n83\n30\n1\n\n\n\n18\n129\n956\n\n\n\n23,063\n727\n27\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n12\n12\n\n\n\n258\n26,356\n\n\n\n71\n167\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n133,313\n\n\n\n 487\n576\n\n\n\n108,768\n40,384\n16,748\n\n\n\n613\n899\n314\n\n\n\n140\n309\n\n\n\n32,901\n56,917\n5,526\n\n\n\n185\n50\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n134\n46\n\n\n\n8,695\n*73,462\n\n\n\n1,227\n549\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n678,595\n\n\n\n   297\n409\n\n\n\n57,924\n13,806\n13,156\n\n\n\n392\n899\n314\n\n\n\n79\n241\n\n\n\n17,510\n8,437\n4,409\n\n\n\n83\n50\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n32\n5\n\n\n\n5,454\n20,358\n\n\n\n644\n176\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n260,086\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNegri\nSembilan\n\n\n\nPahang\n\n\n\nState Over \n15\n\n\n\nUnder \n15\n\n\n\nTotal\npersons\n\n\n\n1891 1901\nRace Over \n\n\n\n15\nUnder \n\n\n\n15\nTotal\n\n\n\npersons\nOver \n15\n\n\n\nUnder \n15\n\n\n\nTotal\npersons\n\n\n\nIncrease\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n* Includes 1,397 sex not given.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n              It is noteworthy that there is an increase of 10 persons to the square mile in the \n       Federated Malay States since the last Census and that the largest increase (27 persons to  \n       the square mile) is in Selangor. \n13.  The density of the population at the Census of 1901 in each district in each State is shown  \n       in the following table: \u2014\n\n\n\n7372\n\n\n\nPerak    \nSelangor    \nNegri Sembilan     \nPahang   \n        Total for the Federated Malay States   \n\n\n\nState Increase\n\n\n\n6,500\n3,200\n2,600\n\n\n\n    14,000\n 26,300\n\n\n\n       33\n        25\n\n\n\n    25\n4\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\n           50\n       52\n       37\n        6\n      26    \n\n\n\n17\n27\n12\n  2\n10  \n\n\n\nArea in \nsquare miles 1891 1901\n\n\n\nNumber of population to square mile\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n \n\u2026  \n  \n\n\n\nLarut           \nMatang      \nSelama       \nKinta          \nKrian         \nKuala Kangsar     \nLower Perak      \nBatang Padang     \nUpper Perak         \nNew Territory      \nKuala Lumpur    \nUlu Selangor       \nKlang                  \nKuala Langat       \nKuala Selangor    \nUlu Langat           \nSeremban     \nCoast            \nJelebu           \nKuala Pilah          \nTampin      \nUlu Pahang         \nTemerloh     \nPekan          \nKuantan     \n\n\n\n   330\n   300\n   280\n   710\n   200\n1,550\n1,080\n1,030\n   390\n   680\n   380\n   730\n   330\n   500\n  800\n  460\n     \n\n\n\n6,000\n3,000\n4,000\n1,000        \n\n\n\n26,300\n\n\n\n 42,474\n 14,380\n   3,615\n122,737\n 48,196\n 37,112\n 30,117\n 22,906\n   3,921\n   2,837\n 77,234\n 40,687\n 18,110\n   7,384\n   9,544\n  14,931\n  31,134         \n    8,351\n    8,254\n  30,153\n  18,136\n  37,674\n  18,710\n  19,930\n    7,799    \n677,731\n\n\n\n128.70\n  47.93\n  12.91\n172.86\n240.98\n  23.94\n  27.88\n  22.23\n  10.05\n   4.17\n203.2\n  55.7\n  54.9\n  14.4\n  11.9\n  32.4\n\n\n\n  6.3\n  6.2\n  5.0\n  7.0\n25.7\n\n\n\nState Area in square miles PopulationDistrict Population per \nsquare mile\n\n\n\nSelangor \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNegri\nSembilan\n\n\n\nPahang    \u2026\n\n\n\nFederated Malay States grand total    \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPerak      \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2,600 Boundaries \nnot surveyed\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026   \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026   \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026   \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n  \n\n\n\n \u2026 \n\n\n\n \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n14.  The statement below shows the districts with the largest area and the number of population  \n       to the square mile, 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n15.  The following statement shows the districts with the greatest density of population: \u2014\n\n\n\n16.  The following table exhibits the distribution of the main races in each district in each State  \n       in the Federated Malay States in 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n7574\n\n\n\nKrian          \nKuala Lumpur     \nKinta        \nLarut        \n\n\n\nDistrict\n\n\n\n200\n380\n710\n330\n\n\n\n240.98\n203.20\n172.86\n128.70\n\n\n\nNumber of population to\nsquare mileNumber of square miles\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\nUlu Pahang        \nPekan                \nTemerloh         \nKuala Kangsar  \nLower Perak      \nBatang Padang  \n\n\n\nDistrict\n\n\n\n6,000\n4,000\n3,000\n1,550\n1,080\n1,030\n\n\n\n          6.3\n5.0\n6.2\n\n\n\n23.94\n27.88\n22.23\n\n\n\nNumber of population to\nsquare mileNumber of square miles\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\nLarut        \nMatang     \nKuala Kangsar          \nUpper Perak             \nKinta       \nLower Perak              \nBatang Padang          \nKrian        \nSelama     \nNew Territory          \n                                  Total  \nKuala Lumpur       \nUlu Selangor          \nKlang   \nKuala Langat        \nKuala Selangor   \nUlu Langat         \n                                  Total \n\n\n\nDistrict\n\n\n\n10,580\n  7,508\n27,954\n  3,006\n18,273\n23,600\n 7,387\n28,705 \n  3,372\n\n\n\n      1,085\n  131,470\n\n\n\n7,436\n5,581\n5,604\n3,947\n7,303\n\n\n\n      4,149\n    34,020\n\n\n\nState Malays\n\n\n\n24,401\n 5,045\n 5,133\n    205\n\n\n\n    93,003\n 3,705\n 9,461\n 9,135\n   130   \n\n\n\n           21\n  150,239\n\n\n\n60,627\n31,880\n  5,567\n  1,843\n  1,493\n\n\n\n      7,624\n109,034\n\n\n\nChinese\n\n\n\n5,361\n1,934\n2,475\n   140\n6,284\n2,259\n2,693\n9,809\n    71\n\n\n\n\u2026\n31,026\n6,449\n1,891\n3,685\n\n\n\n342\n 440\n\n\n\n2,694\n15,501\n\n\n\nIndians *\n\n\n\n1,076\n58\n\n\n\n164\n12\n\n\n\n1,984\n73\n\n\n\n203\n164\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n3,734\n704\n387\n84\n12\n4\n\n\n\n 81\n1,272\n\n\n\nOther Races\n\n\n\n1,021\n  515\n1,681\n 189\n\n\n\n2,808\n\n\n\n  37\n      1,731\n\n\n\n7,982\n219\n470\n172\n899\n   1\n\n\n\n         114\n 1,875\n\n\n\nAborigines\n\n\n\nPerak      \u2026\n\n\n\nSelangor \u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n  \n\u2026 \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n  \n\n\n\n \n  \n\u2026  \n  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n \n  \n\u2026  \n  \n  \n\n\n\n \n\u2026  \n  \n  \n \n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n* This includes Tamils, Singhalese and all other natives of India.\n+ Exclusive of floating population and prisoners.\n\n\n\n \n17.  It is to be noted that the Chinese figure the largest in the great mining districts of Kinta,  \n       Larut, Kuala Lumpur, Ulu Selangor and Seremban.\n              The Malays show the largest population in the agricultural districts of Krian, Kuala            \n        Kangsar, Lower Perak, Kuala Pilah, Tampin, Ulu Pahang, Temerloh and Pekan.\n              Out of all the main races the Tamils and other natives of India are the most evenly  \n       distributed, being found in fair numbers in nearly all the chief districts. They bulk  \n       largest in Krian, Kinta, Kuala Lumpur and Seremban.\n18.  The following table exhibits the distribution of the population according to race in the  \n       chief towns and villages in the Federated Malay States in 1891 and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\nTaiping    \nKamunting       \nMatang   \nPort Weld         \nKuala Kangsar  \nPadang Rengas \nBagan Serai      \nParit Buntar      \nKuala Kurau    \n\n\n\n781\n9\n\n\n\n117\n176\n167\n120\n386\n175\n511\n\n\n\n7,972\n706\n261\n193\n514\n136\n652\n630\n330\n\n\n\n3,874\n13\n\n\n\n231\n129\n441\n450\n884\n691\n139\n\n\n\n704\n\u2026\n\n\n\n4\n26\n35\n1\n\n\n\n20\n70\n14\n\n\n\n13,331\n     728\n\n\n\n 613\n524\n\n\n\n1,157\n707\n\n\n\n1,942\n1,566\n\n\n\n994\n\n\n\n2,608\n1,289\n\n\n\n952\n\n\n\n881\n\n\n\nPerak\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n 205\n    \n\n\n\n685\n\n\n\n1,880\n676\n\n\n\nState\nMalays Chinese Indians* Other    \n\n\n\nRaces 1901 1891\n\n\n\n1901 Total population\nDistrict\n\n\n\n1901\n\n\n\nIncrease Decrease\nTown or Village\n\n\n\nLarut     \u2026   \u2026\n\n\n\nMatang   \u2026    \u2026\n \nKuala \nKangsar\u2026\n\n\n\nKrian     \u2026    \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n7574\n\n\n\nSeremban \nCoast     \nJelebu    \nKuala Pilah   \nTampin          \n                                   Total\n                         Kuala Lipis     \n                         Raub and Bentong \n                  \n\n\n\nTemerloh            \nPekan                   \nKuantan              \n                                   Total  \n\n\n\n8,777\n 3,036\n 3,418\n24,313\n15,157\n54,701\n19,085\n8,396\n\n\n\n17,029\n16,030\n5,031\n\n\n\n65,571\n285,762\n\n\n\n17,683\n  3,968\n 4,279\n 4,690\n2,311\n\n\n\n32,931\n1,284\n4,241\n\n\n\n    61\n  791\n2,318\n8,695\n\n\n\n300,899\n\n\n\n3,369\n873\n\n\n\n   185\n   331\n\n\n\n349\n5,107\n\n\n\n225\n530\n\n\n\n  \n 5\n\n\n\n101\n57\n\n\n\n918     \n52,552\n\n\n\n310\n   28\n   37\n   33\n\n\n\n 11\n419\n 168\n   89\n\n\n\n   \n 1\n\n\n\n  57\n  20\n335\n\n\n\n5,760\n\n\n\n157\n174\n125\n700\n221\n\n\n\n1,377\n2,467\n   669\n\n\n\n1,598\n2,391\n\n\n\n215\n7,340\n\n\n\n18,574\n\n\n\n     Negri \n  Sembilan\n\n\n\nPahang \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026   \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026    \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDistrictState Malays Chinese Indians * Other Races Aborigines\n\n\n\nUlu Pahang\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGrand totals + \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare 7776\n\n\n\nIpoh      \nKampar   \nBatu Gajah    \nMenglembu     \nLahat     \nGopeng  \nPapan    \nTeluk Anson   \nTapah   \nTemoh   \nBidor     \nKuala Lumpur \nSungei Besi     \nSerendah  \nRawang   \nKuala Kubu     \nRasa       \nKlang     \nKuala Langat   \nSepang   \nKuala Selangor  \nKajang    \nSemenyih \nSeremban  \nMantin     \nAmpangan \nGedong Lalang\nRasah      \nPantai     \nPort Dickson    \nPengkalan Kempas\nKuala Klawang \nTiti          \nKuala Pilah       \nJohol       \nTampin     \n\n\n\n1,359\n378\n690\n10\n27\n\n\n\n522\n51\n\n\n\n744\n446\n150\n101\n\n\n\n3,727\n  36\n405\n219\n 368\n\n\n\n75\n650\n144\n\n\n\n      46\n     89\n    228\n    117\n\n\n\n873\n113\n236\n17\n\n\n\n184\n220\n207\n87\n\n\n\n497\n39\n\n\n\n2,438\n33\n45\n\n\n\n9,067\n5,056\n1,700\n3,105\n2,397\n1,983\n2,211\n1,618\n\n\n\n897\n572\n347\n\n\n\n23,181\n3,576\n4,564\n3,639\n1,851\n\n\n\n652\n1,976\n\n\n\n104\n500\n142\n\n\n\n1,167\n240\n\n\n\n2,379\n934\n24\n\n\n\n290\n460\n\n\n\n6\n765\n126\n339\n883\n570\n86\n62\n\n\n\n1,917\n411\n705\n67\n99\n\n\n\n597\n165\n679\n838\n80\n\n\n\n142\n4,435\n\n\n\n124\n251\n106\n381\n43\n\n\n\n784\n38\n9\n\n\n\n92\n544\n75\n\n\n\n1,256\n14\n26\n11\n16\n29\n\n\n\n296\n2\n\n\n\n83\n\u2026\n\n\n\n126\n1\n\n\n\n52\n\n\n\n448\n62\n\n\n\n166\n11\n7\n\n\n\n55\n14\n93\n63\n4\n\n\n\n20\n1,038\n\n\n\n20\n138\n51\n43\n5\n\n\n\n166\n9\n\n\n\n11\n15\n\n\n\n600\n  \u2026\n257\n\n\n\n7\n5\n\n\n\n\u2026\n2\n\n\n\n\u2026\n120\n91\n18\n6\n\n\n\n72\n1\n\n\n\n11\n\n\n\n12,791\n5,907\n3,261\n3,193\n2,530\n3,157\n2,441\n3,134\n2,244\n\n\n\n806\n610\n\n\n\n32,381\n3,756\n5,358\n4,015\n2,643\n\n\n\n775\n3,576\n\n\n\n295\n566\n338\n\n\n\n1,999\n432\n\n\n\n4,765\n1,068\n\n\n\n291\n318\n662\n255\n\n\n\n1,388\n306\n937\n928\n\n\n\n3,206\n121\n170\n\n\n\n3,184\n\n\n\n2,135\n\n\n\n2,870\n\n\n\n1,630\n\n\n\n19,020\n\n\n\n9,607\n\n\n\n1,126\n\n\n\n287\n\n\n\n614\n\n\n\n13,361\n\n\n\nKinta     \u2026       \u2026\n\n\n\nLower Perak    \u2026\n\n\n\nBatang Padang\u2026\n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur \u2026\n\n\n\nUlu Selangor   \u2026\n\n\n\nKlang    \u2026      \u2026\n\n\n\nKuala Langat  \u2026\n\n\n\nKuala Selangor\u2026\n\n\n\nUlu Langat      \u2026\n\n\n\nSeremban        \u2026\n\n\n\nCoast     \u2026      \u2026\n\n\n\nJelebu   \u2026       \u2026\n\n\n\nKuala Pilah     \u2026\n\n\n\nTampin  \u2026      \u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSelangor\n\n\n\nNegri \nSembilan\n\n\n\nState\nMalays Chinese Indians* Other    \n\n\n\nRaces 1901 1891\n\n\n\n1901 Total population\nDistrict\n\n\n\n1901\n\n\n\nIncrease Decrease\nTown or Village\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n  \n \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n* This includes Tamils, Singhalese and all other Indians.\n\n\n\n19.  The total population of the five leading towns is shown below: \u2014\n\n\n\n   * Returns incomplete.\n\n\n\n20.  The Chinese mining population resides chiefly in the following towns: \u2014\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPahang\n\n\n\nState\nMalays Chinese Indians* Other    \n\n\n\nRaces\n1901 1891\n\n\n\n1901 Total population\nDistrict\n\n\n\n1901\n\n\n\nIncrease Decrease\nTown or Village\n\n\n\nKuala Lipis      \nRaub        \nTras         \nTranum   \nBentong    \nPekan Bharu     \nKuala Kuantan   \n\n\n\n  370\n226\n207\n140\n95\n\n\n\n110\n465\n\n\n\n439\n439\n239\n121\n345\n239\n226\n\n\n\n286\n165\n15\n27\n69\n\n\n\n116\n27\n\n\n\n47\n24\n4\n\n\n\n\u2026\n13\n21\n7\n\n\n\n1,142\n854\n465\n288\n522\n486\n725\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUlu Pahang \u2026\n\n\n\nPekan    \u2026  \u2026\nKuantan\u2026  \u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n \u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\nPerak       \n\n\n\nSelangor   \nNegri Sembilan \nPahang     \n\n\n\nState\nDecrease\n\n\n\n  3,184\n13,304\n19,020\n\n\n\n*\n*\n\u2026\n\n\n\n  12,791\n13,331\n32,381\n  4,765\n  1,142\n\n\n\n  64,410\n\n\n\n9,607\n27\n\n\n\n13,361\n\n\n\n*\n*\n\n\n\n1891 1901\n\n\n\nCensus\n\n\n\nIncrease\n\n\n\nCensus, 1901\n Town\n\n\n\nIpoh         \nTaiping    \nKuala Lumpur   \nSeremban          \nKuala Lipis       \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTotal population of the five towns      \u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\nIpoh           \nTaiping       \nKampar      \nLahat         \nPapan       \nKuala Lumpur        \nSungei Besi               \nSerendah                \nRawang                     \nKuala Kubu           \nSeremban                 \nMantin                    \nTiti                        \nKuala Pilah               \nKuala Klawang       \nRasa\n\n\n\nPerak       \u2026     \u2026\n\n\n\nSelangor  \u2026     \u2026\n\n\n\nNegri Sembilan\u2026\n\n\n\n      9,067\n  7,972\n  5,056\n  2,397\n  2,211\n23,181\n  3,576\n  4,564\n  3,639\n  1,851\n  2,379\n     934\n     883\n     570\n     339\n    460\n\n\n\nNumber of Chinese mining population\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n7776\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n21.  The towns in which the Chinese agricultural population reside are roughly as follows: \u2014\n\n\n\n22.  The places where the Malay population is most largely gathered together living in towns  \n       are as follows: \u2014\n\n\n\nPort Dickson and           \nPengkalan Kempas         \nTampin      \nNil\n\n\n\nNegri Sembilan\n\n\n\nPahang \n\n\n\n       765\n   126\n     62\n    Nil\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBagan Serai       \nParit Buntar           \nTeluk Anson         \nSepang       \n\n\n\nPerak      \n\n\n\nSelangor \n\n\n\n    652\n   630\n1,618\n   500\n\n\n\nNumber of Chinese \nagricultural population\n\n\n\n \n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\nIpoh          \nTeluk Anson      \nBatu Gajah           \nGopeng                 \nKuala Kurau         \nTapah               \nBagan Serai          \nKuala Lumpur      \nKlang         \nSerendah  \nKajang     \nKuala Pilah           \nSeremban \nKuala Klawang        \nPort Dickson         \nAmpangan             \nKuala Kuantan       \nKuala Lipis             \nRaub     \n\n\n\nPerak      \u2026       \u2026\n\n\n\nSelangor \u2026       \u2026\n\n\n\nNegri Sembilan \u2026\n\n\n\nPahang   \u2026       \u2026\n\n\n\n 1,359\n   744\n   690\n   522\n   511\n   446\n   386\n3,727\n   650\n   405\n    228\n2,438\n   873\n   497\n   207\n   236\n   465\n   370\n   226\n\n\n\nNumber of Malay population \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n  \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n7978\n\n\n\nRaub          \nBentong     \nKuantan     \nTras          \n\n\n\nPahang    \u2026    \u2026\n\n\n\n   439\n   345\n   226\n   239\n\n\n\nNumber of Chinese mining population\n\n\n\n \u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n23.  Nearly all the industrial Tamil and Indian population is centred in the largest towns as         \n       follows: \u2014\n\n\n\n24.  The agricultural Tamil population is largest in the following towns: \u2014 \n\n\n\n25.  Practically speaking, no returns were taken at the Census of 1891 of the population of the  \n       greater numbers of these towns, so that it is impossible to show the increases or decreases  \n       except in a few instances in Perak.\n26.  The Census of the Federated Malay States, 1901, is a striking one.\n              The total population has now reached 678,595 persons and shows an increase of  \n       38.3% over the Census of 1891.\n27.  The Census returns for the Colonies of the Straits Settlements and Hongkong show       \n       increased populations of 73,020 and 59,902, respectively.\n              During the last ten years the population of the Federated Malay States has increased \n       by leaps and bounds.\n28.  Since 1891, the population of the Federated Malay States has increased at a rate greater  \n       than that of the Straits Settlements by 200,184 persons and at a rate greater than that of \n       Hongkong by 187,066 persons.\n29.  These great increases are all due to the rapid development and expansion of the great \n       tin-industry of the Peninsula, to the employment by Government of large numbers of \n       labourers in building railways, roads and public works, and to the steady growth of the  \n       planting and agricultural classes. During 1894, 1895 and 1896 Chinese immigration \n       remained almost stationary and did little more than balance Chinese emigration. With the  \n       phenomenal rise in the price of tin from 1898 up to date, the day wages of the Chinese \n       miner rose from about 30 cents in 1896 to 45 cents in 1898 and to 70 and 80 cents in 1899. \n       This abnormally high wage immensely stimulated the flow of Chinese immigration, and  \n\n\n\n7978\n\n\n\nBagan Serai         \nParit Buntar         \nTeluk Anson         \nKlang          \nKajang        \nPort Dickson         \nKuala Pilah       \n\n\n\nPerak           \n\n\n\nSelangor      \n\n\n\nNegri Sembilan  \n\n\n\n   884\n691\n679\n784\n544\n296\n126\n\n\n\nTamil agricultural population\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\nTaiping               \nIpoh                   \nKuala Lumpur   \nSeremban                              \nKuala Lipis           \n\n\n\n         Perak\n\n\n\nSelangor    \nNegri Sembilan  \nPahang      \n\n\n\n 3,874\n1,917\n4,435\n1,256\n\n\n\n286\n\n\n\nTamils, etc.\n\n\n\n \u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHare\n\n\n\n       it is calculated that approximately no less than 100,000 adult Chinese arrived in the \n       Federated Malay States from China and the Colony of the Straits Settlements between \n       the beginning of 1899 and the end of 1900.\n30.  Perhaps the most striking figures of the Census for 1901 are those that show that in the two      \n       premier States, where most of the tin-mining is found, the Chinese now outnumber the \n       native Malays proper by 18,348 in Perak and 74,771 in Selangor; or, in other words, \n       the combined returns of these two large States show that the Chinese now outnumber \n       the native Malays there by 93,119.\n31.  On the other hand, the Malays in Negri Sembilan and Pahang outnumber the Chinese in  \n       each State by 21,782 and 56,876, respectively.\n              The point, however, has now been reached when the total number of the Chinese \n       population in the Federated Malay States has passed that of the Malays.\n32.  In the Federated Malay States the total number of Chinese persons in 1891 was 163,821;  \n       the Malays then numbered 217,065 persons, or 53,244 persons more than the Chinese.\n33.  In the Federated Malay States to-day the Federal Census of 1901 shows that the Chinese  \n       number 299,739 persons as against the Malays 285,278 persons, or a difference of 14,461  \n       persons in favour of the Chinese race.\n              Or, in other words, since 1891 the Chinese have increased by 136,310 persons \n      and the Malays by 68,864 persons only.\n34.  The total male and female Malay population has increased by 80,314* persons (males  \n       41,567, females 37,068), or equal to a total increase of 38.9%.\n35.  It is satisfactory to record that since the last Census was taken the increase of the Malay  \n       race has been steady, that there are no counter-balancing decreases, and that the increase in  \n       the Malay population is far more uniformly distributed than that of the Chinese and other  \n       races.\n               The number of foreign Malays from Java, Sumatra, Kedah, etc., has increased by 8,634, \n       the Javanese alone having increased by 7,529. The returns further show that there is         \n       little tendency on the part of the aboriginal Sakais and Simangs to decrease. The aboriginals  \n       altogether now number 18,574 persons.\n36.  As compared with other races living here, the Malay population is a settled agricultural  \n       one which depends chiefly on natural increases rather than on accessions of strength from  \n       without. Much as been said by some distinguished medical authorities here about the great  \n       mortality prevalent amongst the Malay population in general and amongst the Malays \n       of tender years in particular.\n               The facts and statistics of the present Census, however, certainly do not appear to \n       warrant these theories, but it may be possible that if there were not so much infant mortality  \n       as there is alleged to be the Malay population would increase even more rapidly than it is  \n       doing now.\n\n\n\n        * Includes 1,679 persons whose age and sex were not given.\n\n\n\n8180\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Census of the Federated Malay States\n\n\n\n37.  The following table shows the increases amongst the native Malays in each State in 1891        \n       and 1901: \u2014\n\n\n\n         \n              It is to be noted that there is a very large increase in Perak, due no doubt to the great \n       prosperity and well being of the Malays there, and that the Malays of Negri Sembilan \n       outnumber the Malays in Selangor by 20,686. In short, Selangor is, as far as population \n       goes, now much more a Chinese Colony than a Malay State, the Chinese now alone \n       outnumbering the Malays there by 74,771 persons.\n38.  It is gratifying to be able to record a very considerable increase amongst the Tamil settlers  \n       in the Federated Malay States.\n              They have increased from 17,464 persons in 1891 to 52,477 persons at the present \n       Census, this being a total increase of 35,013 persons.\n39.  The table given below shows the increases in the Tamil population in each State: \u2014\n       \n\n\n\n          \n              As the Tamils and other Indians are among the very few British subjects of alien extract \n       resident in the Federated Malay States, their increase is cause for congratulation.\n\n\n\nNote: Figures in italics indicate computational errors in the original text.\nSource: George Thompson Hare, Census of the Federated Malays States,1901, Kuala Lumpur, 1901: 21-31.\n\n\n\n131,027\n33,997\n54,683\n65,571\n\n\n\n285,278\n\n\n\nPerak        \nSelangor   \nNegri Sembilan \nPahang \n                                                   Total \n\n\n\n34,911\n10,247\n  8,614\n15,062\n68,834\n\n\n\nIncrease\n96,116\n23,750\n46,069\n50,509         \n\n\n\n216,444\n\n\n\n19011891State\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n30,976\n15,476\n 5,107\n    918\n52,477\n\n\n\nPerak        \nSelangor  \nNegri Sembilan \nPahang     \n                                                   Total\n\n\n\n17,913\n12,394\n4,144\n\n\n\n562       \n35,013\n\n\n\nIncrease\n13,063\n3,082\n\n\n\n963\n356\n\n\n\n17,464\n\n\n\n19011891State\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n8180\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n* Dr. Voon Phin Keong is Director of the Institute of Malaysian and Regional Studies, New Era \nCollege, Selangor. E-mail: phinkeong.voon@newera.edu.my\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 101-118\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises:    \nThe Malaysian Chinese Experience\n\n\n\nVOON Phin Keong*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThe Chinese are well known for their hard work and enterprise. Self-reliant and resourceful, the \nChinese in Malaysia have always pursued their interests in what they perceive as financially rewarding \nand personally fulfilling enterprises. This paper discusses two new enterprises that are distinctive for \ntheir uniqueness and boldness. These are the breeding of the Asian arowana and the keeping of swiftlets \nfor their edible nests. These products are high-value items that have their respective niche markets. The \nhistory of both is of recent origin. Yet each is, in its own way and from the very beginning, a bold and \ninnovative enterprise in its specialization and in the exploitation of local resources.\n\n\n\nThe foresight and innovative spirit of the pioneer entrepreneurs in these enterprises have exploited \nbusiness opportunities that are, to the average person, generally beyond the range of commercial \npossibilities. More significant is that these entrepreneurs have shown that, with their unyielding spirit \nof enterprise and resourcefulness, it is possible to transform the unthinkable into thriving businesses.\n\n\n\nKey words: Chinese entrepreneurs, swiftlet nest farming, arowana fish breeding, business insights\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nThe swiftlet or bird\u2019s nest is a high-value project that may be \nworked by Malay and other Bumiputera entrepreneurs. Another \nenterprise is the growing of seaweeds for export. Another industry \nis the Arowana fish that has been listed in the Stock Exchange. \n\n\n\n(Datuk Seri Najib Razak, 29 March 2009) \n\n\n\nThe Chinese overseas determine their own future by trying endlessly to improve \n\n\n\nthemselves, be self-reliant and resourceful in the spirit of xiqiang buxi or seeking self-\n\n\n\nadvancement through unremitting efforts. In their desire to improve their livelihood, \n\n\n\nthey would attempt what they perceive as financially rewarding and personally fulfilling \nendeavours. They have indeed accomplished much success in a variety of activities at different \n\n\n\ntimes and in different places. In the arena of commerce and trade, they have pioneered many \n\n\n\ntraditional as well as totally new enterprises. In all these cases, the underlying factor has been \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n102          Voon\n\n\n\nthe readiness to seize opportunities wherever and whenever they present themselves.\n\n\n\nThis paper discusses two types of unusual enterprises that have recently been pioneered \n\n\n\nby enterprising individuals in Malaysia. These are concerned with fish and birds that are \nfound in Malaysia, one that is too exotic and the other too commonplace to be conceived \n\n\n\nas candidates for viable businesses. Yet the entrepreneurs have the foresight and conviction \n\n\n\nto turn them into uncommon products to stand as pioneers of new and thriving enterprises.1 \n\n\n\nThe paper will examine the special circumstances surrounding the development of these \n\n\n\nenterprises and the factors that lead to their subsequent transformation into new business \n\n\n\nundertakings. It will then discuss some general features concerning these new activities in \n\n\n\norder to gain a better understanding of the nature of business enterprise in general and that of \n\n\n\nthe Chinese in particular. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese Overseas and Their Participation in Business \n\n\n\nThe Chinese give the impression of possessing a natural flair for doing business \nand Chinese communities overseas are often seen as the epitome of entrepreneurship. As \n\n\n\nmerchants and businessmen, they have often been criticised for their \u201cdomination\u201d of local \n\n\n\neconomies and thus aroused resentment from quarters ranging from the local communities \n\n\n\nto international organizations.2 Yet their role as founders of new enterprises has often been \n\n\n\noverlooked as they put their initiatives and resourcefulness to advantage in creating businesses \n\n\n\nout of unlikely quarters. \n\n\n\nIn the unfamiliar situations in different territories in which the average Chinese \n\n\n\nimmigrant has settled down, often under difficult circumstances, the struggle for survival \nhas indeed been a game of pitting self against the environment and competitors. Many early \n\n\n\nimmigrants were forced into jobs pre-determined by their contracts as indentured labourers. \n\n\n\nAway from China, they were deprived of access to bureaucratic appointments and their most \n\n\n\nimmediate task was to overcome various situational circumstances in the struggle for survival \n\n\n\nand to seize upon any opportunity that could secure their survival. Sociological factors and \n\n\n\ncultural background may ease the entry into business. The sociological factors include past \n\n\n\nexperiences of the Chinese in commerce and trade and the handling of money. The positive \n\n\n\ntraits of the Chinese such as being hardworking, resourceful and thrifty would come into play \n\n\n\nwhenever new opportunities arise. Culture as a motivational force is manifested by such traits \n\n\n\nas the indomitable spirit and unremitting efforts of the average Chinese for self-improvement \n\n\n\n(see Voon, 2001).\n\n\n\nOther than hired employment in the ports, mines and plantations, trade and commerce, \n\n\n\nand in the services, many early Chinese arrivals sought ways for self-employment of which \n\n\n\nthe most common was in petty trade. Then as now, a simple way to earn a living was to \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          103\n\n\n\nprepare food and various other edible items for sale. Southeast Asian cities abound with \n\n\n\nhawkers and peddlers who ply their wares in busy town centres, the streets and verandas of \n\n\n\nshop-houses, or by the many side lanes. Hawkers work from their ubiquitous stalls in coffee \n\n\n\nshop-houses offering an array of noodle, rice and other edible dishes. Their ranks are further \n\n\n\nswelled by itinerant peddlers of food or other goods and services. One writer (McGee, 1976) \n\n\n\ncalled this army of petty traders the \u201cproto-proletariat\u201d. They form a bloated \u201cinformal\u201d sector \n\n\n\ncomprising the self-employed and under-employed. \n\n\n\nMore specialized and capital-intensive than petty trade, but still with a relatively low \n\n\n\nbarrier to entry, are the retail shops and stores. Retailing is simply the resale of new and \n\n\n\nused goods for personal and household consumption. This takes place in shops, department \n\n\n\nstores, stalls, auction and mail-order houses and co-operatives (DSM, 2003). In 2001, there \n\n\n\nwere 153,660 retail establishments in Malaysia. Among them were 491 major stores owned \n\n\n\nby foreigners and 35 were Malaysian-foreigner ventures. All except the major ones are \n\n\n\nsmall family businesses. A quarter was run as a \u201cone-man\u201d show, while a third involved \n\n\n\ntwo persons and 17 per cent were worked by three persons. These small establishments \n\n\n\nprovided employment to 76 per cent of the workforce in retail trade, involving 512,185 \n\n\n\npersons altogether or an average of 3.3 persons per establishment (DSM, 2003: 127). Total \n\n\n\nrevenue of the entire sector amounted to RM71,651 million in 2001. After deducting the cost \n\n\n\nof goods sold and other expenditures of RM63,676 million, and RM3,149 million in salaries \n\n\n\nand wages, a balance of only RM4,826 million was left, which worked out as RM31,407 per \n\n\n\nestablishment or RM2,617 per month (DSM, 2003: 130).3 \n\n\n\nThe Genesis of Uncommon Enterprises\n\n\n\nBesides ubiquitous businesses such as petty trade, there are a few less common ones. \n\n\n\nAmong them are the breeding of the rare Asian arowana (Scleropages formosus) and the \n\n\n\nkeeping of swiftlets (A. Fuciphagus and related species). Both are attempts to commercialize \n\n\n\nbiological processes, one concerning the breeding of fish in captivity and the other in attracting \nswiftlets to nest in built structures. \n\n\n\nIn the Eighth Malaysian Plan 2000-2005, ornamental fish, seaweed and floriculture were \nidentified as \u201cnew sources of growth\u201d in the agricultural sector. This attention has been reiterated \nin the Ninth Malaysia Plan 2006-2010 which encourages the private sector to participate \n\n\n\nin these new businesses. The government is to provide extension service, incentives, basic \n\n\n\ninfrastructure, marketing facilities, downstream processing, and to strengthen \u201cmarketing and \n\n\n\nglobal networking\u201d (Malaysia, 2006: 86, 89-92). Strangely, edible birds\u2019 nests did not feature \n\n\n\nin the radar screen of the broad official purview then.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n104          Voon\n\n\n\nThe breeding and supply of ornamental fish and the production of birds\u2019 nests are unusual \nenterprises that fall outside the vision and consciousness of all but the bold and discerning \n\n\n\nentrepreneurs. Those who dare are individuals who realize the commercial possibilities and \n\n\n\nthe market potential of these enterprises. Through perseverance and the belief in themselves, \n\n\n\nmany have built up viable businesses to occupy special niches in the economy. Both are \n\n\n\ntherefore the fruits of efforts that are independent of official assistance. \nSignificantly, the entrepreneurs regard these undertakings as the commercial production \n\n\n\nof highly-priced \u201ccommodities\u201d for the local and export markets rather than new forms of \n\n\n\nfarming. Yet, in having to deal with \u201cwild\u201d and endangered species found in nature, these \n\n\n\nenterprises involve \u201cdomestication\u201d processes that differ radically from the manufacturing or \n\n\n\nthe retailing of finished goods.\n\n\n\nOrnamental Fish Breeding: A Success Story \n\n\n\nMalaysia\u2019s trade in ornamental fish began in the 1950s with the marketing to Singapore \nof fish caught in the wild. This relatively new sector has experienced a healthy trend of \ngrowth since then. During the Eighth Malaysian Plan period, the sector produced 438 million \n\n\n\ntails with a market value of RM103 million (Malaysia, 2006: 86). With up to 600 varieties of \n\n\n\nornamental fish to satisfy the interests of hobbyists worldwide, this is a trade that will grow in \ntandem with rising affluence. Malaysia is now the world\u2019s largest producer and second largest \nexporter of ornamental fish for which the major markets are the United States, Japan and the \nEuropean Union. At the global level, the Food and Agricultural Organization has estimated \n\n\n\nthat the trade is worth US$15 billion (Loh, 2007). \n\n\n\nThe Malaysian ornamental fish trade has become a fast-growing business sector. In the \n20 years to 2006, the industry enjoyed an annual rate of growth of 24 per cent (Fish Farmer, \n\n\n\n2006). There are now about 500 aquarium shops in the country (San Sui, 2006). About 550 \n\n\n\nlocal and exotic varieties of ornamental fish comprising more than 250 species are bred in \nMalaysia. In 2006, more than 70 per cent of the production were exported to over 30 countries \n\n\n\nand was worth RM140 million (Fish Farmer, 2006). A local source stated that the world trade \n\n\n\nin ornamental fish was estimated at about RM8.06 billion in 2005, and Malaysia was ranked \nnext to Singapore in global exports (Fish Farmer, 2006). \n\n\n\nAmong the most highly-priced ornamental fish is the Asian arowana, also fondly known \nas the Dragon Fish by the Chinese. The arowana is a living \u201cfossil\u201d that is known for its \n\n\n\nelegance and beauty. It is found only in a few localities but especially in Southeast Asia. In \n\n\n\nMalaysia, its sole natural habitat is the Bukit Merah lake in the northern part of Perak state. \n\n\n\nThe outstanding ornamental fish breeding and export enterprise of Malaysia is of recent \norigin. Its success story reveals an enterprise whose beginning owes as much to serendipitous \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          105\n\n\n\ncircumstances as its subsequent growth is due to the sheer drive and foresight of an unassuming \n\n\n\nman and a company called Xiang Leng that he founded in 1983. This company is now listed in \n\n\n\nthe Malaysian stock exchange with the Asian arowana as its flagship product (XLH, 2003). \nThe origin of this enterprise may be traced to the founder\u2019s love for ornamental fish \n\n\n\nduring his boyhood. Back in 1978, he had begun breeding ornamental fish as a hobby. In 1980 \nhe converted a 0.4ha lot of vacant land in his village in the state of Johor into a fish pond \nand in the process transformed a hobby into a commercial undertaking. The increase in his \n\n\n\nfish stock from his breeding programme soon compelled the search for a market among local \nshops and dealers. In 1983 the establishment of an aquarium in a shop-house registered as \n\n\n\nXiang Leng marked a milestone in his business career. The need to support the new business \n\n\n\ncalled for serious efforts in fish breeding. The company pursued this objective with undivided \nattention and at the same time built up a reputation as a reliable supplier. \n\n\n\nThe 1970s and 1980s coincided with the craze for the keeping of the Asian arowana as a \n\n\n\nhousehold hobby. Fondly referred to as the \u201cfeng shui\u201d (geomancy) fish among the Chinese, \nit was reputed to be a harbinger of good luck and fortune. It was this symbolic connotation \n\n\n\nthat catapulted the fish into a hot favourite in the Chinese business community. Found only \nin a solitary location in the country, the Malaysian arowana is consequently a rare and almost \n\n\n\npriceless possession valued in the thousands of dollars each. Xiang Leng and its founder \n\n\n\nsaw in this special fish very enticing potentials and began to seek supplies from Bukit Merah \nfishermen to add to its aquarium catalogue. \n\n\n\nA number of arowana that Xiang Leng purchased at Bukit Merah lake had shown certain \n\n\n\ndefects and were placed in its pond, in the hope that these defects might disappear as the \n\n\n\nfish grew in size. This well-intentioned move turned out to be a momentous event in the \nsubsequent history of the company. Within 6-12 months it was noted that the arowana had \n\n\n\nspawned a brood of fry. Hitherto, all the arowana sold had been captured in the wild and \n\n\n\nthe idea of breeding this rare fish had never entered the realm of reality. It was this amazing \ndiscovery that led to the idea of breeding the arowana in captivity.\n\n\n\nXiang Leng\u2019s farm was extended to 2ha by 1986, and it was soon followed by a much \n\n\n\nlarger second farm covering 40ha (in Parit Sulong, Batu Pahat) for the specific purpose of \nbreeding the Asian arowana. It soon became clear that the breakthrough in breeding arowana \n\n\n\nwould have limited benefit as the fish could only be supplied to a limited local market. It \nwas the market outside Malaysia that would give real meaning to the breakthrough. Yet the \n\n\n\narowana is an endangered species that comes under the watchful eye of the Convention on \n\n\n\nInternational Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). \n\n\n\nThe first obstacle to attempts in exporting to foreign markets was the need to obtain \nthe approval of the Malaysian Fisheries Department. The Department has to be satisfied that \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n106          Voon\n\n\n\nthe fish has indeed been successfully bred rather than captured. In the early 1990s, fisheries \nofficials were invited to the farm to scrutinize the breeding programme and to confirm the \nscientific claims of the company. Winning the support of the Fisheries Department was \ncrucial in preparing the next move to obtain the approval of CITES to export the fish to the \nworld market. In 1994 the company founder became the first Malaysian, and one of only \ntwo persons in the world then, to receive recognition of CITES and the green light to trade \n\n\n\nin Asian arowana raised from captive commercial breeding (Xiang Leng Holdings Berhad \n\n\n\nwebsite: www.xianleng.com.my, retrieved on 3 June 2009). \n\n\n\nObtaining the CITES permit was a ground-breaking achievement for the company. The \n\n\n\npermit comes with two highly significant implications. The first is that the breeding and sale \nof the arowana is transformed from being an \u201cillegal\u201d operation into a legal export enterprise \n\n\n\nof immense potential. The second is that the company\u2019s business is transformed from being a \n\n\n\nlocal supplier into a global player in a growing market. \n\n\n\nThe award of the CITES permit opened the way for Xiang Leng to embark on the \n\n\n\nnext phase of expansion. In 1998, it became the first company in the fisheries industry \nin Malaysia to be listed in the Malaysian Stock Exchange under the name of Xiang Leng \n\n\n\nHoldings (XLH) (XLH, 2003). Under its control in 2007 were four fully-owned subsidiaries \n\n\n\nspecializing in the commercial breeding of the Asian arowana and other ornamental fishes, \ntrading of aquarium accessories as well as in property holdings (XLH, 2008a). It maintains \n\n\n\nits leading position through a vigorous research and development (R&D) programme and \n\n\n\nby focusing on the arowana niche market. Japan is its major destination where the fish can \nfetch up to US$17,000 each (XLH, 2008b). In 2001, Japan accounted for 65 per cent of \n\n\n\nworldwide sales of the fish (Loo, 2002). \nGuided by its mission to be a first-class breeder and supplier of high value Asian arowana, \n\n\n\nXLH has since achieved a number of \u201cfirsts\u201d. It was the first in the world to produce the Albino \nMalaysian Golden Arowana, the first to be given an additional Special Innovations Award by \nthe Small and Medium Industries Development Corporation of Malaysia for pioneering the \n\n\n\ncommercial breeding of Asian arowana on a commercial basis, and the first in the Malaysian \nfisheries sector to use microchips in tagging fish for permanent identification (XLH, 2003).\n\n\n\nWhat began as a hobby a quarter of a century ago has blossomed into a thriving \n\n\n\nenterprise. Xiang Leng has since embarked on a path of expansion and technical excellence \n\n\n\nbased on a business model driven by continuous research and development to maintain its \n\n\n\nleading position as a breeder and supplier of the Asian arowana and other ornamental fishes \nof unmatched quality (XLH, 2003). Its business now comprises two ornamental fish trading \ncentres and four farms (XLH, 2008a and b). The third farm covers 15.4ha in area and the \n\n\n\nfourth extends over 100ha. This large farm is situated in a modern integrated agricultural \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          107\n\n\n\npark covering 400ha in central Johor state. This park was developed in 2005 as a government \n\n\n\ninitiative to showcase 20 outstanding enterprises in the breeding and production of poultry, \n\n\n\nlivestock, vegetables, fish and other agricultural products. It is to serve as a one-stop centre to \nfacilitate contact between producers and foreign importers (XLH, 2008b). \n\n\n\nSince its listing, XLH has undergone impressive growth. Its annual turnover of RM16 \n\n\n\nmillion in 1998 has trebled to RM49.5 million in 2003 (XLH, 2003 and 2008a). In 2006, \n\n\n\nits turnover of RM45.43 million accounted for 44 per cent of the country\u2019s total of RM103 \n\n\n\nmillion (Malaysia, 2006: 86). However, turnover has been declining since and stood at \n\n\n\nRM32.89 million in 2008. Profit after taxation had dropped correspondingly from RM17.33 \nmillion in 2005 to RM1.73 million in 2008 (XLH, 2008a). The decline is attributed to reduced \n\n\n\nsales brought about by the \u201cpersistent aggressive price competition\u201d mounted by a number \n\n\n\nof new entrants into the trade, and the company\u2019s high depreciation charges arising from \n\n\n\ninvestments in the new but still unproductive farm (The Star Online, 31 March 2008). In \n\n\n\na business that XHL has pioneered, it now finds itself facing the inevitable competition of \nmany other breeders and suppliers. As always, the reality of business can be harsh and the \n\n\n\ninnovative entrepreneur has to keep a step ahead of his competitors with more innovations. \n\n\n\nSwiftlet Nest Farming: A Dream Come True \n\n\n\nEdible birds\u2019 nests had been an item of trade between China and Southeast since ancient \n\n\n\ntime. A late Tang dynasty record mentioned this and other items such as ivory, spices and gems \n\n\n\nthat were bought by Chinese traders in Santubong at the mouth of Sarawak river (\u5468\u4f1f\u6c11\u3001\n\n\n\n\u5510\u73b2\u73b2/Zhou Weiming and Tang Lingling, 2004: 87). Birds\u2019 nests also featured in the ancient \n\n\n\ntrade between China and Brunei, Sulu and the Moluccas (Purcell, 1951:421, 451 and 612). An \n\n\n\nEnglishman who visited Kedah in 1783 noted, among other things, birds\u2019 nests and sharks\u2019 \n\n\n\nfins in the trade with China (Purcell, 1951: 314). The birds\u2019 nests are therefore a highly-priced \ndelicacy beloved of the Chinese up to the present. These nests were deemed to be a worthy \n\n\n\ngift to kings. In 1907, the Sultan of Sambas in West Kalimantan offered bird\u2019s nests as a gift to \n\n\n\nthe King of England. This gesture had incurred the displeasure of the Dutch colonial masters \n\n\n\nwho feared that it could be construed as a form of vassalage (Tagliacozzo, 1999: 70). Almost \n\n\n\nall the supplies of birds\u2019 nests have come from the work of skilful harvesters in the limestone \n\n\n\ncaves of Southeast Asia. According to Warren (2001: 28), the demand for birds\u2019 nests from \n\n\n\nthe late eighteenth century \u201cshaped the destinies of thousands\u201d in Southeast Asia. This was \n\n\n\na time when radical economic changes were taking place globally and altered the course of \n\n\n\ncross-cultural trade and promoted economic development in the region.\n\n\n\nBirds\u2019 nests are the strands of saliva of the swiftlets. They are wound into half-cup \n\n\n\nnests that bond to the cave wall. These swiftlets belong to the Apodidae family of which 24 \n\n\n\nspecies are recorded worldwide. In Malaysia, three of these species are known to build edible \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n108          Voon\n\n\n\nnests in caves. The most valuable nests are those of A. Fuciphagus. It is claimed that the A. \n\n\n\nFuciphagus is found only in Malaysia, Indonesia (Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Java), Thailand, \n\n\n\nCambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Hainan Island (Lim, C., 2006: iii). \n\n\n\nThe Malaysian swiftlet nest business began more than a century ago. Traditionally, the \n\n\n\nbusiness has consisted of two clearly defined components, namely, the work of harvesting by \nindigenous collectors of swiftlet nests in limestone caves, and the purchase of the nests by \n\n\n\nChinese dealers. After years of the status quo, new avenues for business have since emerged. \n\n\n\nIn the early 1980s it was observed that swiftlets were nesting in abandoned houses in some \n\n\n\ncoastal areas in Peninsular Malaysia. The idea of \u201ckeeping\u201d these swiftlets on a commercial \n\n\n\nbasis, similar to the concept of bee-keeping, arose when it was found that swiftlets began to \n\n\n\nbuild nests in the vacant buildings of the lucky few. As swiftlets show strong nesting place \n\n\n\nfidelity, even after their nests are harvested, attempts to retain them to rebuild more nests \nbecame a distinct possibility (Lim, C., 2006: 6). \n\n\n\nSwiftlet nest farming received a boost during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 \nas owners of abandoned buildings looked for ways to cushion losses incurred on their bad \n\n\n\npurchases (Hameed, 2007). The success of the early swiftlet farmers had a strong demonstration \n\n\n\neffect on neighbours and friends who also possessed unoccupied houses or shop buildings \n\n\n\nthat were on the verge of bank foreclosure. As swiftlet nest farming became an attractive \n\n\n\nbusiness proposition, the more enterprising investors even travelled to Indonesia, the leader \n\n\n\nin the business, to learn the \u201ctricks\u201d of the trade.\n\n\n\nThere were also other circumstances that worked in favour of swiftlet nest farming. \n\n\n\nIt was found that the over-harvesting of swiftlet nests in caves had become unsustainable \n\n\n\nand the species was under threat.4 A working trip to Indonesia in 1996 organized by CITES \n\n\n\nprovided the Malaysian Wildlife and National Park Department a clue in protecting the \n\n\n\nswiftlets through commercial farming (Lim, C., 2006: 7). \u201cDomestication\u201d of the bird was \n\n\n\ntherefore treated as a viable alternative to natural conservation. \n\n\n\nThe diffusion of swiftlet nest farming for profit has since made rapid progress. Up to \n1998, there was an estimated 900 odd swiftlet houses in Malaysia. By 2006, the number \n\n\n\nreached almost 36,000 (Hameed, 2007). The growth has been exponential since then. In 2008, \n\n\n\none source put the number of swiftlet houses at 100,000 (Lim, D., 2002). It is estimated that \n\n\n\nfour-fifths of the farmers are Chinese (Sunday Star, 31 October 2010). \n\n\n\nDespite the \u201cboom\u201d in the new business venture in recent years, the entire enterprise \n\n\n\nhas been likened to backyard poultry farms run by individuals trying to earn an extra income \n\n\n\n(Lim, D., 2002). Nevertheless, progress made so far has been entirely independent of any \n\n\n\nform of official assistance (Hameed, 2007). That this enterprise is able to thrive, and has \nspawned related services such as accessories and consultancies, points to the resourcefulness \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          109\n\n\n\nof a community of individuals with the courage to challenge the odds in turning an untested \n\n\n\nbusiness model into a success. \n\n\n\nAs swiftlet nests are a culinary delight of the Chinese, the business of swiftlet nest \n\n\n\nfarming is firmly anchored on its potential for lucrative returns. The growing demand is \nderived especially from the rising affluence of Mainland Chinese and the world-wide trend \nof pharmaceutical and herbal products companies in using swiftlet nests as base materials for \n\n\n\nproducing natural and organic extracts and products (Hameed, 2007). On the basis of 2-4kg \n\n\n\nof swiftlet nests from a standard shoplot (6.1m by 21.3m/20ft by 70ft) per month, the yield \n\n\n\nwould translate into a gross revenue of RM10,000 to RM20,000 (Lim, C., 2006: ii). \n\n\n\nRealizing the prospects of swiftlet nest farming, the Malaysian government in 2010 has \n\n\n\ndesignated it as a high-growth sub-sector in the agriculture National Key Economic Area \n\n\n\n(NKEA). This activity has been earmarked as an \u201centry point project\u201d under the Economic \n\n\n\nTransformation Programme announced in late 2010 with the aim to turn it into an agro-\n\n\n\nbusiness to serve the export market and to create a viable form of livelihood. The government \n\n\n\nenvisages the growth potential of the global market for swiftlet nests and their derivative \n\n\n\nproducts to reach RM29 billion by 2020, or almost three times the 2010 value (Pemandu, \n\n\n\n2010: 528-529). The Veterinary Services Department is to allocate RM5 million to encourage \n\n\n\n500 hardcore poor families to take up swiftlet nest farming. The official estimate is that \nMalaysia is expected to \u201ccapture\u201d 30 per cent of the global market and to generate revenue \n\n\n\namounting to RM4.5 billion by 2020 (Pemandu, 2010: 529; Sunday Star, 31 October 2010).\n\n\n\nThe attractive returns notwithstanding, swiftlet nest farming contains its fair share of \n\n\n\nrisks to investment. Experience shows that there are several stages of growth and the initial \n\n\n\nhurdle to \u201csuccess\u201d is to attract the first pair of swiftlet to build a new nest in the birdhouse. \nIf the swiftlet population increases to a sufficient number to yield a profit, the enterprise is \nconsidered viable. To imitate \u201cnatural\u201d conditions to attract the swiftlets, an elaborate system \n\n\n\nof recorded swiftlet voice has been devised to \u201cnotify\u201d and \u201cinvite\u201d the birds to the new \n\n\n\nbirdhouse. Under normal circumstances, the \u201cgestation\u201d period of trial and error may take \n\n\n\nthree to five years. Upon achieving this initial success, the farm may take a couple of years \nor so to reach maturity to repay the relatively large investments that are required (Lim, D., \n\n\n\n2002; Hameed, 2007). \n\n\n\nHowever, many birdhouses have failed to attract any swiftlets at all. It is estimated that \n\n\n\nonly 30 to 50 per cent of swiftlet farms are regarded as successful and most of these belong \n\n\n\nto the pioneers and early investors in the business. Late-comers have to contend with many \n\n\n\nbirdhouses vying for a given colony of swiftlets and many are forced to abort their operation. \n\n\n\nAs in other businesses, only the fittest will survive (Lim, D., 2002).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n110          Voon\n\n\n\nSome Insights\n\n\n\nThese case studies yield some insights into the nature of Chinese business enterprises. \n\n\n\nAlthough arowana fish breeding and swiftlet nest farming are minor players compared with \nmore established enterprises, they are nevertheless significant in their own way. They have \ncontributed to exports and created a fair amount of employment. More significantly, they \nsymbolize the human spirit of making possible what are normally considered impossible. At \n\n\n\nthe same time, both have contributed positively to the conservation of endangered species of \n\n\n\nwildlife. \n\n\n\nThe Family Business Model\n\n\n\nLike many enterprises pioneered by the Chinese, the ornamental fish and swiftlet \nnest businesses are generally family operations that may be managed with available family \n\n\n\nresources. The degree of technical complexity and hence the investment in R&D involved in \n\n\n\nornamental fish breeding will easily allow it to grow beyond the traditional family business \nmodel. Fish breeding for export requires a fairly large scale of operation that integrates \n\n\n\nbreeding, the sale of fish and accessories, and exports to take advantage of the economies of \nscale. For leading breeding companies, the business may attain a scale that allows listing in \n\n\n\nthe stock exchange. \n\n\n\nThe breeding of and research on arowana and other ornamental fish, for example, are \nscientifically specialized areas of endeavour that are generally beyond the competence of the \naverage family. Breeding and research go through a long drawn-out process from trial and \n\n\n\nerror, to initial success, scientific breakthroughs, and even listing in the stock exchange. Both \nthe leading arowana-breeding companies in Malaysia and Singapore are leaders in R&D and \n\n\n\nhave achieved significant scientific advancements to stay ahead of their competitors (XLH, \n2003; Fock, 2009). \n\n\n\nSwiftlet nest farming is limited by its size and length of operation. The size of a swiftlet \n\n\n\nfarm is dependent on the bird population and its fidelity to an extent that is beyond the \noperator\u2019s control. Given the size of the swiftlet colony in a locality, the larger the number \n\n\n\nof individual birdhouses, the greater the likelihood of a decrease in the number of \u201cvisitors\u201d \n\n\n\navailable for each. Also, swiftlets may abandon the birdhouse when its nesting spaces are \n\n\n\nfully occupied. This may take place within a few years. \n\n\n\nThe small operator accounts for an estimated two-thirds of all swiftlet farms. This is \n\n\n\na typically trial-and-error attempt by enterprising individuals who rely on self-learning and \n\n\n\nexchange of experiences among peers. However, among those who enter the business without \n\n\n\nadequate knowledge, experience, capital or appropriate equipment, nine out of ten may meet \n\n\n\nwith disappointment (Hameed, 2007). A small group comprising less than 30 per cent of \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          111\n\n\n\nswiftlet-keepers enjoy a fair degree of success. They have sought the advice of consultants \n\n\n\nand advisors for a substantial fee. For their trouble, 70 per cent have established commercially \n\n\n\nviable farms. There is also a very select group, making up 5 per cent of the operators, that \n\n\n\nare large companies seeking to diversify their business. Backed by capital and with access \n\n\n\nto expert advice and superior equipment, they are known to enjoy a 95 per cent success rate \n\n\n\n(Hameed, 2007). \n\n\n\nIt is difficult to operate a single large farm because its swiftlet \u201cstock\u201d is made up of free-\nroaming birds that cannot be \u201ctamed\u201d in captivity. In addition, when a birdhouse is saturated \n\n\n\nwithin three to five years, the swiftlets would seek out new nesting places elsewhere (Lim, \nC., 2006: 39; Hameed, 2007). One way to overcome these problems, however, is to operate \n\n\n\nseveral \u201csubsidiary\u201d farms in localities with known swiftlet colonies.\n\n\n\nSwiftlet nest farming requires investments in the basic infrastructure to accommodate \n\n\n\na sizeable colony of swiftlets, the installation of essential electrical and electronic gadgets, \n\n\n\nand the labour to clean the birdhouse, to harvest the nests, and to undertake preliminary \n\n\n\nprocessing of the nests. The farm itself is cost-free in terms of feedstock and any research that \n\n\n\nis deemed necessary deals with aspects other than those concerning the swiftlets themselves. \n\n\n\nThe successful operators are those who are able to lure swiftlets into their birdhouses. The \n\n\n\nharvest of nests may occur four to six times a year, and consequently capable of generating \n\n\n\na \u201cmassive amount of passive income\u201d (Lim, C., 2006: v). In such instances, the business \n\n\n\nmodel of swiftlet nest farming is the nearest to the Chinese saying of \u201cone unit of cost yielding \n\n\n\n10,000 units of profits\u201d.\nThe growth path of a swiftlet nest business is different from that of fish breeding. The \n\n\n\ntime from initial establishment to success may be as short as a few months. The growth path \n\n\n\nis determined largely by the rate of increase in the swiftlet population. It is this factor that \n\n\n\neventually decides whether a farm is a resounding success or a dismal failure. But failure may \n\n\n\nmore often than not be the bitter reward for efforts. In all, 70 per cent of all swiftlet farms in \n\n\n\n2006 were uninhabited by swiftlets or yielded fewer than 20 nests in a month after five years \nof operation. These are considered clear cases of failure (Hameed, 2007).  \n\n\n\nProduction for Niche Markets\n\n\n\nThe arowana and swiftlet nests are highly-priced products demanded by the urban \n\n\n\nmiddle class and the rich. Targeting their respective niche markets is the essential strategy \n\n\n\nof all arowana breeders and swiftlet nest farmers. The arowana is a fish of great antiquity, \nand the harvesting of swiftlet nests in caves goes back many centuries. The former has been \n\n\n\nlikened to a living \u201cfossil\u201d but associated, especially among the Chinese business community, \n\n\n\nwith auspicious connotations. The swiftlet nest has been a culinary delicacy of the Chinese \n\n\n\nfor at least a thousand years. Both products cater to the expensive tastes of their clients: the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n112          Voon\n\n\n\narowana among hobbyists and business people who consider the fish as a prized possession \nand the consumption of swiftlet nests as a desirable culinary habit that boosts the \u201cfeel good\u201d \n\n\n\nfactor especially among a growing number of health-conscious and age-shy women. Both are \n\n\n\nideal items to satisfy the extra-biological needs of their clients for their personal well-being \n\n\n\nand self-esteem and to enhance their lifestyle. \n\n\n\nThe arowana is kept as a symbol of elegance and beauty. Among the Chinese and \n\n\n\nthe business community, its association with positive geomancy influence is even more \nmeaningful. In addition, the trend towards apartment and condominium living makes the fish \na suitable candidate for the small indoor aquariums. While it adds colour to modern living, \n\n\n\nit also doubles as a symbol of wealth in today's highly competitive and status-conscious \n\n\n\nsociety.\n\n\n\nThe swiftlet nest is traditionally believed to have rejuvenating and anti-ageing value \n\n\n\n(Lim, C., 2006: 23). Chemical analysis of swiftlet nest soup at the Chinese University of Hong \n\n\n\nKong confirms the presence of a water-soluble glyco-protein. But the cleaning process destroys \nthe protein and much of the nutritive value of swiftlet nests (Mackay, n.d.). Nevertheless, as \n\n\n\nan up-market consumer item, its demand will rise in tandem with the growing prosperity and \n\n\n\naffluence especially among Chinese communities. The people in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong \nand Macao consume two-thirds of the world supply of 160 tons of swiftlet nests in 2006, with \n\n\n\nthe affluent society of Hong Kong alone accounting for half the amount (Hameed, 2007). \nWith rising income, the vast potential pool of demand in China is particularly enticing.\n\n\n\nThe strategy to expand the market for the arowana is through export. The global demand \n\n\n\nis large and expanding. Much of the Malaysian supplies are exported through Singapore \n\n\n\nwhich has traditionally acted as an air transport hub. Its excellent facilities and handling skills \n\n\n\nare essential in delivering supplies into the hands of foreign importers with a high degree of \n\n\n\nsuccess and reliability. In the case of swiftlet nests, the concern of individual producers is to \n\n\n\nmeet the demand of local collectors whose market outlets span across international borders. A \n\n\n\nmajor collector is Eu Yan Sang, a long-established Chinese medicinal shop of Malaysian origin \n\n\n\nthat maintains a chain of outlets locally and in Singapore and Hong Kong (see Singapore: \n\n\n\nThe Encyclopedia, 2006: 183; Fock, 2009). In both cases too, the commercialization process \n\n\n\naccords with, and is in turn encouraged by, the need for species protection. Both enterprises \n\n\n\ndemonstrate the benefits of commercial development and its contribution to local and global \nconservation efforts.\n\n\n\nThe Element of Serendipity\n\n\n\nAdding to the enterprise of the people behind the growth of arowana breeding and \n\n\n\nswiftlet nest farming as thriving businesses is the presence of fortuitous circumstances. \n\n\n\nSerendipity, or what Deepak Chopra (2003) would term as \u201csychro-destiny\u201d, is inseparable \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          113\n\n\n\nfrom the spontaneous development of the trade in arowana and swiftlet nests in Malaysia. The \n\n\n\nkeeping of arowana had begun as a hobby that supported a small-time aquarium business. The \n\n\n\nfirst swiftlet nests were harvested outside the natural setting of caves only because swiftlets \nvisited some abandoned structures to build their nests.\n\n\n\nThat arowana breeding has evolved into a thriving business that put Malaysian on the \n\n\n\nworld map is due to a chance encounter with the spawning of the fish in captivity. The encounter \nwas experienced by a hobbyist rather than someone armed with a prepared plan of a business \n\n\n\nmodel. It is this particular hobbyist's acumen to seize upon this ground-breaking \u201cdiscovery\u201d \n\n\n\nas a commercial possibility that initially helped to build up the foundation of a viable business \n\n\n\n(XLH, 2008b). In the case of swiftlet nest production, commercial farming is further justified \nby the general need to protect the endangered swiftlets from the over-harvesting of their nests \n\n\n\nand the potential threat to their survival. In the trade in arowana, commercial breeding has \n\n\n\nnow assumed significance as a conservation practice. In both instances, commercialization \nhas enhanced the links between man and nature.\n\n\n\nThe Supremacy of Private Initiatives\n\n\n\nIn the development of arowana breeding and swiftlet nest farming, private initiatives have \n\n\n\novershadowed those of the bureaucracy. Despite signs of an emerging trade in ornamental fish \nfrom the 1960s, no sign of official encouragement was evident. It was in the Eighth Malaysian \nPlan that reference to the ornamental fish trade was made. As for swiftlet nest farming, it \nwas the demonstration of the potentials of this activity by ordinary folks that subsequently \n\n\n\naroused official response in 2005 in the publication of Good Animal Husbandry Practice \n\n\n\nfor Edible-nest: Swiftlets Aerodermus Species Ranching and Its Premise (Department of \n\n\n\nVeterinary Service, 2005). By early 2009, both businesses have achieved such significance \nthat the Prime Minister designate drew special attention to them in an important address (see \n\n\n\nthe opening quotation).\n\n\n\nThat the private sector has been more alert to the commercial possibilities in exotic \n\n\n\nspecies of fish and swiftlets speak volumes about the keen business sense of discerning \nindividuals. This has much to do with their boldness to embark on new and unproven ventures \n\n\n\nand to back them up with an indomitable spirit until the first glimpse of success appears. \nThese are pioneer innovators whose foresight, perseverance and convictions have helped to \n\n\n\nopen up completely new business opportunities for the benefit of the country.\nThe leading ornamental fish breeder and supplier in the country originated from the \n\n\n\nindividual efforts of a private citizen. A remarkable instance of \u201ctaming\u201d a rare and ancient \n\n\n\nfish species that has survived in Malaysia has provided the immediate impetus to the transition \nfrom keeping to breeding the fish. That this is the work of a hobbyist rather than that of the \nlong-established and large fisheries and research bureaucracy of the state has given added \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n114          Voon\n\n\n\nsignificance to the supremacy of private initiatives. \nThe development of swiftlet nest farming has not been a smooth process. Private \n\n\n\nsector efforts have to encounter initial official indifference and even objections. Until today, \nSarawak state is still vehemently opposed to swiftlet nest farming (The Star Online, 15 \n\n\n\nFebruary 2009 and 21 February, 2009a and b). The potential investor is dependent on his \n\n\n\nown resourcefulness in learning and experimenting with ways of keeping the swiftlets. The \n\n\n\nprivate sector has undertaken some amount of R&D and dissemination of basic information \n\n\n\nconcerning swiftlet nest farming in the form of books (see Lim, C., 2006 and Hai and Lee, \n\n\n\n2009), reports (see Lim, D., 2002 and Hameed, 2007), and by conducting special courses, \n\n\n\nlectures and seminars. Christopher Lim is a medical specialist who, by adopting a scientific \napproach to swiftlet nest farming, has become a fine example of success entirely on his own \nefforts (Lim, C., 2006). David Lim is another \u201cindustry-insider\u201d who has been prompted \n\n\n\nby the lack of reference materials to share his experience in a report. Hameed's report was \n\n\n\ncommissioned by the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises of Penang. \n\n\n\nSwiftlet nest farming is very much a \u201cdo-it-yourself\u201d business. Any person with the urge \n\n\n\nfor profits within a reasonable period of time may venture into swiftlet nest farming. Diffusion \nof the enterprise is effected by word of mouth, personal observation, and through learning. \n\n\n\nA popular channel of acquiring information about swiftlet nest farming is by attending \n\n\n\nspecialized seminars and workshops. Some of these are costly, especially in Indonesia which \n\n\n\nis the leading producer of home-bred swiftlet nests. Charges may approach RM3,600 for a \n\n\n\ntwo-day course covering theory and field practice (Lim, C., 2006: 46). Another method of \nentry is to engage a swiftlet farm consultant from a growing list of practitioners. Consultation \n\n\n\nservices may cost up to RM25,000, or a portion of the revenue up to as much as 75 per cent. \n\n\n\nOther than the successful individual swiftlet farmers, various companies have ventured \n\n\n\ninto related activities. One of the earliest is an importer and distributor of edible swiftlet nests \n\n\n\nthat is based in Penang and incorporated in 1975 (Crystal Swiftlets website). It has grown into \n\n\n\nan integrated swiftlet nest specialist dealing with the manufacturing, packaging, marketing \n\n\n\nand exporting of products and consultancy service in swiftlet-keeping in Southeast Asia. In \n\n\n\n2009, two of its board members published an introductory guide to swiftlet nest farming in \n\n\n\ndigital format (Hai and Lee, 2009).\n\n\n\nReward for the Enterprising \n\n\n\nLike all business undertakings, rewards are reaped by the bold entrepreneurs who \n\n\n\nsucceed in guiding their business to meet production and marketing requirements. These are \n\n\n\nmore demanding in arowana breeding than in swiftlet nest farming. The former is much more \n\n\n\nknowledge-intensive and requires large investments in R&D. The latter too is knowledge-\n\n\n\nbased but more in the nature of a \u201cdo-it-yourself\u201d application of a set of ready-made packages \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          115\n\n\n\n(see Lim, C., 2006).\n\n\n\nArowana breeding has developed beyond the trial-and-error stage and is a highly \n\n\n\nscientific enterprise in which R&D is a key capital-intensive operation. Competition is \ngrowing in intensity and is contested through efforts in in-house as well as collaborative \n\n\n\nresearch. XLH has set its corporate mission to become a first-class breeder and supplier of \nhigh-value and high-quality Asian arowana and other ornamental fish, to be achieved through \ncommitments to R&D (XLH, 2008). Scientific research is concerned with more than the rates \nof success in breeding but also in pioneering hybrid breeding, raising productivity, improving \n\n\n\nresistance to diseases, or overcoming transport and packaging problems. \n\n\n\nXLH has to date achieved some impressive successes. It was the first to breed the Albino \nMalaysian Golden arowana and the first in the fisheries sector in Malaysia to use microchips \nin tagging fish for identification (XLH, 2003). Recent successes include improving the \nquality of the Malaysian Golden variety ranking it as the best among Asian arowana species; \n\n\n\nbreeding \u201cnew\u201d variants of the major varieties through genetic selective breeding; enhancing \n\n\n\nthe colour of fish scales with intense hues and brilliance; improving the physical appearance \nand robustness of fish through proper priming and careful nurturing of the fry; perfecting \nenvironmental and fish management practices; and improving feed quality and culture \nsystems (XLH, 2008: 3). \n\n\n\nThe scope for improvement through research is vast. In Singapore, this is demonstrated \n\n\n\nby research through active collaboration between fish breeders and the government. The \nleading ornamental fish breeder, Qian Hu, has consolidated its status with recent successes \nthat include in vitro fertilization and selective breeding of arowana in its attempts to produce \n\n\n\n\u201ctailor-made arowana\u201d, and the development of an oral vaccine to prevent common diseases; \n\n\n\nthe development of a method to screen for a killer disease which eats away at the bodies of \n\n\n\nkoi; the use of DNA testing to double the rate of production; and the improvement in packing \n\n\n\ntechniques that raises the survival rate of exported gruppies to a near-perfect level (Chua, \n\n\n\n2009; Fish Matrix, 2009; Fock, 2009). \n\n\n\nSwiftlet nest farming has emerged as a sustainable business with a phenomenal rate of \n\n\n\ndiffusion in recent years. Despite the relatively standardized guidelines and procedures, the \n\n\n\nrisks to new-comers, however, are ever present (Lim, C., 2006: iv). Those who adopt the \n\n\n\nmore \u201cprofessional\u201d approach have been amply rewarded with \u201cwindfall\u201d returns. Yet the \n\n\n\nbusiness prospects of each farm are determined by the quantity and quality of its harvest and \n\n\n\nthe market price. The bright side is the demand that is fuelled by rising affluence. The market \nin China and advanced countries is still small but its potentials are immense. \n\n\n\nIn its attempt to transform its economy, Malaysia is waking up to the possibility of \n\n\n\nexploiting the immense potentials of the trade in swiftlet nests. The latest call for Malaysians, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n116          Voon\n\n\n\nespecially targeting the non-Chinese, to take advantage of the growing market worldwide \n\n\n\ncomes from the Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Malaysia (ACCCIM), \n\n\n\na body that comprises the captains of \u201cmainstream\u201d business. Swiftlet nest farming has finally \nbeen seen as a viable small-scale enterprise that is capable of yielding attractive returns. In \n\n\n\n2010, ACCCIM organized a seminar to encourage Malays and Indians to take up swiftlet nest \n\n\n\nfarming (The Star, 24 September 2010). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nThe success in the commercial breeding of arowana and swiftlet nest farming amply \n\n\n\ndemonstrates that business opportunities are present even in the least likely quarters. Both \n\n\n\nhave been pioneered by the select few who are armed with the foresight to tap the latent \n\n\n\nprospects in commercial operations. Through years of single-minded and painstaking efforts, \n\n\n\nthese pioneers have been able to nurture and to realize the potentials of these enterprises and \n\n\n\nhence to create new sources of wealth. \n\n\n\nThe emergence of these new businesses shows that the efforts of the private sector are \n\n\n\nwell ahead of those of the bureaucracy. Despite the solid backing of advanced infrastructures \n\n\n\nand personnel, the bureaucracy can be bogged down by the deadweight of administration or \n\n\n\nroutine research to give sufficient thought to issues that might well lead to breakthroughs to \ncommercial possibilities. \n\n\n\nCommercial arowana breeding and swiftlet nest farming stand as successful enterprises \n\n\n\nthat open the way to the effective exploitation of unlikely environmental resources. More \n\n\n\nimportant, they are the result of the initiatives of individuals bold enough to take the road less \n\n\n\ntravelled. This is a boldness anchored on a sharp perception of the immense opportunities that \n\n\n\nare hidden from the purview of the larger society as well as the bureaucracy. In a matter of a \n\n\n\nfew decades, the foresight and perseverance of these individuals have collectively nurtured \n\n\n\nentirely new business enterprises that have brought considerable economic benefits that may \nincrease many times yet in the near future. \n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  An \u201centrepreneur\u201d is here defined as one who invests capital to start and manage a commercial \nconcern and to bear risks.\n\n\n\n2  The latest involves the looting of Chinese businesses and other anti-Chinese acts in Papua New \nGuinea. Academics such as Amy Chua (2004) blame immigrant minorities for the poverty of \nlocal communities. International groups such as Greenpeace have launched scathing criticisms \non timber logging companies and have singled out Malaysian Chinese as the target of their wrath \n(see Greenpeace, 2004 and 2005).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBold Entrepreneurs and Uncommon Enterprises          117\n\n\n\n3  The family store is under the constant threat of competition from foreign-owned mega-stores \nthat are sprouting in suburban areas of major cities. The family stores have always relied on a \ncaptive market of local households, but few are able to withstand the intense competition. The \nappearance of a large supermarket is known to divert 20-30 per cent of the business away from \nthe neighbourhood retail shops, mini-markets as well as the fish-monger and vegetable sellers (\n\u300a\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5\u300b/Sin Chew Daily, 29 May 2009). The viability of the traditional provision shops is \nincreasingly tenuous and many have ceased operation. According to the estimate of the Chinese \nRetail Trade Association of Malaysia, there were about 50,000 traditional retail shops, chain \nstores, and mini- and super-markets in the country in the 1950s. By the 1970s, the number had \ndeclined to around 40,000 outlets. Today only about 20,000 outlets or so still survive of which \nthe traditional retail outlets might number only a few thousand (\u300a\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5\u300b/Sin Chew Daily, \n24 May 2009). Only a handful have been able to \u201cre-invent\u201d themselves by setting up their own \nnetwork of outlets in new suburban neighbourhoods. \n\n\n\n4  The Niah Caves of Sarawak house the largest complex of caves for black-nest swiftlets. But \nexcessive collection has led to a sharp decline in their population from an estimated 1.7 million \nin 1935, to 200,000 in 1996 and 65,000 in 2002 (Lim, C., 2006: 6). \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nCHOPRA, Deepak 2003. SychroDestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create \nMiracles, London: Rider.\n\n\n\nCHUA, Grace 2009. Fish central, Straits Times, 30 May.\nCrystal Swiftlets. http://www.crystalwwiftlets.com\nDepartment of Statistics Malaysia (DSM) 2003. Census of Distributive Trades 2002, Putrajaya: \n\n\n\nDepartment of Statistics Malaysia. \nDepartment of Veterinary Service 2005. Good Animal Husbandry Practice for Edible-nest Swiftlets \n\n\n\naerodermus Species Ranching and Its Premise, Ministry of Agriculture Malaysia. \nFish Farmer 2006. Malaysia: ornamental fish output to rise. http//:www.fishfarmer_magazine .com \nFish Matrix: A Group Newsletter of Qian Hu Corporation Ltd, April 2009. http://203.116.88.76/\n\n\n\ncontent/phase1/Newsletter/files/QHNewsletter.\nFOCK Siew Tong 2009. Dynamics of Family Business: The Chinese Way, Singapore: Cengage Learning \n\n\n\nAsia.\nGreenpeace 2004. The Untouchables \u2013 Rimbunan Hijau\u2019s World of Forest Crime and Political \n\n\n\nPatronage, Amsterdam: Greenpeace International. \n----- 2005. Partners in Crime: The UK Timber Trade, Chinese Sweatshops and Malaysian Robber \n\n\n\nBarons in Papua New Guinea\u2019s Rainforests, London: Greenpeace.\nHAI Kuan and LEE, Jannette 2009. The Complete Introductory Guide to Swiftlet Farming, marketed as \n\n\n\neBook by Perfect Trading Sdn. Bhd. of Penang under the trademark of Crystal Swiftlets (http://\nwww. crystalswiftlets.com/cs4.html)\n\n\n\nHAMEED Sultan Merican 2007. The 2007 Malaysian Swiftlet Farming Industry Report (Summary and \nSynopsis), Penang: SMI Association of Penang. \n\n\n\nMacKAY, Jeanine (not dated). Swifts and trade, http://www1.american.edu/ted/swift.htm (Retrieved \non 29 June 2009).\n\n\n\nLIM, Christopher 2006. Make Millions from Swiftlet Farming: A Definitive Guide, Kuala Lumpur: \nTrueWealth Publishing.\n\n\n\nLIM, David Y.C. 2002. Report on the Malaysia Swiftlet Nest Industry Issues (revised in 2008). http://\nworldofswiftletfarming.blogspot.com\n\n\n\nLOH, Errol 2007. Xian Leng shows that ornamental fish is big business, The Star Online, 29 December \n(http://biz.thestar.com.my/bizweek/story). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n118          Voon\n\n\n\nLOO, Terence 16 October 2002. Company visit: Xian Leng Holdings Bhd, RM2.69 @ 14 Oct 2002. \nhttp://articles.wallstraits.net/articles/279. \n\n\n\nMalaysia, Government of 2006. Ninth Malaysia Plan 2006-2010, Putrajaya: Economic Planning Unit. \nMcGEE, T.G. 1976. The persistence of the proto-proletariat: occupational structures and planning of \n\n\n\nthe future of Third World cities, Progress in Geography, 9: 1-38.\nNAJIB Razak, Datuk Seri 2009. Speech by Malaysian Prime Minister, Y.A.B. Datuk Seri Najib Razak \n\n\n\nin the recent UMNO Convention. Utusan Online, 29 March 2009.\nPerformance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) 2010. Economic Transformation Programme: \n\n\n\nA Roadmap for Malaysia, Putrajaya: Prime Minister\u2019s Department.\nPURCELL, Victor 1951. The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London: Oxford University Press. \nWARREN, James 2001, The birds\u2019 nests of Borneo. In The Encyclopedia of Malaysia: Early Modern \n\n\n\nHistory 1800-1940. edited by Cheah Boon Kheng, Singapore: Editions Didier Miller: 28-29.\nSan Sui Trading Tropical Fish website 2006. http://www.sansuimy.com/contact_us.html \nSingapore: The Encyclopedia, 2006. Singapore: Editors Didier Millet and National Heritage Board.\nSunday Star 31 October 2010. RM5mil for swiftlet farming: Govt allocates funds to get hardcore poor \n\n\n\ninto industry. \nTAGLIACOZZO, Eric 1999. Secret Trades of the Straits: Smuggling and State-formation Along a \n\n\n\nSoutheast Asian Frontier, 1870-1910, Yale University, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation. \nThe Star Online 15 February 2009. Illegal Sarawak bird nest entrepreneurs want Taib to help ((http://\n\n\n\ntirokswiftlet.webs.com)\n----- 21 February 2009a. Sarawak crackdown on illegal swiftlet breeders (http://tirokswiftlet.webs.com) \n----- 21 February 2009b. Raids conducted on illegal rearing (http://tirokswiftlet.webs.com)\n----- 31 March 2008. Xian Leng FY net profit falls 75% to RM1.7m (http://biz.thestar.com.my/bizweek/\n\n\n\nstory). \n----- 24 September 2010. Bird\u2019s nest trade open for all: Non-Chinese urged to join industry with global \n\n\n\ndemand.\nVOON Phin Keong 2001. The Chinese merchant then and now: their emergence and position in and \n\n\n\noutside China\u201d, Journal of Malaysian Chinese Studies, 4: 79-112.\nXian Leng Holdings Berhad (XLH) 2003-08. Annual Reports, 2003-08a.\n----- 2008b. Company Profile 2008, digital video disc. \n\u300a\u661f\u6d32\u65e5\u62a5\u300b2009\u5e745\u670824\u65e5\u3002\u6742\u8d27\u53d8\u6cd5 (Sin Chew Daily 24 May 2009. The changing retail \n\n\n\nbusiness).\n----- 2009\u5e745\u670829\u65e5\u3002\u9738\u5e02\u5165\u4fb5\u751f\u610f\u5927\u51cf (Sin Chew Daily, 26 May 2009. Mega-store enters, big \n\n\n\ndrop in business). \n\u5468\u4f1f\u6c11\u3001\u5510\u73b2\u73b22004\u3002\u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u548c\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u6587\u5316\u4ea4\u6d41\u53f2\u300b\uff0c\u6d77\u53e3\uff1a\u6d77\u5357\u51fa\u7248\u793e (Zhou Weiming and \n\n\n\nTang Lingling 2004. History of China-Malaysia Cultural Exchanges, Haikou: Hainan Press).\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 69-81\n\n\n\nStudent Expectations and Branding Strategies \namong Private Institutions of Higher Education \n\n\n\nin Malaysia\n\n\n\nVincent WEE Eng Kim* and THINAVAN Periyayya**\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nCompetition in private higher education in Malaysia is intense and many institutions realize \nthe need to review their branding strategies to become more competitive. In order to conceive a \nnew branding strategy it is crucial that these institutions understand the expectations particularly of \nMalaysian Chinese students who dominate enrolment in the private education sector. \n\n\n\nThis study examines the expectations of Malaysian Chinese students on selected factors, \nidentified in past research, that influence the choice of institutions in their application for admission. \nTwo hundred Chinese students were randomly selected from several private institutions to respond to \na questionnaire which tested on such variables as academic programme and staff, facilities, pricing, \nand promotion. Data collected were analysed using Factor Analysis and Comparison of Means. Based \non the mean score analysis, factors that significantly influenced the choice of an institution of higher \neducation for admission are found to be academic integrity, quality of teaching, duration of course, \nfuture employability, educational fees, foreign and local degrees offered, institutional reputation and \ntrack record, student testimonies and opportunities of exposure to new social environment. A few factors \nfound to be significant in an earlier study had lost their importance and these are entry requirements, \nfacilities and extra-curricula activities. It is clear that for branding strategies to work, an institution of \nhigher education has to take into account expectations that matter most to students.\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nMalaysia had since the early 1980s witnessed a significant change in the roles and \nresponsibilities of private institutions as providers of tertiary education. The growth of \ninformation and communication technology (ICT), the escalating costs of education abroad, \nand changes in government policies provided a strong impetus to the emergence of private \ninstitutions of higher education (PIHEs) in the country (StudyMalaysia, 2005). Until the \n\n\n\n*  Vincent WEE Eng Kim is Senior Lecturer, Business School, Sunway University. E-mail: weevincent@\nyahoo.com\n\n\n\n**  THINAVAN Periyayya is Associate Professor, Media Department, Faculty of Creative Industries,  \nUniversiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. E-mail: thinavan@utar.edu.my\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n70          Wee and Thinavan\n\n\n\n1990s, tertiary education was available only in public universities (Shahabudin, 2005), and \nprivate institutions of higher education were prohibited to award their own degrees. During \nthe global recession in the 1980s, a group of Malaysian academics from the University of \nMalaya and Institute Technology MARA took the lead to establish private institutions of \nhigher learning to offer selected undergraduate programmes (Tan, 2002: 53). In the mid-\n1980s, the then Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad encouraged PIHEs to explore the \npossibility of offering twinning programmes with higher education institutions in Australia \nand other countries (Tan, 2002: 58). \n\n\n\nThis has led to the introduction of transnational education by PIHEs in the form of \nforeign degree programmes. These programmes offer an option for students to spend part of \ntheir studies overseas (Anantha Raj, 2011: 74). The growth of the PIHEs in the 1990s was \nalso due to the official move to meet the rising demand for tertiary education through the \nprivatization of the education sector (Lee, 2003). The rapid growth of private education has \nwitnessed a surge in the number of PIHEs in the Malaysian educational landscape. According \nto the Ministry of Higher Education, as of 2012, there are currently 500 PIHEs out of a total \nof 616 higher education institutions in the country. Most of these institutions are clustered in \nthe major towns where the biggest market is found. \n\n\n\nAccording to Chieh (2011), there is an estimated enrolment of 541,629 students \nin PIHEs out of whom 87,000 are foreign students. In comparison, public institutions of \nhigher learning such as universities, polytechnics and community colleges have a combined \nenrolment of 503,535 students. In 2008, 84.8 per cent of the students in public institutions \nof higher learning were Bumiputras (Malays and other indigenous groups), followed by 9.7 \nper cent Malaysian Chinese, 2.8 per cent Malaysian Indians and 2.7 per cent \u201cOthers\u201d. The \nPIHEs, established by Malaysians and a few by foreigners, cater to those who have been kept \nout or opt out of public universities and colleges but who are prepared to pay high tuition fees \ncharged by these institutions. Understanding the expectations of students to fulfil their needs \nfor higher education is vital for the continued growth and viability of PIHEs.\n\n\n\nThe prospects of any PIHE will rest with its brand image. One with an established \nbrand will have a definite advantage over its competitors. Branding refers to a name, term, \nsign or symbol that identifies and differentiates an institution. The differentiation can either \nbe tangible or intangible or a combination of both (Kotler and Keller, 2009: 28). But it \ntakes more than a catchy slogan or symbol to stand out from the crowd. Tertiary education \nis arguably a high involvement product (Kotler, 1976: 46). High involvement products are \nthose that consumers need to take time to think over their purchases. This is because the \nproducts are expensive and consumers are inclined to evaluate the benefits to justify their \ndecision. In this context proper branding of an institution to communicate the benefits it \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBranding Strategies among Private Institutions of Higher Education in Malaysia           71\n\n\n\noffers is important in a highly competitive private education sector.  PIHEs offer a range of \neducational services rather than physical products. Service branding has to focus on three \nareas, namely, external branding, internal branding, and customers\u2019 perceptions of brands. \nExternal branding explains how organizations create brands (Harris and de Chernatony, 2001: \n456; McDonald et al., 2001: 163); internal branding focuses on employees (Aurand et al., \n2005: 32; Hankinson, 2004: 103; Vallaster, 2004: 106); and customers\u2019 perceptions of brands \nrefer to the value that customers place on the brands (Jones et al., 2002: 451; O\u2019Cass and \nGrace, 2003: 466; O\u2019Loughlin and Szmigin, 2005: 18). \n\n\n\nPursuing studies in PIHEs is a costly commitment and as such students and their families \nwill make sure that they obtain good value for their investments in higher education. With \nhundreds of institutions competing for students, the stakes for PIHEs are high. An institution \nthat does not fulfil the expectations of students will be quickly rejected, and this is a key \nreason for student withdrawals after enrolling (Alridge and Rowley, 2001, 61). This study \ntherefore explores factors considered by Malaysian Chinese students in their PIHE selection \nor decision-making process as well as the media most dominant in providing relevant \ninformation on higher education opportunities.\n\n\n\nLiterature Review\n\n\n\nEducation is closely associated with economic growth. Historically none of the rich \nindustrialized countries were able to achieve significant economic growth before attaining \nuniversal primary education. In less developed agricultural societies, the value of labour is \ndetermined by manpower that relies on physical strength and long working hours. Human \ncapital theory, as developed by Schultz (1963), argues that education increases human \nproductivity. Human resource theory (including intellectual capital, psychological capital, \ncultural capital, and social capital) further expands this framework into a broader and more \ncomplicated system. In Malaysia, education reforms have been implemented from time to \ntime to cope with the developmental needs of the nation and the rapidly increasing number of \ntertiary students (Ahmad, 1998: 471).\n\n\n\nFailure of public institutions to cope with the rising demand for higher education has \nbeen a strong stimulus to the growth of PIHEs in Malaysia (Wong and Hamali, 2006: 113). \nIntense competition for students in the private education sector has turned branding and brand \ndevelopment into management priorities (Kapferer, 2008: 365; Keller, 2008: 106; Post, 2008: \n140). The branding of PIHEs is moving towards student-oriented expectations. In response \nto the growth of student enrolment in degree courses, almost all private colleges aspire to be \nupgraded to university-college status by the Ministry of Higher Education. As competition \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n72          Wee and Thinavan\n\n\n\namong universities intensifies, a need for thorough understanding of student expectations is \ncrucial for all PIHEs. Thus, attention to institutional branding is gaining greater prominence \namong university administrators. In order to survive and to succeed, it is mandatory that \nadministrators understand how various student segments differ in their decision-making \nbehaviour (Coccari and Javalgi, 1995: 78). \n\n\n\nIn the area of marketing, Berry (2000) produced a service-branding model in an attempt \nto cultivate service brand equity at the customer level. Service brand equity refers to customers\u2019 \nrecognition that a particular brand is different and offers higher value than alternative brands \nin the market. In a business that offers services as intangible products, awareness of the \nname of the company, knowledge of its unique products, and direct personal experience will \ncontribute to brand equity. Berry (2000) suggested nurturing a service brand by launching \nmanagerial efforts to enhance brand awareness and create brand meanings for customers. A \ncompany\u2019s presentation of a service brand is assumed to be the primary source of brand name \nawareness, whereas brand meanings are derived from a customer\u2019s direct contact with the \nservices associated with the brand. For service providers, it is critical to understand which \ncues or attributes of the service offering are most valued in the decision-making process of \ncurrent and potential customers. \n\n\n\nStudent decision-making process is a fundamental and integral part of theory and \nresearch on higher education. A student faces the hard choice on which particular discipline \nof study and institution of higher learning to enrol after completing secondary education. It \nis therefore critical for PIHEs to influence the student decision-making process. To do this \neffectively relevant key attributes of the service offerings that are highly valued by the students \nmust be identified (Samsinar et al., 2003: 262). Students have been found to opt for PIHEs \nthat match their selection criteria academically, socially, and financially (Brown, 1991: 32). \nPlank and Chiagouris (1998: 23) reported that the choice of college for admission depends on \nfive factors, namely, academic programmes offered, leadership opportunities in the college, \nperceived job prospects after graduation, financial aid, and value for money. From the service \nmarketing point of view, consumers through an interactive process will experience or receive \na bundle of benefits that are different from those of purchasing a physical product (Hoffman \nand Bateson, 2002: 324). In a study by Brown (1991:32-33), 17 college image components \nwere identified as predictors of students\u2019 selection of college or university and four out of the \n17 components, namely, quality of education, recreational activities, educational facilities \nand faculty members, were found to be statistically significant.\n\n\n\nIn another study carried out at the University of North Alabama, 29 college image \ncomponents were identified and those that were found to be significant included location, \ntype of academic programmes, community in which college is located and overall quality of \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBranding Strategies among Private Institutions of Higher Education in Malaysia           73\n\n\n\neducation (Absher et al., 1993: 426-427). In a Malaysian study, out of the 20 characteristics \nof PIHEs which influenced the decisions of students, four items were found to be significant, \nnamely, facilities, procedures and policies, entry requirements and extra curricula activities \n(Samsinar et al., 2003: 275-276). Packaging this bundle of characteristics or benefits into \nthe brand that represents a particular service is vital in order to make the service provider \ncompetitive. What goes into the bundle will depend on the expectations of the consumers.\n\n\n\nWen et al. (2004) found that Mainland Chinese have traditionally relied on word of \nmouth communication from group and family members for product information. Their study \naccords with the Malaysian Chinese belief that verbal information is considered more credible \nthan printed sources and also minimizes the risk of losing face. Many young Malaysian \nChinese are exposed to advertising including the Internet which is a new source for product \ninformation. Although thriftiness is valued in Confucianism consumption culture as a sign \nof modesty and humility, brand and status consciousness have gradually emerged as pre-\npurchase evaluative criteria among the young. Their independence and confidence, coupled \nwith the rise of individuality, has fuelled their desire for things that express their tastes, and \nthis also applies to higher education aspirations.\n\n\n\nMethodology\n\n\n\nA quantitative study was conducted on Malaysian Chinese students form ten randomly \nselected PIHEs located in the Klang Valley area.1 The sample comprises 20 respondents \nfrom each institution. A questionnaire containing three sections was used. The first section \npertains to the respondent\u2019s demographic profile. The next section that contains questions \nadapted from three sources namely Absher et al. (1993), Brown (1991) and Samsinar et al. \n(2003), focuses on tertiary education selection criteria based on a five-point Likert scale with \n1 indicating \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d and 5 as \u201cstrongly agree\u201d. The final section focuses on media \nand other sources of information. Questions in this section are based on a five-point scale \nranging from \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d to \u201cstrongly agree\u201d. A pilot study was conducted to measure \nthe reliability of questions in the second and third sections. The respective Cronbach\u2019s Alpha \nscores were 0.70 and 0.80. A score of 0.70 and above implies that the questions are reliable in \nmeasuring the factors under study. \n\n\n\nData from the survey were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences \n(SPSS) version 17 software. Descriptive statistics used in the analysis included frequency, \nmean score and percentage. A confirmatory factor analysis and comparison of means and \nChi-square analysis was carried out to examine the goodness-of-fit of the measurement model \nand to establish the factors that influenced the decisions of students on the institution of their \nchoice.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n74          Wee and Thinavan\n\n\n\nResults\n\n\n\nDemographic Analysis\nThe respondents were Malaysian Chinese students of whom 50.5 per cent were 18 to \n\n\n\n19 years old and 35 per cent were 20 to 21 years old. Two-thirds of the students were from \nthe higher income group with family monthly income averaging RM6,000 and above. The \nmajority of the respondents were enrolled in Foundation courses while the rest were pursuing \nqualifications in the A-Level, diplomas and bachelor degree courses (Table 1).\n\n\n\nTable 1. Profile of Respondents\nAge Frequency (N=200) Percentage\n\n\n\n18 and 19 101 50.5\n20 and 21 70 35.0\n22 and 23 18 9.0\n24 and above 11 5.5\n\n\n\nMonthly Family Income (RM)\n1001-2500 11 5.5\n2501-4000 20 10.0\n4001-6000 38 19.0\n6001 or More 131 65.5\n\n\n\nEnrolment by Academic Programme \nFoundation 118 59.0\nA-Level 12 6.0\nDiploma 40 20.0\nBachelors degree 28 14.0\nOthers 2 1.0\n\n\n\nPIHE Selection Criteria\nA comparison of means was performed to statistically analyse the responses from \n\n\n\nstudents to evaluate the order of importance of the criteria in their decision to enrol in a \nPIHE. The factors are arranged on the Likert scale of 1 to 5. A high mean score (> 4) indicates \nthat the factor has a strong influence on student choice (Table 2). Generally, factors such as \nacademic integrity, length of existence and future employability, with mean values of 4.55, \n4.51 and 4.30, respectively, exert the strongest influence on the choice of institution. With a \nmean value of 3.9, location is seen as the least important factor by students. This seems to \nindicate that students are prepared to pursue courses of their choice regardless of the location \nof the PIHE.   \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBranding Strategies among Private Institutions of Higher Education in Malaysia           75\n\n\n\nTable 2. Factors that Influence the Choice of PIHEs among Malaysian Chinese Students\nNumber        Variables Mean Value \n1 Academic integrity 4.55\n2 Length of existence 4.51\n3 Future employability 4.30\n4 Quality of teaching 4.28\n5 Education fees 4.25\n6 Duration of course 4.16\n7 Facilities 4.12\n8 Availability of preferred courses of study 4.10\n9 Entry requirement 4.00\n10 Location 3.90\n\n\n\nStudents made informed decisions on the choice of institutions according to a set of \nfactors listed in Table 3. Based on Chi-square results, nine factors were found to be significant \nat 0.1 confidence levels. These items are academic integrity (trust in the institution to deliver \nwhat it promises), foreign and local degrees offered, institution\u2019s reputation and proven track \nrecord, future employability, quality education, tuition fees, duration of the course of study, \nopportunities of exposure to new social environments, and concrete student testimony which \nrefers to recommendations made by existing or senior students.\n\n\n\nTable 3. Chi-square Results by Factors Favoured by Respondents\nCharacteristics of PIHEs Chi-square Significance\nAcademic integrity/trust 1.968 0.045*\nForeign degree/qualification offered 1.833 0.043*\nLocal degree/ qualification offered 1.813 0.041*\nInstitution\u2019s reputation and track record 1.802 0.040*\nConcrete student testimony 1.801 0.039*\nFuture employability 1.765 0.038*\nQuality education 1.743 0.036*\nEducation fees 1.728 0.033*\nDuration of course 1.721 0.032*\nFacilities 9.032 0.212\nAvailability of preferred course 9.136 0.223\nEntry requirement 9.256 0.236\nLocation of institution 9.345 0.252\nLibrary resources 9.498 0.263\nScholarship/financial aid 9.642 0.283\nInstitution\u2019s size and layout 12.339 0.321\nPopularity of institution 12.347 0.337\nStudent population 12.452 0.348\nExtra-curricular activities 12.463 0.356\nOpportunities of exposure to new social environments 12.588 0.035*\n\n\n\n* Statistically significant factors\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n76          Wee and Thinavan\n\n\n\nMedia Effectiveness and Brand Message \nBased on the mean score, the Internet (5.01) and newspapers (4.91) are the two most \n\n\n\neffective sources of information for the students, followed by magazines, brochures, open \ndays and education fair (Table 4). The traditional electronic media (TV and Radio) and word \nof mouth communication lag behind the print media. Promotional materials such as posters \nand photographs have the lowest mean scores (3.81 and 3.61). \n\n\n\nTable 4. Media Effectiveness to Convey Brand Message\nN = 200\n\n\n\nSources of Information Mean SD\nInternet 5.01 0.96\nPrint Media\n\n\n\nNewspapers\nMagazines\nBrochures\n\n\n\n4.91\n4.62\n4.62\n\n\n\n0.93\n0.81\n1.03\n\n\n\nOpen day 4.51 1.06\nEducation fair 4.31 1.03\nElectronic media\n\n\n\nTV\nRadio\n\n\n\n4.28\n4.21\n\n\n\n1.22\n1.21\n\n\n\nWord of mouth 4.11 1.22\nPromotional materials\n\n\n\nPosters\nPhotographs\n\n\n\n3.81\n3.61\n\n\n\n1.12\n1.01\n\n\n\nN is the total number of respondents \nSD is the standard deviation from the mean score\n\n\n\n   \nDiscussion and Conclusion\n\n\n\nThis study found that Malaysian Chinese respondents were more attracted to local \ninstitutions that confer foreign university rather than local university qualifications. This is \nin line with the findings of Batra et al. (2000) which suggest that consumers in developing \ncountries showed positive attitudes and preference for non-local brands. The majority of the \nstudents in PIHEs are those with SPM (O-level) qualifications while 78 per cent of those in \npublic universities have passed the STPM (A-level) examination (Samsinar et al., 2003). \nThe present study shows that 65 per cent of the students in PIHEs come from higher income \nfamilies compared with 46 per cent in the 2003 study. \n\n\n\nBased on the findings, the bundle of factors that should be considered in the branding \nstrategy of PIHEs include academic integrity, degree offered (local/foreign), institutional \nreputation and track record, employability, quality of education, fees and duration of study. In \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBranding Strategies among Private Institutions of Higher Education in Malaysia           77\n\n\n\ncomparison with the 2003 study by Samsinar et al., based on a sample size of 210 students, \nthe significant factors of a higher institution were facilities, procedures and policies, entry \nrequirement and extra curricula activities and none of these factors were found to be significant \nin the current study. The 2003 student sample comprised various ethnic groups whereas the \ncurrent study is concerned with Chinese students and separated by a time-lag of ten years. \nThis implies that, as far as Malaysian Chinese are concerned, in planning branding strategies it \nis crucial to consider changes in consumer expectations in order to ensure that these strategies \nare relevant and effective in the highly competitive private education sector. It is pertinent to \ntake note that some of the factors which were not statistically significant in the 2003 study \nwere found to be significant in the current study. These factors are academic integrity, quality \nof teaching, duration of course, future employability, educational fees, and opportunities for \nexposure to new social environments. Conversely a few factors that were significant in the \n2003 study were found to be insignificant in the current study and they are entry requirements, \nfacilities and extra-curriculum activities. These changes in student decisions are primarily \ndue to fresh perceptions of employment opportunities. For instance, priority is given to \nfuture employability as the media has drawn attention to the high percentage of unemployed \ngraduates. According to Md Izwan and Zuraini of Malaysian Insider (Feb 2013) quoting from \nthe Ministry of Higher Education website, among 184,581 graduates from the PIHE sector in \n2012, 44,931 or 24 per cent were unemployed. News of this nature tends to have an important \nimpact on current and future students in the PIHE sector. Employability also depends on the \nquality of education received and academic integrity of the PIHEs. Entry requirements are no \nlonger important simply because the minimum requirements to enrol in a degree programme \nare easily attainable (minimum five credits in SPM; two principal passes in STPM or an \naccredited diploma qualification) by most aspiring students. This implies that the selection \ncriteria that go into the branding strategies need to be reviewed from time to time.\n\n\n\nAccording to Guo et al. (2011), the impact of brands has been examined from various \ntheoretical perspectives. Evidence suggests that a brand serves as an indicator of quality and is \nmore potent in this respect than other external variables such as price, physical appearance and \nreputation. Brand helps reduce \u201cpurchase complexity\u201d and enables consumers to understand \nproduct or service attributes and evaluate products or services effectively. It additionally \nprovides sellers with an economical method of helping prospective customers to infer quality \nwhen it is not discernible. Studies also show that branding is a mechanism to help consumers \nidentify and differentiate products within the same category and can signify the uniqueness of \na particular offer. Through branding strategies and advertising messages, an organization can \nconvey a certain image for its brand (Gordon, 2002: 288 ). Consumers may, however, evaluate \nthe organization\u2019s message through the prism of their own subjectivity. People will use their \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n78          Wee and Thinavan\n\n\n\nown interpretations and will respond differently to brands. This subjective evaluation results \nin the formation of brand image of PIHEs among Malaysian students. It is important that the \nbrand message be conveyed to potential consumers clearly and effectively. \n\n\n\nResearch on brand communication clearly indicates that the Internet and print media \nmust be fully utilized to convey branding messages. Since the Internet and print media are \nsingled out as the most popular sources of information, they may be integrated to ensure \nthat the website links of an institution appear in all the print advertisements and in printed \nmaterials such as brochures and leaflets. This will motivate students to visit the websites for \nfurther information and branding messages. According to Gatfield et al. (1999) brochures are \nsuperior compared to other printed literature in internal branding because a good blend of \npromotional elements such as visuals, typeface, pictures and texts are used to communicate \npersuasively the benefits of a product or service. The communicative functions of university \nbrochures are viewed to be more promotional than informative (Hajibah, 2008). In order to \ndevelop an effective media strategy and consistent brand image, Malaysian PIHEs should \nevaluate and select the most effective communication channels to serve the inquiring students.\n\n\n\nThe present study also demonstrates that TV and radio are less popular amongst \nstudents, and face to face communication such as open days and participation in education \nfair and word of mouth are more promising. Genuine testimonies or recommendations by \nsenior students at open days, recruitment fairs and awards ceremonies play a role in branding \na PIHE and sway the decisions of parents and students. This is supported by Duke\u2019s study \n(2002) that confirms that marketing education services tends to rely on promotion by word of \nmouth to influence the perception of potential students on the institution of higher learning.\n\n\n\nIn the desire to be associated with a well-established institution, Malaysian Chinese \nstudents tend to enrol in well-known institutions of higher learning with strong brand \nidentities. The price premium charged by institutions of higher education for their brands is \ntaken to reflect the quality of the education that is offered. The quality issue should therefore \nbe given priority. The overall perceived quality of higher education has a considerable impact \non the selection of a higher education institution (Plank and Chiagouris, 1998). It is also \nfound that a student\u2019s socio-economic background such as family income; parental education \nand occupation, and high school achievements are directly related to his college aspirations. \n\n\n\nA good institutional brand needs to stand out, convey the brand message effectively, and \nto build consumer trust. These are critical because a brand is equivalent to a promise that an \ninstitution must deliver (Nandan, 2005). Brand and consumer trust will also serve to reduce \nthe risk of making wrong decisions in the selection of a particular PIHE. It is through the \ncreation of a brand that an educational institution, through promotion, seeks to convey certain \nidentity and image of itself to potential students. Educational institutions must therefore be \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBranding Strategies among Private Institutions of Higher Education in Malaysia           79\n\n\n\nable to meet these fundamental branding requirements in their marketing attempts to target \nthe Malaysian Chinese students. Findings from this study may help policy makers and \nadministrators of private institutions to review their educational, administrative policies and \nbranding strategy in the context of student expectations to convince the Malaysian Chinese \nstudents to enrol in their institutions. \n\n\n\nNo research is without limitations and it is admitted that the sample size of this study is \nrelatively small in comparison with the total student population in the private higher education \nsector. A small sample size may lead to bias and findings cannot be confidently generalized. \nBesides this, the choice of PIHEs in the study was restricted to the Klang Valley while there \nare many more outside this region. They may not be representative of all the PIHEs in the \ncountry. \n\n\n\nMore research is recommended to explore the relationship between service quality \nand student satisfaction among Malaysian Chinese students in PIHEs to determine the \neffectiveness of branding strategies in the actual delivery of education in terms of quality, \nintegrity, employability and other key factors identified in this research.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1 The PIHEs are Inti College, KBU International College, New Era College, Olympia College, \nKDU University College, Limkokwing University, Segi University, Sunway University, Taylor\u2019s \nUniversity, and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nABSHER, K. G., G. CRAWFORD and K. P. GATLIN 1993. Identifying college selection factors \namong students of a regional university, Southwest Business Symposium Proceedings: 419-430.\n\n\n\nAHMAD, R. 1998. 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Essentials of Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, \nand Cases, 2nd ed. Harcourt College Publishers.\n\n\n\nHOFSTEDE, G. 1991. Culture and Organization: Software of the Mind, New York: McGraw-Hill.\nJONES, P., SHEARS, P., HILLIER, D. and CLARKE-HILL, C. 2002. Customer perceptions of services \n\n\n\nbrands: a case study of J.D. Wetherspoons, British Food Journal, 104(10): 845-854.\nKAPFERER, J.N. 2008. The New Strategic Brand Management: Creating and Sustaining Brand Equity \n\n\n\nLong-term, London: Kogan Page. 492\nKELLER, K.L. 2008. Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand \n\n\n\nEquity, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall, 13th edition (first published in 1998).\nKOTLER, P. 1976. Applying marketing theory to college admissions. In A Role for Marketing in \n\n\n\nCollege Admissions, edited by College Entrance Examination Board, New York: College \nEntrance Examination Board: 54-72.\n\n\n\nKOTLER, P, and KELLER K. L. 2009. Marketing Management, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 13th \nedition (first published in 1998).\n\n\n\nLEE, M.N.N. 2003. International linkages in Malaysian private higher education. Retrieved from http://\nwww.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter /News30/text009.htm on 10 May 2005.\n\n\n\nLIP, E. 1995.The Design and Feng Shui of Logos, Trademarks, and Signboards, Singapore: Prentice-\nHall.\n\n\n\nMcDONALD, M. H.B., DE CHERNATONY, L. and HARRIS, F. (2001). Corporate marketing and \nservice brands: moving beyond the fast-moving consumer goods model, European Journal of \nMarketing, 35(3/4): 335-352.\n\n\n\nMD IZWAN and ZURAINI, A.R. 2013. Malaysian graduates, a RM500 million strain on taxpayers. \nRetrieved from http://www.malaysianinsider.com on 22 February 2013.\n\n\n\nMinistry of Education 2012. Malaysian Educational Statistics 2011, Putrajaya. \nNANDAN, S. 2005. 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The Economic Value of Education, New York: Columbia University Press.\nSAMSINAR Md. Sidin, SITI RAHAYU Hussin and TAN Ho Soon. 2003. An exploratory study of \n\n\n\nfactors influencing the college decision making of undergraduate students in Malaysia, Asia \nPacific Review, 8(3): 259-280.\n\n\n\nSHAHABUDIN, S. H. 2005. In the aftermath of liberalization: designing a common framework for \npublic and private providers to serve national development goals: South Africa, International \nInstitute for Education Planning, UNESCO. Retrieved from http://unesco.org/iiep/eng/research/ \nhighered/polforum/\u2026/SHapsah.pdf. on 13 August 2012.\n\n\n\nST. JOHN, E. P. 1990. Price response in enrollment decisions: an analysis of the high school and \nbeyond sophomore cohort, Research in Higher Education, 31(2): 161-176.\n\n\n\nStudyMalaysia 2005. Retrieved from http://www.StudyMalaysia.com on 29 July. 2005. \nTAN, A.M. 2002. Malaysian Private Higher Education: Globalisation, Privatisation, Transformation \n\n\n\nand Marketplaces, Malaysia: ASEAN Academic Press.\nVALLASTER, C. 2004. Internal brand building in multicultural organisations: a roadmap towards \n\n\n\naction research, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 7(2): 100-113. \nWONG, ANNIE MUK-NGIIK, AND JAMIL HAMALI. (2006) \u201cHigher education and employment in \n\n\n\nMalaysia.\u201d International Journal of Business and Society 7.1, 102-120.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nGerakan Pendidikan Cina di Malaysia \u2013 Satu Kajian Tentang Perjuangan Dong Jiao Zong \n(1970-2002) (Chinese Educationist Movement in Malaysia \u2013 A Study on the Struggle of Dong \nJiao Zong (1970-2002) by Cheong Yuen Keong (2013), Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information \nand Research Development Centre, ISBN 978-967-5832-71-0, 438 + xxvi pages. \n\n\n\nThe Malaysian public education system is unique in that the primary schools are taught \nin three different media of instruction, namely, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. This was the \nfruit of interethnic compromise and negotiation at Independence in 1957, against the odds of \na forceful assertion of Malay nationalism. Notwithstanding this initial concession, the 1956 \nRazak Education Report reiterates one of the terms of reference assigned to its committee, \nthat the \u201cultimate objective\u201d of the education policy was to gradually switch to the use of the \nMalay language as the \u201cmain medium of instruction\u201d. It was this \u201cultimate objective\u201d which \nbecame the perpetual bone of contention between the official implementation of the Malaysian \neducation policy and the Chinese educationists\u2019 struggle till today.\n\n\n\nDong Jiao Zong (\u8463\u6559\u603b), the acronym for two national associations, the United Chinese \nSchool Committees\u2019 Association (abbreviated in Mandarin as \u8463\u603b or Dong Zong), and the \nUnited Chinese School Teachers\u2019 Association (abbreviated in Mandarin as \u6559\u603b or Jiao Zong), \nis almost synonymous with the Chinese educationist movement in Malaysia. While they are \nrecognized as the foremost bastion of Chinese education in Malaysia, they are poorly understood \nby those who are outside the Mandarin-speaking milieu in Malaysia, i.e. those who do not \nread Chinese newspapers regularly or are not involved in Chinese associations; let alone those \nwho do not speak the language. Hence Gerakan, the doctoral thesis of Cheong Yuen Keong in \nthe Malay language on the struggles of the Chinese educationist movement (as epitomized by \nDong Jiao Zong) is a welcome contribution to the academic literature on Chinese education in \nMalaysia.\n\n\n\nAs pointed out by Cheong, Dong Jiao Zong are not the only associations who are \ncommitted to the preservation and promotion of the Chinese education in Malaysia. They are \nnonetheless recognized as the most authoritative social force, with an organized and dedicated \ninstitution for this purpose. Besides acting as a watchdog over the general operations of the \nMandarin-medium primary schools, Dong Jiao Zong are also intimately involved in sustaining \nthe standard of secondary Mandarin-medium private schools through periodic revision of their \ncurriculum, the writing of school textbooks and the administration of common examinations \nknown as the Unified Examination Certificate. Since 1998, Dong Jiao Zong have also run a non-\nprofit tertiary educational institution, the New Era College, the fruit of persistence after decades \nof unsuccessful attempts. It is nonetheless bound by the pre-conditions set by the government, \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 87-89\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTing\n\n\n\nwhich stipulated that it is only allowed to use Mandarin as the medium of instruction for Chinese \nstudies course. Other courses have to be offered in English or Malay medium.\n\n\n\nGerakan consists of an introductory section and ten chapters which examine contestations \nand struggles spearheaded by Dong Jiao Zong over a range of issues related to the preservation \nand sustenance of Chinese education in Malaysia. The introductory section sets out the \nconceptual perspective of the book, framing the Dong Jiao Zong as a social interest group and \nits struggles as a form of social movement. The author points out that at the heart of the conflicts \nare the opposing visions of national integration through education, i.e. monolingualism versus \nmultilingualism. \n\n\n\nChapter 1 sets the historical background of the Chinese education till 1970. Chapter 2 to 7 \ncover a series of struggles over various issues using a thematic approach: attempts of Dong Jiao \nZong at building a comprehensive system of Chinese education, speaking up on the formulation \nof national education policy, safeguarding the status quo of the Chinese primary schools, \nseeking compromise in the implementation of national education policy, demanding for the \nbuilding of new Chinese primary schools, and fighting for equal treatment of Chinese schools \nin the national education system. Chapter 8 then reviews the various strategies and partnership \nadopted by Dong Jiao Zong over the decades to fight for its cause. Chapter 9 assesses the \neffectiveness and impact of Dong Jiao Zong\u2019s struggles, before chapter 10 ends by making \noverall conclusions based on the issues discussed in various chapters of the book.\n\n\n\nThe author has collected information based on in-depth interviews, observation and study \nof documents, and also benefits from his own experience as a teacher in various categories \nof schools. Notwithstanding his inside knowledge and sympathetic perspective, the author \nmaintains his scholarly distance by including, where relevant, the official perspective on the \nissues concerned. Hence besides using Chinese sources extensively, the author also consults \nand cites a fair amount of Malay and official sources to articulate the perspective from both \nsides.\n\n\n\nCheong notes that over the decades, Dong Jiao Zong\u2019s approach has evolved from a narrow \nethnic based struggle to a civil and human right-based discourse of defending mother tongue \neducation. He also concludes that Dong Jiao Zong were successful in their struggle to negotiate \nfor a more accommodative policy implementation which did not threaten the status quo of the \nChinese primary schools but were unsuccessful in so far as changing the basic orientation or \nthe \u201cultimate objective\u201d of the government education policy. On the other hand, the ideological \norientation of the government towards the role of education, though less explicitly, has arguably \nevolved from a \u201cmajoritarian\u201d nation-building perspective to one which is more responsive to \nthe exigencies of an open Malaysian economy in the face of globalized economic forces. The \nshort-lived switch of the teaching language for mathematics and science to English, as well \n\n\n\n88\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews 89\n\n\n\nas the decision to allow for the establishment of English-medium private tertiary institutions \nimplemented from the 1990s are some of the indications of such shifting official perspectives \nof the policy makers. This was contrary to the position of the government during the 1970s and \n1980s on the insistence of using the Malay language in all tertiary educational institutions when \nrejecting the application of Dong Jiao Zong to set up a private tertiary educational institution, \nthe Merdeka University.\n\n\n\nWhile the book is well written as a whole, the publisher may wish to consider doing a \nthorough copy editing if a reprint is undertaken in the future, in order to eliminate the more than \nfew typos and occasional errors in the spelling of names. The one minor doubt is the generous \nand loose usage of the term \u201cgerakan\u201d (movement) by the author, in particular in the titles of \nthe various chapters. The author may have intended to use the term to indicate that other social \nactors besides the Dong Jiao Zong were also involved in fighting for the issues. However, \nshould each of these initiatives to tackle specific issues be described as a \u201cmovement\u201d in its \nown right? The handling of some of the issues did not appear to involve mass mobilization \nbut media war and lobbying. The issues discussed in each chapter are organized according to \nthe thematic concern, but the various events of contestations are not necessarily interrelated \nor temporally continuous. It may be more appropriate in that instance to name it merely as \n\u201cstruggle\u201d or \u201ccampaign\u201d rather than \u201cmovement\u201d.\n\n\n\nAs a whole, the strength of the book is its comprehensiveness and thoroughness, with \nmeticulous care in handling the details of various events. It may be regarded as an essential, \nbasic reference book for all students of the Malaysian Chinese education movement spanning \nthe three decades, in particular for those who cannot read Mandarin.  Given the scarcity of good \nEnglish-language academic works on the subject, the author may wish to consider translating \nthe book into English for the benefit of foreign scholars.\n\n\n\nHelen TING Mu Hung\nUniversiti Kebangsaan Malaysia\n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n* TEY Nai Peng is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Statistics, Faculty \nof Economics and Administration, University of Malaya. E-mail: teynpster@ gmail.com\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 40-59\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley \nof Malaysia: Issues and Implications \n\n\n\nTEY Nai Peng*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper deals with migration into and out of the Klang Valley, followed by a description of \nthe profile of migrants. The causes and consequences of the influx of population to a region and the \nimportant role of migration in national development will also be dealt with.\n\n\n\nInternal migration in Malaysia has become more focused, with heavy in-migration to the Klang \nValley which is the national administrative, commercial and educational hub. Between 1991 and 2000, \nthe population of Klang Valley increased from about 3.2 million to 5.1 million, at 5 per cent per annum. \nMigration is induced by opportunities of higher learning, and employment in the manufacturing, \nservices and construction sectors. The migrants tend be among the young and the better educated \nsegments of the population. \n\n\n\nThe influx of Malays to the Klang Valley has contributed to the government's goal to reduce the \nethnic identification with employment and geographical locations. Internal migration in turn results in \neconomies of agglomeration and plays a key role in transforming the economy, increasing incomes and \npropels the nation towards \u201cdeveloped nation\u201d status. Heavy concentrations of population in the Klang \nValley, however, have given rise to many social problems and exacerbate the strain on existing social \namenities and infrastructures.\n\n\n\nKey words:  Internal migration, migrants, Klang Valley, population concentration, economy, \ndevelopment\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\nMalaysia covers an area of 333,000 square kilometres, with a population of about 28 \nmillion in 2010 of whom almost four-fifths were found in Peninsular Malaysia (DSM, 2010). \nThe population is multi-ethnic in character, comprising Bumiputera communities of Malays \nand several other indigenous groups in Sabah and Sarawak, and non- Bumiputera communities \nof Chinese, Indians, and other minor groups. In 2000, the the national population was made \nup of 61.2 per cent Bumiputera, 24.5 per cent Chinese, 7.2 per cent Indians, and 1.2 per cent \n\u201cOthers\u201d, and 5.9 per cent non-citizens. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          41\n\n\n\nEconomically, the employment structure of the major ethnic groups has undergone \nsignificant transformation since independence in 1957. Traditionally, Malays lived largely \nin the rural areas and worked as paddy farmers, fishermen and rubber tappers. The Chinese \ndominated trade and commerce in the towns and were also involved in tin mining, rubber \ncultivation and commercial agriculture. The Indians were primarily found in the rubber \nplantations, with a few involved in trade and commerce and in the professions (Leete, 1996). \nFollowing the implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) during the period of 1970-\n1990, aimed at restructuring society to eliminate the identification of race with location and \noccupation, and the creation of a Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community, large \nnumbers of Malays had moved to the urban centres. Between 1970 and 2000, the urbanization \nlevel of the Malays increased from 14.9 to 54.2 per cent. During the same period, the \nurbanization level of the Chinese and Indians increased from 47.4 and 34.7 per cent to 85.9 \nand 79.7 per cent respectively.\n\n\n\nUntil the 1960s, the Malaysian economy was based on the production of rubber and \ntin for export and the growing of rice and minor food crops. In 1970, half the labour force \nwas engaged in agriculture, but was reduced to 13.4 per cent in 2006. On the other hand, \nthe manufacturing sector increased its share of total employment from 8 to 20.3 per cent \nduring the same period. Significant gains were also recorded in the construction, services \nand financial sectors. Rapid industrialization and economic growth boosted per capita gross \ndomestic product (GDP) from US$3,849 (PPP) in 1987 to US$13,515 (PPP) in 2007 (UN, \n2009). At the same time, the supremacy of rubber, which accounted for 55 per cent of the \ncountry\u2019s export earnings in 1960, was practically obliterated, being a mere 1.4 per cent in \n2007. In contrast, the manufacturing sector rose to primacy by contributing to about 52 per \ncent of export earnings (DSM, 2007).\n\n\n\nRemarkable progress was also made in human development. Life expectancy rose from \n54.3 years in 1960 to 74.1 years in 2007. Enrolment in primary and secondary schools stood \nat about 95 and 58 per cent respectively. The labour force is now more highly trained with 19 \nper cent possessing tertiary education in 2006, compared with only 3 per cent in 1980. Gender \ndifferentials in educational attainment have been narrowed and reversed, with young women \noutnumbering the men in institutions of higher learning. Female labour force participation \nrate has remained at around 47 per cent (DSM, 1999, 2002, 2003a and 2007).\n\n\n\nThese changes have come about through various processes of change. One of the major \nprocesses is that of internal migration and its varying social and economic impacts on the \ndifferent states of the country. Some states have registered net gains in population while others \nexperienced net losses. Yet it is not always true that the more developed states with large \nurban centres experience net gains at the expense of their less developed counterparts. The \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n42          Tey\n\n\n\nadjoining Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and the state of Selangor are cases in point. \nDuring the inter-censal period of 1991-2000, internal migration resulted in a slow rate \n\n\n\nof population growth of 1.3 per cent per annum in Kuala Lumpur and an almost phenomenal \nrate of 6.1 per cent per annum in Selangor. This decade witnessed a 75 per cent increase \nin the population of Selangor from 2.4 million to 4.2 million, while that of Kuala Lumpur \nwas just 17 per cent from 1.2 million to 1.4 million. The unusual situation in Selangor was \nlargely the result of heavy in-migration from other parts of the country, including Kuala \nLumpur. The manufacturing, services and construction sectors of this state also attracted \nsubstantial numbers of foreign workers. Between 1996 and 2000, Selangor received a net \ninflow of 371,000 migrants, of whom 14 per cent were foreigners. On the other hand, Kuala \nLumpur received 42,000 in-migrants between 1996 and 2000, but sent almost 100,000 away \nto Selangor. \n\n\n\nThis paper deals with issues of internal migration between 1996 and 2000 with an \nanalysis the socio-demographic characteristics of migrants into and out of Kuala Lumpur \nand Selangor. The discussion will focus on the Klang Valley comprising Kuala Lumpur and \nits adjacent districts in Selangor (Klang, Petaling, Gombak, Ulu Langat, Sepang, Putrajaya, \nand Multimedia Super Corridor, which together made up 86 per cent of the total population \nof Selangor), and some of the causes of in-migration to this region. Unabated and heavy \nmigration to the Klang Valley has both positive and negative consequences. The implications \nof the migratory streams and rapid population growth in the Klang Valley on the restructuring \nof society, social and economic development, basic infrastructures and services, as well as \nopportunities, challenges and problems associated with rapid population growth in the Klang \nValley will be examined. \n\n\n\nOverview of Population Growth and Internal Migration in Malaysia\n\n\n\nPublished data and the two per cent sample data of the 2000 Population Census of \nMalaysia form the basis of this study. Unlike previous censuses which used the de facto \napproach (by counting people where they are on Census day irrespective of their usual place \nof residence), the 2000 Census adopted the de jure approach by enumerating all persons \naccording to their place of usual or legal residence on Census day on 5 July 2000. All persons \nincluding foreigners who had stayed or intended to stay in Malaysia for six months or more \nin the year 2000 were enumerated. \n\n\n\nThe population of Malaysia increased by about 2.6 per cent each year between 1970 \nand 2000, but declined to 2.2 per cent per annum since then. The population almost trebled in \nnumber from 10.4 million in 1970 to more than 28 million in 2010. The rate of growth varies \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          43\n\n\n\nconsiderably in urban and rural areas. In the 1990s, the annual rate of growth ranged from less \nthan 1 per cent in the states of Kelantan, Perak (the most populous state up to 1980) and Perlis \nto 6.1 per cent in Selangor. While the population in Selangor saw an accelerating rate of growth \nbetween 1970 and 2000, that of Kuala Lumpur grew at a slower pace than before (Table 1). \nEmbedded in the markedly contrasting rates of population growth between Kuala Lumpur and \nSelangor that encloses it are a host of causes arising from diverse origins.\n\n\n\nTable 1. Population and Rate of Population Growth by State, 1970-2000 (\u2019000)\n\n\n\nState \n\n\n\nPopulation Rate of growth (per cent)\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1991 2000 2010\n1970-\n\n\n\n80\n1980-\n\n\n\n91\n1991-\n2000\n\n\n\n2000-\n2010\n\n\n\nJohor 1,277.2 1,638.2 2,162.4 2,740.6 3,395.1 2.5 2.5 2.6 2.1\nKedah 954.9 1,116.1 1,364.5 1,649.8 1,984.6 1.6 1.8 2.1 1.8\nKelantan 684.7 893,8.0 1,207.7 1,313.0 1,533.0 2.7 2.7 0.9 1.5\nMelaka 404.1 464.8 529.2 635.8 828,141 1.4 1.2 2.0 2.6\nNegeri  \n\n\n\nSembilan 481.6 573.6 722.0 859.9 1,046.9 1.7 2.1 1.9 2.0\nPahang 504.9 798.8 1,081.1 1,288.4 1,515.5 4.6 2.8 1.9 1.6\nPerak 1,569.1 1,805.2 1,974.9 2,051.2 2,371.3 1.4 0.8 0.4 1.5\nPerlis 121.1 148.3 190.2 204.5 238.4 2.0 2.3 0.8 1.5\nPenang 776.1 954.6 1,116.8 1,313.4 1,596.1 2.1 1.4 1.8 1.9\nSabah 636.4 983.1 1,808.8 2,603.5 3,276.0 4.3 5.5 4.0 2.3\nSarawak 976.3 1,307.6 1,718.4 2,071.5 2,541.0 2.9 2.5 2.1 2.0\nSelangor 982.1 1,515.5 2,413.6 4,188.9 5,753.3 4.3 4.2 6.1 3.2\nTerengganu 405.4 5,406.0 808.6 898.8 1,066.6 2.9 3.7 1.2 1.7\nKuala Lumpur 648.3 977.1 1,226.7 1,379.3 1,708.5 4.1 2.1 1.3 2.1\nLabuan 17.2 27.9 54.8 76.1 89.5 4.8 6.1 3.6 1.6\nMalaysia 10,439.4 13,745.2 18,379.7 23,274.7 28,944.1 2.8 2.6 2.6 2.2\n\n\n\nSources: DSM, 1995, 2001, 2010 \nNote: the preliminary report of the 2010 Census showed an enumerated population of 27,565,821 in \n2010, and this was inflated by a factor of 1.05, to 28,944,112 to take into account under-enumeration, \nas in the case of the 2000 Population Census, i.e. 23,274,690/ 22,198,275= 1.05. \n\n\n\nOne of the consequences of the differential rates of population growth is the substantial \nre-distribution of population. In the 1990s, Selangor boosted its share of the total population \nfrom 13.1 to 18.0 per cent, and further to 20 per cent in 2010, while Sabah increased its share \nfrom 9.8 to 11.2 per cent in 2000-2010. Except for Johor which contained 11.8 per cent of the \ntotal population throughout the 1990s, all other states experienced a relative decline in their \nshare of the national population. Perak, the most populous state in 1970, dropped to fifth place \nin 2000, behind Selangor, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak. \n\n\n\nData on the place of birth and usual residence of a person five years preceding the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n44          Tey\n\n\n\ncensus are employed in the study of lifetime and five-year internal migration. All movements \nduring the intervening period are ignored. The 2000 Population Census shows that 76.2 per \ncent of the population had not moved between 1996 and 2000, 17.8 per cent were migrants and \n6 per cent were of unknown migration status (DSM, 2004). In terms of life time migrants, 4.5 \nmillion persons had moved across states since birth, of which 3.3 million did so during the five \nyears preceding the 2000 Census (Table 2). \n\n\n\nTable 2. Distribution of Lifetime and Five-year Internal Migration by State, 1996-2000\n\n\n\nState\nLife time migrants Five-year migrants\n\n\n\nIn Out Net In Out Net\nJohor 372,194 377,789 -5,595 419,390 400,212 19,178\nKedah 226,589 388,821 -162,232 179,114 191,450 -12,336\nKelantan 51,179 358,098 -306,919 108,646 167,438 -58,792\nMelaka 120,852 256,741 -135,889 103,983 101,051 2,932\nNegeri Sembilan 222,319 267,911 -45,592 154,595 136,769 17,826\nPahang 355,812 277,362 78,450 190,984 205,339 -14,355\nPerak 224,884 793,354 -568,470 252,653 303,592 -50,939\nPerlis 42,122 58,946 -16,824 21,466 24,366 -2,900\nPenang 249,715 251,741 -2,026 225,623 212,010 13,613\nSabah 74,380 98,901 -24,521 310,733 331,721 -20,988\nSarawak 31,523 93,659 -62,136 261,560 285,534 -23,974\nSelangor 1,876,690 254,963 1,621,727 740,700 503,800 236,900\nTerengganu 105,444 152,764 -47,320 124,404 136,503 -12,099\nKuala Lumpur 558,494 745,049 -186,555 221,080 315,327 -94,247\nLabuan 25,288 4,473 20,815 13,554 13,373 181\nTotal 4,537,485 4,380,572 156,913 3,328,485 3,328,485 0\n\n\n\nSource: DSM, 2004 \n\n\n\nSelangor registered a net gain of 1.6 million lifetime migrants and about a quarter \nmillion recent migrants (including external migrants in both cases). On the other hand, Kuala \nLumpur experienced one of the largest net losses. However, these losses were apparent rather \nthan real, as most of the out-migrants from Kuala Lumpur moved to new housing areas across \nthe border in Selangor.\n\n\n\nA key feature of internal movements during the five years before the 2000 Census was that \nmost migrants moved across adjoining states. This explains why there were more migrants into \nand out of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor than other states. The populations of these territories \ncontained a higher proportion of migrants than other states. The proportion of residents born \noutside the state was as high as 50 per cent in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, in sharp contrast \nto less than 5 per cent in Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak. \n\n\n\nThe 2001 Migration Survey confirms that migration to urban areas is becoming more \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          45\n\n\n\ndominant in inter-state migration, accounting for 77.6 per cent of the movements (65.7 per cent \nurban-urban and 11.9 per cent rural-urban). Rural-rural and urban-rural migration made up 4.0 \nper cent and 18.5 per cent respectively of these total movements. The Survey shows that 85 per \ncent of the urban migrants in Selangor had come from other urban centres, whether they were \nfrom other states or within Selangor itself (DSM, 2003b).\n\n\n\nFemales were as likely to migrate outside their state of residence as males. This is shown by \nthe fact that the sex ratio of internal migrants is similar to that of the total population. Relatively \nmore females than males have migrated to work in the factories. As expected, migration tends to \ninvolve young adults between the ages of 20 and 34 years. These groups accounted for 42.8 per \ncent of all inter-state migrants in 2000, but only 20.0 per cent of the non-migrants and 31.8 per \ncent among intra-district migrants.\n\n\n\nThe better educated, and therefore better equipped, are more likely to move than the less \neducated. Migrants are much more likely than non-migrants to have upper secondary or tertiary \neducation. The proportion with upper secondary or tertiary education was 57.8 per cent among \ninter-state migrants and 42.6 per cent among intra-state migrants. In comparison, only one third \namong the non-migrants had secondary or higher qualification. In the case of tertiary education, \nthe contrast is 22 per cent among movers against 5.8 per cent among non-movers. \n\n\n\nAs migration is generally motivated by the search for better job opportunities, it is therefore \nlikely that most migrants seek employment as employees. On the other hand, the self-employed \nare less likely to move as they may not prefer to work for others. \n\n\n\nMigration Into and Out of the Klang Valley\n\n\n\nLifetime Inter-state Migration\nLifetime migration up to the year 2000 refers to the change of residence between the \n\n\n\nplace of birth and the current place, without taking into account intervening movements. The \nfollowing discussion is concerned with lifetime migrants who were living in Kuala Lumpur \nand Selangor in 2000 but were born in other states.\n\n\n\nIn 2000, Selangor was the destination of 1,788,020 lifetime in-migrants and the source \nof 254,963 lifetime out-migrants. The result was a net gain of about 1.5 million people to \nthe state. The corresponding figures for Kuala Lumpur are 538,831 lifetime in-migrants \nand 745,049 lifetime out-migrants, resulting in a net loss of 206,218 persons. The contrast \nbetween the two territories is marked and clear. As half the population in Selangor and 40 per \ncent of that in Kuala Lumpur were born in other states, one may dub these two territories as \nthe home of migrant communities. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n46          Tey\n\n\n\nTable 3. Lifetime Migration Flows To and From Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, 2000\n\n\n\nState\n\n\n\nTo From Net To From Net\n Kuala \n\n\n\nLumpur\nKuala \n\n\n\nLumpur \nKuala \n\n\n\nLumpur Selangor Selangor Selangor\nJohor 52,500 20,220 32,280 139,408 22,467 116,941\nKedah 35,382 10,005 25377 88,967 8,378 80,589\nKelantan 36,671 3,452 33,219 104,001 2,695 101,306\nMelaka 38,478 10,215 28,263 91,364 8,672 82,692\nNegeri Sembilan 44,619 19,339 25,280 126,228 27,774 98,454\nPahang 32,642 20,484 12,158 90,632 32,625 58,007\nPerak 123,435 19,095 104,340 352,176 25,453 326,723\nPerlis 4,345 1,493 2,852 11,277 1,246 10,031\nPenang 27,511 8,250 19,261 67,489 7,165 60,324\nSabah 9,484 3,906 5,578 29,642 3,698 25,944\nSarawak 11,335 1,567 9,768 22,039 1,335 20,704\nSelangor 109,113 622,347 -513,234 1,757,373 1,757,373 0\nTerengganu 12,998 4,073 8,925 41,499 3,923 37,576\nKuala Lumpur 595,483 595,483 0 622,347 109,113 513,234\nLabuan 318 603 -285 951 419 532\n\n\n\nSource: DSM, 2004. \n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur recorded a net gain of lifetime migrants from all states, except Selangor \nand Labuan. It was Perak, where depopulation has been a sensitive barometer to its economic \ndecline that contributed the largest number of lifetime migrants to Kuala Lumpur and the second \nlargest number to Selangor. Selangor saw a net gain from all other states, drawing the largest \nnumber from adjacent Kuala Lumpur, followed by Perak, Johor and Kelantan. The migratory \nmovements from Kuala Lumpur to Selangor, amounting to a net deficit of half a million people, \nis illusory as large numbers have moved to the mushrooming housing estates in adjoining \nSelangor but who may still commute daily to work in the capital city. For the Klang Valley as a \nwhole, the net inflow of Malay lifetime migrants was close to 900,000, while that of the Chinese \nand Indians exceeded 300,000 and 100,000 respectively (Figure 1).\n\n\n\nOthers\n31,654\n\n\n\n748,751\n\n\n\n1,372,446\n483,581\n\n\n\n888,865\n\n\n\n413,042\n335,709\n\n\n\n261,585\n135,568\n126,017\n\n\n\n47,869\n16,215\n\n\n\nIndians\n\n\n\nChinese\n\n\n\nMalays\n\n\n\n0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000\n\n\n\nIn\nOut\nNet\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Lifetime Migration to and from Kuala Lumpur/Selangor by Ethnic Group, 2000\nSource: DSM, 2004.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          47\n\n\n\nFive-Year Migration, 1996-2000\nChanges in the place of residence five years preceding the 2000 Census provides \n\n\n\ninformation for the study of the most recent inter-state migration. As this measure does \nnot take into account intervening moves within the five-year period, all return migrants are \nclassified as non-migrants. The five-year inter-state migration provides a clearer picture of the \nrecent trend and patterns of internal migration that lifetime migration may not reveal.\n\n\n\nAgain, the cross-over of population from Kuala Lumpur to Selangor represents the \nmajor phenomenon of internal migration in Malaysia in recent years. During the 1996-2000 \nperiod, Kuala Lumpur had a migration deficit of close to 100,000, mainly to Selangor, and \nalso net losses to several other states.\n\n\n\nSelangor continued to attract migrants from other states during the 1996-2000 period, \ngaining close to a quarter million people. It was this influx that explains its 6 per cent annual \npopulation growth in the 1990s. Migrants to Selangor had crossed over mainly from adjacent \nKuala Lumpur, but also from Perak, Kelantan, Johor, and Pahang, and as far as Sabah and \nSarawak (Table 4).\n\n\n\n \nTable 4. Migration To and From Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, 1996-2000\n\n\n\n \nState/Others\n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur Selangor\nTo From Net To From Net\n\n\n\nState\nJohor 10,213 11,267 -1,054 27,393 11,369 16,024\nKedah 6,409 6,462 -53 16,351 6,108 10,243\nKelantan 7,977 3,358 4,619 25,838 3,088 22,750\nMelaka 3,897 5,565 -1,668 10,614 5,290 5,324\nNegeri Sembilan 5,628 10,291 -4,663 17,898 16,021 1,877\nPahang 7,269 7,032 237 23,520 8,005 15,515\nPerak 14,323 10,881 3,442 41,278 12,485 28,793\nPerlis 861 907 -46 2,411 777 1,634\nPenang 4,414 4,944 -530 11,074 4,278 6,796\nSabah 4,103 2,448 1,655 14,060 2215 11845\nSarawak 5,264 2,175 3,089 9,706 1,529 8,177\nSelangor 32,145 131423 -99278 396,310 396310 0\nTerengganu 3,545 3,411 134 12,039 3,807 8,232\nLabuan 239 440 -201 785 373 412\nKuala Lumpur 114,793 114,793 0 131,423 32,145 99,278\nTotal* 106,287 200,604 -94,317 344,390 107,490 236,900\n\n\n\nOthers\nOutside Malaysia 22,631 n.a. n.a. 52,284 n.a. n.a.\nUnknown (migrants) 13,775 n.a. n.a.  81,370 n.a. n.a.\nNon-migrants  883,811 n.a. n.a. 2,641,418 n.a. n.a.\nUnknown  164,495 n.a. n.a.  437,045 n.a. n.a.\n\n\n\n* Excluding intra-state\nSource: DSM, 2004.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n48          Tey\n\n\n\nSince the 1980s, labour shortage has led to an influx of foreign workers from Indonesia, \nPhilippines and Bangladesh to fill the needs of the construction, plantation, manufacturing \nand services sectors. The 2000 Census enumerated a total of 1.38 million non-citizens. Table \n4 shows that 22,631 and 52,284 non-citizens had entered Kuala Lumpur or Selangor five \nyears prior to the Census. This number has since ballooned in recent years.\n\n\n\nThe published reports of the 2000 Population Census do not provide information on \nfive-year inter-state migration by ethnicity. The 2 per cent sample of the 2000 Census is \ntherefore used to estimate the five-year migratory flow to and from the Klang Valley (Figure \n2). There were net inflows of migrants of all the major ethnic groups, led by the Malays (in \nexcess of 75,000), Chinese (about 50,000) and Indians (about 10,000).\n\n\n\nOthers\n8,198\n\n\n\n126,885\n\n\n\n263,494\n\n\n\n75,666\n\n\n\n75,965\n50,920\n\n\n\n35,625\n25,885\n\n\n\n9,740\n14,142\n5,944\n\n\n\nIndians\n\n\n\nChinese\n\n\n\nMalays\n\n\n\n0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 3,000,0002,500,000\n\n\n\nIn\n\n\n\nOut\n\n\n\nNet\n\n\n\n487,828\n\n\n\nFigure 2.  Five-year Inter-state Migration to and from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, 1996-\n2000\n\n\n\nSource: Based on estimate from the 2% sample \n\n\n\nCharacteristics of Five-year Internal Migrants To and From Klang Valley\nBoth age and education have a determining effect on migration. To migrate or not to \n\n\n\nmigrate is a major personal decision that tends to favour the young and the better educated \nsegments of the population who have a longer planning horizon. \n\n\n\nFrom Table 5, it is clear that the average age of migrants to Selangor and Kuala Lumpur \nis lower than the national average and that of non-migrants in these two territories. The mean \nage of the migrants is highest among out-migrants from Kuala Lumpur. Recent migrants \nto both areas are over-represented by the 20-29 age group (46.1 per cent in Kuala Lumpur \nand 37.5 per cent in Selangor). One of the reasons for this is the large enrolment of youths \nin institutions of higher learning, which are mostly concentrated in the Klang Valley. As the \nindustrial, commercial and administrative centre of the country, Kuala Lumpur and major \nurban centres in the Klang Valley offer ample opportunities for employment to the graduates \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          49\n\n\n\nof colleges and universities and all those in search of employment.\nThe sex ratio of in-migrants, especially those aged 20-39 years, indicates the \n\n\n\npredominance of female migrants in Kuala Lumpur, but this is not the case in Selangor. \nThat relatively more males had moved out from Kuala Lumpur during the 1996-2000 period \nalso explains the strong presence of female in-migrants. More males had also moved out of \nSelangor during this period and had helped to depress the high male to female ratio.\n\n\n\nTable 5. Socio-demographic Characteristics of Five-Year Internal Migrants to and from \nKuala Lumpur and Selangor, 1996-2000\n\n\n\nCharacteristics\n\n\n\nMalaysia Kuala Lumpur Selangor\n\n\n\nTotal\nIn-\n\n\n\nmigrants\nOut-\n\n\n\nmigrants Total\nIn-\n\n\n\nmigrants\nOut-\n\n\n\nmigrants\nAge distribution\n\n\n\nBelow 10 23.0 18.9 12.5 21.5 21.3 15.4 22.7\n10-19 20.8 16.5 13.6 14.2 18.6 14.7 13.4\n20-29 16.3 21.0 46.1 22.3 20.1 37.5 27.4\n30-39 15.1 17.7 18.4 24.4 17.2 18.3 23.2\n40-49 11.8 13.0 6.1 11.9 12.3 8.6 9.6\n50-59 6.7 7.0 2.1 3.5 5.9 3.2 2.6\n60+ 6.3 5.8 1.3 2.4 4.5 2.3 1.3\n\n\n\nEthnicity\nMalays 51.0 39.9 57.0 57.0 49.4 58.8 68.4\nOther Bumiputera 10.9 0.7 1.8 1.0 1.0 2.8 1.0\nChinese 24.4 41.6 32.3 28.1 29.9 26.8 18.2\nIndians 7.2 10.6 5.3 8.9 14.6 8.7 7.6\nOthers 1.2 1.5 0.5 0.9 1.0 0.6 1.0\nNon-citizens 5.4 5.7 3.2 4.1 4.2 2.3 3.8\n\n\n\nEducational level among those aged 20-64\nNo schooling 10.2 4.1 1.6 1.8 5.0 1.7 1.6\nPrimary 25.3 16.9 5.9 8.4 17.6 7.5 8.6\nSecondary 49.2 52.8 43.9 51.1 51.8 46.8 50.2\nTertiary 15.4 26.2 48.5 38.6 25.6 43.9 39.6\n\n\n\nTotal (per cent) 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0\nMean age 26.3 29.7 24.5 25.6 26.1 25.2 24.0\nSex ratio (Overall) 103 102 95 107 105 107 112\nSex ratio (20-39) 100 98 86 108 103 110 106\n\n\n\nSource: Computed from 2 per cent sample of the 2000 Population Census\n\n\n\nMalays were predominant among the in-migrants in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor during \nthe 1996-2000 period. They also dominated the outflows from the Klang Valley. One of the \nexplanations for this was the departure of students to their home states upon completing their \nhigher education. The corresponding shares of Chinese and Indian migrants into and out of \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n50          Tey\n\n\n\nKlang Valley are much lower than their respective shares of the population in these territories. \nThis phenomenon again underscores the dominance of Malay migration into and out of the \nKlang Valley (Table 5).\n\n\n\nTable 5 also confirms that recent in-migrants to the Klang Valley have higher educational \nattainment compared with the general population. Among those aged 20-64 who had recently \nmoved to the Klang Valley, about half in Kuala Lumpur and 44 per cent in Selangor had \nreceived tertiary education, compared with only 15 per cent for the country, and 25 per cent \nfor the two territories as a whole. One may acknowledge that higher educational attainment is \nmore likely to be the result rather than the cause of migration, given that most institutions of \nhigher learning are located in the Klang Valley.\n\n\n\nExplaining Migration Flows Into and Out of Klang Valley\n\n\n\nGovernment Policies\nThe launching of NEP in 1971 marked a watershed in Malaysian history. The policy was \n\n\n\nto achieve socio-economic goals by pursuing economic growth targets to create harmony and \nunity among diverse ethnic and religious groups. The overriding goal of national unity was to \nbe met by means of two major strategies. The first was to reduce absolute poverty irrespective \nof ethnicity through expanding employment opportunities and raising income levels for all. \nThe second was to restructure society to reduce and eventually eliminate economic imbalances \narising from the occupational identification with ethnic groups.\n\n\n\nThe social restructuring programme was by far the more fundamental and at times \ncontroversial policy. Its implementation was tied to a series of strategies that were deliberately \nbiased in favour of the Bumiputera communities. Among these strategies were the following \n(http://www.epu.gov.my/neweconomicpolicy):\n\n\n\n1. Direct intervention by Government through the creation of specialized agencies to \nacquire economic interests and hold in-trust for Bumiputeras until such a time when \nthey are capable of taking over;\n\n\n\n2. Introduction of specially designed rules and arrangements, whereby the involvement \nand participation of Bumiputeras are assisted and facilitated over a period;\n\n\n\n3. Provision of concessional fiscal and monetary support as part of the package towards \nentrepreneurial development;\n\n\n\n4. Accelerated programme for education and training;\n5. Increasing Bumiputera ownership through privatization projects; and\n6. Reduce progressively, through overall economic growth, the imbalances in \n\n\n\nemployment so that employment by sectors and occupational levels would reflect \nracial composition.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          51\n\n\n\nIn the Mid-term Review of the Eighth Malaysia Plan (2001-2005) (Malaysia, 2003), it \nwas stated that:\n\n\n\nThe Government will continue to implement programmes and \nprojects to achieve distributional and regional balance strategies \nduring the remaining Plan period\u2026Strategies to restructure \nemployment will focus on programmes to increase the number \nof Bumiputera professionals, managers and skilled workers in \nvarious occupations and sectors.\n\n\n\nA corollary in the implementation of the social restructuring policy has been to urbanize \nthe Malays and other Bumiputera groups. Vastly increased opportunities in higher education \nand employment in government and business sectors have led to an exodus of Malay youths \nfrom the rural to urban areas, in particular to the Klang Valley. \n\n\n\nKlang Valley: The National Hub\nGiven that Kuala Lumpur was formerly a part of Selangor and that they form an \n\n\n\ninseparable economic zone, the migratory flows between these territories are intra-regional. \nIt is more meaningful then to discuss migratory flows to the region as a whole, particularly \nwith reference to Klang Valley that comprises Kuala Lumpur and the adjacent districts of \nSelangor. \n\n\n\nOne of the factors that induce heavy outflows from Kuala Lumpur to Selangor is the \nrapid housing development in Selangor. Between 1991 and 2000, the number of housing units \n(including flats, apartments and condominiums) in Selangor increased sharply from 529,198 \nto about 830,000 units, while those in Kuala Lumpur increased from 257,666 units to 294,400. \nRelative abundance of land in Selangor and shortage in Kuala Lumpur has pushed the suburbs \noutwards from the high-density urban core to the adjoining and largely agricultural outskirts. \nHence, the cross-over from Kuala Lumpur is residential rather than occupational as many \ncommute to work between the sprawling suburbs and Kuala Lumpur.\n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur is the Federal Territory and the national capital though most of the \nadministrative functions have been shifted to Putrajaya in 2001. Its nodal position as the \ncommercial, industrial and educational hub, together with several major urban centres \nadjoining it, remains intact if not becoming progressively more important. Between 1991 \nand 2000, the number of metropolitan centres in Selangor with 150,000 inhabitants and more \ndoubled from four to eight, out of 17 and 26 respectively in Malaysia. In 2010, the nine \nlargest urban centers in the Klang Valley have a combined population of 7.2 million, and this \nrepresents one quarter of the national total (Figure 3). \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n52          Tey\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n200,000\n\n\n\nK\nua\n\n\n\nla\n L\n\n\n\num\npu\n\n\n\nr\n\n\n\nS\nub\n\n\n\nan\ng \n\n\n\nJa\nya\n\n\n\nS\nel\n\n\n\nay\nan\n\n\n\ng \nB\n\n\n\nar\nu\n\n\n\nK\naj\n\n\n\nan\ng\n\n\n\nC\nhe\n\n\n\nra\ns\n\n\n\nP\net\n\n\n\nal\nin\n\n\n\ng \nJa\n\n\n\nya\n\n\n\nS\nha\n\n\n\nh \nA\n\n\n\nla\nm\n\n\n\nA\nm\n\n\n\npa\nng\n\n\n\n J\nay\n\n\n\na\n\n\n\nK\nla\n\n\n\nng\n\n\n\n400,000\n\n\n\n600,000\n\n\n\n800,000\n\n\n\n1,000,000\n\n\n\n1,200,000\n\n\n\n1,400,000\n\n\n\n1,600,000\n\n\n\n1,800,000 1,708,531\n\n\n\n253,921\n428,131\n\n\n\n515,961543,410\n617,149\n\n\n\n756,309\n\n\n\n1,055,207\n\n\n\n1,321,672\n\n\n\nFigure 3. Population of the Nine Largest Urban Centres in the Klang Valley\nSource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selangor, retrieved on 7 March 2010\n\n\n\nRapid population growth in the Klang Valley during the last few decades has been caused \nby the influx of migrants to its urban centres from all over the country. The majority arrive to \npursue higher education and seek employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors. The 2000 \nCensus shows that out of 316,959 persons aged 20-24 who were in school, 105,866 or one-\nthird were in Selangor, 43,223 (13.6 per cent) were in Kuala Lumpur. With the liberalization \nof higher educational sector, private colleges and universities with overseas twinning \nprogrammes and several public universities have mushroomed in the Klang Valley. With \nemployment prospects that were far superior to those in other parts of the country, the Klang \nValley was naturally the location of choice for many graduates as a place to development their \ncareers and to settle down. \n\n\n\nThe economic clout of the Klang Valley has grown over time. The 2000 Census confirms \nthat this region accounted for almost 60 per cent of the total workforce in the financial and \nreal estate sectors, and more than a quarter in other sectors outside agriculture, fishing, and \nmining (Table 6). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          53\n\n\n\nTable 6. Distribution of Working Population in Kuala Lumpur and \nSelangor by Industry, 2000\n\n\n\nIndustry\nMalaysia Kuala Lumpur Selangor\nNumber Number Per cent Number Per cent\n\n\n\nAgriculture, Hunting and \nForestry 1,129,794  806 0.1  57,608 5.1\n\n\n\nFishing  102,300  54 0.1  6,824 6.7\nMining and Quarrying  20,518  594 2.9  3,175 15.5\nManufacturing 1,761,478  71,037 4.0  426,334 24.2\nElectricity, Gas and Water \n\n\n\nSupply  58,348  4,213 7.2  13,690 23.5\nConstruction  573,226  42,979 7.5  119,213 20.8\nWholesale and Retail Trade  976,398 111,397 11.4  190,943 19.6\nHotels and Restaurants  469,176  61,497 13.1  92,695 19.8\nTransport, Storage and \n\n\n\nCommunications  471,349  44,554 9.5  134,320 28.5\nFinance  252,771  51,178 20.2  97,455 38.6\nReal Estate, Renting and \n\n\n\nBusiness Activities  270,192  39,424 14.6  130,456 48.3\nPublic Administration and \n\n\n\nDefense  775,034  60,156 7.8  133,307 17.2\nEducation  509,191  33,501 6.6  119,470 23.5\nHealth and Social Work  179,693  21,051 11.7  37,360 20.8\nOther Community and Personal \n\n\n\nService Activities  134,241  21,634 16.1  36,555 27.2\nPrivate Household with \n\n\n\nEmployed Persons  150,478  29,106 19.3  48,210 32.0\nExtra-territorial Organization  \n\n\n\nand Bodies  3,136  353 11.3  723 23.1\nSource: DSM, 2003a\n\n\n\nConcentration of employment opportunities is translated into a large GDP share of the \ncountry (Table 7). Selangor accounted for the largest number of approved manufacturing \nprojects between 1996 and 2000, and produced more than one fifth of the national GDP in \n2000. It\u2019s economic and development index was among the highest in the country and its \nmean household income was next only to that of Kuala Lumpur.\n\n\n\nThe high mean household income and economic and development indices of Kuala \nLumpur are accompanied by declining rates of population growth since the 1980s. In 2000, \nKuala Lumpur had 5,676 inhabitants to a square kilometer, compared with 526 in Selangor \nand 71 for the country. This intense overcrowding was a major push factor in the migration to \nnew housing estates in adjacent Selangor. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n54          Tey\n\n\n\nTable 7. Socio-Economic Development Indicators by State, circa 2000 \n\n\n\nState\nUrban- \nization\n\n\n\nGDP\n(RM \n\n\n\nmillion)\n\n\n\nPer \ncapita \nGDP\n\n\n\nMean \nhousehold \n\n\n\nincome\n\n\n\nApproved \nmanufacturing \n\n\n\nprojects\n1996-2000\n\n\n\nEconomic \nindex\n\n\n\nDevelop-\nment \nindex\n\n\n\nJohor 63.9 23,798 14,058 2,646 857 102.9 100.5\nKedah 38.7 8,969 8,754 1,612 233 95.5 97.8\nKelantan 33.5 5,120 6,137 1,314 44 91.9 93.1\nMelaka 67.3 6,040 15,244 2,260 164 106.4 104.2\nNegeri \n\n\n\nSembilan 55.0 7,205 13,574 2,335 165 101.8 102.3\nPahang 42.1 7,826 9,855 1,482 116 96.3 96.3\nPerak 59.5 15,158 11,826 1,743 259 99.7 100.4\nPerlis 33.8 1,239 9,739 1,431 13 95.0 99.9\nPenang 79.5 17,054 20,894 3,128 519 109.0 105.7\nSelangor 88.3 46,609 18,157 3,702 1051 108.4 103.2\nTerengganu 49.4 12,453 22,514 1,599 79 91.5 96.2\nKuala \n\n\n\nLumpur 100.0 25,963 29,919 4,105 97 114.4 109.6\nSabah 48.3 15,698 9,560 1,905 125 82.8 90.0\nSarawak 47.9 16,817 13,248 2,276 181 94.8 96.6\nMalaysia 61.8 209,959 14,582 2,472 3,903 100.0 100.0\n\n\n\nSources: Tey, 2005; Government of Malaysia, 2003.  \n\n\n\n  \nImplications of Migration \n\n\n\nRapid population growth in the Klang Valley resulting from continuing influx of migrants \nhas led to various consequences and implications and manifested in many different ways. \n\n\n\nIn-migration to the Klang Valley and Its Implications\nRapid population growth in the Klang Valley has largely been the result of internal \n\n\n\nmigration. Between 1970 and 2010, the population of the region grew by 4.5 times, at a \nrate of about 3.8 per cent per annum. Even if the rate of growth slows down to 3 per cent \nper annum over the next decade, the population of the ten largest urban centres in the Klang \nValley will most likely reach 10 million by 2020. \n\n\n\nThe declining population growth of Kuala Lumpur is deceptive as many residents in \nSelangor commute daily to work in the city. The day-time population of Kuala Lumpur is \nthen much larger than that indicated by the statistics based on place of usual residence. \n\n\n\nRapid growth and concentration of population in the Klang Valley are accompanied \nby rising crime rates, squatter settlements, traffic congestion and environmental pollution. \nFollowing the enforcement of the \u201cZero Squatter\u201d policy undertaken by both Kuala Lumpur \nand Selangor since the 1990s, most squatters have been moved to low cost housing. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          55\n\n\n\nResidential associations of housing estates have also set up \u201cgated communities\u201d manned \nby hired security guards. This has consequently led to increased spending among suburban \nhouseholds it their fight against crimes. \n\n\n\nUrban traffic congestion has reached critical levels in the entire Klang Valley region, a \nfact that is acknowledged in the Eighth Malaysia Plan (2001-2005). Despite investments in \nnew highways and traffic relief works, traffic congestion has continued to worsen. A 1997 \nsurvey confirmed that increasing traffic volumes have reduced travel speed on most radial \nroads in urban centres to 10 kilometers per hour or less (http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/\ngroups/public/documents/apcity/unpan017511.pdf). It is not possible to estimate the extra \ncost shouldered by the growing community of motorists but they must be counted in the \nmillions each year. Vehicles were the main sources of air pollution, contributing 74 per cent, \nfollowed by factories and thermal-power generation plants (22.0 per cent) and burning of \nmunicipal and industrial waste (4.5 per cent) (Government of Malaysia, 2000: 540).\n\n\n\nRapid population increase exacerbates the strains on existing infrastructure and social \namenities. One of the worse affected is the average Chinese primary school in the Klang \nValley. With the region accounting for a third of the Chinese population but only a tenth \nof all Chinese primary schools in Peninsular Malaysia, the supply and demand situation \nfor enrolment in many Chinese primary schools in the Klang Valley has been in serious \ndisequilibrium. The region now contains some of the largest primary schools in the country \nand the shortage of capacity to accommodate the demand for enrolment has reached a critical \nstage. It is not uncommon to have a class size of 50 or more pupils, compared with the \nideal size of 35 or fewer. The rate and volume of migration flows have clearly outpaced the \ncapacity of the government machinery to adjust to the changes in population distribution \n(Voon, 2008).\n\n\n\nWith rapid population growth and industrialization, increased demand for water has \ncreated a new critical area that affects daily life. This problem surfaced in 1998 when the \nKlang Valley was hit by water crisis and led to a serious shortage of water. Recurrence of \na similar crisis will have far more serious consequences as the region is far more densely \npopulated and concentrated with the economic activities than before. \n\n\n\nThe continued influx of migrants and population growth has inflated the demand for \nnew housing in areas close to the urban centres. The Klang Valley had experienced a housing \nboom to accommodate the rising demand by the young workforce. Besides pushing the urban \nsprawl farther into the outskirts, and the increase in the vehicular traffic in tandem, the high \ndemand for housing, commercial space and factories has resulted in the rapid appreciation in \nproperty values. The implication is that as housing becomes increasingly unaffordable, it will \npersist as a social and economic problem to many.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n56          Tey\n\n\n\nThe exodus to the cities has led to rural depopulation, land abandonment, under-\nutilization of facilities, and marginalization of many kampung (Malay village) and Chinese \nNew Villages. Many primary schools in Chinese New Villages are facing the grim prospects \nof closing down for lack of pupils. In the social context, rural depopulation is depriving the \ncountryside of the able-bodied and the young and in turn undermines the villages as viable \nsettlements. Depopulation undermines rural production and weakens the economic base of \nvillages. \n\n\n\nAccelerated Urbanization \nInternal migration redistributes the population in favour of urban areas and accelerates \n\n\n\nthe process of urbanization. Between 1970 and 2000, the urban share of the population in the \ncountry increased from 28.4 to 61.8 per cent. This development has brought about demands \nfor new services and altered the structure of the economy. The urban population registered a \ngrowth rate of 4.2 per cent per annum in the 1970s, 6.2 per cent in the 1980s and 4.8 per cent \nin the 1990s, much higher than the national average growth of only 2.5 per cent per annum \nduring these periods. In the 1990s, internal migration accounted for 48 per cent of the urban \ngrowth in Selangor, while natural increase contributed 33 per cent, and urban reclassification \n19 per cent (Tey, 2005). \n\n\n\nOf the 13.6 million urban population in Malaysia, Selangor accounts for more than a \nquarter, and Kuala Lumpur a tenth. Close to half the urban Indians live in the Klang Valley, \ncompared with about 36 per cent each for the Malays and Chinese. As the Chinese are highly \nurbanized, this means that a third of the entire Chinese population is concentrated in the \nKlang Valley. The concentration of Chinese in this region of high growth probably explains \npart of the ethnic differentials in income in this country.\n\n\n\nThe presence of large urban centres would foster economies of agglomeration as firms \nin related industries cluster together to enjoy the benefits of scale and business networking. \nClustering cuts down on production costs as more suppliers and customers gravitate around \nthe clusters. This also facilitates government efforts in economic transformation towards high \nincome economy and developed nation status by 2020. On the negative side, however, stiff \ncompetition could drive down pricing power and give rise to diseconomies of agglomeration. \nMoreover, large cities are also prone to problems of overcrowding, congestion and \nenvironmental degradation. \n\n\n\nInternal Migration and the Restructuring of Society \nInternal migration in general and in-migration to the Klang Valley in particular has \n\n\n\nplayed a crucial role in restructuring the Malaysian society in line with the objectives of NEP \nas well as the National Development Policy and the National Vision Policy that followed. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          57\n\n\n\nUrban in-migration and high rates of urbanization among the Malays have reduced their \npreponderance in rural areas. In 1970, when only 14.9 per cent of the Malays were living in \nurban areas compared with 47 per cent of the Chinese and 35 per cent of the Indians, these \nrates had changed to 54.2, 85.9 and 79.7 per cent respectively. \n\n\n\nConsequent upon the higher rate of rural-urban migration among the Malays, the ethnic \ncomposition of urban areas has changed significantly. Half the urban population comprised \nthe Bumiputera (Malays 43.9 per cent and other Bumiputera 6.1 per cent) in 2000. This was in \nsharp contrast with only 28 per cent in 1970. Proportionately, the Chinese presence in urban \nareas has fallen rather sharply from about 59 to 34 per cent between 1970 and 2000. Many \nurban centres are becoming more heterogenous in terms of ethnic composition, and in some \ncases Malays have become the majority. The Indian presence has also been decreasing from \n12.8 to 9.3 per cent during the same period, though less rapidly than that of the Chinese. Hence \ninternal migration is making the Klang Valley a cosmopolitan region where people from \ndifferent ethnic groups living, working and studying alongside one another. The opportunities \nfor close ethnic ties are more obvious than in many other localities in the country. \n\n\n\nFollowing the rapid urbanization of the Malays, the nature of their economic base has \nundergone visible transformation. Two-thirds of the Malays and other Bumiputera were \nengaged in agriculture in 1970, but only 18 per cent in 2000. At the same time, the proportion \nengaged in manufacturing had increased from 5 to 26 per cent, while social services accounted \nfor another 25 per cent and wholesale, retail, hotel and restaurant 13 per cent. \n\n\n\nBesides acting as a catalyst in the process of restructuring society, internal migration \nprovided access to economic opportunities that raised individual and household income as a \ndirect attack on the incidence of poverty. Between 1970 and 2002, the incidence of poverty \ndeclined from 21.3 to 2.0 per cent in urban areas and from 58.7 to 11.4 per cent in the rural \nareas. If the urbanization level had stagnated at 30 per cent, the weighted incidence of poverty \nof the country as a whole would be about 8.6 per cent (0.7*11.4+0.3*2.0), instead of 5.8 per \ncent (0.38*11.4+0.62*2). The number of poor households would be around 411,000 in 2002, \ninstead of 267,000 as officially reported (Government of Malaysia, 2003: 60).\n\n\n\nUrban In-migration and Education and Employment\nInternal migration leading to population concentration in the Klang Valley has fuelled \n\n\n\nthe demand for education and human resource development. The region is now the centre of \nhigher learning and research as clusters of universities and colleges emerge to take advantage \nof the demand for tertiary education. Just as the better educated are more likely to migrate, \nopportunities for education are just as likely to attract large numbers of young migrants. \nExpectedly, a high proportion of migrants to Kuala Lumpur and Selangor possess tertiary \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n58          Tey\n\n\n\nqualifications. Half the Chinese in-migrants to the Klang Valley have received tertiary \neducation, while the figures for the Malays and Indians are 45 and 30 per cent respectively \n(Table 8).\n\n\n\nMigration to Kuala Lumpur and Selangor increases the employment opportunities, \nespecially among recent Malay migrants. Rural out-migration has also led to changes in the \neconomic structure by siphoning off excess labour from agriculture into the secondary and \ntertiary sectors. The influx into the Klang Valley has not resulted in unemployment. In fact, \nthe unemployment rates of 1.5 and 1.6 per cent for Selangor and Kuala Lumpur are lower \nthan the nation average.\n\n\n\nTable 8. Educational Level and Employment Status of Migrants to Kuala Lumpur \nand Selangor and the Total Population in the 20-55 Age Groups, 2000\n\n\n\nEducational and \nEmployment Status\n\n\n\nTotal population \nRecent migrants to Kuala Lumpur \n\n\n\nand Selangor\nMalays Chinese Indians Malays Chinese Indians\n\n\n\nEducational level\nNone 4.4 3.9 5.7 0.3 0.9 3.1\nPrimary 20.3 22.4 24.8 4.4 6.8 9.1\nSecondary 56.7 54.3 55.8 49.9 40.3 57.5\nTertiary 18.7 19.4 13.8 45.3 52.0 30.3\n\n\n\nIndustry\nAgriculture 7.9 3.9 6.6 0.3 0.3 1.2\nManufacturing 14.5 14.1 21.2 20.7 9.1 14.2\nServices 44.6 51.9 43.9 51.3 55.1 55.7\nNot working 33.0 30.1 28.3 27.7 35.5 28.8\nUnemployment rate 2.7 2.1 2.2 1.1 0.7 1.9\n\n\n\nTotal 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0\nSource: Computed from 2 per cent sample of the 2000 Population Census\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nRecent trends in internal migration in Malaysia have become more selective in terms \nof destinations. The Klang Valley is by far the most popular destination, and with the fastest \ngrowing population. Selangor that has benefited most from the large outflows of people from \nKuala Lumpur is in fact a \u201cdemographic hinterland\u201d that develops a range of facilities to \nmeet the demands of the latter. In the process, as out-migrants shift their place of residence \nto Selangor but keeping their jobs in Kuala Lumpur, daily traffic congestions tend to worsen \nwith time. Government policies have been effective in encouraging Malays to migrate to \nthe Klang Valley to study and to work and eventually to settle down. As the national hub \nof administration, commerce, industries and education, the Klang Valley provides ample \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInternal Migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia          59\n\n\n\nopportunities for further education and employment. Despite the heavy influx of migrants, \nthe labour absorptive capacity of the region is demonstrated by the very low level of \nunemployment rate. Urban in-migration has contributed positively to economic development \nand restructuring of society. On the flip side, the influx to the Klang Valley has also created \nsocial problems and exacerbated the strains on existing infrastructure and worsened the \npollution problem. As the population in the Klang Valley is approaching 8 million, there is \nan urgent need for the government to devise plans to cope with the increased population, \nespecially in the provision of social amenities and economic infrastructure. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nDepartment of Statistics Malaysia (DSM) 1995. Report of 1991 Population Census of Malaysia, \nVolume 1. Kuala Lumpur.\n\n\n\n----- 1999. Social Statistical Bulletin. Kuala Lumpur.\n----- 2001. Preliminary Count Report for Urban and Rural Areas, Population and Housing Census of \n\n\n\nMalaysia, 2000, Putrajaya.\n----- 2001. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia- Population Distribution and Basic \n\n\n\nCharacteristics, Putrajaya.\n----- 2002. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia \u2013 Education and Social Characteristics of the \n\n\n\nPopulation, Putrajaya.\n----- 2003a. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia \u2013 Economic Characteristics of the Population, \n\n\n\nPutrajaya.\n----- 2003b. 2001 Migration Survey Report, Putrajaya.\n----- 2004. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia \u2013 Migration and Population Distribution, \n\n\n\nPutrajaya.\n----- 2010. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia, 2010, Preliminary Count Report, Putrajaya.\nGovernment of Malaysia. 2000. Eighth Malaysia Plan, Putrajaya.\n---- 2003. Midterm Review of Eighth Malaysia Plan. Putrajaya.\nhttp://www.epu.gov.my/neweconomicpolicy, page 2, retrieved on 11 March 2011.\nLEETE, R. 1996. Malaysia\u2019s Demographic Transition: Rapid Development, Culture and Politics, \n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press\nTEY Nai Peng. 2005. Trends and Patterns of Urbanization in Malaysia, 1970-2000. In Asian Urbanization \n\n\n\nin the New Millennium, edited by Gayl Ness and Prem P Talwar. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish \nAcademic. \n\n\n\nVOON Phin Keong, 2008. Population movements and the Chinese community in Malaysia. In Chinese \nMigration in Comparative Perspectives: Adaptation and Development, edited by Leo Suryadinata, \nSingapore: Centre for Chinese Language and Culture, Nanyang Technological University and \nChinese Heritage Centre.\n\n\n\nWorld Bank. 2003. World Development Indicators, Washington.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2026  \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\n\n\n\u2026 \n\u2026 \n\u2026  \n\n\n\n\u2026\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nS S S S\n\n\n\nS S S S S\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n40\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n60\n\n\n\n70\n\n\n\n19\n41\n-4\n5\n\n\n\n19\n46\n-5\n0\n\n\n\n19\n51\n-5\n5\n\n\n\n19\n56\n-6\n0\n\n\n\n19\n61\n-6\n5\n\n\n\n19\n66\n-7\n0\n\n\n\n19\n71\n-7\n5\n\n\n\n19\n76\n-8\n0\n\n\n\n19\n81\n-8\n5\n\n\n\n19\n86\n-9\n0\n\n\n\n%\n\n\n\nBirth cohort\n\n\n\nMale post-secondary\nFemale post-secondary\nMale diploma/degree\nFemale diploma/degree\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10\n\n\n\n10 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10\n\n\n\n10 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n40\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n60\n\n\n\n70\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1991 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040\n\n\n\n% <15\n% 15-59 \n% 60+ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n5\n10\n15\n20\n25\n30\n35\n40\n45\n50\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n12\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\n18\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1991 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nBumiputera CDR Chinese CDR Indians CDR\nBumiputera IMR Chinese IMR Indians IMR\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015\n\n\n\nC\nB\nR\n\n\n\nT\nFR\n\n\n\nBumiputera TFR Chinese TFR Indians TFR\nBumiputera CBR Chinese CBR Indians CBR\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n100\n\n\n\n150\n\n\n\n200\n\n\n\n250\n\n\n\n15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49\n\n\n\n1980\n2000\n2015\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMigration, Settlement and the Rise of a \nNew Middle Class in Malaysian Chinese Society: \n\n\n\nA Case Study of Kajang\n\n\n\nDiana WONG, LIN Chew Man and TAN Pok Suan *\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper traces the settlement history of the Chinese in Kajang (and Sungai Chua), as seen \nin particular through an account of their economic and religious life. Kajang, as a small town turned \nKlang Valley satellite town locale, presents the opportunity to examine immigrant small-town Chinese \nsociety in the setting of the tin, rubber and land settlement economy which was the making of colonial \nMalaya. At the same time, its participation in the vigorous demographic, economic and social develop-\nment of the Klang Valley in the past 30 years provides a setting for an understanding of the forces of \ntransformation in the social and religious landscape of contemporary Malaysian Chinese society. The \npaper makes two arguments. First, it argues that settlement was far more integral to the process of Chi-\nnese migration to colonial Malaya than the evocative figure of the \u201csojourner\u201d, widely seen to be typi-\ncal of the Chinese migrant, suggests. Second, it argues that in the course of the recent New Economic \nPolicy (NEP) decades, a new, tertiary-educated, sinophone but multilingual, Malaysian Chinese middle \nclass has emerged, concentrated in the Klang Valley, whose political and cultural imaginations are of \ngreat significance in understanding the dynamics of Malaysian society today. \n\n\n\nKey words: middle class, Chinese religion, migration\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nKajang, the capital of Hulu Langat district in the state of Selangor, is a burgeoning satellite \ntown of Kuala Lumpur, the Federal capital some 22.4 km away, to which it is connected by several \nnew highways as well as by a commuter train service. With a rapidly increasing population \nhoused in sprawling new suburbs, its historic old town centre however, serves as a reminder of \nan earlier phase of extraordinary growth, fuelled by the pioneering spirit and unrelenting  labour \nof Mandailing, Javanese, Tamil, Hakka, Cantonese, Hokkien and other migrants and settlers \nwho cleared the surrounding  jungle and built its urban economy. In the 1931 census, the Kajang \npopulation consisted of 14,801 Chinese, 6,415 Malays and 6,447 Indians (Radcliffe, 1969: 168) \n\n\n\n*   Dr. Diana WONG (\u9ec4\u6c38\u5b9d) is an independent scholar. E-mail: dwongingboh@gmail.com\n            LIN Chew Man (\u7ec3\u79cb\u6ee1) is a teacher at Hua Lian High School, Taiping. E-mail: linchewman@gmail.com\n       TAN Pok Suan (\u9648\u5b9d\u78b9) is a teacher at Hua Lian High School, Taiping. E-mail: suansuan@yahoo.com\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 61-78\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\n- a picture book model of the Furnivallian \u201cplural society\u201d. The Chinese commercial centre \nconsisted of three streets, one of which was the old Jalan Mandailing, lined with merchants and \ntradesmen closely linked to the surrounding tin and rubber economy of Hulu Langat. \n\n\n\nThis paper is an attempt to trace the history of settlement of the Chinese in Kajang and \nthe adjoining village of Sungai Chua, as seen in particular through an account of the religious \nlife of its Chinese inhabitants. In 1980, with its population of 29,301, Kajang would have \nranked in the small town category. The dramatic population growth experienced in the past \nthree decades led to a population size of 205,700 in 2000, and a ranking of 17 in the Malaysian \nurban hierarchy (Jamaliah Jaafar, 2004: 51). Population growth in the suburbs of Kajang was \nespecially spectacular (Table 1).\n\n\n\nTable 1.  Population of Kajang and of Area Covered by Kajang Local Authority, 1980-2000\n\n\n\nPopulation     1980   1991    2000\nKajang    29,301  46,269    85,810\nKajang Local Authority (MPKj)    n/a  78,063  506,526\n\n\n\nSource: Malaysia. Jabatan Perancangan Bandar dan Desa, Selangor. Jabatan Perancang Bandar dan \nDesa. Draf Rancangan Struktur Sebahagian Majlis Perbandaran Kajang (MPKj) 1995-\n2020. 1997\n\n\n\nKajang as a locale thus presents the opportunity to examine immigrant small-town Chinese \nsociety in the setting of the tin, rubber and land settlement economy which was the making of \nMalaya (see Voon, 2007). At the same time, its participation in the vigorous demographic, \neconomic and social development of the Klang Valley in the past 30 years provides a setting \nfor an understanding of the forces of transformation in the social and religious landscape of \ncontemporary Malaysian Chinese society.\n\n\n\nTwo paradigmatic depictions of a dichotomized Malaysian Chinese society have \ndominated the field, both penned by Wang Gungwu, the eminent scholar and doyen of overseas \nChinese studies. The first is that of a society constituted essentially by the merchant and the \nnon-merchant: \u201cthere were broadly speaking only two divisions in overseas Chinese society \n-merchants and those who aspired to be merchants\u201d (Wang, 1981: 161); the second is that of the \n\u201cdichotomy of the English-educated and Chinese-educated\u201d (Wang, 1981: 160).  The inference \nwas that the middle class in Malaysian Chinese society was essentially English-educated. Wang \nbased his first model of the mercantile elite on Chinese society in colonial Malaya; the second \n\u201cmore recent dichotomy\u201d (Wang, 1970: 160) referred to the immediate post-war decades. \nNevertheless, the continuing influence of these models can be seen in a recent reformulation of \nthe English vs Chinese-educated divide by Rita Sim, Executive Director of the Chinese daily \nSin Chew Jit Poh and Deputy Chairman of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) think \ntank Insap, who divides Malaysian Chinese society today into the G1-those Chinese-educated \nwho subscribe to the so-called three pillars (Chinese associations, Chinese schools and Chinese \n\n\n\n62\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nmedia) and the \u201cfor want of a better term, referred to as the English-speaking group (G2)\u201d (see \nTan, 2007).\n\n\n\nBased on empirical field material from a research project conducted in Kajang in 2007, \nwe suggest that these two models of Chinese society are in need of modification in light of \nthe profound forces of change in contemporary Chinese society in Malaysia. While a divide \nbetween the English and Chinese-educated is still discernible, the contours have been blurred, \nand the character of the Chinese-educated, in particular, has undergone profound change. The \ndata speak for the emergence to national prominence of a new middle class in Chinese society \naged 40 and below, schooled in the national education system and hence essentially bi- and in \nmany cases, trilingual. This middle class, which dominates the cultural and religious life of \nKajang Chinese society today, is the product of social and geographical mobility. Most issue \nfrom the small towns and new villages not dissimilar in character to Kajang itself-30 years ago. \nMany have since acquired tertiary education in the many universities and colleges located in \nthe Klang Valley and have settled there. The proportion of professionals, as well as of women, \nis high. This middle class shows little inclination to engage in the old highly localized dialect-\nbased Chinese migrant temple and clan associations, one of the \u201cthree pillars\u201d alluded to earlier.\nWith its \u201ctraditional\u201d understandings of ethnic and religious identity, which were key institutions \nin early Chinese settlement in the country, and they are to be found today in new religious, civic \nand political organizations which speak to the national context of their settlement. In these \nnew organizations, Mandarin, not dialect, is the medium of communication. It is the preferred \nlanguage of this new sinophone, yet multi-lingual middle class. \n\n\n\nIn the following, section II gives a brief introduction to the early history of Kajang and \nits environs, section III traces the migration and settlement history of the Chinese in Kajang \nin the colonial and immediate post-colonial period, section IV looks at the post-NEP rise of a \nnew Chinese middle class and the changing religious landscape in Kajang today and section V \nconcludes by reaffirming the importance of settlement in Chinese migration and the emergence \nof a new middle class in Malaysian Chinese society.\n\n\n\nThe Opening of the Frontier\n\n\n\nThe earliest inhabitants of Hulu Langat, the district in which Kajang is located, would have \nbeen Temuan, with some accounts dating their presence in this area to around 1580.1 Other oral \naccounts place the founding of Kajang in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the \narea was the scene of conflict between various ethnic groups drawn to the rich spoils of the new \ntin-mining economy, known as the Selangor Civil War of 1867-1873.2 Although downplaying \nthe traumatic violence highlighted in these oral accounts, the written records clearly affirm the \npioneering role played by migrants from Sumatra.3 Interestingly, a collective memory of the \ntragic violence of this civil war is inscribed into the religious worship of the Chinese immigrant \ncommunity in Kajang. The patron deity of its community temple known as Shiye temple \n\n\n\n63\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\n(\u5e08\u7237\u5e99) or See Yar temple in the Cantonese dialect (one of the religious organizations to be \ndiscussed later), was a former Chinese Capitan (Kapitan Cina) of Seremban, Sheng Ming \nLi (\u76db\u660e\u5229), a Hakka tin miner who was killed in the fighting and deified shortly thereafter. \nHe is said to have successfully mediated a conflict between two indigenous tribes in Seremban, \nwhich won him their respect and earned him the position of Kapitan of Seremban. His death \nin turn is attributed to his failure to mediate between two Malay groups which were fighting \nwith each other. When he was killed in the ensuing war, white blood gushed out of his severed \nhead, the miracle which led to his deification (\u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 13-14). These early \nnarratives show how inextricably linked the various incoming ethnic groups were, not just as \ncompetitors but also as allies.\n\n\n\nWith the end of the war and the establishment of a British Protectorate in 1874, tin mining \nin Hulu Langat resumed with a vengeance and new Chinese towkays no longer linked to the \nkongsis such as Goh Ah Ngee (\u5434\u4e9a\u4e49)  began mining in Kajang (Voon, 2013: 51). By 1901, \nthere were 7,269 Chinese tin miners in the district (Voon, 2013: 52). It was to be agriculture \nhowever, which was to lead the demographic and economic transformation of the district. Coffee \nwas the first crop to be planted by the European plantations established in the Kajang and Hulu \nLangat area.4 It was Malay peasant immigration however, which was to grow exponentially in \nthe wake of British colonial rule and agricultural expansion.\n\n\n\nThere had already been a major migrant Malay participation in the new tin economy \nof the nineteenth century, from the Bugis nobility, who had founded the Selangor sultanate \nin the eighteenth century, to the Mandailings and other groups from Sumatra, who had led \nthe movement into the interior, largely as traders and miners, but also as agriculturists. This \nmigration took a collective form and was encouraged, as well as occasionally financed, by \nthe palace (see Gullick, 1960). Apart from the active role played by the royal family, there \nwas also the encouragement provided by the British administration. Peasant settlement was \na cornerstone of the British colonial policy of capitalist expansion as cheap rice was essential \nfor the maintenance of low wages for imported coolie labour. The encouragement of Sumatra \nmigration was expressed in particular through its land policy, and the passage, in 1913, of \nthe Malay Reservations Enactment, under which large stretches of land were gazetted as \nreservations for Malays, sealed an already on-going process.5 The upper reaches of the Sungai \nLangat, on whose lower banks Kajang was located, fell under the purview of the Act and the \narea was officially demarcated and delineated as Malay Reservations in 1916 (Voon, 1976). \nThe early Mandailing immigrants, who had founded the urban settlement of Kajang, moved \nupstream to open up and settle in the surrounding hills and valleys of the Hulu Langat, joined \nby others such as Kerinchi, and Rawa, and in particular, Minang settlers moving west from their \nearly settlements in Negeri Sembilan.6\n\n\n\nWhile Malay settlers moved upstream, Chinese capital and labour continued to move into \nSemenyih and Kajang to invest in the new sector of commercial agriculture. Towkays such as \nthe above-mentioned Goh Ah Ngee, and Low Ti Kok (\u5218\u6cbb\u56fd), both of whom owned several \n\n\n\n64\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nhouses in Kajang, led the way.7 Apart from the towkays however, the opening of the rubber \nfrontier in Hulu Langat was done primarily by Chinese immigrants claiming small lots of land \nto establish rubber smallholdings with family labour. By 1920, when most of the state land had \nbeen given out by the Land Office, 41 per cent had been obtained by Chinese smallholders, \nidentical to the share held by European planters, and 14 per cent by Malay owners (Voon, 2013: \n55). By then, Kajang had developed into a town that tin and rubber built.\n\n\n\nChinese Migration, Settlement and Social Organisation in Kajang\n\n\n\nHaji Abdul Rasyid, an 84 year-old Mandailing born in Jalan Reko and now living in Sungai \nKantan,8 remembers a time when only a few Chinese were living in Kajang, all concentrated in \nthe two or three main streets of the pekan or inner city area, centred around Jalan Mandailing. \nFar more Chinese were to be found in Sungai Chua, the tin-mining village across the river. \nToday, the town of Kajang has absorbed the Chinese settlement of Sungai Chua, although \nlocal Chinese terminology still distinguishes between Xi Mi Shan (\u9521\u7c73\u5c71) or Tin Hill, the \nChinese name for Sungai Chua, and Kajang (\u52a0\u5f71). That Sungai Chua has a Chinese name, and \nKajang merely a transliteration of a Malay one, is indicative of the origins of the two respective \nsettlements, the one a Chinese (mining) village, the other a Mandailing-founded trading town. \nNevertheless, as the town grew, the emergence of Chinese place-names reveals a growing sense \nof place and attests to the process of localization taking place. Jalan Mandailing had become a \nChinese street, known in Chinese as Hou Jie (\u540e\u8857) or Back Street. The surroundings of Sungai \nKantan, founded by Malay immigrants, had also become largely Chinese, and was known as \nShu Fang Bei (\u4e66\u623f\u80cc) or Behind the School. The map below shows the Chinese topography \nof Kajang.\n\n\n\n The early Chinese migration to the tin mines of the interior at the invitation of the local \nMalay royalty had been entirely self-organized by kongsis formed along lines of jiguan (\u7c4d\n\u8d2f) native-place or provincial origin. In this pre-colonial period of \u201cfree and unrestricted\u201d \nmovement (Saw, 1988: 13), labour migration was entirely transient in character. Comprising \nsingle men working the tin mine on a shareholder basis, the kongsi as the migrant form of social \norganization precluded local household formation. Individual kongsi members would have had \ntheir households in their ancestral villages in China, to whom, when sufficient money had been \nmade, the men would return. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese Immigration Ordinance, 1877 marked the first attempt by the new colonial \nadministration to regulate Chinese migration and although it failed, this intervention in the \nrecruitment of Chinese labour into the country heralded the end of the closed, all-encompassing \nkongsi system. However, the Chinese tin mining economy continued to rely on the availability \nand ruthless exploitation of an unending stream of cheap and unregulated labour (Tai, 2010) \nand population fluidity and migrant mobility and mortality remained high. The data for 1886 \nshow that among the 1,339 Chinese who entered the district of Hulu Langat, 519 left (Mohd. \n\n\n\n65\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nShaidin, 1981-82: 16).\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Map of Kajang with Chinese Place Names\n\n\n\nIn the newly-emerging small towns such as Kajang, local household formation-the \nprelude to settlement, such as had already happened in the Straits Settlements cities of Malacca, \nSingapore and Penang-soon occurred, and those who could afford it now preferred to live in \nthe townships. In the early days however, household formation remained highly limited. It was \ngenerally the mine-owners, traders, and the increasing number of artisans and tradesmen who \nwere in a position to bring their wives or families from China.\n\n\n\nWith household and town formation came the establishment of the community temple \nand cemetery. The kongsi organization of the tin-mines had taken the guise of secret societies \nwelded together by the worship of a patron deity (Kok, 1993: 104). For the Hai San secret \nsociety which governed the Hulu Langat mines, the afore-mentioned Hakka kongsi head and \nKapitan Cina of Seremban, Sheng Ming Li, around whose death in the Selangor civil war \nmiraculous accounts arose, was deified into the local protector deity. As the mining towns grew, \na chain of Shiye temples, dedicated to this local deity, spread across ex-Hai San mining territory \n(see Appendix).\n\n\n\nIn Kajang, the Xian Si Shiye (\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab) community temple was completed by 1898. \nThe completion of the Shiye community temple in the heart of the town, and the acquisition \nin 1895 of a large piece of land for a public cemetery in Sungai Kantan, then the site of a large \nChinese settlement, by the newly-formed Kwangtung Cemetery Association (\u52a0\u5f71\u5e7f\u4e1c\u4e49\u5c71\u516c\n\n\n\n66\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\n\u4f1a), was largely due to the efforts of Jian Yang Zheng (\u7b80\u626c\u94b2), a leading Cantonese merchant \nin Kajang. Among the funders he was able to mobilize for the temple, two stand out: Loke Yew \nand Ye Jie Liang (said to be Yap Kwan Seng), wealthy Cantonese mine owners based in Kuala \nLumpur. Jian also played a lead role later in the 1910 formation of the Kajang Merchant Club \n(\u5546\u77ff\u516c\u4f1a, initially known as\u516c\u5546\u77ff\u9986). A small coterie of men such as Jian, representing the \nlargely Cantonese-speaking mercantile elite in Kajang, constituted the early settled core of the \nnew local community.9\n\n\n\nThe household, the temple and the cemetery were the core sacral institutions of \ntraditional Chinese village society, in which religion functioned as a community cult (Yang, \n1961). Religious cult communities under the protection of a patron deity remained of primary \nimportance in the lives of Chinese migrants and settlers struggling to survive and prosper in a \nhostile new environment. The ritual community constituted by the temple and cemetery was \nalong provincial lines, in this case from the same region in the province of Guangdong. This \ncomprised the largely Cantonese mine-owners, as well as the far more numerous and less settled \nHakka mine labourers,10 and may help explain the quiescence of a brutally exploited tin mining \nlabour force. Indeed, it may be argued that the temple with a Hakka deity (Sheng Ming Li \nwas Hakka) was built by Cantonese mine owners to keep their Hakka labourers under control; \nalthough divided by class, both belonged to the same ritual cult community.\n\n\n\nTable 2. Distribution of Chinese Population in Hulu Langat by Dialect Group and Gender 1911-1947\n\n\n\nYear 1911 1921 1931 1947\nCantonese 2,736 \n\n\n\n(2,176/560) 1:3.9\n1,710 3,170\n\n\n\n(2,043/1,127) 1:1.8\n5,179 \n\n\n\n(2,868/2,311) 1:1.2\nHakka 6,065 \n\n\n\n(5,088/977)1:5.2\n9,846 18,117 \n\n\n\n(10,343/7,774)1:1.3\n17,468 \n\n\n\n(8,955/8,513)1:1.05\nTie Cheu Kheh 14\n\n\n\n(14/0)\nHokkien 2,283 \n\n\n\n(2,137/140)1:15\n3,048 6,019\n\n\n\n(3,668/2,351)1:1.5\n8,805\n\n\n\nHin Hun 292 \n(291/1)\n\n\n\nHok Chiu 146 \n(145/1)\n\n\n\n23 297 \n(124/83)\n\n\n\nTeochew 336 \n(284/52)\n\n\n\n174 369 \n(362/107)\n\n\n\n814 \n(428/386)\n\n\n\nHailam 571 \n(560/7)\n\n\n\n298 563 \n(479/84)\n\n\n\n738 \n(513/225)\n\n\n\nKwong Sai 45 \n(41/4)\n\n\n\n911\n(788/123)\n\n\n\n1,244 \n(758/486)\n\n\n\nTotal 12,618 15,622 29,474 \n(17,794/11,675)\n\n\n\n34,669\n\n\n\n    Source: Pountney, 1911; Nathan, 1922; Vlieland, 1931; Del Tufo, 1949\n\n\n\n67\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nBy 1911, a sizeable number of Hokkiens, originating from the neighbouring Fujian \nprovince in China, had also moved into Kajang (see Table 2).11 They established their own \ncommunity temple and cemetery, with their own patron deity. Community formation and \nidentity thus followed closely the boundaries established in the homeland, defining in the last \ninstance those who worshipped and were buried together. Transplanting themselves into a new \nenvironment, early Chinese immigrants in Kajang thus organs themselves into different cult \ncommunities following familiar native-origin lines, incorporating however, new deities. These \nincluded, it should be noted, those of a non-traditional Chinese form. The Kajang towkay Goh \nAh Ngee was a Teochew convert to Catholicism and his fortune funded the construction of the \nCatholic Church in Kajang (built in 1905) as well as St. John\u2019s Cathedral in Kuala Lumpur \nfor the small Teochew Catholic flock under the care of the French mission.12 Among the many \nHakka miners residing in Sungai Chua, a small number were Methodists converted in China \nand a Methodist church was built in Sungai Chua in 1905, not too long after the construction \nof the Shiye temple. \n\n\n\nThe need to adapt to the new political environment however, brought forth in due time new \nsecular community organisations which transcended these cultic divides. The kongsi system \nwas finally ended by the abolition in 1905 of the office of Kapitan by the British administration. \nIn order to have continued representation of local Chinese commercial interests vis-\u00e0-vis the \nBritish, as well as a platform for inter-group negotiations, Jian and his friends established the \nKajang Merchant Club in 1910. Although, as the name indicates, tin mining interests were still \npredominant, this new association was the first to accommodate other commercial elites in \ntown, regardless of ethnicity or industry. At least two Hokkien rubber tycoons, Low Ti Kok13 \nand Kuan Guang Hou (\u5b98\u5149\u539a), were elected as committee members of the Club. Two local \nMalay political elites were also invited to sit on the committee. \n\n\n\nIn 1914, the banning of Chinese indentured labour lifted all regulation of Chinese entry \ninto the country, resulting in another period of free and unhampered movement and the following \ndecade, buoyed by world economic demand for rubber and tin, witnessed a dramatic rise in \nChinese migration (Saw, 1988: 15).14 In the wake of the rubber boom, Chinese landownership \nin the Kajang area increased at an average annual rate of 32 per cent between the years 1915-\n1920 (Voon, 1978: 512). The shift from a predominantly tin to a predominantly rubber-based \neconomy had profound implications for Chinese household and community formation. As Voon \nnotes, rubber was a non-seasonal crop, providing a regular, and with its long productive life-\nspan of more than  25 years, permanent source of income, enabling and promoting settlement \n(Voon, 2007: 58).15 Furthermore, whilst the tin economy had involved largely Cantonese and \nHakka migrants, a much broader range of dialect groups, including Hokkiens and Teochews, \nparticipated in the rubber economy (Tai, 2010: 177).\n\n\n\n The outcome of a booming mining and agricultural economy was the  flourishing of  new \ntowns and the emergence of an urban economy (Voon, 2007: 59) of Chinese artisans or traders \nwhose businesses were based on household labour. Concurrent with, and in part the outcome of, \n\n\n\n68\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nthese momentous socio-economic and demographic developments was the emergence of a new \nset of important Chinese public institutions-non-dialect-based Chinese schools-which replaced \nthe temple and cemetery as the central pillars of Chinese community life. In Kajang, the left-\nleaning Hua Qiao (\u534e\u4fa8\u5b66\u6821) was founded in 1912 and the Kuomintang-related Yu Hua (\u80b2\n\u534e\u5b66\u6821) in 1918. They were themselves the product of the new (unregistered) associations in \nKajang which were being formed along political lines, which included the Kuomintang (KMT \nor \u56fd\u6c11\u515a), Tong Meng Hui (\u540c\u76df\u4f1a), Zhong He Tang (\u4e2d\u548c\u5802), and the Jia Ying Wen Hua Shu \nBao She (\u52a0\u5f71\u6587\u534e\u4e66\u62a5\u793e). Low Ti Kok, who was also one of the key leaders of the Kajang \nbranch of the Tong Meng Hui and KTM in Kajang, played a major role in the foundation of \nthese schools. In addition to these Chinese-medium schools, the English-medium Kajang High \nSchool was established in 1916. Notwithstanding the adverse economic conditions which still \naccounted for considerable population fluctuation, a stable core of settled families with children \nto educate, including new elites as well as non-elites no longer based on the tin economy, had \nthus obviously developed. The three new schools were the institutional expressions of this new \ndemographic trend. \n\n\n\nToward the end of the decade, the Immigration Restriction Ordinance, 1928, and its \nreplacement with the Aliens Ordinance, 1933, signaled the end of an era of uncontrolled migration \n(Saw, 1988: 16). Women and children however, were exempt from the Ordinance. The result \nwas a further improvement in the sex ratio and a deepening of the settlement process.16 Kajang \nearned a reputation as a flourishing cultural centre and gained the epithet of \u201ca cultural town\u201d. \nEspecially in the late 1930s, stage performances and magazine publications were available \nin town, much of it inspired by the spirit of Chinese national renewal in China itself, and the \nanti-Japanese struggle there. The presence of the Chinese schools played an important role in \nthis development. The Hua Qiao School, before it was closed down in the 1940s during the \nJapanese Occupation of Malaya, was well-known for its spirit of reform and resistance towards \nJapanese colonialism. Its very name encapsulated the importance of the \u201cHuaqiao\u201d movement \n(see Wang, 1989) for overseas Chinese settlements in the first half of the twentieth century. \n\n\n\n1949 saw the closure of the Mainland Chinese border when the Communist Party came \ninto power. The replacement of the 1933 Aliens Ordinance with the Immigration Ordinance, \n1953, in turn, signaled the closure of the Malayan border to free labour entry, including of \nwomen. A history of migration was coming to an end. An immigrant population, long on its \nway to a largely self-organized process of localization and settlement, had to learn to deal with \na more and more intrusive colonial state.  \n\n\n\nFor a large segment of the localized population, this meant in the first instance another \nwrenching round of forced dislocation. Kajang and its surrounding areas were deeply implicated \nin the anti-colonial revolt known as the Emergency, which began in 1949. Several thousand \nfamilies were uprooted from their homes, including in Sungai Kantan, and forced to re-settle in \nthe New Village of Sungai Chua in 1951/52. \n\n\n\nThe vastly changed political circumstances of this postwar period also generated new \n\n\n\n69\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\neconomic opportunities, a new set of community institutions, and a new generation of local \nleaders. These were scions of the established families, some of whom, educated in English at \nKajang High, represented a new generation of local leadership based on their ability to deal \nwith the postwar British colonial administration. Ng Bow Tai (\u9ec4\u536f\u6cf0), a son-in-law of the \nKajang pioneer, Towkay Goh Ah Ngee, was a Teochew Catholic whose family owned a grocery \nbusiness and who made a fortune from supplying rice to the British administration during the \nEmergency period (for which he was awarded the OBE). He was the President of the Merchant \nClub from 1946 to 1963. He was also one of the founding members of the Malaysian Chinese \nAssociation (MCA) in Kajang, the Chinese political party through which the other Chinese \nassociations have since mediated their relationship with the state. Low Ti Kok\u2019s son17 also \nbecame the president of the Merchant\u2019s Club, and the Low family continued to play a role in \nthe Kajang business community and Chinese education until the late 1970s. Leadership in these \nChinese associations remained, as before, in the hands of the mercantile elite, and remained \nexclusively male.\n\n\n\nThis second-generation leadership, with its closer ties to the British administration, helped \nto ameliorate the much more intrusive presence of the state in the life of the local Chinese \nsociety in the difficult postwar decade. As the dust settled in the 1960s, Kajang had become \na quiet Chinese trading town surrounded by Malay villages and Indian plantation labour, with \nthe mercantile elite, bilingual in the post-war generation, still running the traditional local \ncommunity organizations such as the Shiye Temple, the Merchant Club, the Yu Hua School, and \nthe MCA. Many had attended the English-medium Kajang High and the local Kajang Convent, \ntogether with children from the early Christian families, constituting a small anglophone middle \nclass. Sungai Chua was the working class district across the river, housing the third largest new \nvillage in the country.\n\n\n\nNation-building, the NEP, and a New Chinese Middle Class\n\n\n\nThe post-independence Alliance consensus with MCA representation of the Chinese \nmiddling urban towns and New Villages left the economy and society of Kajang cum Sungai \nChua largely intact. The profound changes, such as they were, took place in the metropolitan \ncentres, such as Kuala Lumpur and Penang. It was in the 1970s, as the national government \nstepped up development spending under the newly-introduced New Economic Policy, that the \npostcolonial nation-building state became a major factor in the economic and political life of \nthe community. Among the many projects which it undertook, the establishment of Universiti \nKebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in the neighbouring town of Bangi, together with the concurrent \nestablishment of an industrial park there, was to kick off the profound changes which were \nto transform the town and its surroundings. An economic boom ensued, from which the local \ntradesmen and small businesses profited. This commercial middle class, their ranks augmented \nby the few new educated teachers and journalists now living in the town, was to set the tone \n\n\n\n70\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nfor a new community leadership structure in the NEP years. The dominance of the wealthy \nmercantile class was to come to an end. By the second half of the 1970s for example, the Low \nTi Kok family no longer played a prominent role in the local community. The wealthy pioneer \ntowkay families of the past, now English-educated, relocated to the metropolitan centre, and \njoined the ranks of the anglophone middle class.\n\n\n\nThe career of Li De Shu (\u674e\u5fb7\u6055) is illustrative of the changes wrought by the new \npolitical context of government policy activism. Li, of Hokkien origin, had moved to Kajang \nin the 1940s, and served as headmaster of the new primary school in nearby Bangi. In 1979, \nhe was elected State Assemblyman for Kajang, running as an Independent after having lost \nthe presidency of the Kajang MCA.18 He was then invited to lead the Shiye temple and the \nMerchant Club, as both organizations had necessary dealings with the state legislature. Li was \nthe first person to hold the presidency of these two important local organizations in Kajang \nconcurrently. In fact, his term marks the beginning of the cross-holding of key posts in the two \norganizations. \n\n\n\nMoving into the late 1980s, more cross-holding of posts was observed, as well as the \nrecruitment of an even wider range of occupations beyond the commercial class. These \ndevelopments may be due to difficulty encountered in recruiting the younger generation into \nthese community organizations. Their original functions-to provide for protection, networking, \nand conflict resolution-had become increasingly irrelevant in local society, hence the failure of \nthese old networks of the past to attract members of the younger generation. \n\n\n\nThe nature of the \u201cyounger generation\u201d has also changed. No longer is it confined to the \noffspring of the first or second generation of local immigrants. In keeping with the national trend \nof internal migration toward the Klang Valley (see Tey, 2012; Fadzil et al., 2014), population \ngrowth in the 1980s and 1990s in Kajang and its suburbs has been phenomenal (see Table 3 \nbelow). Recent migrants to the Klang Valley are over-represented by the 20-29 age group, in \npart due to the institutions of higher learning which are concentrated here. The 2000 census \nrevealed that 52 per cent of Chinese in-migrants to the Klang Valley have received a tertiary \neducation (Tey, 2012: 48 and 58).19\n\n\n\nIn the vicinity of Kajang are to be found several such institutions, including UKM, \nUniversiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), and New Era College. As Chinese enrolment in these local \ntertiary institutions increased in the 1990s and 2000s, a wave of \u201cnew migrants\u201d streamed into \nKajang, mostly from the small towns and new villages of an earlier Malaya (see Voon, 2001; \nZhang, 2011). Coming from a labouring or petty mercantile background, many belonged to the \nfirst generation in the family to acquire a tertiary education. Having gone through the national \neducational system, many of these tertiary educated graduates were sinophone, but functionally \ntrilingual in Chinese, Malay and English. Most of them later found employment in the Klang \nValley, and settled in Kajang. They constitute a new urban professional Chinese middle class \nhitherto unknown in Malaysian Chinese society. \n\n\n\nThe rise of this new Chinese middle class has had a profound impact on Chinese society in \n\n\n\n71\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nKajang. Today, a century after its founding, the Shiye temple continues to exist as a community \ntemple for public worship, based on the bai shen (\u62dc\u795e) practices of Chinese popular religion \noften characterized as folk Taoism. It has however, lost its character as a community cult. After \nundergoing reforms in its management structure in the last few decades, the leadership of the \nShiye temple is more representative of the pluralistic, multi-dialect as well as professional \nand middle-class character of Kajang society.20 However, although there is a high level of \nparticipation at public, civic events, such as its annual dinner conducted in Mandarin, \nparticipation in the ritual events conducted in the vernacular during the festivities surrounding \nthe birthday of the patron deity is extremely low. The ritual segment of the three-day festivities, \nwhich fell on 19 September in 2007,21 and included the execution of elaborate Taoist rituals and \nthe performance of Cantonese opera, as well as the ritual burning of old tablets from members \nof the community, attracted a small crowd of about 30 people. \n\n\n\nThe leadership of the temple remains exclusively male, elderly and local-born, with many \nalso holding leadership positions in other Chinese associations in the town.22 The profile of \nthe committee members as well as the general constituency of the temple clearly indicate the \ndifficulties a \u201ctraditional\u201d  religious institution such as the Shiye temple faces in appealing to the \nnew professional middle class. Where they are more likely to be found are in two new vibrant \nChinese religious organizations which have emerged in Kajang offering a new confessional \nBuddhist identity not equated with, but related to, Chinese culture.\n\n\n\nOn a beautiful moonlit night on 1 May 2007, a large procession of a few thousand people \nsnaked its way through the main streets of the town of Kajang and back to the huge, brightly-\nlit Fo Shan (\u4f5b\u5c71) temple at the top of the hill in Sungai Chua.23 It was Wesak Day, the day \nSakyamuni Buddha\u2019s birth, enlightenment and death is celebrated. Weeks before the event, \nposters in Chinese, Malay and English announcing the procession had been plastered all over \ntown. The ceremony on the temple grounds which kicked off the procession comprised largely \nof speeches by local politicians and the singing of the national anthem.\n\n\n\nThis annual Wesak Day procession had in fact been introduced for the first time in 1986. \nThe gleaming, imposing temple on the hill overlooking Sungai Chua and visible from all \ndirections in Kajang was completed only three years ago. It grew out of a small folk temple \nlocated at Sungai Chua, and is run by an association officially registered under the name of \nPertubuhan Budhis Manju Suddhi (PBMS), known in Chinese as Jing Miao (\u51c0\u5999). \n\n\n\nThe \u201ctakeover\u201d of the small folk temple and its transformation into a \u201cmodern\u201d Buddhist \norganization was the work of the elderly couple,  Lee Tian Ji, who grew up in Sungai Chua,24 and \nhis wife Mdm. Liu, from Kajang. Though from modest backgrounds, both had acquired high \nschool education, Lee in English and Liu in Mandarin. They had \u201creturned\u201d to Sungai Chua in \n1978 after several years of working in Kuala Lumpur, where they appear to have been drawn \ninto Buddhist reform activities influenced by the thinking of the Taiwanese Buddhist monk and \nfounder of the Fo Guang Shan (\u4f5b\u5149\u5c71) movement, Hsing Yun. Sungai Chua was then a typical \nChinese New Village steeped in poverty, secret society activities and deity worship. Lee, who \n\n\n\n72\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nwas familiar with the writings of Marx and Mao and also an avid admirer of Lee Kuan Yew \nof Singapore, felt that the social backwardness of the Chinese community he had grown up in \nneeded to be addressed through a reform of its folk religious beliefs and practices, which he \nviewed as holding households and community to ransom to the twin evils of superstition and \ncommercialization. Liu\u2019s position as deputy principal of the local primary school gave her a \nvantage point from which to initiate the process of reform.\n\n\n\nIn the early stages, the resistance was considerable. Gaining the support of young \nprofessionals who were returning to the village from tertiary education abroad proved to be \ncritical. One had just returned from an Australian university, another from Taiwan; both proved \ninvaluable in the struggle over control of the temple. Today, the gleaming new temple, with its \nassortment of deity statues from the Mahayana, Hinayana and Tibetan traditions but dominated \nby a huge statue of Kwan Yin, stands as proud testimony to 30 years of reform efforts. \n\n\n\nThe public face of Buddhism that was first presented in Kajang through the PBMS had a \nstrong Chinese-language, village, working-class and ethnic character. In 1999, another Buddhist \nsociety was registered in Kajang as a branch of the Buddhist Missionary Society of Malaysia \n(BMSM), which has its headquarters in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur. BMSM owes its origins \nto a Sri Lankan monk, Rev. Dhammananda, who arrived in Malaya in 1951 to serve the small \nSinhalese Buddhist community. English-educated and urbane, he won, in the following three \ndecades, a large following among the urban English-educated Malaysian Chinese middle class \nin Kuala Lumpur. The founding members of the Kajang branch were members of the BMSM \nparent body at the Maha Vihara, Brickfields, who felt that they should bring \u201cBuddhism to \nKajang\u201d. Many were English-educated scions of old-established wealthy Kajang families, for \nwhom the older community institutions, such as the Shiye temple, no longer held any attraction. \nAlthough dialect would have been spoken in these wealthier households, the second generation \nwas often sent for an English education to the well-known English medium schools in town \nsuch as the Kajang High for boys and the Kajang Convent for girls. \n\n\n\nOthers, who had also been members of the Brickfields temple, were recent migrants to \nKajang, largely anglophone professionals who had found employment in the Kajang area, \nincluding a number of Kelantan Chinese some of whom were teaching at the local university. \nIn 2007, BMSM Kajang had a membership of 206. It is a lay organization, run by an elected \ncommittee; monks from the parent temple are in attendance only at key annual festivals such as \nWesak Day, with a purely ritual function, that is, to lead in the chanting of the sutras (in Pali) \nand to dispense blessings. The majority of those who turned up at the AGM in 2007 were adults \nin their mid-thirties to fifties, most of them with children of school-going age. There is a high \npercentage of professionals, as well as a good gender balance, with a number of women active \nin the committee. In form though not content, the congregational nature of this new Buddhist \norganisation resembles closely the Christian churches (Catholic and Protestant, old and new) in \nand around greater Kajang which have also expanded greatly in the last decades, thanks again \nto the influx of \u201cnew migrants\u201d and university students to the area.\n\n\n\n73\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nThese changes in the religious landscape of the town cannot be understood without taking \ninto account the profound changes in culture and society, both national and transnational, \nwhich have shaped the thinking of this postcolonial generation of descendants of immigrants. \nIn stark contrast to their forefathers in the colonial period, the political imagination of this new \nsinophone middle class no longer connects to a distant homeland, and political engagement  \ntoday is directed exclusively toward the nation. Kajang seethed with political debate during \nthe 2008 national election and voted in as State Assemblyman a multilingual ex-schoolteacher, \nknown popularly as teacher or Cikgu Lee (Lee Kim Sin) from the opposition, Parti Keadilan \nRakyat. The emergence of this new Chinese middle class and its new politics has sealed \nKajang\u2019s transformation from a localized immigrant community to a Chinese society firmly \nlocated within national society. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nThe study of Chinese migration has been dominated by the paradigmatic figure of \nthe \u201csojourner\u201d or the temporary migrant, as opposed to the \u201csettler\u201d (see Siu, 1952). It is \ncertainly true that the pattern of Chinese migration in the 19th and 20th centuries was not \nbased on the intention to settle. Nonetheless, de facto settlement on a not insignificant scale \ndid occur.  In his study of the Chinese contribution to the making of Malaya however, the \nMalaysian geographer Voon Phin Keong notes that for the \u201cpioneers, entrepreneurs and \nlabourers\u201d who toiled at this development frontier,\n\n\n\n\u201csettling down was not an alien concept, but part of the traditional concepts that had \nguided the life of the Chinese. Traditionally, attachment to the land, wherever it might \nbe, was in keeping with the idea of \u201cputting down roots on the land\u201d (\u843d\u5730\u751f\u6839luodi \nshenggen) (see Wang, 1998). The intention was to start a family away from one\u2019s \nancestral village (\u5b89\u5bb6\u843d\u6237anjia luohu), to live a peaceful and contented life (\u5b89\u5c45\u4e50\u4e1a\n\n\n\nanju leye), and to abide by the age-old tradition of simple living and keeping out of trouble \n(\u5b89\u5206\u5b88\u5df1anfen shouji). It was this pragmatism that transformed the vast majority of \nthe early immigrants in Malaya and the Borneo territories into de facto permanent \nsettlers.\u201d (Voon, 2007: 79)\n\n\n\nWe suggest in this paper that settlement has been an important, and overlooked, dimension \nof Chinese migration. The religious organizations discussed above represent different stages and \ndimensions of social formation and transformation in the settlement process of Chinese society \nin Kajang. The Shiye community temple bears witness to the migrant Chinese community at the \nturn of the century. It was a community with a strong \u201csojourner\u201d character, but even there, the \nongoing process of localisation and the gradual transition from sojourner to settler is suggested \nby the deification of local personages as the patron deities, in this case, the Xian Si Shiye (\u4ed9\u56db\n\n\n\n74\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\n\u5e08\u7237). The community temple and cemetery were transplanted institutions around which new \nlocalized dialect-based communities with new local deities were re-constituted. As the process \nof settlement proceeded, they were superseded as central institutions of Chinese public life \nby the establishment of Mandarin-medium local schools. These schools were the embodiment \nof the \u201cHuaqiao\u201d era of Chinese migration (Wang, 1989) when a trans-dialect sense of ethnic \nChinese identity and a new emotional tie with an abstract \u201chomeland\u201d was forged. With the \nestablishment of the post-war nation-state, de facto settlement has been affirmed by citizenship. \nThanks to its attendant institutions, in particular the national education system, we see the \nemergence of a new sinophone Chinese middle class for whom the homeland-orientated ethnic \nChinese identity of the Huaqiao era no longer holds much, if any, attraction.\n\n\n\nIn this respect, the paper also addresses two other highly influential paradigmatic depictions \nof Malaysian Chinese society, namely Wang Gungwu\u2019s model of an essentially mercantile \noverseas Chinese society comprised of the merchant and the aspiring merchant (see Wang, \n1981); as well as his characterization of post-war Malaysian Chinese society as dichotomized \ninto the Chinese-educated (Groups A and B) and the English-educated (Group C)-in his well-\nknown categorization of Malaysian Chinese into Groups A, B, and C (Wang, 1981). The story \nof the Chinese \u201cpioneers, entrepreneurs and labourers\u201d (Voon, 2007) of colonial Malaya-one \nshould perhaps add the artisans whose family businesses kept the urban economy  going-would \nlargely fit the model postulated by Wang, a model made manifest in the Shiye temple. The age \nof the Shiye temple however, has passed. So has that of the \u201cHuaqiao\u201d school. Any model of \nMalaysian Chinese society today must take into account the coming of age of a new sinophone \nbut multilingual, tertiary-educated, professional and in good measure, feminized, Chinese middle \nclass, whose allegiance to \u201ctraditional\u201d Chinese institutions cannot be taken for granted. Just \nas multilingualism has nationalized the sinophone world of this new Chinese middle class, so \nhas the contemporary globalized sinophone world injected new cultural, religious and political \nimpulses to their community-making projects. A simple dichotomy between the English and the \nChinese educated will no longer suffice. The nature of the English-educated middle-class may \nnot have changed; that of the Chinese-educated certainly has.\n\n\n\n75\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nAppendix\nShiye Temples in Peninsular Malaysia\n\n\n\n   Location         Name of Temple   Built in\n1. Seremban, Negeri Sembilan Gumiao(\u8299\u84c9\u5343\u53e4\u5e99)    1861\n2. Kuala Lumpur   Xian Si Shiye(\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99)   1864\n3. Rawang, Selangor  Xian Si Shiye(\u4e07\u6320\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)   1869\n4. Seremban, Negeri Sembilan Xian Si Shiye(\u8299\u84c9\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237)   1869\n5. Semenyih, Selangor  Xian Si Shiye(\u58eb\u6bdb\u6708\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237)   1880\n6. 14th Milestone, Ulu Langat, Xian Si Shiye(\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bae)   1890\n    Selangor\n7. Melaka   Guang Fu He Sheng(\u5e7f\u798f\u5e99\u548c\u80dc\u5bab)  1890\n8. Kuala Kubu Baru, Selangor Yue Shan Gumiao(\u65b0\u53e4\u6bdb\u5cb3\u5c71\u53e4\u5e99)  1895\n9. Kajang, Selangor  Shiye Gong(\u52a0\u5f71\u5e08\u7237\u5bab) \n    (shifted from Lukut)    1898\n10. Serendah, Selangor  Xian Si Shiye(\u53cc\u6587\u4e39\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)    1898\n11. Kalumpang, Selangor  Xian Si Shiye(\u9f99\u90a6\u53e4\u5e99\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)  1902\n12. Bentong, Pahang  Guang Fu Gong(\u6587\u51ac\u5e7f\u798f\u5bab)   1902\n\n\n\nSource: Survey conducted by authors, 12 August 2007\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\nThe name \u201cKajang\u201d is said to derive from the Temuan term for the palm (mengkuang) which 1 \ngrew profusely in the area, and which was used by the Temuan to construct their rough \nshelter for the night.\n\u201cKajang\u201d means shelter, but can also mean \u201cstab\u201d. In one account, the conflict is between 2 \na Temuan and a Malay. In another, it is between two migrant groups, the Mandailing and \nthe Bugis.\nSee official portal of Kajang Local Authority-Origin of the name of Kajang, mppj.gov.my. 3 \nIn one, the pioneering role is attributed to a Mandailing prince, Raja Berayun, who took \nshelter (berkajang) at a spot now known as Jalan Mandailing, and subsequently opened up \nKajang and ruled the area with the title of Tengku Panglima Besar, granted by Sultan Abdul \nSamad, with whom he had sided during the Selangor Civil War of 1867-1873. In another, \nthe founding of Kajang is attributed to a Tok Lili from Riau (possibly a Bugis), who was \ngranted mining rights and the right to open up land in the Hulu Langat area by the Sultan \nMuhammad Shah Ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Ibrahim Shah of Riau, who also conferred on him \nthe title of Dato\u2019 Bandar Kajang.\nThe largest estate was West Country, which employed 116 Indian and 12 Javanese labourers 4 \n(Mohd. Shaidin, 1981/82: 20).\nIn 1884, shortly after the establishment of a British administration, the village of Hulu 5 \nLangat was estimated to have a population of 400, almost all migrants from Mandailing, \nRawa and Minangkabau (Mohd. Shaidin, 1981/82: 13).\nIt was estimated in the 1960s that 80 per cent of the population of Hulu Langat were of 6 \nSumatran origin (Radcliffe, 1969: 181).\nAs a reminder of the founding Mandailing presence however, it is worthy of note that while 7 \n\n\n\n76\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigration, Settlement and New Middle Class \n\n\n\nGoh owned 9 and Low 8 houses in Kajang in 1912, Raja Alang owned 20 (Voon, 2014: \n57).\nReko was the site of the first tin mine opened in the area. There was an early Mandailing 8 \nsettlement there as well. Sungai Kantan was originally the site of a Chinese mining \nsettlement. It has since become a Malay area.\nNevertheless, there is no present record of Jian or his family in Kajang.9 \nThe 1911 census shows that the Cantonese and Hakkas (termed in the census as Kheh) were 10 \nthe predominant dialect groups in Hulu Langat then (see Table 1). The highly uneven sex \nratio in both groups show the low incidence of household formation, where the sex ratio is \nmore favourable for the Cantonese (1: 3.9) than for the Hakkas (1: 5.2). See Table 2.\nThe third largest group was the Hokkiens, with an even more unfavourable sex ratio of 1: 11 \n16.\nhttp://stjohnkl.net/index.cfm?load=page&page=151)12 \nFor an account of Low Ti Kok in Kajang, see http://kajangtown.blogspot.com/2007/08/13 \nlow-ti-kok.html\nThe Chinese population in Hulu Langat doubled between 1921 and 1931.14 \nVoon\u2019s work on landownership patterns in the surrounding mukim of Semenyih and Ulu 15 \nSemenyih also reveals the durability of Chinese owned lots, as compared to that of European, \nIndian and Malay, an indicator of the propensity to permanent settlement found within in the \ncommunity (Voon, 1978: 516).\nIn 1947, when the first post-war census was taken, the sex ratio was virtually balanced, with 16 \n1: 1.2 for the Cantonese, and 1: 1.05 for the Hakkas. It is noteworthy that for the smaller \nHok Chiu, Teochew, Hailam and Kwongsai populations, the sex ratio remained far more \nimbalanced (see Table 2).\nLow YF (Liu Yan Fei17 \u5218\u96c1\u98de)\nHe was also involved in the Min Sheng Ti Yu Hui (18 \u6c11\u751f\u4f53\u80b2\u4f1a), a local society that inherited \nthe spirit of Sun Yat Sen\u2019s Tong Meng Hui (\u540c\u76df\u4f1a). It promotes Confucian teachings and \nmartial arts.\nThe sample of Chinese migrants to urban centres in a 2005 study consisted of 20.4 per cent 19 \ncollege graduates, 15.5 per cent university graduates, 12.6 per cent with a Masters degree \nand 1 per cent a PhD (Zhang 2011).\nSpearheading the reforms was a wealthy Hokkien businessman Lee Ken (20 \u674e\u9063) who was \ninvited to head the Shiye temple. He introduced administrative reforms which \u201crationalized\u201d \ntemple management-the notion of membership, open elections to the positions of ritual lu \nzhu (\u7089\u4e3b) and management leadership-and attenuated its narrow \u201csectarian\u201d base. \nThe birthday is celebrated annually on the seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese 21 \nlunar calendar.\nOf the 13 committee members covered in a 2007 survey, all are male, nine in their sixties 22 \nand seventies. For example, the current President (who was not polled in this survey) is a \nwealthy businessman of Teochew origin, educated in English at Kajang High School, who \nalso serves as President of the Kwangtung Association.\nThe organizers estimate that more than 10,000 people participated in the procession.23 \nLee characterized himself as a third generation Sungai Chua villager, the first being 24 \nimmigrants from China, the second those who were forcibly relocated to the New Village \nfrom Sungai Kantan during the Emergency, and the third being those like him who moved \nvoluntarily to Sungai Chua.\n\n\n\n77\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Lin and Tan\n\n\n\nReferences\nDEL TUFO, M.V. 1949. Malaya: A Report in the 1947 Census of Population, Millbank: Crown Agents \n\n\n\nfor the Colonies.\nFADZI, M.A.D.  et al. 2014. Evaluation of migration decision-selectivity factors in metropolitan area: a \n\n\n\ncase of Klang Valley Region, Malaysia, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 9(1): 34-44.\nGULLICK, J.M. 2000. A History of Kuala Lumpur 1857-1939, MBRAS Monograph 29, Kuala Lumpur: \n\n\n\nMalaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\nJAMALIAH Jaafar 2004. Emerging trends of urbanisation in Malaysia, Statistics Malaysia, 1: 43-54. \nKOK, Hu Jin 1993. Malaysian Chinese folk religion: with special reference to Weizhen Gong in Kuala \n\n\n\nLumpur, in Cheu Hock Tong (ed.), Chinese Beliefs and Practices in Southeast Asia, Petaling Jaya: \nPelanduk.\n\n\n\nMajlis Perbandaran Kajang, portal Rasmi, Sejarah Kajang, http://www.mpkj.gov.my, retrieved 14 July 2014.\nMalaysia 1997. Jabatan Perancangan Bandar dan Desa, Selangor. Jabatan Perancang Bandar dan Desa \n\n\n\n1997. Rancangan Struktur Sebahagian Majlis Perbandaran Kajang (MPKj) 1995-2020, Kajang: \nMajlis Perbandaran Kajang.\n\n\n\nMOHD. SHAIDIN bin Ismail 1981/82. Orang-orang Mandailing di Selangor 1860an-1940an: Satu \nKajian Kes di Daerah Ulu Langat, Sarjana muda, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (The Mandailing \nof Selangor, 1860s-1940s: A Case Study Ulu Langat District, unpublished M.A. thesis, UKM).\n\n\n\nNATHAN, J.E. 1922. The Census of British Malaya 1921, Dunstable and Watford: Waterlow & Sons Ltd.\nPOUNTNEY, A.M. 1911. The Census of the Federated Malay States 1911, London: Darling & Son Ltd. \nRADCLIFFE, David 1969. The peopling of Ulu Langat, Indonesia, 8: 155-182.\nSAW Swee-Hock 1988. The Population of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore: Singapore University Press.\n---- 2006. Population trends and patterns in Multiracial Malaysia. In Malaysia, Recent Trends and \n\n\n\nChallenges, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.\nSIU, Paul C.P. 1952.  The sojourner, American Journal of Sociology, 58 (1): 34-44.\nTAN, Jocelyn 2007. One race, two sets of views, The Star, 23 September.\nTEY, Nai Peng 2012. Internal migration in the Klang Valley of Malaysia: issues and implications, \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 1: 40-59.\nVLIELAND, C.A. 1931. British Malaya: A Report on the 1931 Census, Millbank: Crown Agents for the \n\n\n\nColonies. \nVOON Phin Keong 1976.  Malay reservations and Malay land ownership in Semenyih and Ulu Semenyih, \n\n\n\nModern Asian Studies, 10 (4): 509-523.\n-----  1978. Evolution of ethnic patterns of rural land ownership in Peninsular Malaysia: a case study,    \n\n\n\nSoutheast Asian Studies, 15 (4): 510-529.\n-----   2001.  The Chinese new villages in Malaysia: impact of demographic changes and response strategies, \n\n\n\nCentre for Malaysian Chinese Studies, www.malaysian-chinese.net, retrieved 1 July 2014.\n-----  2007.  Pioneers, entrepreneurs and labourers: building the social and economic foundations of       \n\n\n\nstatehood. In Malaysian Chinese and Nation-building: Before Merdeka and Fifty Years after, edited \nby Voon Phin Keong, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies: 43-94.\n\n\n\n-----  2013. Transforming the development frontier: Chinese pioneers in the Ulu Langat district of \nSelangor, Malaysia, Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2 (2): 45-64.\n\n\n\nWANG, Gungwu 1981. Traditional leadership in a new nation: the Chinese in Malaya and Singapore. \nIn Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese, Singapore: \nHinemann.\n\n\n\n-----   1989.  Patterns of Chinese migration in historical perspective. In Observing Change in Asia: Essays \nin Honour of J.A.C. Mackie, edited by R.J. May and W.J. O\u2019Malley, Bathurst, NSW: Crawford \nHouse Press: 33-48.\n\n\n\nYANG, C.K. 1961. Religion in Chinese Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.\nZHANG, Jijiao 2011. Urbanization and urban migrants in Malaysia: a comparative study between Chinese \n\n\n\nand Malays, Journal of Malaysian Chinese Studies, 12: 107-127.\n\u6e29\u6545\u77e51988.\u300a\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u4e0e\u5e08\u7237\u5e99\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u8f89\u714c\u51fa\u7248\u793e (WEN Gu Zhi 1988, Xian Shiye and the  \n\n\n\nTemple, Kuala Lumpur: Hui Huang Press).\n\n\n\n78\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n404 Not Found\n\n\n\nnginx\n"
"\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nVOON Phin Keong, EE Chong Huat, LEE Kim Sin* \n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis is a study of the genesis of a local Chinese religious cult in Malaysia. The Xian Shiye cult \narose from the veneration of Sheng Ming Li, a Chinese leader in early Sungei Ujong. Based on the \nmyths about the birth, death and related incidents as well as the historical facts about the person, \nthe deification process began almost immediately after he was killed in 1861. Tracing the formation \nand diffusion of the cult thus provides an opportunity for research on Chinese folk religion in the \nlocal context. This study will examine the Xian Shiye cult in the context of the tradition of Chinese \nreligious practices. After a brief mention of the nature of Chinese beliefs, attention will focus \non the life of Sheng Ming Li in China and Sungei Ujong. The mythological and cultural bases \nof deification are next discussed, followed by an examination of the diffusion of the cult and a \nconclusion on its cultural significance. \n\n\n\nKey words: Xian Shiye cult, deification, Chinese folk beliefs\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nIn the world of beliefs and religions, those of the Chinese people defy simple definition. \nIn the early population censuses of Malaya, census supervisors failed to devise a breakdown \nof the beliefs of the Chinese in the same manner as they did with Christianity. The Chinese \nwere classified as Christians, Muslims, and followers of \u201cOther Religions\u201d. A.M. Pountney, \nsuperintend of the 1911 census of the Federated Malay States, famously wrote that, while most \nof the Chinese mentioned \u201cConfucianism\u201d in the entry for religion, \u201cthe only worship which \ncould, however, be properly entitled the national religion of China is \u2018ancestral worship\u2019\u201d \n(Pountney, 1911: 57). Yet the religious beliefs of the Chinese go beyond the worship of \nancestors which is a domestic ritual performed in individual households and confined only to \nfamily and clan members.\n\n\n\nNevertheless, to study the beliefs of the Chinese is like venturing into a fuzzy territory \n\n\n\n*        Dr. VOON Phin Keong (\u6587\u5e73\u5f3a) is Director, Institute of Malaysian and Regional Studies, \n         New Era College. E-mail: phinkeong.voon@newera.edu.my\n        Dr. EE Chong Huat (\u4f59\u5b97\u53d1) is Visiting Professor, Department of Chinese Language and \n         Literature, New Era College. E-mail: chonghuat.ee@newera.edu.my\n             LEE Kim Sin (\u674e\u6210\u91d1) is an independent researcher and a former member of the Selangor State   \n         Legislative Assembly. E-mail: leekimsin@gmail.com\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 37-59\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nof \u201creligious persuasions and forms of worship \u2026 that are of a nature essentially different \nfrom the beliefs to which the term religion is commonly applied in western parlance, and \nthere are no generally understood specific names for these persuasions\u201d (Vlieland, 1932: 87). \nOther than adherence to Islam, Christianity or atheism, the majority of the Chinese believe \nin Buddhism, Taoism, ancestral worship, and folk beliefs, or in an eclectic form that features \nelements from these beliefs.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese have traditionally practised different religious cults. Each of these has \nits own set of practices and beliefs adhered to by followers in the worship of essentially \nlocal deities. These deities may be historical figures, elements of the natural environment, \nand other objects real or imaginary. Religious cults share certain characteristics. There is \noften an element of the \u201cmagical\u201d which defies logical explanation, such as the special \ncircumstances surrounding the births, deaths or the lives and services of certain persons. \nThese are looked upon as out of the ordinary or have been beneficial to the people and thus \ninspire awe and reverence. Whether superstitious or pragmatic, the Chinese would rather \nbelieve in these miraculous phenomena than to deny their existence. The rationale is that \none does not lose anything in believing these phenomena but may pay a price for rejecting \ntheir existence. The rise of a cult may be spontaneous and prompted by a desire to remember \none or more acknowledged community or folk \u201cheroes\u201d. This is the case of the cult of Xian \nShiye in Peninsular Malaysia which began with the deification of a Chinese leader during the \npioneering period a century and a half ago. \n\n\n\nThis study attempts to decipher the genesis of the Xian Shiye (\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237 or Sage \nCounsellor) cult that emerged among Chinese immigrants in certain Malay States from the \n1860s. Its central figure of worship is Sheng Ming Li (\u76db\u660e\u5229,1823-1861, hereafter referred \nto as Sheng) who was consecrated as Xian Shiye. Sheng was a Hakka from Huizhou (\u60e0\u5ddeor \nFui Chiu in Hakka) and had migrated initially, to Melaka in 1851, and soon after to Sungei \nUjong which now forms part of the state of Negeri Sembilan.1 He emerged as the leader of \nthe Chinese community and was made a Chinese Capitan but met a violent death in 1861. He \nbecame a figure for veneration almost immediately upon his death and was consecrated in a \ntemple dedicated to his worship. \n\n\n\nThe worship of Xian Shiye has become a part of the \u201cmythology\u201d of the Chinese \ncommunity in Malaysia. Mythologies are about the deeds of gods (\u9f9a\u9e4f\u7a0b/Gong Pengcheng, \n1983). All fictional depictions may be defined as mythology and it is not necessarily based \non the ancient past. A story or part of it that encapsulates some elements of the human or \nsuperhuman spirit may constitute a mythology. Like their ancient counterparts, contemporary \nsocieties too have created their own mythologies. Indeed, societies of all ages have not only \ninvented their own mythologies but also altered them to emphasize specific meanings and \nsignificance. Seen in this context, the term \u201cmythology\u201d is compatible with the birth of the \nmyths surrounding historical figures in the local context. \n\n\n\nWe will examine the events and rationale that led to the consecration of the person as an \n\n\n\n38\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nicon for public worship especially by the Hakkas. Following a brief account of the nature of \nChinese beliefs, the events of Sheng\u2019s birth and death that bear witness to his \u201cextraordinary\u201d \nqualities will be examined. This is followed by a discussion on the deification process with \nspecial reference to mythological and cultural considerations. A review of the diffusion of \nthe Xian Shiye temples takes up the next section, followed by some remarks on the cultural \nsignificance of the cult.\n\n\n\nThe Nature of Chinese Beliefs\n\n\n\nThe Chinese people keep an open mind in what and who they worship. The ancient \nBook of Rites describes in detail religious ceremonies during which sacrifices were offered \nto Heaven, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the seasons, the mountains and forests, and all \nnatural phenomena that were regarded as living spirits (\u59dc\u4e49\u534e/Jiang Yi Hua, 2001: 636). \nThe insignificance of humans and the power of nature gave rise to the realization that man \nand nature were inseparable. Their link with all that surrounded them was through a system \nof veneration and beliefs. With time, these beliefs extended to the worship of leaders of tribes \nand groups who were seen to have contributed significantly to the benefit of the people. The \nearly forms of worship developed into a belief system comprising a large number of gods and \ndeities of diverse origins. The worship was performed for various purposes: to honour and \nremember past leaders and heroes, to maintain continuity with the past, to seek protection and \nspiritual fulfillment and many others. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese are pantheistic and tend to create their own deities and gods. According \nto the Book of Rites, sacrifices were offered to those who deserved such honour. These were \npersons who had given good laws to the people, laboured to the death in the discharge of \ntheir duties, strengthened the state by their toil, boldly and successfully met great calamities, \nand who had warded off great evils (\u59dc\u4e49\u534e/Jiang Yi Hua, 2001: 640). With the birth of \nTaoism and other indigenous beliefs as well as the introduction of Buddhism, the early forms \nof worship eventually evolved into an eclectic system of beliefs comprising deities from \nBuddhism, Taoism, and folk religions that encompass the world of spirits, guardian and \ndomestic gods, folk heroes, ancestors, wealth and many more.\n\n\n\nThe pantheon of Chinese gods and deities was transplanted overseas by immigrants who \nbegan to settle in parts of Southeast Asia and else where beginning from the late eighteenth \ncentury. The combination of different beliefs, some tracing their roots in antiquity, has \nendured to constitute what may be known today as folk or household religion practised both \nin temples and at home. The Chinese in Malaysia have also inherited the tradition of ancestral \nworship when they left their villages in south China. \n\n\n\nReligion answers the many needs of the worshippers. In a study to uncover the reasons \nbehind religious practices Clarence B. Day (1947), in a field study in Zhejiang province in \nsoutheast China between 1924 and 1940, revealed different values that sustained the devotion \n\n\n\n39\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nof the worshippers. These values that were looked upon as beneficial to the worshippers and \ntheir families fall into six categories. These are the protection of life and property; adjusting \nto the forces of the natural environment; peace and harmony of family life; attainment of \nsuccess in life; salvation of the soul; and the accumulation of merits and virtue for a place \nin heaven in the afterlife. These values summarize the general benefits that devotees hope to \nattain in their religious worship both in traditional Chinese society and particularly among \nthose who migrated and settled down in foreign territories.\n\n\n\nAs in their ancestral villages in China, the emerging Chinese communities in Malaya \nkept alive the cultural fetish for religious syncretism. They practised a system of worship \ncomprising deities from China and new ones brought into existence locally. The deities were \ninstalled in temples for which the Chinese spared no efforts in erecting wherever they have \nsettled down to make a living (see Purcell, 1965). A few local deities were created based \non the exploits and memories of historical figures of Chinese pioneers who personified \nadmirable qualities and whose worship could bring forth blessings and spiritual protection. At \nthe same time, also incorporated into the pantheon of deities were the local tutelary guardians \nof territorial affairs. \n\n\n\nToday, a host of Chinese religious cults have appeared in Malaysia and each has its own \nset of faithful, often overlapping, congregations of followers. Many Chinese worship common \ngods such as Guan Ying or the Goddess of Mercy or Kuandi (\u5173\u5e1d or Emperor Kuan) to \nwhom many traders pay homage as the epitome of loyalty and righteousness.2 Different crafts \nand trade tend to have their own patron gods, and the major dialect groups have their own \ndeities and cult practices introduced from China. The pantheon of the Hokkiens consists of 12 \nindividual or multiple deities including such popular ones as Mazu (\u5988\u7956), the Cantonese pay \nhomage to five sets of deities, the Hakkas four, the Teochews three, and the Hainanese four, \nof which the most celebrated is Tian Hou (\u5929\u540e) (see\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1/ Shi Cangjin, 2014: 175-231). \n\n\n\nMigrant Chinese communities were ingenious in adding new deities to those transplanted \nfrom their ancestral villages. The practice of elevating individual persons to the status of \na deity with specific titles was common in the pioneering period of Chinese settlement \noverseas. The deification of historical figures is a common mode adopted by local Chinese \ncommunities to preserve the collective memory of their life in the new environment as well \nas for subsequent transmission down the generations. Among the earliest to be deified was \nAdmiral Zheng He who made seven voyages to the \u201cSouth Seas\u201d in the early fifteenth century. \nThe worship of Zheng He began in 1795 with the establishment of the Poh San temple (\u5b9d\u5c71\n\n\n\n\u4ead) in Melaka. This was followed by the San Poh temple in Kuching 1873, and subsequently \nin Terengganu and Penang (see Kong, 2000\uff1b\u82cf\u5e86\u534e/Soo Khin Wah, 2004). That Zheng He \nbecame a venerated deity was partly the result of the mythology that arose from the \u201cmarvels \nof romance\u201d surrounding his performance of miracles to save his countrymen from the perils \nof their travels in unknown lands (Purcell, 1965: 39).  \n\n\n\nThe deification of local figures was not uncommon among pioneer communities. Among \n\n\n\n40\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nthe more popularly known deities include the Da Bogong (\u5927\u4f2f\u516c or Tuk/Toh Pekong in \nHokkien). Early Chinese settlers in other parts of Southeast Asia showed a similar tendency to \ndeify their departed leaders. In West Kalimantan, Lo Fong-Pak, the founder of the Langfang \nKongsi, was worshipped after his death in 1793 as a \u201cprotective deity\u201d. The people in the \nKongsi believed that their welfare depended on his protection and he was worshipped as \na show of respect. He was worshipped on feast days and the anniversaries of his birth and \ndeath. \n\n\n\nThe earliest one was in Penang, reputed to be dedicated to the worship of the three \nChinese who lived in the island in the 1740s. The temple, erected in 1799 by the local Chinese \ncommunity, was to commemorate their pioneering spirit (\u9ec4\u5c27/Huang Yao, 1966: 42). Not \nmuch is known of the lives of the trio and the erection of a temple in their memory was more \nin keeping with the urge for a deity to ensure protection from diseases and dangers in the \nhumid tropics.  \n\n\n\nThe Da Bogong may have evolved from the tutelary deity or Tudi Shen (\u571f\u5730\u795e) of \nChina, known locally as Datuk Pekong (\u62ff\u7763\u4f2f\u516c) or simply Datuk Kong (\u62ff\u7763\u516c). \u201cPekong\u201d \nis a Chinese kinship term for \u201cgrand uncle\u201d whereas the Malay word \u201cDatoh\u201d or \u201cToh\u201d is \nan honorific for a respected elder and has the same sound as \u201cbig\u201d or \u201cgrand\u201d in Chinese. \nThus, to christen this early deity as \u201cDatuk Pekong\u201d or simply \u201cTuk Pekong\u201d was a sign of \nthe localization of beliefs in keeping with the popular worship of the local \u201cterritorial\u201d deity. \nHowever, the \u201cTuk Pekong\u201d may symbolize the pioneering spirit in general rather than the \ndeification of a particular person (Purcell, 1965: 39).   \n\n\n\nIn Sabah, the Hakka community of Sabah has its own Da Bogong temples. The first was \nbuilt in Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu) in 1912, and rebuilt in Putatan in 1987. Two more \nwere established in Tawau in 1952 and Tenom in 1953 (\u5f20\u5fb7\u6765/Zhang Delai, 2002: 146-\n147). In Sarawak there are 65 Da Bogong temples distributed throughout the state (\u5434\u8bd7\u5174/\nNgu See Hing, 2014: 122-123). The term is also used by the Dutch for any Chinese deity or \nspiritual being (see T\u2019ien, 1997: 173).    \n\n\n\nMore recent in time and much nearer by is the worship of Xian Shiye. The narrative is \nrather different from those of other deities, not least because of its recent origin. The diffusion \nof the belief in this deity is the product of early and contemporary Chinese society in the \nMalay States in their need for spiritual fulfilment and the perpetuation of a collective memory \nof a pioneer and community leader. The genesis of the Xian Shiye story is supported by \nextant records and documentary evidence in the forms of the personal belongings of Sheng, \nhis descendants and their recorded oral history, his tomb as well as the decision to establish \nthe Xian Shiye Temple. Consequently, tracing the process by which Sheng was deified poses \nfew difficulties and presents an excellent case study in the manner in which a historical figure \nwas transformed into a permanent icon of worship from the 1860s.\n\n\n\n41\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nThe Life of Sheng Ming Li\n\n\n\nSheng Ming Li was also known as Shin Kap and Shin On (Letessier, 1893: 535; \nMiddlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 15). He was born in 1823 in Huizhou county, Guangdong \nprovince, and died in 1861 at the age of 38. He spent the first 28 years of his life in Huizhou and \nlater in Xin\u2019an county (\u65b0\u5b89\u53bf) and the last ten in Sungei Ujong in the Malay Peninsula.\n\n\n\nLife in China \nAccording to popular belief, Sheng attended a traditional village school at the age \n\n\n\nof seven and was known for his intelligence and as a child prodigy much admired by his \nclassmates and teachers. At age 15, he took up martial arts and studied ethics and history. He \nsoon earned a reputation as a young man who excelled in learning and the martial arts and \nwas looked upon as a role model in the village.\n\n\n\nIn the dying days of the Qing dynasty, China was plagued by massive corruption and \nbureaucratic incompetence. Internal instability and rampant banditry were compounded by \nthe incursion of various Western powers keen on carving out their respective spheres of \ninfluence in China. The ravages of banditry were so alarming that the Sheng family migrated \nand settled down in Xin\u2019an. While this shift sheltered the family from banditry, it also ended \nSheng\u2019s education. He was then forced to work as an apprentice in a trading company and \nthus embarked on a career in business.\n\n\n\nBy 1851, Sheng had accumulated more than ten years of experience in the world of \ncommerce. Being ambitious, he saw little future working as a hired hand. He therefore \nresolved to migrate to Southeast Asia, then popularly known as \u201cNanyang\u201d to the Chinese, to \ntry his luck. On 1 August of the same year, he boarded a junk and sailed to Melaka.\n\n\n\nLife in Sungei Ujong  \nUpon his arrival in Melaka, he was soon blessed with an encounter with Chen Yu Fa, \n\n\n\na well-known local businessman and proprietor of Hong Fa Company. Chen found Sheng a \nhumble and talented young man and hired him as an assistant manager. He was entrusted with \nresponsibilities to manage the employer\u2019s grocery and tin-trading businesses. With his prior \nknowledge and experience in business, he helped to open up many business opportunities for \nhis employer.\n\n\n\nRenowned for its rich tin resources, the Malay Peninsula in the nineteenth century was \ntouted as the right place to invest in mining as a quick path to wealth. Hong Fa Company was \nthen engaged in the purchase, transport and trade in tin but not in mining itself. In the days of \nprimitive river transport, the conveyance of tin ore was time-consuming and yielded meager \nprofits compared with those derived from mining. In order to reap profits at source, Chen Yu \nFa decided to embark on his own mining venture. He then dispatched Sheng to Sungei Ujong, \nnow forming the greater part of Negeri Sembilan, to establish an enterprise called Ming Fa \nCompany to engage in tin mining. The enterprise prospered under Sheng\u2019s astute guidance \n\n\n\n42\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nand leadership. It was at this time that Yap Ah Loy (\u53f6\u4e9a\u6765, 1837-1885, hereafter known as \nAh Loy), a fresh arrival from the tin mining district of Lukut, was introduced to him. Ah Loy \nwas a Hakka from Huizhou district of Guangdong and Sheng\u2019s junior by 14 years. He was to \nemerge later as a leading pioneer and one of the founding fathers of modern Kuala Lumpur.\n\n\n\nSheng quickly built up a reputation for his entrepreneurial flair. Known as a person \nof upright moral character, he also won the admiration of other ethnic groups. He was \ndescribed as an exceedingly brave and outstanding leader and was respectfully referred to as \na \u201cCapitan\u201d by the local Chinese community and whose contributions were also appropriately \nacknowledged by the authorities. The term \u201cCapitan\u201d was a title conferred on the leader of \nthe Chinese and charged with duties to deal with certain affairs of the community (Letessier, \n1893; Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 15; \u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 31).3 \n\n\n\nTin mining in the Malay Peninsula has a long history and tin was reported as an item \nof commerce from the ninth century (Sadka, 1968: 18). By 1790, the Dutch noticed that \nthe Chinese were the principal miners in Perak and Selangor (Wong, 1965: 17). About 400 \nChinese were engaged in tin mining and trading in Perak in the nineteenth century and there \nwere 200 Chinese working under a \u201cChina Captain\u201d in the Lukut mines in 1815 (Anderson, \n1824: 187 and 202). The discovery of rich tin deposits in the Larut district of northern Perak \nin the 1840s attracted large inflows of Chinese.  \n\n\n\nIt was the thriving tin industry that induced the massive influx of Chinese immigrants \nto Malaya from the 1850s. The industry soon emerged as the economic lifeline of Malaya. It \nwas also a time when all mining proprietors and operators, whether Chinese or Malays, had \nto rely on their followers to defend their rights and interests. Intense competition for mining \nrights often gave rise to disputes and conflicts that led to bloodshed and loss of life. One of \nthe earliest incidents of such conflicts took place in Sungei Ujong in early 1860 between two \nlocal Malay chiefs over the ownership of the tin produced by the Chinese miners and on the \nrights to collect taxes. The Chinese were divided into two groups to back their respective \nMalay chiefs. Sheng and his largely Huizhou Hakka followers supported the Datoh Klana. \nOne of Sheng\u2019s panglima (head fighter) was Liu Ngim Kong, another Huizhou Hakka, and \nwho used to extend his hospitality to Ah Loy during his visits to Sungei Ujong from Lukut. \nAh Loy later became Liu Ngim Kong\u2019s assistant panglima in the Sungei Ujong clashes \n(Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 15).\n\n\n\nIn the fighting that broke out in 1860, Sheng\u2019s group was defeated on 26 August. \nOutnumbered by his adversaries, Sheng was separated from his men and escaped into the \nforest. He was subsequently found and killed by his enemies. Ah Loy was injured but managed \nto retreat to Lukut where he was saved by some local residents. Upon hearing the bad news of \nthe demise of Sheng, Ah Loy led the victim\u2019s wife and son and a retinue to the site to recover \nhis body. They then escorted the body to Melaka for burial. As Sheng\u2019s head was severed \nand could not be traced, a wooden head was made instead, as mandated by tradition, before \nburying him in Bukit Simuka outside Melaka town (Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 15; \u6e29\n\n\n\n43\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\n\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 263-264). The inscription on Sheng\u2019s tombstone indicated that he \nhad a son and two daughters. His son made his way to Mantin where he lived in disguise as \nan ox-cart handler to raise a family. His descendants of six generations have since remained \nin this small town.\n\n\n\nDeification of Sheng Ming Li\n\n\n\nKnowledge of the episodes of Sheng\u2019s life and death, his leadership and moral strength \nhas become part of the convenient wisdom of the Xian Shiye cult and meticulously recorded \nin official temple publications (see \u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, \n2009). Events leading to the death of Sheng seemed to have satisfied the traditional conditions \nthat justify the offer of sacrifices. Sheng died as the leader and Capitan of the Chinese \ncommunity of largely Hakka miners. Although they were then worshipping deities introduced \nfrom their ancestral villages, they still harboured a sense of insecurity and spiritual void. The \nworship of the Capitan would plug this void as he was their leader and who had mediated the \ncommunity\u2019s disputes, fought for their rights, and spoke up for the interests the community. \nHe had sacrificed his life in the service to his community. The \u201cdivine\u201d manifestations of his \nspirit inspired a general belief that it had the power to communicate with local deities and to \nassure a sense of security of the community.\n\n\n\nTwo elements constitute the core cultural dynamics that motivate the Chinese in Sungei \nUjong and Selangor to initiate a process that eventually led to the crystallization of facts \nand fiction concerning the life of an individual into an icon of worship. These consist of the \nsupernatural and cultural. The cultural element refers to the need for social cohesion and \nreligious belief in keeping with the desire of early immigrant Chinese communities.\n\n\n\nSheng Ming Li was probably the first to be deified by the Chinese community in the \nMalay States. The deification process was rather unique in its intention and construction and \nwas initiated almost immediately upon his death in 1861. Christened Xian Shiye, Sheng was \nconferred a religious status that was more revered than that of a Tuk Pekong. But like the Tuk \nPekong, the deification of Sheng was another model in the localization of religious beliefs \nconstructed from actual and mythical episodes of his life.    \n\n\n\nAccording to an 1893 account, the remains of Sheng that were buried in the Melaka \ncemetery \u201cwere revered on days set apart by custom\u201d. The worship of Sheng thus began in \nMelaka itself:\n\n\n\n\u201cNow it happened that at one of these ceremonies the dead man\u2019s spirit \nentered into a man and spoke with his mouth, saying that he ought no \nlonger to be called \u2018Captain\u2019 but Si Sen Ta (from Sen wise, and Si four \nor fourth, and Ta a title of honour, while Sen Ta if applied in a spirit \ncorresponds to the Malay world Kramat) for that the Thai Sen Ta (the great \nKramat) had invited him to share his glory\u201d (Lestessier, 1893: 535).  \n\n\n\n44\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nThe 1893 account further stated that:\n\n\n\n\u201cAfter the miraculous manifestation of the spirit of Captain Shin On \nincense was burnt in his honour in the pagodas, the new god was adored \nunder the name of Sen Ta\u201d (Lestessier, 1893: 536).\n\n\n\nThe term \u201cSen Ta\u201d is obviously a reference to Xian (\u4ed9). The concept of xian is based \non the ancient belief in Shen Xian (\u795e\u4ed9). They are believed to be \u201capotheosized genii or \n\u2018immortal\u2019 spirits who have left the earth for the Three Islands of the Blessed --- the Taoist \nparadise\u201d (Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 22). This belief is derived from Taoist cults \nand has become part of Chinese mythology. The Shen Xian are attributed with superhuman \npowers and capable of busting evil forces. From the temple in Melaka had come reports \nthat testified to the \u201cextraordinary power of this deified Captain\u201d. Such were the powers of \nthe \u201cCaptain\u201d that:\n\n\n\n\u201cDuring the time of the war he was constantly consulted, and his answers \nwere always found to be true, both as regards his prophesies and the \ncounsels which he gave, and it was he who in a dream revived the courage \nof Yap Ah Loi during the rebellion of the Ka Tu In. Sick people who \nfollow his prescriptions are almost always cured, traders who invoke him \nmake their fortune, gamblers will not risk the fruit of their toil without \nhaving invoked him, and even abandoned women come to ask good luck \nfrom this great spirit\u201d (Letessier, 1893: 536).\n\n\n\nIt is probably because of the deity\u2019s power in dispensing counsels and advice to \nsatisfy the prayers and demands of different worshippers for different purposes that it is \nworshipped as a Shiye (\u5e08\u7237) or counsellor and empowered as a xian. This could most \nprobably be the reason for the deity to be christened Xian Shiye.\n\n\n\nThe Mythological Basis of Deification \n\n\n\nSheng Ming Li\u2019s Birth and Death\nThe myths surrounding Sheng\u2019s birth and death were probably frequently enriched \n\n\n\nin contents to enhance the sense of awe in the deification of the person. Traditionally, the \ndeification of mortals was followed, rather than preceded by, attempts to embellish their \nlives with extraordinary attributes. Hence, to garb the lives and deeds of great men in \nmystical terms was a way of winning over the hearts of followers. \n\n\n\nAmong the defining symbolisms that added to the \u201cgodliness\u201d of the deceased were \nsigns interpreted to be good omens at the time of birth or death and that were interpreted \nas bringing blessings and prosperity to the people. Popular accounts of Sheng\u2019s birth often \nreferred to an auspicious brightness radiating from his ancestral house for several nights \n(\u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 206). The villagers saw this as the birth of an extraordinary \nperson who would bring prosperity to the village. On his death, Sheng had oozed out blood \n\n\n\n45\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nthat was white rather than red in colour (Letessier, 1893: 535). It was also reported that the \nbody was wrapped in a dazzling brightness that sent his assailants scuttling in fear.\n\n\n\nIn traditional parlance, the connotation of an \u201causpicious light\u201d is generally associated \nwith the birth of great men. Chinese legends are rich in tales relating to the mythical \nbirths of extraordinary persons. Examples include the births of Hou Ji (\u540e\u7a37), the God of \nAgriculture and the ancestor of the people of the Zhou kingdom, and emperors such as \nGaozu and Taizu, the respective founders of the Han and Song dynasties (\u738b\u5b5d\u5ec9/Wang \nXiao Lian, 2006: 28). Although these tales cannot withstand logical explanation and might \nhave been amended down the generations, it is nevertheless a pattern that is frequently \nrepeated throughout the ages. Sheng\u2019s birth and death were seen to accord with miraculous \nsigns and omens associated with the lives of great men in Chinese history and to justify his \nelevation to the stature of a deity. It is through this form of myth creation that provides the \nframework to mount the spirit of Sheng on the altar of a \u201cXian\u201d as a benevolent deity.\n\n\n\nThe Apparition\nAnother element in the myth surrounding the death of Sheng was the manifestation \n\n\n\nof his apparition. It is believed that Sheng was killed in a place called Rahang, a pioneer \nsettlement situated outside the capital of Sungei Ujong in present day Seremban. Tales of \nsightings of Sheng\u2019s apparition soon circulated among the people of this village.\n\n\n\nA documented source referred to the sighting of the apparition of Sheng on two \noccasions in 1861. A farmer\u2019s son had witnessed the apparition of an old man plucking \npeas in the farm that was situated outside what is now Seremban town. This incident was \nrepeated the following day. Convinced that the old man was hiding nearby, the farmer \ncleared away the bushes for a better view of his farm. It was then that he tumbled upon a \nstone tablet upon which were inscribed some faint but recognizable characters. It suddenly \ndawned upon him that the apparition was the manifestation of Xian Shiye. He thereupon \nmoved the stone tablet to a temple called Qian Gu Miao (\u5343\u53e4\u5e99) in Rahang so that its \nspirit could be worshipped by all (\u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 32-33).  \n\n\n\nAlthough the report did not explain clearly the writing on the stone tablet, it did allude \nto a Xian Shiye whose powers were derived from a \u201cliving\u201d (\u751f) spirit. The character \n\u201cliving\u201d could have been mistakenly written for \u201cnew\u201d (\u65b0). Hence, in 1861 when Sheng \nmet his death, to look upon the stone tablet for Xian Shiye as a \u201cnew\u201d deity accords with \nlogic. It is generally understood that the Qian Gu Miao was devoted to the worship of \nhomeless spirits of Chinese who had lost their lives in a foreign land (\u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, \n1988: 32-33).\n\n\n\nYap Ah Loy\u2019s Dreams\nThe name of Yap Ah Loy is intimately associated with that of Sheng who was his \n\n\n\nerstwhile benefactor and mentor. When the rival groups in the Sungei Ujong conflict \nresolved their differences and restored peace, the vacant Chinese Capitan position was \n\n\n\n46\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nfilled by Yap Ah Shak, the erstwhile follower of Sheng and a leading trader and gambling \nrevenue farmer. He acted in this capacity temporarily and felt that Ah Loy, who was still \nin Lukut, was the better man for the position. Ah Loy was thus appointed the new Capitan. \nMeanwhile, Liu Ngim Kong had migrated to Kuala Lumpur in 1861, where tin mining \nwas transforming the town into a fast-emerging economic centre of Selangor. There he \nbecame the head fighter of Hiu Siew, the earliest trader to arrive at the mining settlement \nand who later became the first Capitan China of Kuala Lumpur. Upon Hiu Siew\u2019s death, \nLiu Ngim Kong took over the Capitancy. He in turn sent for Ah Loy who gave up the \nCapitancy of Sungei Ujong and left for the greater promise of Kuala Lumpur in 1862. As \nthe able lieutenant of Liu Ngim Kong as well as on his own, Ah Loy prospered and by 1868, \nsucceeded Liu as the Capitan China.4 His early years in Kuala Lumpur was a baptism of \nfire as he was thrown into the midst of the Selangor civil war that raged between 1867 and \n1873, and emerged subsequently as the leading spirit in the development of Kuala Lumpur \n(see Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983; Gullick, 1998).     \n\n\n\nThe reported appearance of Sheng, already deified as Xian Shiye, in Ah Loy\u2019s dreams \nwas in connection with the civil war in Selangor. The dreams related to warnings to Ah Loy \nof impending attacks. He then prepared his counter-offensive and made offerings to Xian \nShiye for protection. His army succeeded in scuttling his enemies. When he learned of a \ncounter-attack, he beat a hasty retreat to base to seek the counsel of Xian Shiye. Again in \nhis dream, Ah Loy was instructed to exorcize the sorcery of his enemies by means of the \nblood of black dogs. He then launched an immediate attack by his joss-stick carrying troop \nand succeeded in subduing the enemies. Much was attributed to the power of Xian Shiye \nin his wise counsel on war to Ah Loy who eventually succeeded in restoring order in Kuala \nLumpur (\u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 208-209).  \n\n\n\nThat it was Ah Loy who dreamed of Sheng would appear more creditable than anyone \nelse. Ah Loy was then the leader of the Chinese community in Kuala Lumpur and the \ncommander of a major faction in the civil war. The counsel of the Xian Shiye in matters of \nwar would be a psychological boost to the morale of Ah Loy\u2019s army. Ah Loy\u2019s final victory \nconfirmed the omnipotence of Xian Shiye and served to popularize the belief in the deity.\n\n\n\nThe Cultural Basis of Deification\nThe emergence of Xian Shiye worship was more than prompted by real and strange \n\n\n\nevents. It was the collective response of a community to a common cultural behaviour of \nworshipping the worthy and to forge social cohesion.   \n\n\n\nIn south China, the Hakkas were late-comers and looked upon as \u201cguest people\u201d. \nEncroaching into the densely-settled areas of Guangdong and Fujian provinces where \narable land was scarce, their presence was resisted by local inhabitants. The history of \nHakka migration is an epic encounter with hardships and toils in hostile environments as \nthey eked out a living in the narrow valleys of mountains and streams. Consequently, this \n\n\n\n47\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nhad moulded a Hakka consciousness of community cohesion to defend against external \nthreats. They lived in clustered groups and developed a natural instinct for mutual help and \nself-identity in the face of adversity (\u66fe\u9038\u660c/Zeng Yichang, 2003: 27). \n\n\n\nIn the unopened territories of Sungei Ujong and Selangor in the mid-nineteenth \ncentury, small clusters of Hakkas had to co-exist not only with local Malay settlers but \nalso among themselves. Whether in Sungei Ujong, the Kuala Lumpur area in Selangor or \nthe Larut area of Perak, it was the Hakkas who pioneered the development of tin mining \nand turned it into a revenue-spinning enterprise (see Wong, 1965). But power struggle \namong Malay chiefs and rival Hakka groups were rife. Large-scale inter-group clashes \nhad ensued at immense costs to life and property and social stability. The need for social \ncohesion in the formative stage of the male-dominated Chinese community in these \nterritories was an urgent prerequisite to stable development. Over and above the social \nstructure that was built on secret societies and the \u201cinstitution\u201d of the Chinese Capitan, \nthe need for spiritual fulfillment was a foremost consideration. For the Huizhou Hakkas \nin particular, the extraordinary tales about Sheng after his death made him into a ready \ncandidate for common reverence. To consolidate the social cohesion of the Hakkas, the \nerection of temples dedicated to the worship of Xian Shiye was a natural development to \npromote group consciousness and solidarity among the incipient community struggling to \nsurvive in an alien environment.  Given the fact that Sheng was a Huizhou Hakka, it was \nthis community, labouring under the harsh conditions of the mines, that identified with this \ncult. The temple could act as a symbol of social solidarity that nurtured a shared dialect \nidentity.\n\n\n\nThe account of Letessier (1893: 536) mentions that a certain Tu Lien introduced the \nworship of \u201cSen Ta\u201d into Kuala Lumpur and a temple was raised by the exertions of Ah \nLoy. The town was then inhabited largely by Hakka tin miners. The earliest mines had \nopened a few years earlier in 1857 and the export of tin was first made only in 1859 \n(Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 18). It was in 1864 that Ah Loy carried part of Sheng\u2019s \nashes from the Qian Gu temple in Seremban to consecrate the new Xian Shiye Temple in \nKuala Lumpur. Ah Loy obviously performed this solemn ceremony knowing full well of its \nsocial significance. As the leader of the Huizhou Hakkas and Hai Shan Society (\u6d77\u5c71\u4f1a), \nboth of which counted Sheng as a member, he desired to glorify the veneration of Sheng in \nan attempt to strengthen the position of the Hai Shan society and the unity of the Hakkas.  \n\n\n\nAh Loy and his Hakka compatriots appealed to dialect affinity and consciousness in \nthe attempt to glorify the worship of Sheng as Xian Shiye. This was the most direct and \neffective means to promote the unity and power of the Hakka immigrants to safeguard their \nlives and properties and to commit themselves to the development of the new settlement. \nFrom the perspective of the Huizhou Hakkas and Hai Shan Society, Sheng was seen as an \nepitome of moral uprightness and righteousness that were held in high esteem and which \nfurther justified the cultural raison d\u2019\u0113tat and the social impact of the deification process. \n\n\n\n48\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nThe temple was sited in what is now the busy downtown centre of Kuala Lumpur \nand the first to be built in the settlement. After peace was restored in Kuala Lumpur, the \ntemple was rebuilt in 1875 under the supervision of Ah Loy and has since become an iconic \nsymbol of the city\u2019s Chinese community. It was then that the name of the new temple was \namended to read Xian Si Shiye Temple (\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab).    \n\n\n\nAnother cultural ingredient in the deification of Sheng was the community need for \nreligious practice and spiritual contentment. Like other immigrant communities from China, \nthe Hakkas in early Sungei Ujong and Selangor faced a life of hard work and frugal living \nin an unfamiliar territory. Mainly male dominated, the majority of the early immigrants had \nto combat the drudgery of loneliness and spiritual emptiness. These depressing thoughts \nwere keenly felt especially at times of illness and setbacks. The need for domestic comfort \nand spiritual fulfillment as essential props to overcome the spiritual void would call for \nformal places of worship.\n\n\n\nDiffusion of Xian Shiye Worship\n\n\n\nFrom its original Qian Gu Temple in Seremban, the worship of Xian Shiye has spread \nto many other localities across five states. There are now up to 24 temples in which Xian \nShiye is worshipped, generally together with Si Shiye and other related deities. Diffusion \nof the cult was a reflection of the tradition of worshipping men who were seen to have the \npower to confer benefits to the community. The founding of temples was in itself a highly \nesteemed act that would be rewarded by the blessings of the deities. It would also win the \npraise of the community and would bring honour to the founder(s) (\u674e\u4e1a\u9716/Lee Yip Lim, \n1997: 148).\n\n\n\nHalf a century after the death of Sheng in 1861, 17 temples were established in various \ntowns in Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Johor, Melaka, and Pahang, with another seven for \nwhich the date of establishment has yet to be confirmed. Although known under a variety \nof names, their core deity is Xian Shiye. During this period, nine temples, the original one \nin Rasah, seven in Selangor (Kuala Lumpur, established in 1869; Sikamat,1869; Rawang, \n1869; Semenyih, 1880; Sungei Tekali, Ulu Langat, 1890; Serendah, 1897; and Kalumpang, \n1902) and one in Seremban (Sikamat, 1869) were christened Xian Si Shiye Temple; four as \nXian Shiye Temple (Kajang, 1870); Sungai Besi, 1901); Mentakab; and Parit Jawa, 1872); \nfour were identified with the character \u201cthree\u201d (\u4e09), two associated with the name of Shiye \n(Kuala Pilah and Pertang), one with that of  \u201cblessed sage\u201d (Titi, 1892), and the fourth \nwith \u201cmultiple sages\u201d (Seremban). Two other temples were known as Guangfu (\u5e7f\u798f\u5bab) \n(Cheng, 1890; Bentong, 1902), one each called Si Xian Tang (\u6cd7\u4ed9\u5802) (Ulu Klang), Tian \nDe Gong (\u5929\u5fb7\u5bab) (Melaka, 1884), and the Stone Datuk Temple (\u77f3\u62ff\u7763\u5e99) (Broga, 1904). \nIn the case of Bentong, the deities were installed in the pre-existing Guangfu temple (see \n\u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, 2009: 76). \n\n\n\n49\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nXian Si Shiye is the collective term for Xian Shiye and Si Shiye (\u56db\u5e08\u7237). However, \nanother Shiye called San Shiye (the Third Counsellor) is also worshipped in three of these \ntemples. The identity of Si Shiye or the Fourth Counsellor has since become a matter of \ndispute. One source refers to Zhong Lai (\u949f\u6765), reputedly the advisor of Yap Ah Loy (\u6e29\u6545\n\n\n\n\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988: 14). This is also acknowledged in a publication of the Kuala Lumpur \nXian Si Shiye Temple (see \u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, 2009: \n96-97). Little is known of Zhong Lai except that he was a trusted friend of Ah Loy and had \nlost his life during the Selangor civil war. A source (\u674e\u4e1a\u9716/Lee Yip Lim, 1997) argues \nthat it was unlikely that Zhong Lai be elevated as the equal of Sheng. He was a subordinate \nof Ah Loy and, having been killed before peace was restored in Kuala Lumpur, there was \nnothing of the aura of greatness in him to deserve elevation to become a deity. Instead, \nLee argues the case for Ah Sze (\u4e9a\u56db) as the real identity of Si Shiye. Ah Sze\u2019s real name \nwas Yap Ah Si (\u53f6\u4e9a\u56db), the character si indicating his status as the fourth child of the \nfamily. He and Hiu Siew were the first traders to arrive in Kuala Lumpur in anticipation of \nbusiness prospects in the budding mining settlement in nearby Ampang. They were joint \nowners of a mine in Lukut and had come in response to the suggestion of Sutan Puasa, the \nMandeling trader in Ampang, to whom they had supplied goods. As Kuala Lumpur grew, \nHiu Siew was made its first Capitan China. It was he who had sent for Liu Ngim Kong \nin 1861 to become his head panglima and who assumed the Capitancy after Hiu Siew\u2019s \ndeath a few months later (Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 19-20). Yap Ah Si expanded \nhis business to Kanching just north of Kuala Lumpur and became the first miner in the \nlocality. He soon became a man of great influence and reportedly the wealthiest trader in \nSelangor. Before Liu Ngim Kong passed away, Yap Ah Si was offered but declined the \nCapitancy and recommended Ah Loy instead (Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 27-28). It \nis clear that this was a breakthrough for Ah Loy and he owed it to the munificence of Yap \nAh Si for his elevation to the leadership of the Chinese community. Hence when Yap Ah \nSi was murdered in 1869 by Ah Loy\u2019s adversaries as he attempted to leave Kanching, Ah \nLoy was bent on avenging his death (Middlebrook and Gullick, 1983: 34-35). In 1881, \nAh Loy presented to the Xian Si Shiye temple a plague which recorded the gratitude from \n\u201cfollower/pupil Yap De Loi\u201d, De Loi being the formal name of Ah Loy. As Zhong Lai was \nAh Loy\u2019s subordinate, this plague could only be meant for his mentor Yap Ah Si (\u674e\u4e1a\u9716/\nLee Yip Lim, 1997: 152).     \n\n\n\nApart from Xian Si Shiye, other deities also feature in a secondary role. These include \nKuan Yin the Goddess of Mercy, Huang Lao Xian Shi (\u9ec4\u8001\u4ed9\u5e08), Tan Gong Xian Sheng \n(\u8c2d\u516c\u4ed9\u5723), the Stone Datuk and others. In the Kuala Lumpur temple, the central hall \nconsists of three sections. The central altar is devoted to Xian Shiye, the left altar to that of \nSi Shiye Yap Sze, and the right altar to Emperor Huaguang (\u534e\u5149\u5927\u5e1d), Tan Gongye (\u8c2d\u516c\n\n\n\n\u7237) and, since 1938, that of Yap Ah Loy himself (\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1/Shi Cangjin, 2014: 233).\nBased on the field study of Lee Kim Sin, 24 Shiye temples have been identified in the \n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nstates of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Johor, Pahang, and the Federal Territory of \nKuala Lumpur (Table 1).\n\n\n\nTable 1. Distribution of Xian Si Shiye Temples in Peninsular Malaysia, 2014\n\n\n\nNo. Name of Temple Year Location Deities Worshipped  \n1* Qian Gu Temple \n\n\n\n(\u5343\u53e4\u5e99)\n1861 Seremban (Rasah), \n\n\n\nNegeri Sembilan\nSi Shiye and Goddess \nof Mercy Kuan Yin\n\n\n\n2* Xian Shiye Temple\n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1864 Kuala Lumpur (formerly in \nSelangor)\n\n\n\nXian Si Shiye and          \nXian San Shiye\n\n\n\n3* Xian Shiye Temple \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1869 Seremban, Sikamat, Negeri \nSembilan (formerly Sungei \nUjong)\n\n\n\nSi Shiye\n\n\n\n4* Xian Shiye Temple \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1869 Rawang,Ulu Selangor, \nSelangor\n\n\n\nXian Shiye\n\n\n\n5* Xian Shiye Temple     \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1870 Kajang, Ulu Langat, Selangor \n(originally located in Rekoh, \nshifted to Kajang in 1875 and \nrebuilt in 1897)\n\n\n\nXian Si Shiye and\nSan Shiye\n\n\n\n6 Shiye Temple \n(\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1872 Parit Jawa, Muar, Johor Si Shiye\n\n\n\n7* Xian Shiye Temple \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1880 Semenyih, Ulu Langat, \nSelangor\n\n\n\nXian Si Shiye and San \nShiye\n\n\n\n8 Tian De Temple\n(\u5929\u5fb7\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1884 Melaka (Hang Jebat Road) Xian Shiye and Zhu \nSheng Goddess \n(\u6ce8\u751f\u5a18\u5a18)\n\n\n\n9* Xian Shiye Temple\n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1890 Sungei Tekali, Ulu Langat, \nSelangor\n\n\n\nShifted from Bukit \nArang, Hulu Langat\n\n\n\n10* Guang Fu Temple or \nHe Sheng Temple\n(\u5e7f\u798f\u5e99/\u548c\u80dc\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1890 Cheng, Melaka Si Shiye, Huang Lao \nXian Shi (\u9ec4\u8001\u4ed9\u5e08), \nTan Gong Xian Sheng \n(\u8c2d\u516c\u4ed9\u5723) 5\n\n\n\n11 Fu Sheng Temple\n(\u798f\u5723\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1892 Titi, Negeri Sembilan Si Shiye, Xian Shiye, \nand the birthday of \ndeities on the 3rd day of \n7th Moon\n\n\n\n12* Yue Shan Old Temple \n(\u5cb3\u5c71\u53e4\u5e99)\n\n\n\n1895 Kuala Kubu Baru,\nUlu Selangor, Selangor\n\n\n\nXian Shiye\n\n\n\n13* Xian Shiye Temple\n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1896 Serendah, Ulu Selangor, \nSelangor\n\n\n\nXian Si Shiye\n\n\n\n14 Xian Shiye Temple \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1901 Sungei Besi, Kuala Lumpur Shifted from the \nSerdang area, Hulu \nLangat district\n\n\n\n51\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nNo. Name of Temple Year Location Deities Worshipped  \n15* Long Bang Old \n\n\n\nTemple\n(\u9f99\u90a6\u53e4\u5e99)\n\n\n\n1902 Kalumpang, Ulu Selangor, \nSelangor\n\n\n\nXian Shiye\n\n\n\n16* Guang Fu Temple\n(\u5e7f\u798f\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1902 Bentong, Pahang (temple first \nerected in 1880)\n\n\n\nXian Shiye\n\n\n\n17 Stone Datuk Temple   \n(\u77f3\u62ff\u7763\u5e99)\n\n\n\n1904 Broga, Negeri Sembilan Xian Shiye and Stone \nDatuk\n\n\n\n18 Lie Sheng Temple   \n(\u5217\u5723\u5bab)\n\n\n\n1897 Seremban (Tham Yam Road), \nNegeri Sembilan\n\n\n\nSan Shiye, Si Shiye, \nTan Gong, and another \ndeity\n\n\n\n19 Three Sages Temple\n(\u4e09\u5723\u5bab)\n\n\n\nNa Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan Si Shiye and temple \nfounder Loke Yew\n\n\n\n20 Xian Shiye Temple  \n(\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\nNa Mentakab, Pahang Xian Shiye\n\n\n\n21 San Shiye Temple   \n(\u4e09\u5e08\u7237\u5bab)\n\n\n\nNa Seremban (Tham Yam Road), \nNegeri Sembilan\n\n\n\nPending investigation \nto confirm authenticity \nof temple\n\n\n\n22 San Duo Temple    \n(\u4e09\u591a\u5e99)\n\n\n\nNa Melaka Stone tablet of temple \nidentifies a list of \ndonors from Lukut \nincluding Sheng Ming \nLi \n\n\n\n23 Si Xian Chamber\n(\u6cd7\u4ed9\u5802)\n\n\n\nNa Hulu Klang, Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye\n\n\n\n24 Three Sages Temple\n (\u4e09\u5723\u5bab)\n\n\n\nNa Pertang, Negeri Sembilan Pending investigation \nto confirm authenticity \nof temple\n\n\n\n* List of 12 commonly known Xian Shiye temples\nSources: \u6e29\u6545\u77e5/Wen Gu Zhi, 1988; Lee Kim Sin (field investigations 2014)\n\n\n\nOf the 12 commonly known Xian Shiye temples, all except one located in Melaka \nare found in heavily Hakka-settled localities. Not surprisingly, the temples are clustered \nin the inland districts of Selangor rather than in Negeri Sembilan where Sheng left his \nmark and met his death. The temple in Kuala Lumpur became the religious centre of the \ntown and an annual procession was held during the festival of the Shiye. Substantial sums \nwere lavished on the procession and attracted widespread support when participating clan \norganizations competed to make contributions to demonstrate their wealth (Middlebrook \nand Gullick, 1983: 22). In 1893, the procession took an hour and a half to pass the Selangor \nClub (Gullick, 2007: 538).      \n\n\n\nTemples are also found in Melaka, Muar (Johor) and Bentong (Pahang). Although \n\n\n\n52\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\ntin mining has faded from the scene, the Hakka communities have remained. In Melaka, \nthe origin of the temple is most probably associated with the fact that it was the base \nfrom which Sheng began to carve out his career. One of the temples in Melaka and that \nin Bentong bear a similar name of \u201cGuang Fu\u201d to serve the dialect communities from the \nprovinces of Guangdong and Fujian.        \n\n\n\nThe temple in Bentong was reportedly established in 1880 as a crude thatch structure \nand rebuilt between 1891 and 1898. Bentong was then accessible only from across the \nmountainous backbone from Selangor. When the township was struck by an epidemic in \n1901, Loke Yew \u201cinvited\u201d the spirits from the Xian Si Shiye Temple of Kuala Lumpur and \ninstalled them in the temple to whom an instant congregation of believers offered their \nprayers. The spirits were \u201centertained\u201d with traditional Chinese opera performance. The \nappeased deity seemed to have subdued the deadly epidemic. In a mark of gratitude, Loke \nYew took the lead to rebuild the temple (see \u9646\u5146\u90a6, not dated: 63-64). Loke Yew was one \nof the richest tin miners in the Malay States and had obtained a concession for mining in \nthe district in 1895. He had also partnered the colonial government to construct the path \nfrom Tras to Bentong. Through his mining and other business enterprises in Bentong, he \nwas very much identified with the founding and development of the town. \n\n\n\nField investigations by Lee Kim Sin have confirmed that tucked away in many other \nplaces are possibly another 12 temples devoted to or associated with the worship of Xian \nShiye. Located in Parit Jawa in the district of Muar, Johor, is an old temple from 1872 \ndevoted to the worship of Si Shiye. In the old and busy Chinese quarters of Melaka is the \nTian De Temple, established in 1884, for the worship of Xian Shiye and a goddess. In the \nvillage of Titi in inland Negeri Sembilan and a settlement pioneered by the Hakka from \nthe 1890s (see Siaw, 1983), the Fu Sheng Temple was erected in 1892 for the worship of \nXian Shiye. Kuala Lumpur boasts of a second Shiye Temple besides the early one sited in \nthe city centre. This temple was built in 1901 in Sungei Besi just outside the city to replace \nan earlier temple that was sited farther south in the Serdang township. There are five other \nShiye temples of uncertain age. Two of these are located in Seremban, and one each in \nKuala Pilah (Negeri Sembilan), Melaka and Mentakab (Pahang).\n\n\n\nToday, most of these temples are well-supervised and maintained by their respective \nmanagement committees. The temple in Kuala Lumpur is under the good care of a board \nof trustees comprising representatives from major dialect groups. The Huizhou Hakka and \nCantonese communities are represented with three appointees each, while the Hakka sub-\ngroups of Dapu and Jiaying as well as the Hokkien, Teochew, Kwangsai, and Hainanese \ncommunities by one each (see \u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, \n2009: 84).\n\n\n\n53\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nCultural Significance of the Xian Shiye Cult\n\n\n\nThere are numerous Chinese religious cults in Malaysia. Those that are indigenous to \nMalaysia are few in number. Other than the Da Bogong cult for the worship deities specific \nto local areas, that of Xian Shiye seems impressive for its comparatively large number of \ntemples dispersed in the towns of several states. They were often the first temple to be \nfounded in the towns that were emerging during the initial phase of pioneer development. \nThe Xian Shiye often served as the guardian deity of the towns and the earliest source of \nby which settlers sought spiritual solace and a sense of belonging.\n\n\n\nFrom its initial association with the Hakkas, the cult has gained adherents from all \ndialect groups and is looked upon as a Chinese cultural heritage. They form an important \nelement in the mosaic of Chinese folk religions that in turn enriches the diversity of \nMalaysian culture. The temples are centres where worship and religious rituals are \nperformed on festive days or on the birthdays of the various residential deities.    \n\n\n\nThe cultural significance of the cult is due in no small way to the fact that the temple \nperpetuates the memory of the first Chinese Capitan in Sungei Ujong and therefore \nprovides a historical link to the early days of pioneering of their forefathers. Each temple \nbears a record of the history of the settlement of the local Chinese inhabitants. Recorded \nhistory is an essential element in ethnic identity. The Chinese community has laboured in \nrecent years to assemble historical documents to testify to their efforts and contributions to \ndevelopment. The Xian Shiye cult is thus more than a belief system but also a symbol of \nthe Chinese partnership in the nation-building process (see Voon, 2007 and 2008; \u6587\u5e73\u5f3a/\nVoon Phin Keong, \u8bb8\u5fb7\u53d1/Khor Teik Huat, 2009).        \n\n\n\nToday these century-old temples are historical monuments in their own right. They \noften occupy busy downtown locations and display distinctly traditional Chinese temple \narchitectural styles. The history of these temples is older or co-extensive with that of the \ntowns where they are found. While many old commercial structures have vanished from \nthe landscape, these temples have withstood the test of time to serve as a witness to the \npioneering spirit of the founding of the towns. Significantly, as religious structures and \nthe shared heritage of the community, the temples will continue as cultural fortresses in \nthe midst of relentless modernization. At the same time, some managements have acquired \nlanded properties to create sources of income in support of their temples as well as to serve \nsociety. The Kuala Lumpur temple lists 17 commercial addresses under its ownership in \nthe city centre (see \u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, 2009: 122-\n123).  \n\n\n\nIt is realized that the historical, religious and architectural wealth of these temples \nmay also enrich the tourism resources of the country. The Xian Shiye temples, together \nwith other religious institutions, are places of attraction for both local and foreign visitors. \nEfforts to publicize and basic write-ups about these temples will add further to their \n\n\n\n54\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\npotentials as attractive tourist sites. A walking tour map of Kuala Lumpur now features the \ntemple as a cultural site.   \n\n\n\nThe managements of the major Xian Shiye temples have not taken the existence of \nthe cult for granted. They have marched with the times and have infused new roles for the \ntemples. One of these roles relates to the support of education and charitable organizations. \nBetween 1967 and 2009, the Kuala Lumpur temple has offered 6,018 scholarships worth \nRM6.2 million, of which the four independent Chinese secondary schools in Kuala Lumpur \nreceived 42.7 per cent of the total, the universities 37.9 per cent, and the colleges 15.4 per \ncent (\u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99/Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple, 2009: 125). Records of \nits charitable work date back to 1915 with contributions to schools, hospitals, old folks\u2019 \nhomes, relief work and a variety of causes.\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nReligion is practised for its comforting power on the mind and spirit. Deeply-ingrained \nin the daily life of the people, religious worship has indeed become part of the cultural \ntradition of many Chinese. This tradition would not be undermined by the departure from \none\u2019s ancestral village. Instead, the urge to preserve it might become even more urgent than \nbefore, especially in newly-settled places where appropriate places of worship were absent. \nThis may explain why temples were among the first structures to be put up in these areas.\n\n\n\nChinese communities have been ingenious in the creation of local deities and cults \nto satisfy their spiritual needs. The primary deities of these cults were posthumous \nconsecration of ordinary historical persons. In view of the vagueness of historical events \nsurrounding such figures, facts and fiction become intertwined over time to spawn myths \nthat eventually lead to eventual veneration. The elevation of Sheng as local Chinese temple \ngod is indeed a reflection of the unique historical background and social circumstances of \nhis time. Although the details pertaining to the myths of Sheng are not as comprehensive \nas those of other myths, the deification process does provide an excellent case study on \nfolk or household religion. Indeed, the true value of the Xian Shiye cult is its role in the \nunderstanding of Malaysian Chinese folk beliefs.\n\n\n\nSheng Ming Li was among the earliest persons to be deified by the Chinese community \nin Malaya. This process of veneration had begun spontaneously, aided, after Sheng\u2019s death, \nby tales extolling the extraordinary events surrounding his birth and death. In death, too, \nreports of miracles performed by the spirit of the person would circulate to add support to its \npotency. All these were viewed in awe and looked upon as the qualities of an extraordinary \nperson. The people would have been particularly receptive of the \u201cxian\u201d attributes of Sheng \nwho had been their Capitan. However, this linkage alone would not be sufficient to explain \nthe deification process. Something special was required to mount this process on a more \nconvincing framework. This was provided by the moral uprightness of Sheng and his love \n\n\n\n55\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nfor others, his strong sense of justice, kindness and generosity as well as his service for the \ncommon good. Sacrificing his life in fighting for the interests of his followers won him \nhigh praise and admiration.\n\n\n\nThe role of Yap Ah Loy cannot be under-estimated in the growth and spread of the \nworship of Xian Shiye. The 1860s was a testing time for the new mining settlement of \nKuala Lumpur admist the gathering \u201cwar clouds\u201d stirred up by the rivalry between joint \nMalay and Chinese factions. As a leading figure among the Chinese, Ah Loy gave full play \nto the charismatic appeal of Xian Shiye as an inspiration to his followers and compatriots. \nThe Xian Shiye cult had initially answered the religious needs of the fresh community of \nChinese miners among the close-knit Huizhou Hakkas who desired protection and blessings \nto lead a peaceful life in an alien environment. \n\n\n\nChinese cults, unlike formal religions, are belief systems that are devoid of formal \nmembership or initiation rituals. Worshipping is open to all and no formal religious structure \nhas evolved or been imposed. The rise of the Xian Shiye cult conforms to the general path \nin the genesis and diffusion of the worship of deities whether in China or Malaysia. A \nperson of wide acclaim, and a recognized community, folk \u201chero\u201d who possessed superior \nmoral values and who had rendered valuable service to the community, would seem to have \nthe appropriate status worthy of public admiration and veneration. \n\n\n\nFollowing the lead of the Sungei Ujong and Kuala Lumpur Hakka communities, \nemerging communities in many other localities felt similar needs for the worship and \nprotection of Xian Shiye as their territorial deity. The cult soon spread among the local \nChinese community as the temples with their primary and secondary deities offered solace \nand protection and dispense with wise counsel to worshippers. Like other religious cults, \nthe Xian Shiye cult is essentially localized and its diffusion is regional rather than national. \nDespite its appeal to the Hakka communities, the cult has hardly penetrated into the heavily \nHakka-dominated mining areas in the state of Perak. \n\n\n\nThat the Xian Shiye cult has been able to sustain itself since its birth a century and a \nhalf ago testifies to its vigour and viability. Despite its spatial restriction in certain towns \nin five states and the Federal Territory in Peninsular Malaysia, it bears witness to openness \nof the Chinese to beliefs that reward them with inner peace and the safety of their families. \nIt is one of many religious cults that has nurtured its own set of faithful followers. The \nexisting 24 temples in which Xian Shiye is the main or secondary deity will ensure that the \ncult will continue to feature as an important branch of religious beliefs of the Chinese for \ngenerations to come.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\nSungei Ujong occupied what is now the Seremban district in the state of Negeri Sembilan. 1 \nIt came into prominence with the beginning of tin mining in the late 1850s in the locality \nof Rasah which later became part of Seremban town. Today, Seremban is still known as \n\n\n\n56\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\n\u201cFu Rong\u201d (\u8299\u84c9 or Fu Yong in Cantonese) and is transliterated from the word \u201cUjong\u201d. Fu \nRong is the name of the cottonrose hibiscus or the lotus. Sungei Ujong came under British \nprotection in 1874 and became the core of the confederation of Negeri Sembilan.\nKuandi refers to Kuan Yu (2 \u5173\u7fbd, died 280), the sworn brother of Liu Bei (\u5218\u5907) and Zhang \nFei (\u5f20\u98de) of the Three Kingdoms period (c. 208-280) after the fall of the Han dynasty. \nIntensely loyal to Liu Bei, who later became the emperor of the Shu Kingdom, Kuan Yu is \nworshipped for his courage and loyalty, righteousness, uprightness and other moral values.      \nIn a note by Charles Letessier in the 16 June 1893 issue of the 3 Selangor Journal, it is noted \nthat Datoh Klana Sinding, the Malay Chief of North District of Sungei Ujong, gave Sheng \nthe title of \u201cCapitan\u201d (see Gullick, 2007: 535).\nAn 1893 entry in the 4 Selangor Journal contains the following passage (Gullick, 2007: \n528):\n\n\n\nCaptain Liu (Ngim Kong), feeling his end was drawing near, thus spoke to \nthe Sultan: \u201cThis country will shortly need a headman; if a Captain is not \nappointed I fear there will be fighting.\u201d The Sultan answered: \u201cYour words \nare true. I make Ah Si (Yap Sze) Captain.\u201d Ah Si answered: \u201cI cannot accept, \nYap Ah Loi is a fit man.\u201d Captain Liu supported this\u2026and Yap Ah Loi was \nthen appointed Captain. \n\n\n\nTan Gong (5 \u8c2d\u516c) was a Hakka from Huiyang county of Guangdong province and lived in \nthe Yuan dynasty. He was a Taoist whose religious ideas were derived from the philosophy \nof Zhuang Zi. After his death, he was worshipped as a local deity by the people in the \nHuizhou area. In Malaysia, the worship of Tan Gong was introduced by Hakka tin miners \nand several temples erected in his name, some more than 100 years ago, are seen in villages \non the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur as well as in Seremban and Ipoh, all former centres of tin \nmining, and also in Sabah where the Hakka forms the dominant Chinese community. Tan \nGong is also worshipped as a secondary deity in various other temples in the country (See\n\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d1/Shi Cangjin, 2014: 215).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nANDERSON, 1824. Political Considerations relative to the Malay Peninsula, and the British \nSettlements in the Straits of Malacca, Prince of Wales Island: Printed under the Authority of \nGovernment (Reprinted as JMBRAS, 35(4), 1989).\n\n\n\nDAY, Clarence Burton 1947. Contemporary Chinese Cults, The Far Eastern Quarterly, 6(3): 294-\n299. \n\n\n\nGULLICK, J. M. 1998. A History of Selangor, 1766-1939, Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian Branch of \nthe Royal Asiatic Society, Monograph No. 28. \n\n\n\n-----  2007. History from the Selangor Journal, 1892-1897, edited by John Gullick, MBRAS Reprint \nNo. 26, Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. \n\n\n\nKONG Yuanzhi 2000. Pelayaran Zheng He dan Alam Melayu, Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan \nMalaysia (The Voyages of Zheng He and the Malay World, Bangi: Universiti Kebangsaan \nMalaysia Press).\n\n\n\nLETESSIER, Charles 1893. Si Sen Ta: a Chinese apotheosis. In History from the Selangor Journal, \n1892-1897, edited by John Gullick, MBRAS Reprint No. 26, Malaysian Branch of the Royal \nAsiatic Society, 2007: 533-535. \n\n\n\nMIDDLEBROOK, S.M. 1983. Yap Ah Loy 1837-1885, with an introduction and three final chapters \n\n\n\n57\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Voon, Ee and Lee\n\n\n\nby J.M. Gullick, MBRAS Reprint No. 9 (first published in Journal of the Malayan Branch of the \nRoyal Asiatic Society, Volume 24, Part 2, 1951, and reprinted in 1983 and 1989).\n\n\n\nPOUNTNEY, A.M. 1911. The Census of the Federated Malay States 1911, London: Darling and \nSons.\n\n\n\nPURCELL, Victor 1965. The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London: Oxford University Press (first \npublished in 1951).\n\n\n\nSADKA, Emily 1968. The Protected Malay States, 1874-1895, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya \nPress.\n\n\n\nSIAW, Laurence K.L.1983. Chinese Society in Rural Malaysia: A Local History of the Chinese in Titi, \nJelebu, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.\n\n\n\nT\u2019IEN Ju-K\u2019ang 1997. The Chinese of Sarawak: A Study of Social Structure, Kuching: SUPP Research \nand Resource Centre.\n\n\n\nVLIELAND, C.A. 1932. A Report on the 1931 Census of British Malaya, London. \nVOON Phin Keong (ed) 2007. Malaysian Chinese and Nation-building: Before Merdeka and Fifty \n\n\n\nYears After, Volume 1, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies. \n-----   (ed) 2008. Malaysian Chinese and Nation-building: Before Merdeka and Fifty Years After, Volume \n\n\n\n2, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies.\nWONG Len Ken 1965. The Malayan Tin Mining to 1914, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.  \n\u9f9a\u9e4f\u7a0b1983. <\u53e4\u4ee3\u5b97\u6559\u4e0e\u795e\u8bdd>, \u8f7d\u300a\u9053\u6559\u6587\u5316\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e09\u5377\u7b2c\u516b\u671f (GONG Pengcheng 1983. \n\n\n\nAncient religions and mythologies, Taoist Culture, 3(8)).\n\u9ec4\u5c271966.\u300a\u661f\u9a6c\u534e\u4eba\u5fd7\u300b\uff0c\u9999\u6e2f\uff1a\u660e\u9274\u51fa\u7248\u793e(WANG Yao 1966. History of Singapore and Malaya, \n\n\n\nHong Kong: Mingjian Publications).\n\u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99145\u5468\u5e74\u7eaa\u5ff5\u7279\u520a\u7f16\u8f91\u7ec42009.\u300a\u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99145\u5468\u5e74\u7eaa\u5ff5\u7279\u520a\u300b\uff0c\u5409\n\n\n\n\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u5409\u9686\u5761\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5e99(Editorial Committee of the 145th Anniversary Special Publication \nof the Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple 2009. Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple: 145th \nAnniversary Special Publication, Kuala Lumpur: Kuala Lumpur Xian Si Shiye Temple).\n\n\n\n\u59dc\u4e49\u534e\uff08\u6ce8\u91ca\uff092001.\u300a\u65b0\u8bd1\u793c\u8bb0\u8bfb\u672c\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u4e09\u6c11\u4e66\u5c40\u80a1\u4efd\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8(JIANG Yihua (compiler) \n2001. Liji Text: New Interpretations, Taipeh: San Min Bookshop).\n\n\n\n\u674e\u4e1a\u97161997. <\u53f6\u4e9a\u6765\u548c\u4ed9\u56db\u5e08\u7237\u5bab>\uff0c\u8f7d\u674e\u4e1a\u9716\u4e3b\u7f16\u300a\u5409\u9686\u5761\u5f00\u62d3\u8005\u7684\u8db3\u8ff9\u2014\u2014\u7532\u5fc5\u4e39\u53f6\u4e9a\u6765\n\n\n\n\u7684\u4e00\u751f\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u534e\u793e\u7814\u7a76\u4e2d\u5fc3\uff1a148-152 (LEE Yip Lim 1997. Yap Ah Loy and Xian Si \nShiye Gong. In Footprints of the Kuala Lumpur Pioneer: The Life of Capitan Yap Ah Loy, edited \nby Lee Yip Lim, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies: 148-152).\n\n\n\n\u9646\u5146\u90a6<\u6587\u51ac\u5e7f\u798f\u5e99>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6587\u51ac\u534e\u4eba\u5927\u4f1a\u580290\u5468\u5e74\u6269\u5efa\u4f1a\u5802\u7eaa\u5ff5\u7279\u520a\u300b, \u6587\u51ac\uff1a\u5f6d\u4ea8\u6587\u51ac\u534e\u4eba\n\n\n\n\u5927\u4f1a\u5802\uff1a63-64 (LOKE Chow Bang (not dated). The Guangfu Temple of Bentong. In Special \nPublication in Commemoration of the 90th Anniversary of the Chinese Assembly Hall of Bentong, \nPahang, Bentong: Dewan Perhimpunan Bentong).\n\n\n\n\u77f3\u6ca7\u91d12014.\u300a\u6d77\u5916\u534e\u4eba\u6c11\u95f4\u5b97\u6559\u4fe1\u4ef0\u7814\u7a76\u300b,\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u5b66\u6797\u4e66\u5c40 (SHI Cangjin 2014. Folk Religious \nBeliefs of the Chinese Overseas, Kuala Lumpur: Xuelin Bookshop).\n\n\n\n\u82cf\u5e86\u534e2004.<\u90d1\u548c\u5e99\u5728\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u53ca\u5176\u4f20\u8bf4\u6545\u4e8b>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u9a6c\u65b0\u534e\u4eba\u7814\u7a76\uff1a\u82cf\u5e86\u534e\u8bba\u6587\u9009\u96c6\u300b.\u5409\u9686\n\n\n\n\u5761\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u521b\u4ef7\u5b66\u4f1a:155-182 (SOO Khin Wah 2004. Zheng He temples and legends in Malaysia. \nIn his Collected Papers on the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore, Kuala Lumpur: Soka Gakkai \nMalaysia: 155-182). \n\n\n\n\u738b\u5b5d\u5ec92006.\u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u795e\u8bdd\u4e16\u754c\u300b\u4e0b\u7f16\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u6d2a\u53f6\u6587\u5316\u51fa\u7248\u793e(WANG Xiao Lian 2006. The World \nof Chinese Mythology, Taipeh : Hongye Cultural Press).\n\n\n\n\u6587\u5e73\u5f3a\u3001\u8bb8\u5fb7\u53d1\u7f162009.\u300a\u52e4\u4fed\u5174\u90a6\uff1a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u7684\u8d21\u732e\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u534e\u793e\u7814\u7a76\u4e2d\u5fc3(VOON \nPhin Keong and KHOR Teck Huat (eds) 2009. The Chinese and Their Contributions to Malaysian \nDevelopment, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies).\n\n\n\n\u6e29\u6545\u77e51988.\u300a\u4ed9\u5e08\u7237\u4e0e\u5e08\u7237\u5e99\u300b\uff0c\u5409\u9686\u5761\uff1a\u8f89\u714c\u51fa\u7248\u793e(WEN Gu Zhi 1988. Xian Shiye and Shiye \n\n\n\n58\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGenesis of the Xian Shiye Cult in Malaysia\n\n\n\nTemple, Kuala Lumpur: Huihuang Press). \n\u5434\u8bd7\u51742014.\u300a\u4f20\u627f\u4e0e\u5ef6\u7eed\uff1a\u798f\u5fb7\u6b63\u795e\u7684\u4f20\u8bf4\u4e0e\u4fe1\u4ef0\u7814\u7a76\u2014\u2014\u4ee5\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u793e\u4f1a\u4e3a\u4f8b\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\n\n\n\n\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u8bd7\u5deb\u6c38\u5b89\u5927\u4f2f\u516c\u5e99\uff08NGU See Hing, 2014. Transmission and Continuity: A Study \non the Legend and Belief in the Fude Deity with reference to Malaysian Chinese Community, \nSibu: Sarawak Sibu Yong An Da Bogong Miao). \n\n\n\n\u5f20\u5fb7\u67652002.\u300a\u6c99\u5df4\u7684\u5ba2\u5bb6\u4eba\u300b,\u4e9a\u5e87\uff1a\u6c99\u5df4\u795e\u5b66\u9662(ZHANG Delai, 2002. The Hakkas of Sabah, \nKota Kinabalu: Sabah Theological Seminary). \n\n\n\n\u66fe\u9038\u660c2003.\u300a\u5ba2\u5bb6\u6982\u8bba\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u6e7e\u82d7\u6817\u53bf\uff1a\u66fe\u9038\u660c(ZENG Yichang 2004. A General Survey of the \nHakkas, Miaoli County, Taiwan: Zeng Yichang).\n\n\n\n59\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 35-47\n\n\n\nAncestor Power: Marriage Rituals of a \nHakka Community in Sarawak, Malaysia\n\n\n\nElena Gregoria CHAI Chin Fern*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper discusses marriage rituals in a Hakka community in a resettlement village in Sarawak, \nMalaysia. Modernity has changed the lifestyles of the villagers. They have access to improved \ninfrastructure, greater exposure to the mass media, higher education attainment and increased social \nmobility especially amongst the young people working outside the village. Despite the social changes \ndue to modernization, marriage rituals have remained traditional in form. \n\n\n\nThe study will examine the reasons behind the continuance of such rituals and my hypothesis \nis that the villagers still uphold a worldview that marriage does not only involve themselves (the \nliving), but also the supernatural beings in the other world (their dead ancestors). The legitimacy of \nthe union in marriage is acknowledged after the blessings of the ancestors have been sought. Although \non the surface, ancestor worship is an expression obligation, they actually connote the eternal alliance \nbetween the dead and the living. As suggested by Turner (1974: 57), ritual does not act just as \u201csocial \nglue\u201d that holds the community together or put social order into place. I thus examine further the \nsymbolic representation of ancestor worship in marriage rituals. I use the term \u201cemulating process\u201d to \ndescribe how the future is moulded to gratify the past because one will become a past in the future. It \nis performed to ensure that the family lineage is carried on, as has been past down by their ancestors.\n\n\n\nKey words:  ancestor worship, marriage rituals, Hakka.\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nAncestor worship forms part of the culture that has been practised in Chinese societies \nand has been one of the central institutions of the Chinese regardless of time and space. \nAlthough a common form of ritual among ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, ancestor worship \nis a neglected area of research and often regarded as a simple continuation of the Chinese \nsystem (Clarke, 2000:273). Practised in many ceremonies by different dialect groups, the \nsignificance of ancestor worship has never been clearly understood and deciphered.\n\n\n\n*  Dr. Elena Gregoria CHAI Chin Fern is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences, \nUniversity Malaysia Sarawak. E-mail: gelena@fss.unimas.my\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n36          Chai\n\n\n\nThis study relates the role of ancestor worship in marriage rites so as to put it in a \nbetter perspective. The Chinese are more familiar with ancestor worship as it is practised \nduring major traditional ceremonies connected with the departed such as Ching Ming (Tomb \nSweeping) Festival and the Hungry Ghosts Festival. Ancestor worship and its relevance to \nfelicitous occasions such as marriage is recognized but hardly given serious thought, let alone \nstudied. By means of a study on a Hakka community and their marriage rituals conducted in \na small village-town in Sarawak, known as Tabidu1 in the paper, the purpose is to investigate \nthe reasons behind the incorporation of ancestor worship into marriage rituals and the \nsignificance and importance of the practice to the wellbeing of the bride and her family as \nwell as the community as a whole. \n\n\n\nThe Village Setting\n\n\n\nThe Hakka people of Tabidu were resettled in this village during the 1960s under \na campaign to contain communist threats known as Operation Hammer. Historically, \ncommunism was a national security problem and groups of Chinese settlers were blamed for \npropagating such movements. Hence, they were re-located into centralized settlements, one \nof them being Tabidu, where the people live in an enclosed setting, although movements were \nnot entirely prohibited (Porritt, 2001: 43). The threats were eventually overcome in the 1980s. \nBeing vegetable farmers and livestock keepers, the people of Tabidu have since become the \nmain pioneers of large-scale vegetable farming in the Kuching-Samarahan Division. The \ncommunity of Hakka embraces a syncretic \u201cChinese religion\u201d which incorporates elements \nof Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism as well as ancestor worship (Tong and Kong, 2000: 41).\n\n\n\nIn 2006, the population of Tabidu was around 2,500 people living in 485 households \n(DSS, 2007). Families of Hakka origin account for about 97 per cent of the population. Most of \nthe males and females in the 18 to 45 age groups, probably numbering 1,200, have moved out \nof the village to work in Singapore, Brunei, Kuala Lumpur or in foreign countries.2 Wherever \nthey may be, they maintain a strong identity of their village of origin as most would return to \nTabidu after working abroad and to perform important events of their life such as marriage. \n\n\n\nHow the people who originated here identify Tabidu as their home may be traced \nto their common upbringing in a close community. Close relationships were developed \nin the past because of various factors. They were once exposed to the risks of communist \ninsurgency during which everyone came under the watchful eyes of the authorities. They had \nremained united to counter the bad publicity associated with them as well as the threats of the \ninsurgents. These threats having been removed, many among the younger generation have \nleft to work overseas. Their parents continue to live in the village while their wandering sons \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          37\n\n\n\nstrive to save up before returning to the village to try their luck in small businesses. Most have \nfound foreign places of work to be lacking in the social environment. Life in Singapore, for \ninstance, one of the preferred places of work, is seen as stressful, where the people are less \nthan friendly and overly materialistic, and where the cost of living is excessive. It is a place \nonly to earn money and to maintain in constant contact with their families in the village. They \nwork among many whom they have known since their childhood and some were relatives \nand neighbours. This clustering is the result of the diffusion of information on employment \nprospects by word of mouth from early batches of workers from the village. The scenario is \ndifferent in other cities such as Kuching where the services from work agencies rather than \ninter-personal relationships and acquaintances are relied upon. \n\n\n\nWhere conditions permit, these sojourners return to Tabidu at least once a year during \nthe Chinese New Year, which is the first day of the lunar calendar year during which the \natmosphere in the village turns lively. Families are reunited on the eve of the new year, to \ngather at the reunion dinner. Additionally, many may make another trip home during the \nChing Ming Festival. This is a day of obligation to pay respects to departed ancestors, and \nis a family matter taken seriously as a form of filial piety and a day of remembrance for the \ndeparted.\n\n\n\nA Local Definition of Ancestors\n\n\n\nFreedman (1957:71) mentioned that two persons of the same surname from one \nlocalized lineage in China can be assumed to have a common descent that could be traced \nif genealogical records were available. These ancient ancestors can be defined as those who \ncontinued the lineage through the generations and who could be traced through the lineage \nregistry book called zupu (\u65cf\u8c31).3 At the apex of the lineage is a recognized founding father. \nThe village residents remember the more recent ancestors who were buried in the local \ncemetery and pay their respect to them during major festive occasions. Ancestor \u201cworship\u201d is \nperformed on Ching Ming Festival to pay their respect to the dead, and on the Hungry Ghost \nperiod on the Seventh Moon to pay respect to wandering ghosts. On both occasions, prayers \nare offered at the cemetery where deceased family members are buried. The local cemetery, \nsituated 4km from the village, was established before Tabidu village came into being in 1963. \nIt is learned that the oldest grave dates back 150 years.\n\n\n\nFreedman (1970:166) stated that in principle, domestic ancestor worship works on a \ncycle in which the youngest living generation offers prayers to their ancestors four generations \nbefore. This practice is consistent with the Chinese abstraction that the core of agnatic kinship \nis formed by those related within the patrilineal system of \u201cfive mourning grades\u201d or Wu Fu \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n38          Chai\n\n\n\n(\u4e94\u670d). This is the general structural arrangements of Chinese ancestor worship, either by \noffering prayers to the deceased person on the date of his death or collectively to \u201call the \nancestors\u201d during major annual festivals. \n\n\n\nIn Tabidu, the villagers do not keep tablets of their ancestors in the house. Many \nhouseholders confess that it is troublesome to do so, as this practice would oblige one to \noffer prayers on the first and fifteenth days of each month in the Chinese calendar and to \nburn incense sticks to place before the tablet. They are also too busy to commit themselves \nto this mandatory practice and failure to do so is a failure in upholding one\u2019s filial duties and, \nworse still, there is always the fear of one being inflicted by misfortunes or illness. Hence \nthe practice of keeping ancestral tablets in the house is becoming less common than before. \nFreedman (1970: 173) wrote that the collective worship of ancestors does not necessarily \nhave to be performed before the tablets. Thus, prayers offered to individual ancestors also do \nnot have to be performed in front of the tablets. \n\n\n\nAccording to Freedman (1957: 53), ancestral tablets may be kept elsewhere such as in \na temple. This, he attributed to the fact that the houses in which people live in \u201cNanyang\u201d are \nnot genuine homes as they are not \u201cthe milieux of continuance, generation after generation, \nof the kinship line\u201d. The Hakka people migrated from north to southeast China and have been \nconstantly on the move since then. As such, they did not stay put at specific places for long \nperiods and have gradually abandoned the practice of keeping tablets in their houses. \n\n\n\nAncestor worship is also incorporated into marriage ritual as a unique form of practice by \nwhich ancestors are \u201cinvited\u201d to the house. A medium acts as an intermediary to communicate \nbetween the living and departed beings. Under normal circumstances, ancestor worship \ntakes place in the cemetery where a medium is not usually present or required. In a marriage \nritual, the spirits of the dead are \u201cinvited\u201d to the auspicious event to witness and solemnize a \nmarriage. The roles and reasons behind this custom will be discussed in the later part of this \nstudy.\n\n\n\nThe Practice of Ancestor Worship\n\n\n\nA discussion of two major festivals in Tabidu that are linked directly to the veneration of \nancestors will put into perspective this practice in marriage rituals. These two festivals are the \nChing Ming Festival and Hungry Ghosts Festival which are looked upon as important dates \nin the Chinese calendar. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          39\n\n\n\nChing Ming Festival \nThe Ching Ming Festival falls normally on the first or second week of the third month \n\n\n\nof the lunar calendar. The villagers make a clear distinction between the Chinese and the \nGregorian calendars. The date of this festival is usually fixed in the lunar calendar in relation \nto the winter solstice and arrives 104 days later. Ching Ming is itself a day to remember \nthe recently dead persons. On the day itself or even before its arrival, the villagers visit the \ngrave(s) of their ancestor(s) and to scrap away mosses and dirt that have accumulated on the \ntombstones since their last visit and to cut the tall grasses and shrubs. Some would apply a \nnew coat of paint to the tombstone. Food and drinks are laid out and \u201cpaper or ghost money\u201d \nis burned as offerings to the dead. \n\n\n\nVisiting the grave during Ching Ming is an important affair, especially for the sons, who \nlead the family in prayers to the departed ancestors. A son who fails to join his siblings is \nenjoined to make the visit to the cemetery with his own family on another day. Lest absence \ncreates uneasy feelings and, therefore, all would strive to join the siblings on the appointed \nday. Members who work overseas are informed of the arrival of Ching Ming in advance. \nCleaning the graveyards of ancestors and offering prayers are seen as an act of filial piety to \nparents who are still living. Ching Ming is a day of the year when the dead are remembered \nby the community. It is a day when the living show their respect for their ancestors and to \nappease their souls through prayers and offerings especially of food. At the end of the rites, it \nis natural that offerings of food are taken home for consumption and not left to waste. \n\n\n\nHungry Ghosts Festival\nThe Hungry Ghosts Festival is observed in the seventh month of the Chinese lunar \n\n\n\ncalendar, reaching its climax on the 15th day when the main rituals are conducted. Some \nvillagers call the entire month the \u201cGhost month\u201d. During this festival, the belief is that the \ngates of hell are opened for a month to let out hungry ghosts to roam in the human world. \nThese hungry ghosts are referred to as \u201cgood brothers\u201d but more usually known as \u201cthose \nthings\u201d. Villagers normally refrain from uttering phrases that are considered as \u201cdirty or \npolluting\u201d during the entire month. Many do not look upon this month with favour, and \nconsider it as the most inauspicious month of the year, because of the \u201cpollution\u201d caused by \nthe presence of \u201cthose things\u201d. Marriages in particular are avoided with studied care.\n\n\n\nComing into the human world during this time are also the wandering ghosts or the \nspirits of those who have died tragic or violent deaths would come to the human world to \nhaunt those who have caused their death or to find others to replace them by taking their \nlives. Consequently, many villagers do not make long journeys or venture out at night, and \nthe younger ones are strongly advised to stay indoor after dark. Family members also do not \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n40          Chai\n\n\n\nengage in quarrels or gossips, because they believe that the spirits of their ancestors would be \nvisiting and would haunt them if they broke the harmony of the house. \n\n\n\nThe climax of the Hungry Ghosts Festival for the villagers of Tabidu is the celebration \non the 15th day to appease the souls of their ancestors and that of wandering ghosts. Food \nand drinks are offered, joss sticks and \u201cpaper money\u201d burned, and prayers chanted for the \nbenefit of the death. A bamboo platform is erected in the hall of the cemetery and decorated \nwith firecrackers and on which is displayed a variety of food comprising chickens and ducks, \nslices of pork and pigs\u2019 heads, fish of every kind, rice cakes, bananas, pineapples, and melons. \nThe spirit medium in charge of the ceremony beats a drum to invite the ghosts to feast on the \nofferings. After the feast, the ghosts are sent away for the villagers to partake in the ceremony. \nThe spirit medium will first chant some prayers and then performs what the villagers have \nbeen waiting for anxiously, the beating of the drum, as a signal to scramble for the offerings \non display. \n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals\nAncestor worship forms an essential component of the marriage ritual. On the wedding \n\n\n\nday, ancestor worship rituals are performed out of family obligations and for personal \nassurance to ensure a good marriage, whereby the ancestors are \u201cinvited\u201d to witness and then \nto solemnize the marriage. Families that choose not to perform these rituals run the risk of \nostracism, gossips, and other sanctions by the villager community and these are to be avoided \nat all cost.\n\n\n\nAncestor worship in a marriage is conducted in stages, starting in the bride\u2019s house and \nending in the groom\u2019s. A day before the wedding, an ancestor worship ceremony is conducted \nat the bride\u2019s house. Various restrictions are imposed on the bride on the wedding day, one of \nwhich is that ancestors should not be worshipped, hence the ceremony at the bride\u2019s house \nthe day before. The ceremony is held outside of the house because daughters are treated as \ntemporary members of the family who will eventually be married out into another family \n(Chai, 2009:62). Turner (1969: 109) calls this \u201cthe powers of the weak\u201d whereby there are \nmany restrictions on what can and cannot be done despite what appears to be honorific \ntreatments of welcoming the bride. Ancestor worship is mediated by a medium who initiates \nthe ceremony by lighting up three pairs of red candles and a bundle of joss sticks. He then starts \nchanting to \u201cinvite\u201d the ancestors of the lineage to the ceremony, seeking at the same time for \nthe help of the God of Earth (\u4f2f\u516c) to lead the ancestors in their journey. The ancestors would \nbe told that a female member of the lineage will be marrying during this auspicious occasion. \nBlessings are asked from the ancestors for the outgoing daughter that she may have a good \nand fruitful married life. Blessings are also sought to protect the lineage and to ensure their \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          41\n\n\n\ngood health and prosperity. Meat, rice cakes, and alcohol are served to appease the spirits of \nthe ancestors. \u201cPaper money\u201d and incense are burnt to thank and to send off the ancestors. \n\n\n\nOn the wedding day itself, ancestor worship is performed inside the groom\u2019s family \nhouse, in contrast to the ceremony held outside of the bride\u2019s house the day before. Orchestrated \nby a medium, the ceremony \u201cinvites\u201d the presence of the ancestors to witness and bless the \noccasion. The medium tosses a silver piece for divination purpose made up of two silver \nclams-like ornaments about the size of twenty cent coins tied together with a red string to \nannounce the arrival of the ancestors, again guided by the God of Earth. If the ornaments end \nup in a similar position, it indicates that the ancestors have not arrived or are waiting for more \nto arrive. Complete arrival is signified when one of the ornament faces upward and the other \nfaces downward. Only then will the medium starts his chanting and invites the ancestors to \nfeast on the food and drinks served on the table. \n\n\n\nThe newly-weds are guided by the medium to pay their respect to the groom\u2019s ancestors. \nTheir first act is to make three bows: first to heaven and earth; second to the ancestors; and \nthird to each other. Then, the medium pours tea into three glasses on a tray held by the groom. \nThe bride will symbolically present them to the ancestors and utter words of respect to invite \nthe ancestors to drink. The medium then passes her a red packet filled with money (\u7ea2\u5305). \nThe bride serves the tea three times and receives three red packets in return. When this is \ndone, the couple retreats to the bridal room where the groom will perform the unveiling of \nthe bride. The couple emerges again to the living room and continues with the next series of \nrituals. Each holding three joss sticks, the couple bows: first to the heaven and earth; second \nto the ancestors; and the third to the God of Earth. The final action is to send the ancestors off \nand to thank them and the God of Earth for their blessings and protection by burning \u201cpaper \nmoney\u201d offerings.\n\n\n\n There have been instances in which ancestor worship has not been properly observed \nin the marriage rituals. In one instance, ancestor worship was performed in the bride\u2019s house \nbut not in the groom\u2019s house as the latter has embraced Christianity. This famous incident \nis known as the \u201cLi Suk (Uncle Li) \u2018selling daughter\u2019 to a Christian son-in-law\u201d case in \nTabidu, involving a couple who is working and has settled down in Singapore. A few days \nafter their wedding, many peculiar things were known to have happened in the groom\u2019s home \nin Tabidu. The chickens which the family kept died and the mother and grandmother of the \ngroom fell sick. One of the young grandchildren in the family came across strange people \nand also played with them. This child fell sick soon after. The mother of the child consulted \na spirit medium for advice. In his trance, the spirit medium attributed the unfortunate events \nto the failure to pay proper respect to the ancestors on the wedding day. This prompted the \nimmediate response of the family to choose another auspicious day after the actual wedding \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n42          Chai\n\n\n\nso that ancestor worship could be carried out to appease the angered ancestors.\nOn another occasion, ancestor worship ceremony was performed but the name of one \n\n\n\nancestor was inadvertently omitted. This was groom\u2019s grandmother who died about 20 years \nago. During the ceremony, names of the deceased were revoked in pairs. That the groom\u2019s \ngrandfather was still alive might have led to the spirit medium\u2019s failure to mention the \ngrandmother\u2019s name. That night, an apparition of an old lady appeared in the bridal chamber, \nas witnessed and told by the bride, but vanished as the groom was woken up. The groom \nbelieved that his wife was exhausted and had imagined things. Several nights later, the bride \nsaw an old woman leaving the living room where members of the family were watching \ntelevision. Her \u201csighting\u201d was a puzzle to all who were present then. Her description of an \nold woman dressed in purplish Chinese costume and arranging her hair in a bun confirmed, to \neveryone\u2019s anxiety, that the grandmother had \u201creturned\u201d home. The following morning, the \ngroom\u2019s mother visited the village temple to seek the help of the spirit medium. The medium \nwent into a trance and conveyed the message from a god that the grandmother was unhappy \nfor being left out to \u201cwitness\u201d the marriage of her grandson. Upon the advice of the spirit \nmedium, the family performed a ceremony in the house in an attempt to placate the spirit for \nthe old lady.\n\n\n\nThe above instances confirm the importance of ancestor worship that is held to appease \nthe soul of the dead and their relevance to the affairs of the living. Hence it is believed that \nthe living need to seek the \u201cadvice\u201d of their ancestors through rituals performed before and \nduring the marriage. Their presence is therefore necessary to \u201cwitness\u201d important events of \nthe family such as marriage. \n\n\n\nAncestor worship is taken seriously by the people of Tabidu. The belief in its significance \non the living is deeply ingrained in the minds especially of the elderly. Through experience, \nthe people believe that, when properly executed, ancestor worship may ensure that the family \nand its members are free from many problems. But if it is carried out improperly, the ancestors \nwill feel slighted by the lack of respect of their descendants. Two cases of the improper \nexecution of ancestor worship during marriage remain in the memory of the people of Tabidu. \nIn both cases, the couples paid the \u201cpenalty\u201d of not being blessed with sons. Having a male \ndescendant is of utmost importance in a family as he will carry on the lineage and continue \nthe family\u2019s surname. One of the couples ended up having four girls but without a single boy \nto show after years of efforts. The popular belief is that the bride, who was then a Christian, \nwas half hearted when performing the ancestor worship ceremony during the marriage ritual. \nIt was learned that she lacked sincerity when seeking the blessings of the ancestors and was \nconsequently made to pay for this affront. In another case that occurred 20 years ago, the \nancestor worship was completed with indifference. The offerings had shown an absence of \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          43\n\n\n\nrespect. An elderly male villager who witnessed the ceremony lamented that neither meat nor \nchicken was served to the ancestors but merely some rice cakes, a few local oranges and some \npeanuts. He pointed out that even ordinary guests may not be pleased with the simple items, \nlet alone the ancestors. Hence the couple was made to suffer by having eight daughters and \ncould only have a son by adopting one. \n\n\n\nTable 1. Comparison between the Objectives of Ancestor Worship Practised on \nDifferent Occasions in Tabidu\n\n\n\nObjectives Ching Ming Hungry Ghosts Marriage\nPerson(s) \n\n\n\nworshipped\nOwn grandparents, \nparents\n\n\n\nOthers\u2019 parents, \ngrandparents, those \nwho died of bad deaths\n\n\n\nOwn ancestors\n\n\n\nTrail of \nancestors\n\n\n\nStill in memory or at \nmost two generations \nremoved\n\n\n\nForgotten or two \ngenerations removed\n\n\n\nIn memory \u2013 18 to 22 generations \nremoved and those not known to be \nblood relatives\n\n\n\nVenue Cemetery Cemetery House\nRequests Blessing for family\u2019s \n\n\n\nprosperity, harmony, \nsafety\n\n\n\nBlessing for \ncommunity and \nfamily\u2019s prosperity, \nharmony, safety\n\n\n\nBlessing for family, future \ndescendants\n\n\n\nEmotions Respect, filial \nobligation\n\n\n\nFear, respect Anxiety, respect\n\n\n\nParticipation All in family (except \npregnant women)\n\n\n\nEntire community \n(except pregnant \nwomen)\n\n\n\nAll in family (except pregnant \nwomen and those who are in \nmourning)\n\n\n\nTaboos No calling of names \nof person, or else the \nspirit will follow the \nperson back to the \nhouse\n\n\n\nNo calling of names \nof person, or else the \nspirit will follow the \nperson back to the \nhouse\n\n\n\nThere is no identifiable taboo \nexcept that the ancestors are ideally \nsent off immediately after they \nhave witnessed and blessed the \noccasion and feasted on the food. \nIt is widely rumoured that if the \nancestors were invited into the \nhouse for a longer period, some \n\u201cmischievous\u201d ancestors might \nhide in the corners of the house \nand did not want to return to their \nworld. They might cause much \nmischief to the living. \n\n\n\nPeriod of \nritual\n\n\n\n3-6 hours Half a day 3-4 hours\n\n\n\nSignificance of the Date of Marriage \nThe marriage cycle in Tabidu is tied to the lunar calendar. Discussion of a marriage \n\n\n\nis initiated by the future groom\u2019s family when it presents his horoscopic data (\u516b\u5b57) to the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n44          Chai\n\n\n\ngirl\u2019s family. The compatibility of the couple is sought by consulting a spirit medium or an \nelderly person who is well versed in the Chinese Almanac or Tung Shu (\u901a\u4e66). Tung Shu, \nwhich literally means a \u201cbook of everything\u201d, is an almanac which contains information on \nauspicious and inauspicious dates for carrying out important events. Many prefer to consult \na medium as they are believed to be more accurate and reliable. Furthermore, few in Tabidu \nare able to understand the almanac as most of the elderly are illiterate and the young are even \nmore unfamiliar with the difficult text.\n\n\n\nThe timing of the marriage proposal, like the marriage rituals, is made to avoid certain \nmonths of the year as they are considered as inauspicious. Inauspicious months for marriage \nare the third, sixth and seventh months of the Chinese lunar calendar. These months are \navoided as a sign of respect to the ancestors. The third month coincides with the Ching Ming \nFestival and the seventh month coincides with the Hungry Ghosts Festival. It is unlikely that \none will insist on getting married during any of these months and run the risk of the bride \nbeing labelled a \u201cGhost Bride\u201d (\u9b3c\u65b0\u5a18). The villagers believe that marriage during these \nmonths would invite accidents that might be fatal to the bride. Marriage in the sixth month \nis avoided so that the married couple does not end up as a \u201chalf-year-couple\u201d arising from \nthe loss of the bride in either half of the year. My time spent in the field during these months \nconfirms that marriages are indeed avoided at this time. Even the discussion on the proposed \nmarriage is done outside of these months. \n\n\n\nAccording to a well-known spirit medium in Tabidu, there are basically two \u201cgood\u201d \ndates in each month to conduct marriage rituals. In actual fact, the \u201cgoodness\u201d here does not \nstand for anything good at all. They are actually inauspicious dates, said euphemistically to \ncounter adverse consequences. Events relating to deaths are referred to in a similar fashion. \nWhen making arrangements for a funeral, a bereaved family is assumed to be preparing a \n\u201cgood event\u201d. The \u201cgood\u201d dates in weddings are determined by the months of the year, which \nis divided into three four-month periods called xun (\u65ec), a term that refers to the nodes of the \nbamboo to signify intersections. The first four months of the lunar calendar year are called \nthe early part (\u4e0a\u65ec) and the third and seventh days of these months are avoided for marriage. \nThe next four months are called middle part (\u4e2d\u65ec) and the final four months make up the \nlower part (\u4e0b\u65ec). The 13th and 18th days in the middle months and the 22nd and 28th days of \nthe year-end month are inauspicious dates for weddings and the conduct of marriage rituals.\n\n\n\nChanging Times and Changing Rituals\nAs the community changes with the time, so do the rituals. The most obvious among the \n\n\n\nchanges are in the wearing of the white wedding gown by the bride. First-generation women \nof 75 years and above said that they would be wearing new dresses during the wedding \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          45\n\n\n\nday. The white colour was strictly taboo then. The white wedding gown has since come into \ncommon use, both as a fashion trend and the marketing tactic of bridal shops that offer many \nchoices to suit the tastes of the current generation. \n\n\n\nThe choice of auspicious time for marriage has also changed. Most couples prefer the \neighth month to conclude their nuptials. This is considered the most auspicious month during \nwhich most local restaurants will be fully booked to hold wedding dinners. The end of the \nyear is also the season for tying the knot. December is the choicest month as it coincides with \nthe festive season of Christmas and New Year. \n\n\n\nAnother noticeable change is the type of veil (\u5934\u7eb1) that adorns the bride. To the village \nelders, the putting on of this headgear by the bride marks the onset of a type of malignant \nforce (\u715e\u6c14) that she is believed to possess on her wedding day (Chai, 2009: 59). The veil is \nput on before the bride leaves her natal home and is lifted off her head after she has offered \ntea to the ancestors. The serving of tea signifies her acceptance as a member of her husband\u2019s \nlineage as a daughter-in-law. However some brides may fail to remove the headgear out of \nignorance of its symbolic significance.\n\n\n\nWhy are the Rituals Continued?\nThe reasons for the continued practice of marriage rituals till this day may be examined \n\n\n\nfrom the perspective of perpetuating the family lineage. The institution of the family in \nTabidu is a strong bonding force. Rituals are performed during a marriage within the family \nas a unifying agency that binds the family together. More importantly, these rituals are \nperformed to serve the larger interests of the lineage of the family as well as contributing to \nthe community or village identity. In short, they serve to bridge the past and the present and \nto ensure that the family name is handed down from one generation to another.\n\n\n\nAn element of fear is involved in performing the rituals of ancestor worship during the \nwedding ceremony. It is the fear that, if omitted or performed improperly, the ancestors might be \nso provoked as to bring misfortunes to the family. When misfortunes do strike especially soon \nafter a marriage, they are invariably blamed on the improper performance of ancestor worship. \nThis oversight and disrespect on the part of the current generation is a matter that is related to \nlife and the formation of new families through births and the continuity of the lineage.\n\n\n\nThe avoidance of social stigma is an important factor in the continued practice of \nancestor worship. Failure to fulfil this family obligation will invite the sanction of the entire \nvillage. The occurrence of undesirable events in the family will only confirm the conviction \nof the village of the folly of giving insufficient attention to tradition. The social pressure to \nuphold tradition has also made ancestor veneration a mandated requirement in the marriage \nceremony.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n46          Chai\n\n\n\nPreparations for ancestor worship in marriage rituals do not require much cost or effort. \nThese rituals are supervised by a medium who often doubles as the matchmaker himself. \nThrough expert guidance means that the family members do not have to learn the details of \nthe rituals. In return the medium or matchmaker receives a small token in the form of a red \npacket of a sum of money for his services. Although the wedding couple are the main actors \nin the rituals, they play a passive role by following the instructions from the elders and the \nmedium. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nMarriage is an important episode that shapes the future of the villagers in this Hakka \ncommunity. It gives rise to a great deal of anxiety to all who are involved especially the \ngroom\u2019s family. Through the marriage rituals, the powers of past ancestors are evoked to help \nensure that the marrying couple will be blessed with children, especially sons, to continue the \nfamily lineage and that the entire family may live in harmony. Ancestor worship is performed \nby the couple as a filial obligation and as a safeguard for an accident-free future and one \nthat will be blessed with children. Other members of the family, usually the elders, wish \nto demonstrate the importance attached to ancestor worship, and as a signal that the same \npractice will be bestowed upon them when they are no longer around. Past practices by \nprevious generations have bore fruits and blessings in the continuation of the family line and \nthe family living in harmony. It only makes sense that performing the rituals will ensure the \nsame extent of success that the family has been blessed hitherto. It is a form of sustaining \nan age-old tradition as much as a psychological assurance for the continuance of the family \nlineage.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  To preserve the identity of the village and for confidentiality of my respondents, I use a synonym \nto replace the actual name of the village.\n\n\n\n2  No statistics are available to show the number of males and females who have moved abroad to \nwork but the figures presented here are the best estimates calculated by the local respondents. \n\n\n\n3  A copy of the lineage book of the Chai clan was brought by early emigrants to Sarawak and \ncopies of this book are available at the Chai Clan Association.\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nCHAI, E. 2009. The dangerous bride: case study of a Hakka community, Journal of Malaysian Chinese \nStudies, 12: 55-71.\n\n\n\nCLAKRE, I. 2000. Ancestor worship and identity: ritual, interpretation, and social normalization in \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarriage Rituals of a Hakka Community in Sarawak          47\n\n\n\nthe Malaysian Chinese community, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 15: \n273-295. \n\n\n\nDepartment of Statistics Sarawak (DSS) 2007. Monthly Statistical Bulletin, Kuching: Department of \nStatistics.\n\n\n\nFREEDMAN, M. 1957. Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London: H.M.S.O.\n----- 1970. Family and Kinship in Chinese Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press.\nPORRITT, V. 2001. Operation Hammer: Enforced Resettlement in Sarawak in 1965, Hull: Center for \n\n\n\nSouth East Asian Studies, University of Hull.\nTONG, C. K. and KONG, L. 2000. Religion and modernity: ritual transformations and the reconstruction \n\n\n\nof space and time, Social and Cultural Geography, 1(1): 29-44.\nTURNER, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co. \n----- 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, New York: Cornell \n\n\n\nUniversity Press. \n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: \nMemories of the Past and Social Identity\n\n\n\nof A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\nElena Gregoria CHAI Chin Fern*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper explores the impact of the forced relocation of a Chinese Hakka village community on \nits social identity. The relocation into a \u201cNew Village\u201don the outskirts of Kuching was an official policy \nto counter communist insurgency in Sarawak in the 1960s. Their original dwellings are now abandoned \nbut the temple remains. The community still returns to the temple as a place of worship and reverence. It \nhas become an entity that draws the community together, and back to their village of origin. The link and \nidentify with the past are negotiated through the presence of the temple. It is the temple and its symbolic \nsignificance that the community seeks affiliation to rather than to their ancestral village in China from \nwhich their forefathers had come. It has become a direct link to their rich historical past to which the \ncommunity clings on to proudly. \n\n\n\nThis paper examines the reasons behind the role of the temple as an important unifying factor in \ncommunity solidarity and preservation of historical continuity of the community. The discussion will \nfocus on the action of the government and its social impact on their physical relocation and their spiritual \n\u201crelocation\u201d of their social past to a temple which stands as a testament to their beginning. Between the \nphenomenal action of relocation and the transcendental throwback to the past, the community seeks to \npreserve its links to its history and shared experiences in the old settlement and to remind itself of the \npainful process of being forced to relocate. \n\n\n\nKey words: Relocation, community identity, shared memories, spiritual solidarity (continuity/escape)\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nAccording to Smith (1986: 49), many ethnic groups derive a sense of identity and shared \ndestiny from deep cultural, historical and territorial roots. DeBernandi (2006) in his study on \npopular religion in Penang noted that Malaysian Chinese claimed a separate identity through \nthe construction of temples. This study examines how a temple may continue to crystallize the \nsense of identity of a community that has been physically removed from it. This is a study of a \nvillage and its people and temple. A Hakka community had settled down and developed a site \non the outskirts of Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, in a spontaneous process of agricultural \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2014, 3(1): 21-36\n\n\n\n* Dr. Elena Gregoria CHAI Chin Fern (\u8521\u9759\u82ac) is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences, \n Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. E-mail: gelena@fss.unimas.my\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\npioneering. They chose this site as areas nearer the town had already been occupied by early \nChinese settlers belonging to other dialect groups. The early settlers had built the Tai Pak Kung \n(\u5927\u4f2f\u516cor Da Bo Gong in Mandarin)1 temple dedicated to the worship of the local tutelary \ndeity. \u201cTai Pak Kung\u201d literally means the Great Paternal Granduncle. It is situated along a road \nthat once connected the town of Serian with Kuching.\n\n\n\nThe settlers were compelled to abandon their homes and to resettle in another site in the \n1960s in an official move to combat communist threat. This new settlement occupies a compact \narea within a strictly monitored enclosure to insulate the inhabitants from communist activists. \nSocially, the community was once seen to be marginalized and resettled in an area not of its \nchoice. However, it is still maintaining its distinct identities and religious beliefs that have been \npractised in the old village. Its borders had taken on political and administrative significance \nin the initial period of resettlement as they effectively prevented the free movements of people \ninto and out of the village. Today, a new trunk road, upgraded into a dual carriageway in 2007, \nhas replaced the old road and bypasses the temple. The community which once built this temple \nwas forcefully moved to another site situated 4km away, identified as New Village in this study. \nThe old temple remains in the \u201cOld Village\u201d, still well maintained by the villagers with the \naid of an appointed caretaker to serve their spiritual needs. Despite its physical seclusion, the \nTai Pak Kung temple in the old village site draws the community out of its spatial confines to \nextend its social boundary. \n\n\n\nThis study is concerned with what the temple really means to the people and will examine \nif it is a social representation which brings the community together to venture out of their \ntransparent restrictions of the past; the collective memories of the past that connect the people \nso fondly to the temple; and whether it represents a form of the identity of the community that \ntraces its origins as a naturally formed Hakka settlement.With these concerns in mind, the \nstudy will centre on the role and significance of the Tai Pak Kung temple that still stands in the \nabandoned village.\n\n\n\nThe fieldwork of this study was carried out between November 2006 and April 2008. \nInterviews were conducted with selected respondents of women and men. Additionally, \nobservations through active participation in numerous activities that were organized by the \ncommunity, including the Tai Pak Kung celebration, were recorded as well as the collection \nof data and photographic or video images for further analysis. Historical documents of the \nsettlement were compiled at the District Office and relevant literature consulted to complete the \njigsaw of chronological events surrounding the settlement.\n\n\n\nThe Birth of \u201cNew Village\u201d\n\n\n\nThe threat of clandestine Communist activities in the 1960s had compelled the \ngovernment to resettle homestead Chinese farmers living between the 15th and 24th miles \nof the Kuching-Serian road (Lee, 1970:187). The farmers were mostly Hakka people \n\n\n\n22\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\nwho engaged in small scale agricultural production. Under suspicion of being communist \nsympathizers or even as activists, the settlers were seen to be living in a \u201ccontrolled area\u201d. \nIn a government action dubbed \u201cOperation Hammer\u201d in 1965, the settlers were forcefully \nresettled into a compact village in a new site. Other ethnic groups, however, were left alone \nto live where they were (see Lee, 1970; Porritt, 2001 and 2004). The \u201cOld Village\u201d was fully \nabandoned except for its Tai Pak Kung temple. Although signs of previous habitation are still \nvisible, it is not known how big the village was. According to my informants, the temple and \nthe adjacent abandoned treeless area, now overgrown with grasses, was the site of earliest \nsettlement by settlers, having most probably travelled upstream from Kuching. The rivers \nprovided the only means of access to the interior.\n\n\n\nThe resettlement exercise provided for each family a single unit house on a quarter \nacre plot of land in the village. These houses were arranged in parallel rows, and fences \nwere erected around the perimeter to form an enclave of living space with basic amenities, \nschools, dispensaries, playground and shops. The fences have long been dismantled but the \ncommunity has decided to stay on. The \u201cNew Village\u201d has a population of 2,500 people in \nabout 485 households predominantly of Hakka origin (Siburan district office data, 2005). The \nBidayuh community lives in villages or homesteads on the fringes of the new settlement.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Location of \u201cNew Village\u201d\n\n\n\nOperation Hammer: A People\u2019s Account\nIn the 1960s when Sarawak was riddled with internal communist threats, the Old Village and \n\n\n\nsurrounding areas were considered the hive of insurgent activities. In 1965, the State Government \nlaunched a sweeping movement called \u201cOperation Hammer\u201d to confront the insurgency. Below is \na chronological account of Operation Hammer as told by my respondents in the area of study.\n\n\n\n6th July 1965, 10 days later \u2013 Operation Hammer was officially enforced. At 5 \no\u2019clock in the morning, army trucks patrolled the area as a helicopter hovered \n\n\n\n23\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\noverhead. An announcement was broadcast stating that people living within a \n600-acre radius along the 15th - 25th Mile along the Kuching-Serian Road to bring \nwith them three days\u2019 supply of food and clothing and to report at 3:00pm on the \nthird day at the nearest of the five designated camps located at the 15th, 17th, 19th, \n20th and 24th miles.\n\n\n\nThe aim of Operation Hammer was to separate the people from the communist \ninsurgents who were suspected to be operating actively in that area. The operation \nto move the people out of their houses was to be completed in 48 hours but was \nlater extended to 72 hours, then to a week and, eventually, almost perpetually \nresulting in the formation of new settlements. This move by the State Government \nwas to emulate the Malayan attempt in the late 1940s and early 1950s to insulate \nthe Chinese from the communists. In order to set up proper villages, the Land \nand Survey Department and the Public Works Department began to carry out the \nnecessary survey, including the erection of protective fences. The operation led to \nthe creation of villages at the 17th, 21st and 22nd miles.\n\n\n\nThe year of Operation Hammer coincided with a substantial rise in the price of \npepper and good harvests. The farmers used to earn up to RM8,000 a year from \npepper alone.2 However, Operation Hammer led to the abandonment of the har-\nvests by many villagers and the loss of their livestock through theft and starvation. \nMany farmers were impoverished and had to walk long distances to reach their \nfarms. \n\n\n\nAugust 1965-the Government began to allocate land to the settlers and all adult \nmales were entitled to cast lots to determine location of their land. Each family \nwas subsidized RM1,500 3 as start-up fund to build their houses on their own or \nto hire assigned contractors. \n\n\n\nMovements of the villagers were strictly restricted. Other than going to the farm, \nanyone leaving the village to other places such as the town needed a permit. A \ncurfew was imposed from 6:00pm to 6:00am. Everyone had to report to the police \nbooth at the village each day. Those who failed to do so would be apprehended \nand interrogated. \n\n\n\nThe state of emergency was lifted in the 1970s. With the help of Chinese-based \npolitical parties such as the Sarawak United Peoples\u2019 Party, the people were \nallowed to move freely between 5:00am to 7:00pm. The livelihood of the villagers \nbegan to improve and so also the economic situation. \n\n\n\n24\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\n1974-the East Sarawak Communist guerilla group led by Bong Ki Chok signed \na peace referendum with the State Government. The communists left the jungle \nand surrendered. This happened in all parts of Sarawak. Peace and harmony were \ngradually restored. This helped to improve the conditions of the three villages at \n17th, 21st and 22nd mile. The curfew time was reduced to the hours between mid-\nnight and 4:00am and restrictions on movements were trimmed.\n\n\n\n16th August 1976-Assistant Chief Minister Tan Sri Dato Amar Sim Kheng Hong \nannounced the end of political prohibition of the new villagers. He made the \nannouncement at a gathering in Siburan village or 17th Mile. From then on, all \nvillagers were free to participate in activities of any political party. \n\n\n\n1979-Villagers from Sarikei, Engkilili who were resettled in the new villages \nin the locality between 1970 and 1971 were allowed to return to their original \nhometowns. \n\n\n\n5th February 1980-The Chief Minister, Dato Patinggi Abdul Rahman Yakup \nannounced the end of the state of emergency in Sarawak. The state of emergency \nlasted 15 years.\n\n\n\nFigure 2. New Village and Tai Pak Kung Temple\n\n\n\nOperation Hammer and the creation of New Village with its protective barriers did not \neffectively limit the movements or curb the activities of the communists. What it did was to \nhamper their operations. Many had been recruited into the party without any clear ideological \n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\nreasons. Many were also relatives of the villagers who provided food and information by \nmeans of secret coded messages hidden in the food that was smuggled out of the village. \nResettlement had compelled the villagers to camouflage their movements so as to avoid being \ntotally cut off from their relatives fighting in the jungle. They would act in the daytime rather \nthan during the night to avoid suspicion. The imposition of curfews had given rise to a lot of \ndifficulties in getting to the farms which was their only source of food and income. Worse \nstill, re-location away from Old Village also severed the direct links with the Tai Pak Kung \ntemple. This temple had been the only source of religious inspirations since the birth of the \ncommunity. Being ostracized administratively by the State Government, the resettled people \nalso faced social sanctions by the other communities at large and suffered a serious loss of \nmorale and dignity.\n\n\n\nLocal Forms of Chinese Worships and Beliefs\n\n\n\nIn general, the people of New Village describe their beliefs as \u201cpraying to the gods\u201d or \np\u00e0ish\u00een(\u62dc\u795e). This is the common form of worship that is practised by the majority of the \nvillagers and people in the surrounding area. Various types of temples or other structures are \nused for worship as well as community gathering. Temples that house different types of deities \nare found inside and also outside the municipal boundary of the village. Personalized structures \nsuch as altars of worship are also placed both inside and outside of homes. Some special-\npurpose altars are erected in construction sites, cemeteries and other places. One of the temples \nis dedicated to the Tai Pak Kung as an all-embracing place of worship. It is to this temple that \nthe people of New Village gather periodically for worship and the performance of community \nrituals.\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung Temple and Its Deities\n\u201cTai Pak Kung\u201d is the name given to the local Chinese deity. He is widely revered by \n\n\n\nlocalized Chinese communities as the patriarch god and protector of their villages. The pioneer \nsettlers of Old Village had \u201cinvited\u201d this deity to be their earliest deity for protection and \nspiritual guidance. It is sited close to another local deity, known to the local people as Datuk \nKong. \u201cDatuk\u201d is the Malay word for grandfather and is used by the local people as a sign of \nrespect to their tutelary deity. In terms of language, there is no difference between Tai Pak Kung \nand Datuk Kong. The use of the Malay term implies an infusion of indigenous flavor in the local \nChinese beliefs. Datuk Kong is therefore the indigenous deity of the people of New Village. \nIndeed, the Datuk Kong is widely reported in many other places in Malaysia and Singapore (see \nalso Lee, 1983; Tham, 1985; and Cheu, 1992).\n\n\n\nAlthough \u201cTai Pak Kung\u201d may imply the worship of a single deity, the temple itself houses \nthree other deities (see Appendix). One of these three deities known as Tai San Sh\u00een (or Da Shan \nSheng in Mandarin) is the \u201cBig Mountain\u201d deity that symbolizes the natural surroundings. This \n\n\n\n26\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\nmountain deity is believed to reside at the site of the temple which stands on a hill slope and \nacts as a guardian of the inhabitants around that area. The Chinese believe that natural features \nsuch as mountains, trees, rivers or rocks are the abodes of guardian spirits and are not to be \ndisturbed lest disrespect leads to untoward events. Similarly, the Tai Pak Kung deity, believed \nto have been brought over from China, is a localized deity. The belief in Tai Pak Kung has been \nassimilated into the local Chinese folk religion. Despite its widespread occurrence, the version \nof Tai Pak Kung deity in Old Village is now treated as a local entity that is identified with and \nserves the spiritual needs of the local community.\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung in Sarawak\n\n\n\nThe anniversary of Tai Pak Kung is celebrated by the Chinese in Sarawak on the second \nday of the second month in the Chinese lunar calendar. In the Hakka dialect, it is known as \nTai Pak Kung but in Hokkien, it is Tua Pek Kong. The deity is officially known as Fuk Teck \nZhen Shin (\u798f\u5fb3\u6b63\u795e in Mandarin), as noted by Chua (1996). The name denotes a deity of \n\u201cprosperity, virtue and morality\u201d. According to Chua, there are many gods guiding each of the \nfive basic elements of gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Tai Pak Kung reigns supreme over all \nother deities and watches over the five elements. Temples dedicated to Tai Pak Kung may also \nbe called by different names (Table 1). \n\n\n\nTable 1. Names of Tai Pak Kung Temples in Selected Towns, Sarawak\nTown   Name of Temple (in Mandarin)\nKuching  Fu Teck Si (\u798f\u5fb3\u7960)\nSibu   Yong An Ting (\u6c38\u5b89\u4ead)\nMiri   Da Bo Gong Miao (\u5927\u4f2f\u516c\u5e99)\nBau   Da Bo Gong Miao (\u5927\u4f2f\u516c\u5e99)\nMarudi  Shou Shan Ting (\u5bff\u5c71\u4ead)\nLimbang  Fu De Si (\u798f\u5fb3\u7960)\nLawas  Fu De Gong (\u798f\u5fb3\u5bae)\n\n\n\nThat Tai Pak Kung is known under various names indicates difference in the explanation \nof the identity of the deity. It is generally accepted that the deity is the personification of \nsomeone who has contributed much to the local community. He is also attributed with special \npowers to heal diseases and ward off evils. Among the many myths surrounding this deity, one \nis associated with the period of pioneering by the early immigrants (Chua, 1996). For instance, \nthe Kuching Fuk Teck Si was erected in memory of Lo Fang Pak, the leader of the Lang Fang \nkongsi in West Borneo. Similarly, the Da Bo Gong Miao in the former mining town of Bau \nwas built to commemorate the Chinese kongsi leader, Liew Shang Pang. Both these men were \nknown for their sacrifices and leadership and remained in the collective memory of the Chinese \n\n\n\n27\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai28\n\n\n\nas pioneers who had led their followers to a good start in life in a foreign land. Respect for these \nleaders was turned into worship after their death, to continue to serve the followers\u2019 spiritual \nneeds, protection and well-being for themselves and their descendants.\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung Temple\nThe community of New Village refers to the Tai Pak Kung temple in the Old Village site \n\n\n\nas Sh\u00fai Kh\u00e9u Pak Kung Mi\u00e0u (\u6c34\u53e3\u4f2f\u516c\u5e99 or Shui Kou Bo Gong Miao in Mandarin) in the \nHakka dialect.The name is a reminder of its location near a river. During the heydays of the \nsettlement, the river was the principal means of transport for goods and people to other villages \nand Kuching. This scenario came to a stop at the height of communist insurgency and the \ntemple was deserted. With the gradual restoration of peace to the area, the people resumed their \nvisits to the temple.\n\n\n\nIn the 1990s, suggestions to move Tai Pak Kung to New Village had met with failure after \nconsultation with the deity, through the spirit medium who went into a trance known locally as \n\u201clok th\u00fbng\u201d(\u843d\u7ae5). The message of the Tai Pak Kung deity was that he was not to be subjected \nto human request and be shifted for the convenience of the villagers. As relocation was no \nlonger an option, the villagers decided to raise funds to renovate the temple. Fund raising is \ncommonly carried out during the Chinese New Year when many villagers who work overseas \nreturn to New Village.\n\n\n\nRenovation work began in 2004 with the support of the residents of New Village and \nthose from nearby villages and Kuching. A committee of volunteers from New Village had been \nformed to oversee reconstruction work. This Volunteer Group supervised renovation work and \noperated from an office in the village and met every two months. The Volunteer Group and its \nmembers are responsible for the general administration and cleanliness of the temple as well as \norganizing the annual Tai Pak Kung procession and the Hungry Ghost festival.\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung Birthday Procession\nThe anniversary of the Tai Pak Kung deity is celebrated on the second day of the second \n\n\n\nlunar month. A procession is held in recognition of this special day when the deity is \u201cinvited\u201d \ninto the human world. This is an occasion in which the residents of New Village work as a \ncommunity to continue a major religious practice and to consolidate its social coherence. The \nprocession entails a day of activities that pools community efforts and resources in the worship \nof a deity. The common objective is more than parading Tai Pak Kung in New Village but also \nin the hope of receiving blessings and protection for the entire village. Although the history of \nthis celebration is imprecise, the common belief among the villagers is that it has been practised \nfor well over a century.\n\n\n\nPreparations for the celebration begin early in the morning. The keeper of the temple, who \nis also a spirit medium,\u201ccommunicates\u201d with the deity through prayers and offerings on the \npurpose of the \u201cinvitation\u201d to visit the village. Other members of the organizing committee and \nvillagers who make up the congregation busy themselves with preparations for the procession. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak 29\n\n\n\nA sedan chair or khi\u00e0u (\u8f7f) on which the deity is seated is attached to bamboos and is manually \ncarried by worshippers during the procession. In traditional China, high officials such as \nmagistrates and imperial scholars were ferried in sedan chairs. This is also the only means of \nconveyance befitting the status of the Tai Pak Kung deity.\n\n\n\nThe Tai Pak Kung deity who resides in the statue in the temple is invited to be seated in \nthe khi\u00e0u. The statue is referred respectfully as Kim Shin (\u91d1\u8eabor Golden Body). Two other \ndeities that reside in the temple with Tai Pak Kung are the \u0143g Kwuk Sien Shi (\u4e94\u8c37\u4ed9\u5e08) or the \ndeity of agriculture and V\u00f4ng Lo Sen Shi (\u9ec4\u8001\u4ed9\u5e08) or the deity of virtue. Known to be Tai \nPak Kung\u2019s assistants, both are also paraded during the procession. Hence, the three deities are \nparaded in three separate carriages with great care and amidst lot of fanfare. \n\n\n\nThe procession begins from the temple, passes by the community cemetery, and follows \nthe main Kuching-Serian highway to New Village. The community cemetery is an important site \nwhere most of the departed ancestors of the villagers are buried. In the village, the procession \nmeanders through the lanes and bazaar before finally heading back to the temple by a smaller \nfeeder road.\n\n\n\nChinese Religious Syncretism\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung Temple: Where Many Deities Reside\nThe belief in Tai Pak Kung is in accord with the tradition of Chinese religious syncretism. \n\n\n\nThe Tai Pak Kung temple is generally associated with a founding pioneer, whether real or \nimaginary. No such pioneer has been identified to personify the Tak Pak Kung deity in the Old \nVillage temple. Instead, the villagers believe that the deity was transplanted from China and \nvenerated in the form of a statue. It was originally brought to Dutch East Indies where a large \ncommunity of Chinese was in existence in the gold fields in West Kalimantan from the 1840s \nor even earlier (see Jackson, 1970; Wang, 1994). It was probably from here that the deity was \nbrought to Old Village about 150 years ago. As with the temple, the community cemetery was \nalso an integral feature of early Chinese settlements. The cemetery situated about 2km away is \nbelieved to be as old as the temple itself. It is the final resting place of most of the ancestors of \nthe villagers.\n\n\n\nThe worship of Tai Pak Kung is complemented by that of Datuk Kong, the tutelary deity of \nthe local area and therefore commonly regarded as the indigenous deity of emerging settlements \nin the pioneer zone. Datuk Kong is believed to be a male deity with a taste for sweetened drinks \nand betel nuts, and smokes the locally made cigarette or rokok gulung.4 In prayers to Tai Pak \nKung and other deities of Chinese origins, red candles and beige incense sticks are used. In \ncontrast, white candles and black incense sticks are used when prayers are offered to the Datuk \nKong. It is uncertain as to when the worship of Datuk Kong began, but almost certainly long \nbefore the existence of the temple. Based on the accounts of elderly villagers, worship of the \nDatuk Kong has been practiced for at least 60 years.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai30\n\n\n\nIn the worship of Datuk Kong, the offering of pork is taboo. This has also become a \npractice in offerings to other deities. It is reported that the spirit medium had once uttered a \nhalf-broken message relayed through him by Datuk Kong during a trance, that pork was always \nvisible. This incident was seen as a sign of objection by the deity, after which the villagers \nrefrained from offering pork to Tai Pak Kung as a sign of respect to Datuk Kong. This is \nbecause the Datuk Kong altar is placed before those of other deities. However, some villagers \nfeel that the Tai Pak Kung, being of Chinese origin, should not be denied the offering of pork. \nWith their ingenuity for compromise, the villagers now conceal the meat in plastic bags or in \nbaskets when they walk past the altar of Datuk Kong.\n\n\n\nDatuk Kong and Tai Pak Kung\nThe religious syncretism of the Chinese has given rise to situations in which the Tai Pak \n\n\n\nKung and Datuk Kong are worshipped together as well as separately. The acceptance of the \nformer\u2019s Chinese roots is as universal as that of the latter\u2019s Malay origins. Interestingly, they are \noften linked and worshipped together (Sakai, 1993). The Malay word \u201cDatuk\u201d is the Chinese \nequivalent of Tai Pak Kung. In Singapore, Sakai (1993) refers to temple for the worship of Datuk \nKung as a \u201cmerger\u201d between the Malay Datuk and the Chinese Da Po Gong (in Mandarin). But \nin Old Village, Datuk Kong exists as a separate entity and is assigned a separate altar, in the Tai \nPak Kung temple. Each maintains its distinct identity, one as a Chinese pioneer deity and the \nother a local Malay holy being (Table 1).\n\n\n\nTable 1. Characteristics of Tai Pak Kung and Datuk Kong\n\n\n\nCharacteristics\nBirthday\nOrigin\nFavourite food\n\n\n\nFavourite drink\n\n\n\nSmokes\nColour of candles\nused in worships\nColour of incense \nstick used in worships\n\n\n\nTai Pak Kung \n2nd day of the 2nd lunar month\nBrought in from China\nChicken, duck, pork\n\n\n\nTea\n\n\n\nNo\nRed\n\n\n\nBeige\n\n\n\nDatuk Kong\nNot known\nNot known\nLocal fruits, betel nut, curry, rendang \n(a spicy meat dish), ikan salai (smoked \nfish), ikan panggang (barbequed fish)\nSweetened drinks, e.g. coca-cola, \nlychee\nRokok gulung (rolled cigarettes)\nWhite\n\n\n\nBeige and sometimes black\n\n\n\nGenerally, Tai Pak Kung is the representation of the Hakka villagers: humble, modest and \nkind. On the other hand, Datuk Kong wears a songkok (cap mostly worn by muslim male), likes \nbetel nut, smokes local-made cigarettes, and objects to the sight of pork. In Penang, offerings of \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak 31\n\n\n\nmeat to Datuk Kong may comprise of chicken and mutton but without pork or beef. Other items \ninclude cigarettes, areca nut flakes and betel leaves with lime paste (Cheu, 1992: 390). \n\n\n\nWorshipping the Deities\nThe Tai Pak Kung temple represents the world of religious beliefs of the community. For \n\n\n\nas long as the villagers can recall, they have embraced an eclectic system of belief that consists \nof worshipping deities of Chinese as well as Malay origins and the guardian deity of the natural \nsurroundings. The Datuk Kong has nothing to do with Islam which forbids the worshipping of \nidols. It is in fact an indigenous deity that is widely worshipped by the Chinese wherever they \nhave settled down. Besides their belief of the deities introduced from their ancestral villages, the \nChinese are open to the idea of worshipping of Datuk Kong and the beliefs in animistic beings \nsuch as trees, rocks, mountains or other natural features. Despite the indigenous blending of \ndifferent forms of deities to form a system of folk belief, the objective is always to seek spiritual \nprotection and blessings in their new homes.\n\n\n\nThe worship of Tai Pak Kung is confined only to the Chinese even though the temple is \nopen to all. In my field study between November 2006 and April 2008, I have not come across \nany non-Chinese visiting the temple such as the Bidayuh villagers who live nearby. A female \ninformant confides that all are welcome to worship at the temple as the deity welcomes a merry \natmosphere. \n\n\n\nThe villagers are convinced of the presence of spirits and deities in and surrounding the \ntemple. It is not uncommon for the local people especially females to wear a talisman when they \nvisit their farms or venture into the open. An informant recounts an incidence of a woman who \nonce relieved herself in the woods and was soon badly inflicted by a disease that affected one of \nher legs. The villagers attributed this to the woman\u2019s failure to utter words to seek permission \nfrom the local spirit and had thus offended the spirit of the dead. Upon consulting a medium she \nlearned that she had urinated on a Dayak tomb and was punished as a result. An Iban elderly \nbomoh (a folk healer) was consulted and advised the offer of a live chicken and tuak (rice wine) \nto placate the injured spirit. The exercise was followed by the woman\u2019s eventual recovery. From \nthis incidence, together with the belief of the presence of the Tai San Sh\u00een or Mountain spirit, \nthe villagers realize the land belongs to the Dayak people. Similarly, the Tai San Sh\u00een who rules \nover the spirits in the mountains may mete out punishment to any offender or to respond to  \ncalls for help by persons who are lost in the jungle. Hence the villagers are mindful of how they \nbehave when they are in the jungle.\n\n\n\nBetween the Village Icon and the Temple\n\n\n\nIn New Village, the visitor is greeted by a huge size concrete statue of a vegetable, \nfamously known as the municipal icon of the area. Other major towns of Sarawak have their \nicons that make them easily recognizable. Kuching, which means a cat in the Malay language, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\nhas cat statues; Sarikei uses the pineapple icon and in Serian, it is the durian. These symbols are \nmeant to be powerful entities that help to identify the towns. The symbol may be portrayed in \nthe form of an object, act, event, quality or relation that serves as a vehicle for the conception \nof certain meanings (Cheu, 1993). The symbol is something that stands for something else, and \nmay embody a mythical or ritual meaning. \n\n\n\nThe key notion in placing icons in places is that they represent the identity of the \ncommunities or places. But the vegetable icon bears little significance to the life of the villagers, \nand does not represent their true or perceived identity. In fact, the icon reminds them of their \nhard life as agriculturists. The vegetable icon is a rather discreditable symbol of their lives and \nstatus. Life had been hard in the past and they do not wish to be reminded by an icon that still \nassociates them with a life as farmers. Like all descendants of migrants, they hope that their \nchildren will lead a different life and not toil in the farm. The vegetable icon is thus not a true \nreflection of the aspirations of the villagers.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese treat religion as a psychological refuge when they need the help and blessings \nof the deities. In a monotheistic religion, help and blessings are sought from only one god. The \nvillagers recognize more than one god. In short, what the Chinese believe in are shen (\u795e or \ngods in Mandarin) . According to Elliot (1955: 166), a shen may be:\n\n\n\nthe souls of deceased men, usually high ranking personalities during their lives as \nhuman beings; they were able to claim a powerful position in the spirit world due \nto the strength of the shen component of their souls. As shen they are regarded to \nbe capable of controlling the fate of humans and to repulse the influence of evil \ndemons. They can be utilized by humans through the services of a tang-sin. The \ntang-sin acts as the medium of one or several shen with whom he has become as-\nsociated, because the spirits have chosen him to be their mouthpiece.\n\n\n\nThe temple provides an avenue for the people to recollect the link to their past that traces \nback to their life in Old Village. It is where their past histories and collective memories reside. \nThey wish to play down that part of the past when they were subjected to sanctions and curfews \nthat were socially humiliating. They desire a continuity from a culture and history that they are \nable to identify with and be proud of. The villagers in New Village thus recognize the social \ncontinuity between their old and new settlements. \n\n\n\nThe community in New Village, having been resettled from Old Village, has retained \nits collective memories of the past and proudly upholds their religious heritage. Despite the \nreminders of resettlement and the attendant social humiliation, the villagers still cling to the \nfond memories of their forefathers and life in Old Village. The community has gone beyond the \nperiod of political ostracism as well as their association with their ancestral villages but rather \nto identify their past with the local place of origin and its temple.\n\n\n\nThe pioneer settlers in Old Village had brought with them the Tai Pak Kung deity. As \n\n\n\n32\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\nin agricultural communities in China, the deity is a symbol of the blessings for the safety \nand prosperity of its believers (Sakai, 1993: 6). This belief is common among the Chinese in \nMalaysia and Southeast Asia. The original temple was a simple structure in which the Tai Pak \nKung statue was sheltered by metal sheets. At the same time, the local deity of the land or Th\u00fa \nTh\u00ec Kung (\u571f\u5730\u516c or Tudi Gong in Mandarin) which is also worshipped for a double assurance \non the safety, peace and health of the community. As a deity that enjoys a lower status in the \nhierarchy of deities, the Tudi Gong occupies a crude structure showing a tablet or a piece of \nred paper on which is inscribed three characters to its presence. These deities have now found a \npermanent home in the temple to perpetuate a form of folk belief among the villagers.\n\n\n\nWhile the Th\u00fa Th\u00ec Kung is the tutelary deity of the place where earlier settlers have \nestablished their homes, the Tai Pak Kung is a \u201cuniversal\u201ddeity introduced from China. The Tai \nPak Kung is a cultural symbol of the identity of the villagers and a throwback to the past when \ntheir forefathers settled to establish their homes and the temple. When relocated and physically \nremoved from the temple, the villagers insisted on maintaining the spiritual links of identity \nand affections with the past that was embodied by the temple. With the abolition of the original \nsettlement, the temple remains the only tangible symbol of social identity with the past. \n\n\n\n\u201cIdentity\u201d acts as an apparatus that supports and sustains a particular ideology (Crain \nand Pearson-Rounds, 2000: 23). The ideology of the community of Old Village is inseparably \nlinked to the social and religious identities of the past. The temple and its attendant rituals and \nits significance as a symbol of the original site where life of the community began, brings to \nlife a collective store of social memory of the eventful past and continues to consolidate the \nideology of the community. In effect, the temple acts as a symbolic icon that integrates the \nvillage into a socially coherent community that perpetuates the veneration and memory of their \nforefathers and the past.\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nThe New Village community had been marginalized by enforced resettlement in 1965 in a \ngovernment move to stamp out communist activities. The people were deprived free access to \nthe temple in the old settlement where the community used to perform their religious rituals and \nceremonies. This temple stands as a symbol of the origins of the community of Hakka that has \nsurvived until today. This temple, where the worship of Tai Pak Kung as the founding deity of \nthe settlement is performed, provides the key element in the cultural and spiritual identity of the \ncommunity. Adaptation to the local environment is formalized by the worship of local deities \nin particular the Datuk Kong.\n\n\n\nFrom the inception of the settlement, religious practices in the temple have served to bind \nthe community in unison. The worship of an eclectic mix of deities satisfies the earthly needs \nof the people and the need for lasting peace and security in the pursuit of a living in a new \nenvironment in the midst of various indigenous communities. The religious syncretism of the \n\n\n\n33\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\nsettlement indicates the community\u2019s spontaneous accommodation of the belief in local deities. \nHence the temple and the performance of rituals and festivals embrace the adoption of certain \nvalues and beliefs of local ethnic groups. More crucially, the temple has become a symbol that \nbest represents the Hakka community in the area. Despite the distance from New Village, the \ntemple has galvanized the Hakka community into a coherent whole, to preserve its identity and \nsustain its traditions and religious beliefs.\n\n\n\nSocial memories may be transmitted through oral and written narratives, or structures \nsuch as the temple. Sacred sites and rituals transmit a social memory of this community\u2019s \nhistorical roots. When the people here celebrate Tai Pak Kung\u2019s birthday, the temple rekindles \nthe memory of community life in Old Village. Socially, continuity is still maintained between \nthe old site and the present settlement. Resettlement as a political solution to local communist \ninsurgency has been demoralizing to the affected families and has left a wound in the psyche \nof the community as a whole. Not being able to divorce itself from this episode of its history, \nthe community seeks solace in its temple as a unifying factor in sustaining its sense of identity, \ncultural integrity and social recognition.\n\n\n\n \nNotes\n\n\n\nUnless otherwise stated, vernacular terms are Romanized according to the Hakka dialect.1 \nRM8,000 in 1965 is equivalent to RM34,423 in 2013.2 \nRM1,500 in 1965 is equivalent to RM6,454 in 2013.3 \nRokok 4 gulung is made from dried nipah leaves, curled into thin rolls, sometimes with tobacco. \n\n\n\nReferences \n\n\n\nCHEU Hock Tong 1992. The Datuk Kong spirit cult movement in Penang: being and belonging in multi-\nethnic Malaysia, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 23(2): 381-404.\n\n\n\n-----  1993.The festival of the Nine Emperor Gods in Peninsular Southeast Asia. In Chinese Beliefs and \nPractices in Southeast Asia, edited by Cheu Hock Tong, Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk Publications: \n17-57.\n\n\n\nCRAIN, J.B.and PEARSON-ROUNDS,V 2000. Constructing the Lun Dayeh: contradictions past and \npresent, Borneo 2000, Samarahan: University Malaysia Sarawak: 23-43.\n\n\n\nDeBERNANDI, Jean 2006. The Way that Lives in the Heart: Chinese Popular Religion and Spirit \nMediums in Penang, Malaysia. Singapore: National University Singapore Press.\n\n\n\nELLIOT, Alan 1955. Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults in Singapore, London: London School of \nEconomics.\n\n\n\nJACKSON, James C. 1970. Chinese in the West Borneo Goldfields: A Study in Cultural Geography, Hull: \nUniversity of Hull, Occasional Papers in Geography No. 15.\n\n\n\nLEE Yong Leng 1970. Population and Settlement in Sarawak. Singapore: Donald Moore. \nPORRITT, Vernon L. 2001. Operation Hammer: Enforced Resettlement in Sarawak in 1965, Hull: \n\n\n\nUniversity of Hull, Centre for South-East Asian Studies.\n-----  2004. The Rise and Fall of Communism in Sarawak, 1940-1990, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, \n\n\n\nMelbourne.\nSAKAI, Tadao 1993. Chinese religious practices and customs in Singapore and Malaysia. In Chinese \n\n\n\n34\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Temple, Our Past: A Hakka Community in Sarawak\n\n\n\nBeliefs and Practices in Southeast Asia, edited by Cheu Hock Tong, Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk \nPublications: 3-15 (also published in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1981, 12(1): 133-141).\n\n\n\nSMITH, Anthony 1986. The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell.\nWANG Tai Peng 1994. The Origins of Chinese Kongsi, Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.\n\u8521\u5b97\u79651996.\u300a\u7802\u7f57\u8d8a\u534e\u4eba\u6c11\u95f4\u4fe1\u4ef0\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a\u51fa\u7248\u793e (CHUA Chong Siang \n\n\n\n1996. The Religious Beliefs of Sarawak Chinese, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Cultural Assocation).\n\n\n\nAppendix \n\n\n\n(C)\n(A)\n\n\n\n(B)\n\n\n\nPlate 1. Characteristics of Tai Pak Kung and Datuk Kong\nA: The main building that houses the Tai Pak Kung deity; B: Datuk Kong and C: Tai San Sh\u00een\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPlate 2. Datuk Kong\n(note the headgear or \nsongkok, the collared, \nlong-sleeved shirt, and \nsampan or sarong.)\n\n\n\nPlate 3. The Worship of Datuk Kong with Black \nIncense Sticks\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai\n\n\n\nPlate 4. The Tai Pak Kung Altar, with \nthe V\u00f4ng Lo Sen Shi (left) and \n\u0143g Kwuk Sien Shi (right)\n\n\n\nPlate 6. Tai San Sh\u00een, the Deity of the \nJungle and Mountains\n\n\n\nPlate 5. Wearing a Talisman (arrow), \nfor protection against \ndangerous spirits when \nventuring outside the house\n\n\n\n36\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nBook Review\n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan*\n\n\n\nTo cite this book review: Ying-Kit Chan (2023). China as a frontier nation: A review of Frontier \nFieldwork: Building a Nation in China\u2019s Borderlands, 1919\u201345, by Andres Rodriguez. Malaysian \nJournal of Chinese Studies 12(1): 117\u2013120. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0008\nTo link to this book review: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0008\n\n\n\n Studies on the American frontier, particularly the legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner\u2019s (1861\u2013\n1932) thesis on how the supposed closure of the frontier, or the increasingly perceived lack of \nvirgin lands for conquest and settlement, could weaken American exceptionalism and national \ncharacter, have featured as a key theme in the history of the United States as an imperial formation. \nIn comparison, in the field of China studies, while monographs and journal articles have explained \nhow the Qing Empire, the final dynasty of imperial Chinese history, practised different forms \nof internal or settler colonialism to govern its peripheral regions, less has been said about how \nthe Chinese Republic, its successor state, coped with the dual threat of foreign imperialism and \nterritorial disintegration when inheriting the borderlands, whose boundaries were more fiction than \nfiat. The few scholarly works exploring this topic tend to focus on the issue of ethnicity and national \nidentity, which was only one of many concerns in the minds of the agriculturalists, missionaries, \nphotographers, college students and social scientists who traversed the terrain. Andres Rodriguez\u2019s \nbrilliant Frontier Fieldwork: Building a Nation in China\u2019s Borderlands, 1919\u201345, which examines \nhow a multitude of Chinese and Western agents of social and political change committed themselves \nto the notion of \u201cfieldwork\u201d to understand and chart the future of a China that seemed ill-equipped \nand especially ill-informed for transformation, is a much-needed corrective to such tendencies.\n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\nChina as a frontier nation: A review of Frontier Fieldwork: Building a Nation in China\u2019s Border-\nlands, 1919\u201345, by Andres Rodriguez. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022, 240 pp. ISBN: 9780774867559\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 117\u2013120\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n118\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n Frontier Fieldwork highlights China\u2019s southwest as a region that held immense interest and \npromise among not only Western explorers and scientists but also Chinese intellectuals and political \nreformers who sought to transform it from terra incognita into a strong bastion of national defence \nand rejuvenation. Western missionaries were pioneers in this respect. They saw the borderlands as a \nfield where they could nurture their mental and physical strength and build a corpus of knowledge \nfor their evangelism; the Chinese frontier was where they could reap spiritual gains by confronting \nphysical obstacles. The Chinese Republic drew inspiration from the missionary method of deep and \nthoughtful immersion in local cultures, Qing models of colonisation and new models of agricultural \nsettlement across the world to establish sovereignty in China\u2019s borderlands. Soldiers and scholars \nwere imperative to the Chinese Republic\u2019s colonial manoeuvres during the 1920s, whereby local \nadministrators and the Chinese experts whom they hosted, invited or recruited tried to emulate the \npractices observed in neighbouring British India by installing both military battalions and outposts \nof mapping and ethnographic surveying in remote settlements. A particularly interesting innovation \nof the Chinese during this period was the 1929 Frontier Region Customs and Products Exhibition, a \none-time event sponsored by governor and warlord Liu Wenhui (1895\u20131976) in Chengdu, Sichuan \nProvince, replete with everyday utensils (ethnographic objects), photographs of land surveyors and \nagricultural technicians interacting with supposedly incredulous native communities, and pictorial \ndepictions of their stoicism in the face of hardship. The objective of such images and publications, \nas Rodriguez has eloquently expressed, was the \u201cvisual performance of a modern practice of frontier \nadministration and fieldwork that aimed to legitimize Han Chinese colonial expansion while at the \nsame time instilling a sense of wonder and curiosity among a wider Han Chinese audience\u201d (p. 44). \nThe empathy and genuine affection felt by Chinese scholars towards their ethnographic subjects in \nthe field disguised the military nature of Chinese rule over the borderlands.\n In many ways, the Chinese anthropologists, ethnologists and social scientists exploring the \nsouthwestern (read: Sino-Tibetan) borderlands were engaged in a form of scientific imperialism, \nnot unlike that of the missionary pioneers. As they tried to establish epistemological authority over \nthe economic orientation of southwest China, mobilising latent resources and promoting among \nChinese the idea of southwest China as a potentially wealthy frontier awaiting trade, settlement \nand the use of its abundant natural resources, they developed into a scientific community with \ncommon interests in the region. While missionaries of the past had been lured by the prestige of \nbelonging to scientific societies back at home in the West, many of the Chinese social scientists \ntaking their lead from working in the field were already members of such societies. The West \nChina Border Research Society, formed in 1922 by like-minded missionary-settlers in southwest \nChina to co-ordinate the exploration of Sino-Tibetan peoples, was increasingly indigenised by the \n1930s, with an increasing number of Chinese academics appearing in the society\u2019s meetings and an \nincreasing number of published writings in its flagship journal by Chinese scholars who conducted \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n119\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nstate-sponsored expeditions or those accompanying international scientific expeditions. Journalists \nand photographers from other parts of China actively reported on the academic activities, often \nphysically following scholars to establish the facts behind many of the conflicts in frontier hotspots \nthat included Manchuria and China\u2019s northwest. For the Chinese social scientists, being in the field \ndid not confer authority in its own right; approaching the field through the lens of science was a \nprerequisite to making sense of the ethnic and geographical diversity that travellers encountered \nin China\u2019s frontier regions. In what historian Tong Lam calls the \u201csocial science movement,\u201d data \nand evidence from eugenics, statistics and surveys were deemed property of the Chinese nation and \nmust be handled by the Chinese themselves \u2013 a phenomenon that Rodriguez has corroborated in his \nchapter on the \u201cfrontier fever\u201d of Chinese social scientists.\n By the time Chinese nationalism held full sway due to Japan\u2019s invasion of China in the late \n1930s, Chinese intellectuals had embraced a feeling of empathy and were impelled to enter the \nfield in order to understand the plight of their compatriots; emotions not only broke down barriers \nbetween observer and subject but also built up a sense of national identity or solidarity in the face \nof a common enemy. This is encapsulated in the words of photographer Zhuang Xueben (1909\u2013\n1984), who was known for his ethnographic images of minority peoples in northwest and southwest \nChina: \u201cI am a simple traveler. I certainly don\u2019t need military troops coming along and adorning my \ntraveling expedition. My objective for my survey is not to require military might that will isolate \nthe feelings of the locals\u201d (cf. p. 93). If Zhuang\u2019s words are representative, they indicate a shift in \nthe mentality of a younger generation of Chinese intellectuals who were much more eager than the \nWestern missionaries and those Chinese scholars dispatched by local warlords to disengage from \nthe hard, raw and naked power of colonialism and dissociate from the soldier-scholar complex that \nhad characterised the scholarship on China\u2019s southwest frontier. While young Chinese intellectuals \nhad adopted missionary strategies of becoming proficient in frontier languages and well acquainted \nwith local customs and situations, they also paraded their own blending into local communities and \nhighlighted their physical discomfort and spiritual cultivation in the process. More importantly, they \nemphasised scientific methods of analysis and calibration and a deep understanding of indigenous \ntraditions and the interrelated function of each of their elements, eschewing the method of mere \nimmersion in favour of detailed participant observation of cultures. By 1949, scholars who had \nlong championed the idea that the Chinese nation was multicultural joined the ranks of the new \ncommunist state, sharing with the latter the infrastructure of knowledge building that they had \nhelped create and contributing to its vision of socialist modernity on China\u2019s borderlands.\n Although much of what we already know is merely reinforced by additional anecdotes and \ncase studies, this book retains a keen eye on contextualising scholarly fieldwork in southwest China \nand relating it to broader global phenomena and relevant developments that occurred elsewhere \nin the world. The book thus performs an understated yet important task of placing China\u2019s \n\n\n\nFrontier Fieldwork\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n120\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nborderland fieldwork within global history, which it has admirably accomplished. With this book, \nthe links between Western and Chinese models of colonisation are confirmed, and the ongoing \nreconceptualisation of the modern Chinese state as a national empire is almost complete.\n\n\n\n* Dr. Ying-Kit Chan [\u9648\u82f1\u6770] is Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, National \n    University of Singapore. Email: chscyk@nus.edu.sg\n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan \n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u300a\u653f\u5e9c\u516c\u62a5\u300b(\u4e2d\u534e\u6c11\u56fd)11. <\u53c2\u8bae\u9662\u7b2c\u4e8c\u6b21\u4f1a\u8bae\u901f\u8bb0\u5f55> (Proceedings of the Second Meeting of \n          the Senate, Government Gazette, No.11, Republic of China, 11 May 1912).\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n       67\n     323\n  6,907\n       42\n  6,531\n     782\n  3,094\n  4,363\n  7,386\n15,083\n\n\n\n3,210\n97,120\n  4,455\n  2,811\n      28\n\n\n\nUSA\n  2,275\n       63\n  1,442\n       11\n12,822\n     295\n  1,306\n  5,253\n  6,098\n  3,769\n\n\n\n3,816\n29,713\n  8,784\n  3,516\n     134\n\n\n\nUK\n      12\n\n\n\n   39\n 612\n     9\n 927\n   27\n 303\n 312\n 378\n 792\n\n\n\n1,332\n8,142\n1,929\n  366\n      9\n\n\n\nCanada\n      579\n     462\n  9,431\n     180\n17,001\n     641\n  2,374\n  9,379\n  3,282\n11,081\n\n\n\n3,339\n11,684\n  3,762\n  3,423\n     208\n\n\n\nAustralia\n     76\n     72\n   372\n     31\n1,945\n     30\n   429\n   240\n   457\n1,057\n\n\n\n117\n7,248\n   286\n   628\n     42\n\n\n\nNew Zealand\n3,009\n\n\n\n       959\n  18,764\n       273\n  39,226\n    1,775\n    7,506\n  19,547\n  17,601\n  31,782\n140,442\n\n\n\n11,814\n153,907\n  19,216\n  10,744\n       421\n196,102\n\n\n\nTotal\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity:\nA Case Study of New Chinese Immigrants \n\n\n\nto Thailand\nAranya Siriphon* and Jiangyu Li**  \n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Aranya Siriphon and Jiangyu Li (2023). The Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Sub-\njectivity: A Case Study of New Chinese Immigrants to Thailand. Malaysian Journal of Chinese \nStudies 12(1): 41\u201351. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0004\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0004\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 41\u201351\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n This study is concerned with Chinese who study in Chiang Mai province and how they engage \nin full-time or part-time businesses during their stay in Thailand. Survey and qualitative research, \nincluding fieldwork, was conducted in Chiang Mai province in 2018 and 2019. Attention is focused \non Chinese individuals who have combined migration objectives with business and education, \nincluding students pursuing their studies and part-time work, to seek opportunities to improve and \nchange their lifestyle. It is contended that the transient mobility of the recent Chinese arrivals has not \nprevented them from displaying a cultivated entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of \u201centrepreneurial \nsubjectivity.\u201d On the one hand, their transnational entrepreneurial practices to search for prosperity \nand a better quality of life, and to gain modern knowledge and individual freedom, reflect the \nattributes of a self-governing and self-enterprising power. On the other hand, they form part of the \noutflow of Chinese who move overseas to contribute to China\u2019s drive to increase its integration \nwith the global economy.  \n\n\n\n Keywords: New Chinese migration, Chinese entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial subject, Chiang Mai\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\n Since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping\u2019s open-door economic reforms in 1978, the economic \nrise of China has been felt in many parts of the world. Besides China\u2019s economic expansion, the \n\u201cgoing out\u201d policy has encouraged the Chinese to move overseas to explore opportunities and to \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n42\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\npursue their personal dreams and success for a better quality of life (Santasombat, 2015; H. Liu, \n2016). Recent Chinese arrivals in various countries have often been called \u201cnew immigrants\u201d or \nxin yimin (\u65b0\u79fb\u6c11). While many are indeed bona fide migrants as an integral part of the overall \nChinese diaspora, others are on temporary stay to conduct business, study, or even as tourists. The \nlatter are not \u201cmigrants\u201d in the true sense of the word but may more accurately be described as \n\u201csojourners.\u201d This study is largely concerned with this group but especially students, and their \naccompany mothers, who are staying in Chiang Mai on student or tourist visas.  \n In Thailand, the number of new migrants has grown since the 2000s. These migrants are \ndifferent from previous waves of Chinese emigrants to Thailand. They had arrived between the \nmid-13th century to the mid-20th century (Skinner, 1957; Coughlin,1960; Chansiri, 2008) and had \nbecome ethnic Chinese (Huaren) or \u201coverseas Chinese\u201d (Huaqiao) whose descendants now consider \nthemselves to be Thai or Thai citizens and speaking the Thai language (Siriphon et al., 2022).  \n According to the Thai Immigration Bureau, the number of Chinese citizens holding non-\nimmigrant visas issued by the Royal Thai Embassy and Royal Thai Consulates-General in 2018 \nand 2019 were 152,681 and 179,295, respectively (Information Technology Center, Immigration \nBureau of Thailand, 2021). In addition, the tourist visas that the Royal Thai Embassy and Royal \nThai Consulates-General issued to Chinese citizens in 2018 and 2019 numbered 10,567,292 and \n10,863,360. The non-immigrant visa category applied by new Chinese arrivals reflects how this \nvisa serves their multiple goals of searching for business opportunities, pursuing a better education, \nchasing greater freedom and a lifestyle to attain a better quality of life. There are several types of \nsub-categories of non-immigrant visas that are usually applied for by the Chinese; these are mainly, \nfor example, to conduct business and work (category B), visit friends and family (category O), \nlong-staying visits (category O-A), and education (category ED). Some of these Chinese initially \narrived in Thailand on tourist visas, but then changed their visa status later. Some who hold tourist \nvisas or specific categories of non-immigrant visa status have covertly conducted their business \nactivities without realising that they have violated Thai law. Siriphon & Banu (2021) classify \nChinese \u201cmigrants\u201d in Thailand according to the pursuit of business, education, lifestyle and long-\nterm leisure, and business-cum-lifestyle. \n This study is concerned with new Chinese migrants, particularly those who run tourism-related \nand retail businesses in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Attention is focused on individual entrepreneurs, \nparticularly among those who combine education, residential and business purposes, in order to \nlearn more about their peripatetic lifestyle and entrepreneurial subjectivities. Unlike business \nmanagement perspectives, Ong (2005) Flisfeder (2015) and Br\u00f6ckling (2016) suggest that \n\u201centrepreneurial subjects\u201d may be understood by viewing entrepreneurs not simply as risk-takers \nor individuals pursuing freedom in choosing their lifestyles but also as entrepreneurial subjects \nwho are involved in the creation of new forms and modes of subjectivity in which human life is \n\n\n\nSiriphon and Li\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n43\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nincorporated through \u201can interpellation to act\u201d in the manner of entrepreneurs (Althusser, 1971). \nAs argued by Br\u00f6ckling (2016), the general common sense by which people today cultivate an \nentrepreneurial mindset and modern techniques of self-disciplinary practices is always associated \nwith multiple regimes of knowledge whose power conveys truths to people about themselves and \nabout the logic that governs their actions and social relations. It reflects modern governmentality, \nneoliberal rationality and economic behaviour shifting from a culture of dependency to one of self-\nreliance (Peters, 2001). In the Chinese context, this idea is evident in the works of several scholars \nwho study Chinese citizens, modern knowledge and self-governing intersection with state influence \n(e.g., Rofel, 2007; Zhang & Ong, 2008; Nyiri, 2010). There is a shift from \u201crelying on the state\u201d to \n\u201crelying on yourself\u201d that has appeared under a reconfiguration of the Chinese state and its citizens \nwithin a new context of neoliberal and post-socialism schemes (Zhang & Ong, 2008).\n Methodologically, this paper is part of a broader research project entitled \u201cNew Transnational \nChinese Migrants in the Era of Globalization\u201d (2018\u20132020). We used various survey and qualitative \nmethods, including an online survey with questionnaires administered through Wenjuan Wang, a \nquestionnaire website in China, to select groups of Chinese parents or guardians in Chiang Mai who \nhave stayed for periods ranging from 6 months to 8 years to gather general information. We received \n220 responses, a 22% sampling rate. We also collected data and information from published sources \nand from official and non-official statistics, and conducted fieldwork by observing and interviewing \nChinese residents in Chiang Mai province during the 2018\u20132019 period and covered different \ncategories and groups such as the accompanying parents of students, entrepreneurs, and students.   \n The survey shows that Chinese entrepreneurs in Chiang Mai generally engage full-time or \npart-time in tourism-related businesses in the retail-trade sector. Full-time entrepreneurs are those \nwho operate tourism-related and retail businesses, managing restaurants and guesthouses, Airbnb \naccommodation, retail shops and other small-scale business activities. This group usually has \nexperience in a Thai locality, having spent more than 1\u20133 years in Thailand, and has finally found \nopportunities to run businesses as an experiment. A group of part-time entrepreneurs consists of \n\u201centrepreneur students\u201d who are currently receiving an education in Thailand but running online \nbusinesses in their free time. Another group comprises the \u201centrepreneur study parents,\u201d or the \npeidu mama (\u966a\u8bfb\u5988\u5988) or accompanying mothers who take care of their children who are studying \nin Chiang Mai, but also spending their free time to engage in Chinese e-commerce.\n Interestingly, these two entrepreneur types exemplify the transient mobility (Gomes, 2017; \nGomes et al., 2017; Xiang, 2017; Yeoh, 2017; Li & Siriphon, 2023) of the Chinese residents in \nThailand who, on the one hand, exploit opportunities to develop their self-awareness via travelling \nand, on the other, engage in entrepreneurial practices to search for prosperity, individual freedom \nand a better quality of life. In both cases, they represent a part of the driven trajectory in the \ndynamic rise of China.\n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n44\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nFull-time Entrepreneurs in Tourism-related Businesses\n\n\n\n In their field study, Siriphon and Li found that the most popular business among the Chinese in \nChiang Mai were wholesale and retail accounting for 115 registered companies, followed by 82 in \nthe accommodation and food services business. This development was clearly related to the increase \nin Chinese tourism and the stability of the local economy. Two case studies may be conducted to \ngain insights into Chinese business in Chiang Mai.  \n\n\n\nCase One: Restaurant Business\n This is a case study of Wendy, a female Chinese entrepreneur who runs a Chinese restaurant \nand related business activities to earn an income while living as a transient resident to follow a \nway of living of her choice. The 30-year old entrepreneur is a native of Pu\u2019er that is situated at the \nsouthern border of China\u2019s Yunnan province. She operates a Chinese restaurant and accommodation \nbusiness in a rented house to cater to the needs of Chinese expatriates and visitors. The restaurant, \ncalled \u201cKungfu Pot,\u201d claims to offer the unique taste of original flavours from the provinces of \nYunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan (popularly referred to as \u201cYun-Gui-Chuan\u201d cuisine).  \n After graduating with a major in Thai language at a university in Yunnan province, Wendy \nworked as a volunteer Chinese teacher at the Confucius Institute (CI) in south Thailand from 2013 \nto 2016. Upon finishing her 3-year contract, she decided on a long-term plan to stay in Thailand. \nShe managed to arrange a longer stay in Chiang Mai in 2017 by investing in a Chinese restaurant in \nthe city. The restaurant with its reputation for authentic pungent and spicy Sichuan flavours proves \nto be a success and is popular among Chinese residents, especially the younger generation working \nas volunteers at the local CI, students, their parents, and others including celebrities. \n Wendy\u2019s business journey begins with a \u201csurvey\u201d of the major cities such as Bangkok, Phuket, \nPattaya and Chiang Mai to identify business opportunities and to weigh possible risks involved in \nher choice of her desired lifestyle. She realises that three cities are popular among Chinese citizens \ntravelling to Thailand and finds that Chiang Mai offers several advantages such as good business \nenvironment for tourists, a convenient location, easy accessibility for those travelling between \nYunnan and Thailand, and its relaxed atmosphere and appealing culture for herself and her family. \nA major reason then was that she was planning to marry a Thai citizen.  \n The main problem in starting a business is the availability of capital. Without a track record of \nsuccess in business and facing many problems in obtaining a bank loan, she decides to fall back on \nher own savings from the three years of working in the CI and a long-term, interest-free loan from \nher parents. After scouting around for a suitable site for the proposed restaurant and, according to \nThai property law, she rents a house on a ten-year lease with an option for renewal every three years. \n\n\n\nSiriphon and Li\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n45\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n She recruits part-time and full-time employees via online advertising. The employees are \ngenerally proficient in Chinese and Thai and mainly of Yunnanese descent from Chiang Rai \nprovince. The operation of the restaurant is supported by the installation of modern technology and \ngadgets. CCTV cameras are utilised not only for security reasons but also to monitor food quality \nand for overall business operation. Other modern devices and applications are used to record \nincome and expenses, customer online payments via Alipay, WeChat wallet, Tencent and so on. \n The restaurant relies on two business strategies to promote its service and popularity. The first \nis a \u201cmarketing strategy\u201d to establish a niche market in a \u201cunique tasting cuisine\u201d that is not found \nin Chiang Mai. Through her surveys, Wendy realises that the hot-spicy flavours of the cuisine of \nSichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces can provide a unique selling point of the restaurant. She \nthen resorts to online promotion of the restaurant by highlighting the unique Yun- Gui-Chuan brand \nvia online promotion in specific websites on food and beverages as well as social-media outlets to \npublicise the unique brand of food and to demonstrate the authenticity of original hot and spicy \nflavours to customers. Advanced and efficient logistics greatly facilitates the purchase of genuine \ningredients from the three provinces of China. Easy overland transport between China and Thailand \ntoo also encourages the emergence of import-export business of Thai and Chinese products.\n The second strategy is the development of a management technique based on the entrepreneur\u2019s \nmarketing knowledge. The entrepreneur interviews and exchanges views with some customers on \na regular basis to seek their comments on the quality and taste of the food and service provided. \nInformation gathered is utilised to analyse food tastes, service performance and customer \nsatisfaction. The information also helps in devising a brand audit as a strategy in quality control \nbased on the principles of marketing. \n The cultivation of an entrepreneurial spirit by Wendy reflects a modern approach and knowledge \nacquisition to face risk and challenges, and to rely on managerial and technological techniques to \nmake important business decisions. This pursuit of success has the added advantage of allowing \nthe entrepreneurs to achieve a desire to lead to way of life to satisfy personal choices and individual \npreferences. \n\n\n\nCase Two: Airbnb Accommodation \n Tourism is another sector that offers opportunities for the enterprising. Of the many registered \ncompanies providing accommodation to tourists, one is an Airbnb accommodation operated by \na couple, Bian and Zhou, both in their 40s. The Bian\u2019s, married for 17 years, set up an Airbnb \naccommodation in the remote areas of Chiang Mai.  They renovated the properties and converted \nthem into guest houses to cater to outdoor enthusiasts among Chinese tourists.  \n Coming from a higher-middle class background in Beijing, the Bian\u2019s graduated in 1995 from \ntheir respective universities in Shanghai and Tsinghua University, Beijing. They soon registered an \n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n46\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\noutbound tourism company to serve Chinese tourists traveling to destinations in Europe, America \nand Asia-Pacific countries. In 2002, they scouted for a better place to live and preferably where they \ncould gain new experiences and to enjoy their desired lifestyle. They visited many places including \nHangzhou, Nanning, Xiamen and Kunming in China, and Bangkok, Phuket and Chiang Mai in \nThailand. Two years later, they decided to settle down in Chiang Mai, bought their houses through \ntheir Sino-Thai friend and began their life of travelling back and forth between China and Thailand.  \nIn the 2010s, the Bian\u2019s noticed a growing interest among Chinese tourists in Thailand and \nespecially in Chiang Mai. They decided to convert their houses into guest houses and made this \nknown through advertisements on an Airbnb accommodation website catering for Chinese tourists. \nThere was then a trend to rent out homes to visitors looking for accommodation in popular spots \nto share their passions and interests with other travellers and the locals. However, the appeal of \nAirbnb accommodation was short-lived as the volume of Chinese tourists travelling to Thailand \nand Chiang Mai was not sustained. Besides the decline in the global economy, the idea of Airbnb \naccommodation was not readily understood in Chinese culture where the host accommodated guests \nwith short-term lodgings and tourism-related activities. The concern with privacy, safety, wariness \nof strangers and trust among Chinese tourists prevented some from accepting a home-rental service \nlike the Airbnb.\n The revenue of the Bian\u2019s Airbnb accommodation was sustained for a brief period from 2015 \nto 2016. Between 2017 and 2020, tourism in Thailand and tourism-related businesses witnessed a \nnoticeable decline. This was brought about by several factors. The first was the increased competition \namong Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand as more accommodation facilities such as hotels and \nother tourism-related lodgings emerged. The next was the quality of tourism service in Thailand \nwas put into question by incidents such as the 2018 tourist-boat disaster in Phuket in which 46 \nChinese tourists lost their lives. The third factor was the general decline in the global economy and \nthe slowdown of the Chinese economy resulting from the China-U.S. trade war. Finally, there was \nthe continuing global conflicts as well as the travel restrictions due to the global Covid-19 pandemic \nthat severely disrupted international tourism. \n In view of these developments, the Bian\u2019s were faced with two choices. They could move to \nanother country in search of opportunities for a more profitable business or they could continue to \nstay and settled down in Chiang Mai to establish their second home. They were eventually persuaded \nto remain as Chiang Mai was a peaceful place where they could look forward to their approaching \ngolden years to enjoy the comfort of living and the ease of moving back and forth between China \nand Thailand. Another reason was that the cost of living was not excessive, and their economic \nstatus could support a lifestyle in the midst of the beautiful and peaceful surrounding. \n The path taken by the Bian\u2019s indicates how the twin objectives of doing business and pursuing \ntheir preferred lifestyle was achievable without interference and hassle. They had made a deliberate \n\n\n\nSiriphon and Li\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n47\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ndecision to realise their entrepreneurial activities and lifestyle choices in a rational manner in their \nrisk-taking assessment of residing as migrants in a foreign country.\n\n\n\nRunning Part-time Businesses among Students and Accompanying Mothers \n The Chinese also develop established part-time businesses during their stay in Chiang Mai. \nTwo main groups could be identified, namely, students who were attending local universities \nor colleges and the females popularly known as peidu mama who accompanied their children \nduring their stay and study in Chiang Mai. The former consisted of students who were sufficiently \nenterprising and motivated to earn an income through part-time transactions, and the latter had \nplenty of free time to be involved in buying and selling selected goods via online platforms, mainly \non WeChat. In 2019, 17,055 Chinese students were recorded as having enrolled for international \neducation at higher education institutes in Thailand (Siriphon & Li, 2020). \n While taking care of their children in Chiang Mai, 69.1% of peidu mothers were also running \nfull-time businesses (Siriphon & Li, 2020). Several categories of self-employment were identified, \namong which 6.8% were involved in WeChat business, 6.3% in accommodation business, 6.3% in \nvarious other self-employment ventures, 5.9% were entrepreneurial owners or high-level managers \nand 5.9% engaged in governmental enterprises or in institutions. Some peidu parents described \nthemselves as freelancers, \u201cnomad\u201d workers such as bloggers, writers, or photographers, or as \nfinancial practitioners. \n The part-time businesses are conducted with the use of mobile phones. Online accounts are \ncreated by which to market popular Thai products on various Chinese social media platforms such \nas WeChat, Taobao, Kaola, and Xiao Hong Shu, among others. The volume of online sales of Thai \nproducts varies according to market demand and the support of friends and customers. Popular \nThai products are brand-name fashion items, foreign and popular Thai cosmetic beauty products, \nchildcare products, health-related goods and food snacks. Chinese customers believe that popular \nThai products are of better quality, more authentic, and cheaper than in China. Items sold online are \ndelivered via convenient logistical channels back to China, with the delivery period varying within \none to two days depending on the cost and method used. \n The entrepreneur mothers and entrepreneur students who run part-time businesses reflect \nthe broader situation of \u201cWe-business\u201d or wei-shang (\u5fae\u5546) in China. This refers to a system of \n\u201cmicro businesses\u201d operating via Internet-based retail transactions in China. \u201cWe-business\u201d is one \nof many Chinese e-commerce channels that penetrate every aspect of the lives of many Chinese \nfamilies. The system has facilitated the emergence of a situation in which everybody can engage in \nbusiness. Starting with \u201cbaby moms\u201d or the first generation who used it for shopping and selling, \nWeChat business has now expanded to include ordinary employees, and some Chinese companies  \nencourage their staff to be involved in We-business (Guo, 2017).  \n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n48\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n In Chiang Mai, one of the many part-time student entrepreneurs is Sophia. As a 20-year-old \nundergraduate, she establishes a part-time business to sell selected Thai products online to Chinese \ncustomers. She advertises high quality and luxury products from Thailand on the Guimi Mall \nwebsite. These products include selected Thai handicrafts, hand-made chic products, and high-\nfashion and local jewellery and put on online platforms to reach potential customers in China. Her \ncustomer list has expanded from close friends to a wide circle of buyers. She believes that online \nbusiness will become the trend of the future and will bring about the development of the \u201cplatform \neconomy\u201d or \u201ccommunity economy.\u201d Among the peidu mothers is 40-year-old Madam Zhang who \nspends her free time doing We-business to sell Thai products to buyers in China. She concentrates \non marketing beauty cosmetic items, childcare and health-related products. Being familiar with \nthese Thai products, she believes that they are of good quality and is glad to promote them to a \nlarger circle of users. \n A characteristic shared by these entrepreneurs from China is their readiness to take advantage \nof advanced digital technology and online business infrastructure to benefit from their stay in \nChiang Mai and at the same time to live a different way of life away from home. Online businesses \nconducted through specific platforms such as that of WeChat offers operational flexibility, easy \naccess to players in the supply chains, and minimal barrier to entry.\n However, WeChat and other online business platforms are not without their share of problems. \nIt is clear that Thai law forbids foreign students and residents on an education visa or visiting \nvisa to engage in business. However, some would look upon online business as a grey area in \nwhich the legal boundary between online social contacts and business transactions is blurred and \nuncertain. Nevertheless, there are indeed practical issues that online businesses have to contend \nwith. One is the fact that Thai laws impose regulations on business actions and transactions and \nspecify the standardisation of online markets as well as matters relating to government tax-revenue \ncollection (Guo, 2017; Wong, 2019; You, 2020). Apart from that, problems have also arisen from \ncertain business practices. An example is the practice of \u201cpyramid selling.\u201d A crisis may occur in \nWeChat businesses when agents and sub-agents are recruited to push sales through devious means \n(Chen, 2016; W. Liu, 2018). However, online business platforms will only become proper and \nlegal conduits for business transaction with more systematic rules based on the market logic and a \ncountry\u2019s regulatory framework. \n\n\n\nConcluding Remarks\n\n\n\n This study is based largely on fieldwork conducted in Chiang Mai in 2018 and 2019 and \nsupplemented by reference to published works and examines how recent Chinese arrivals in Chiang \nMai engage in tourism-related and retail businesses. The study focuses on individual entrepreneurs \n\n\n\nSiriphon and Li\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n49\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\namong students and their accompanying mothers. While the students pursue higher education in \nThai universities, they and some of the accompanying mothers may engage in running selected \nbusinesses and at the same time try to pursue a lifestyle according to their desires. In this manner, \nboth students and accompanying mothers are able to allow full play of their entrepreneurial \nsubjectivities as well as to experience a way of living that is different from those in China. \n To understand the situation on the ground, case studies were conducted to appreciate the \nmanner of choice and operation of businesses on a full-time or part-time basis, in the context of \nChinese students and their accompanying mothers on temporary transit in Chiang Mai and at the \nsame time taking advantage of the entrepreneurial urge for profit-making and to seize the sense of \nfreedom to take risks and make choices for optimal personal benefit. This community of sojourners \nreflect the wish to act without restrictions to cross multiple regimes of values afforded by conditions \nof flexible accumulation and neoliberal regulation. These sojourners demonstrate how they utilise \nmodern knowledge and advanced technology to support their daily lives abroad and to undertake \ntransnational business practices to exploit opportunities to develop their self-awareness and at the \nsame time becoming part of the driven trajectory in the dynamic rise of China.  \n \n*    Dr. Aranya Siriphon is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and \n      Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Email: aranya.s@\n      cmu.ac.th.  \n**  Dr. Jiangyu Li [\u674e\u6c5f\u7389] is a lecturer, Department of Law and Sociology, School of Law \n   and Sociology, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. Email: \n      152461775@qq.com \n\n\n\n References\nAlthusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. \nBr\u00f6ckling, U. (2016). The entrepreneurial self: Fabricating a new type of subject. London: Sage \n Books.\nChansiri, D. (2008). The Chinese emigre\u0301s of Thailand in the twentieth century. Youngstown: \n Cambria Press. \nChen, X. (2016). The crime of organising and leading pyramid selling activities: nature and \n boundary. Tribune of Political Science and Law, 34(2), 106\u2013120.\nCoughlin, R. (1960). Double identity: the Chinese in modern Thailand. Hong Kong: Hong Kong \n University Press.\nFlisfeder, M. (2015). The entrepreneurial subject and the objectivization of the self in social media. \n South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(3), 553-570.\nGomes, C. (2017). Transient mobility and middle-class identity: Media and migration in Australia \n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n and Singapore. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.\nGomes, C., Leong, S., and Yang, P. (2017). Editorial: Why transitions. Transitions: Journal of   \n Transient Migration, 1(1), 7\u201311. \nGuo, M. (2017). There is vacant space in supervision on we-business. regulation will be established \n in the euture. Retrieved May 29, 2020, from: https://tech.sina.cn/i/gn/2017-01-15/detail-ifxzq\n nim4440642.d.html?from=wap    \nInformation Technology Center, Immigration Bureau of Thailand. (2021). Traveler statistics: \n Chinese (from 2018\u20132020). Retrieved January 16, 2021, from: https://www.immigration.\n go.th/?page_id=1564   \nLi, J., & Siriphon, A. (2023). Consumption, ongoingness and everyday-life embeddedness: \n Lifestyle experiences of Chinese transient migrants in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Asian and Pacific \n Migration Journal https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968221145339  \nLiu, H. (2016). Opportunities and anxieties for the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. Current \n History, 11(784), 312\u2013318. \nLiu, W. (2018). On the ethicality of multi-level marketing schemes on Wechat platform in Mainland \n China. [Unpublished master\u2019s thesis]. KTH Royal Institute of Technology. \nNyiri, P. (2010). Mobility and cultural authority in contemporary China. Seattle: University of  \n Washington Press. \nOng, A. (2005). Anthropological concepts for the study of nationalism. In P. Nyiri & J. \n Breidenbach (Eds.), China inside out (pp.1\u201334), Budapest: Central European Press. \nPeters, M. (2001). Education, enterprise culture and the entrepreneurial self: A Foucauldian   \n perspective. Journal of Educational Enquiry 2(2), 58\u201371.\nRofel, Lisa. (2007). Desiring China. Experiments in neoliberalism, sexuality, and public culture. \n Duke University Press.\nSantasombat, Y. (2015). Introduction. In Y. Santasombat (Ed.), Impact of China\u2019s rise on the \n Mekong Region (1\u201321). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. \nSiriphon, A., & Banu, F. (2021). The nature of recent Chinese migration to Thailand. Perspective, \n 168, 1\u201311. \nSiriphon, A., Banu, F. & Gatchalee, P. (2022). New Chinese migrants in Chiang Mai: Parallel paths \n for social interaction and cultural adjustment. Perspective, 30, 1\u201311. \nSiriphon, A. & Li, J. (2021). Recent Chinese diaspora and transnational mobile practices in Chiang \n Mai province, Thailand, final Report. Under the transnational Chinese diaspora in the era of \n globalization research project. Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund (TRF).\nSkinner, W. (1957). Chinese society in Thailand: An analytical history. Ithaca: Cornell University \n Press.\nXiang, B. (2017). Preface: Hundreds of millions in suspension. Transitions: Journal of Transient  \n\n\n\nSiriphon and Li\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n51\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n Migration, 1(1), 3\u20135.\nWong, F.K.H. (2019, January 10). China\u2019s crackdown on daigou, new cross-Border e-commerce  \n policies. China Briefing. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from: https://www.china-briefing.com/ \n news/chinas-crackdown-daigou-cross-border-e-commerce-policies/.   \nYeoh, B.A. (2017). Afterword: Transient migrations: Intersectionalities, mobilities and temporalities. \n Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 1(1), 143\u2013146.\nYou, C. (2020). Law and policy of the platform economy in China. Computer Law & Security \n Review 39, 1\u201321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2020.105493 \nZhang, L., & Ong, A. (2008). Privatizing China: Socialism from afar. Ithaca: Cornell University \n Press.\n\n\n\nThe Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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"\n\n*  Dr. Helen TING is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, \nUniversiti Kebangasaan Malaysia (UKM). E-mail: helenting@gmail.com \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 60-84\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses: \nA Historical Review\n\n\n\nHelen TING*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper attempts to reconstruct the dynamics of interethnic relations of university students \nin Malaysian public campuses from the 1960s to 2005. Based on a synthesis and review of existing \nliterature, the subject is examined at two levels. The first is the evolution of interethnic relations among \nstudent leaders in the context of campus student activism and politics, and the other is a synthesis of the \nstate of day-to-day interethnic interaction in the student milieu over the decades. \n\n\n\nEthnic dynamics in campus politics could be broadly divided into two phases. Between 1967 \nand the early 1970s, the two key protagonists were the multiethnic Socialist Club and the Malay-based \nMalay Language Society in the University of Malaya. From 1974 onwards, it was Islamist activism \nand intra-Malay rivalry that defined the campus dynamics. Selective interethnic cooperation persisted \nin campus politics till today, especially when non-Malay students constitute a significant proportion of \nthe student population, but it was carried out in varied forms under different circumstances.\n\n\n\nDiscussions of interethnic relations often refer to the \u201cgolden age\u201d of ethnic relations in the past. \nThis paper contends that if the university campus is seen as the contemporary, microcosmic reflection \nof the wider society, then it is clear that such historical memory is at best partial if not inaccurate. The \ntendency of university students to confine their social interaction within their own ethnic groups had \nbeen observed at least since the 1960s, and was even prevalent among those who had gone through \nEnglish-medium education. In effect, it appears that the pattern of interethnic interaction had not really \nevolved in any substantial way since at least the mid-1960s. There were arguably even more incidents \nof serious interethnic tension during the sixties than in current situation. \n\n\n\nKey words:  Interethnic relations, interethnic interaction, campus politics, student activism, racial \npolarization\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nMedia reports on the \u201cseriousness\u201d of interethnic polarization in Malaysian public \ncampuses are commonplace. Frequently, the observation that campus students interact mainly \nalong ethnic line is highlighted as the basis to substantiate such an evaluation. While the \nfactual observation is seldom disputed, normative evaluation and the interpretation of the \nphenomenon of ethnic segregation is more contentious.\n\n\n\nIn 2003, the assessment of an ongoing survey conducted in Universiti Sains Malaysia \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          61\n\n\n\n(USM) on interethnic relations stimulated polemical discussions among some academics. \nThe survey interpreted the formation of ethnic cliques in studying, socializing and eating out \nas a transient phenomenon and as manifestation of a coping mechanism to facilitate settling \ninto a new social setting for first year students. This had led to energetic rebuttal from a \nUSM lecturer, Rohana Ariffin, who asserted that the problem of racial polarization in the \nuniversity was serious. Attributing the problem to entrenched mutual prejudice, she chided \nChinese students for being insensitive and exclusive when they converse in their mother \ntongue. Perceiving Indian students as the most alienated and discriminated, she claimed that \nsome of them resorted to gangsterism to gain a sense of belonging. Rohana also alleged that \nrace-based biases of government policies had contributed to the problems (Malaysiakini, 7 \nJuly 2003).\n\n\n\nOn the other hand, the alarmist conclusions drawn from a survey on ethnic relations \nconducted in 1999 by Sheela J. Abraham of the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya \n(UM), also stirred up a flurry of reactions and concern in the media. Based on the 200 responses1 \nto her questionnaires, supplemented with the discussions and selective interviews done by \nher, she concluded that even though she found some positive features favouring national \nunity,2 \u201cethnic divisions and linguistic loyalties based on primordial ties were strongly felt, \nwhich manifests itself in highly visible ethnic polarisation\u201d (Abraham, 1999: 10).\n\n\n\nThe conclusion of Sheela Abraham that ethnic polarization was serious was based on \nthree arguments. Firstly, she found that the majority of the respondents identified themselves \nfirst by ethnicity before nationality. Secondly, through her findings on the pattern of language \nuse by respondents in campus, she concluded that despite the fact that the majority of the \nrespondents were fluent in Malay and used it in formal situations, the Chinese and Indian \ncommunities \u201chold on to their own languages and are very sensitive to any attempts, perceived \nor real, to curb their development and use\u201d (Abraham, 1999: 7). Noting that \u201cgreat emphasis \nhas been placed by the policy-makers on the Malay language as an instrument of unity\u201d, \nshe deduced that this attachment to respective ethnic language was \u201cinterfering\u201d with the \nformation of national identity (Abraham, 1999: 7). Lastly, she found that in informal settings, \nher respondents interacted almost exclusively within their own ethnic groups. She concluded \nthat, \u201cthis is definitely a worrying trend and needs to be addressed immediately\u201d (Abraham, \n1999: 8).\n\n\n\nThe doom-seer conclusions reached in the paper of Sheela Abraham did not convince \neverybody, including the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Ungku Aziz, who \ncautioned that her research was methodologically flawed on several accounts. Another critic \nquestioned the representativeness of her sample and the objectivity of her research questions. \nShe also pointed out that when Abraham concluded that \u201cthe sense of ethnicity was strongest \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n62          Ting\n\n\n\namong the Chinese students, and lowest among the Indians\u201d, she did it based on a numerical \ndifference of only two respondents between the Chinese and Indian respondents (out of a total \nof 50 of each of them) (Chia, 2002: 58-9). Another lecturer, Hou Kok Chung, felt that there \nwas no latent problem of racial polarization among the students. It was more because racial \nissues had been raised repeatedly, and over time, it became a problem (Nanyang Siang Pau, \n6 January 2001).\n\n\n\nThe two examples cited above illustrate, besides the challenge of adopting a more \nuniversally acceptable methodological approach in researching the issue, the difficulties \ninvolved in the interpretation of a social phenomenon, and the lack of an academic consensus \nover what constitutes the \u201cproblem of racial polarization\u201d. The root causes of ethnic tension are \nin fact complex and multi-dimensional: structural, historical, and political. The fluid and multi-\ndimensional nature of ethnic relations is also notoriously difficult to ascertain and apprehend. \nCommonsensical assumptions about interethnic interaction and ethnic polarization are often \nnot empirically verified. Theoretically informed studies of ethnic relations would contribute \nto a more nuanced and out-of-the-box perspective in assessing interethnic dynamics than \ncommonly made. \n\n\n\nThis paper does not intend to examine interethnic relations based on an interpretation of \ninterethnic interaction per se. As we have seen, assessment of the same phenomenon may arrive \nat different conclusions, simply because people do not talk at the same wavelength and share \nthe same premises. The aim of this paper is more fundamental: to reconstruct as best as the \navailability of documentation allows, the interethnic dynamics of students in campus, from the \n1960s till around 2005. We have often come across as-a-matter-of-fact and casual references to \nthe \u201cgolden age\u201d of ethnic relations in the past when discussing interethnic relations. This paper \ncontends that if we take university campus as the contemporary, microcosmic reflection of the \nwider society, then it is clear that such historical memory is at best partial if not inaccurate. It will \nalso be shown that the tendency of university students to confine their social interaction within \ntheir own ethnic groups had been observed at least since the 1960s, and was even prevalent \namong those who had gone through English-medium education. \n\n\n\nThe Setting\n\n\n\nIn order to get some historical perspectives on the evolving ethnic dynamics on campus, \nwe will examine the issue from two complementary angles. We will first examine the historical \nevolution of interethnic interaction at the level of student leaders in the context of campus \nstudent activism and politics. This overview of the situation among the more politicized \nand socially conscious student activist minority will be followed by a description of the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          63\n\n\n\nundercurrent dynamics of day-to-day interethnic relations on campus in the student milieu.\nTo begin with, it is necessary to take note of the changing ethnic composition of the \n\n\n\nuniversity student body and the mutation of the overall socio-academic background of the \nstudents.\n\n\n\nPrior to 1969, UM was the only public university in Malaysia. The student population \nthen was predominantly non-Malay but declined progressively to around 60 per cent in 1970. \nMost of the undergraduates, Malays and non-Malays, were from English-medium, urban \neducational background.3 \n\n\n\nThe first batch of students educated fully in Malay-medium entered the university in \n1965.4 From then on, their proportion continued to increase, though concentrating initially \nin the Arts faculty. By 1970, about 1,050 out of the 7,777 undergraduates in UM were from \nthe Malay-medium stream (Abdul Majid, 1971: 48). Lacking English proficiency, many of \nthem gravitated towards the Malay Language Society (Persatuan Bahasa Malaysia Universiti \nMalaya, PBMUM) and the UM Muslim Undergraduate Society (Persatuan Mahasiswa Islam \nUniversiti Malaya, PMIUM). For two decades or so till the 1980s, a sizeable proportion of \nthe Malay students were mature students who were teachers, college lecturers and Islamic \nscholars (Muhammad, 1973: 45, Khoo, K. K., 2009: 97). The 1970s also saw more and more \nMalay-medium Malay students from the rural areas joining the public universities and began \nto dominate the residential colleges and some of the student organizations. \n\n\n\nEthnic Dynamics in Campus Politics\n\n\n\nEthnic dynamics in campus politics could be broadly divided into two distinct phases. \nUntil early 1970s, the two key protagonists were the multiethnic UM Socialist Club (whose \nleaders helmed the UM Student Union, UMSU) and the Malay-based PBMUM. From 1974 \nonwards, it was Islamist activism and intra-Malay rivalry which defined the nature of the \ncampus dynamics.\n\n\n\nMultiethnic Socialist Club versus Malay-based PBMUM (1967-1974)\nThe emergence of issues on campus viewed by one group or another as \u201cethnic cause\u201d \n\n\n\ndated as far back as the 1960s. Certain issues were seen to be communalist due to its \ninherently divisive nature along ethnic line. Chandra Muzaffar (1984: 371) described UMSU \nas exhibiting, \u201conce in a while\u201d, \u201cnon-Malay orientation on national affairs\u201d in particular \nduring the controversies against the constitutional Malay special position. In 1968, the UMSU \nelections were decried by the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party as being stalked by \n\u201cracialism\u201d, \u201cas it stalks in the Malaysian society\u201d (Weiss, 2005: 323).\n\n\n\nDuring the 1960s, even though non-Malay representation in the UMSU council was \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n64          Ting\n\n\n\nsizeable, they maintained, as a whole, a non-partisan and non-communal approach in their \nperspective and the cause they fought for (Silcock, 1964: 193; Chandra, 1984: 371; Hassan, \n1984: 16). It was also noted that the university hostels which accommodated 40 per cent of \nthe students were \u201cracially integrated\u201d and provided \u201can important means for students to learn \nat first hand about their peers from other racial communities\u201d (Silverstein, 1970: 14).\n\n\n\nThe thriving of the multiethnic UM Socialist Club5 leadership from 1967 until its \ndisbandment in 1974 provided an important non-communalist platform for university \nstudent activism and had a far-reaching influence on the UMSU council leadership during \nthis period. These leaders managed to maintain a cordial interethnic partnership and foster a \nnon-communalist perspective on the ongoing social dynamics and national politics (Junaidi, \n1993: 22; Muhammad, 1973: 101). Many of these Malay undergraduate leaders during the \n1960s were supporters of the socialist-inclined Parti Rakyat in political issues (Silverstein, \n1976: 200). These Malay leaders from the Socialist Club occupied influential positions in the \nUMSU council. Syed Hamid Ali, for instance, was the general secretary of UMSU in 1967 \nand its president in 1969. The multiethnic orientation and the dynamism of its leaders during \nthis period articulated an ethnically reconciliatory and socially progressive voice in campus \npolitics. \n\n\n\nThe PBMUM, on the other hand, was regarded as the de facto spokesperson for the \nMalay university students, playing the role as a \u201cMalay student union\u201d in the face of UMSU. \nThe latter was perceived by the former as a \u201cnon-Malay student union\u201d, articulating \u201cnon-\nMalay views\u201d (Bass, 1971: 980), notwithstanding the fact that some Malay students held key \npositions on the UMSU executive committee then. The Majid Report described PBMUM \nas \u201cmore a Malay society than a language society, \u2026a Malay quasi-political group\u2026 \nrepresenting Malay interests which it regards as national interests. The society in fact reflects \nMalay political consciousness of a particular kind\u201d (Abdul Majid, 1971: 50).\n\n\n\nIn effect, some leaders of the Socialist Club attempted to introduce leftist orientation \ninto PBMUM when Sanusi Osman became the president of PBMUM in 1967. A symposium \nwas organized on the problems faced by rural communities, a departure from its previous \nnarrow focus on Malay language and culture. Together with UMSU, the PBMUM was also \ndirectly involved in highlighting the Teluk Gong landless squatter struggle in 1967. Solidarity \nwith Teluk Gong landless squatters was the first time a public stand on a current issue in \nfavour of the poor and marginalized was taken by the university students (Hassan, 1984: \n2-3). This had incurred suspicion among some members of PBMUM as to whether they were \n\u201cinfiltrated\u201d and manipulated for political purposes. An Extraordinary General Assembly was \ncalled to discuss a motion of no confidence towards its president and his working committee \nmembers. Sanusi survived the no confidence vote (Muhammad, 1973: 63-4).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          65\n\n\n\nA central issue which was the source of sustained bitter contention and interethnic \nhostility was the use of the Malay language in UM. Initially raised in 1966, the PBMUM \nleaders came to a serious clash over the issue with those of the UMSU council in 1970. \nThe status of the Malay language as the national language was never questioned. The point \nof contention was rather the extent to which and the speed with which its usage should be \ngeneralized and reinforced in the university. The official position adopted by the National \nUnion of Malaysian Students (Persatuan Kebangsaan Pelajar-pelajar Malaysia or PKPM)6 \nwas to affirm its support of the Malay language and demanded the student unions help all \nstudents to study it so that it might become \u201can essential instrument for promoting inter-\nracial harmony\u201d (Silverstein, 1970: 15).7 The PBMUM, on the other hand, made a vigorous \npush for a speedy and the fullest implementation of the use of Malay language throughout \nthe national education system (Nagata, 1980: 407). Confronted with acute language problem \nin the pursuit of their university studies, the Malay-educated students were suspicious of the \nsincerity of the governing elites to do so (Muhammad 1973:45, 49).\n\n\n\nIn the aftermath of the racial riots in 1969, a campaign was launched by the university \nstudents, particularly the Malay students, calling for the resignation of Tunku Abdul Rahman, \nthe Malaysian Prime Minister. A letter criticizing the Tunku penned by Dr Mahathir, a radical \nyoung Turk in the Tunku\u2019s Malay party, the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) \nthen, was widely distributed by the Malay students, who hand-copied as well as duplicated \nit for distribution.8 In his letter, Dr Mahathir accused the Tunku of giving the Chinese \n\u201ceverything they ask for\u201d in the name of \u201cgive and take\u201d policy, a reason for which \u201cthe \nChinese and the Indians behaved outrageously toward the Malays\u201d, causing the latter to run \namok (von Vorys, 1976: 373).9 Mass demonstrations were organized with the participation of \nstudents from UM, MARA and Islamic College as well as the militant faction of UMNO in \ndefense of \u201cMalay sovereignty\u201d (Munro-Kua, 1996: 56). \n\n\n\nFunston (1980: 225) noted that May 13 incident \u201cboth represented and contributed to \nheightened communal consciousness among Malays\u201d. At the campus level, fault lines of \ndifferences in political orientation between UMSU Council and PBMUM leaderships were \ndiscernible in the differing perspectives carried by two key student leaders who spearheaded the \nanti-Tunku campaign. Syed Hamid Ali who was the president of UMSU then and representative \nof the perspective of the Socialist Club wanted the Tunku to resign because he was critical of \nTunku\u2019s political, economic and social policies which were deemed excessively pro-capitalist, \nhence impotent in solving the problems of poverty and redressing interethnic economic gap \n(Hassan, 1984: 5; Muhammad, 1973: 102-3). The critique of Anwar Ibrahim who was leading \nthe PBMUM, on the contrary, was from an ethnic perspective rather than structural. He felt \nthat Tunku did not try hard enough to overcome the problems of the Malay community and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n66          Ting\n\n\n\nadvance the status of the Malay language in the implementation of the National Education \nPolicy. Echoing the position of Mahathir, Anwar claimed that the Tunku had conceded too \nmuch to the Chinese community (Hassan, 1984: 5; Muhammad, 1973: 88). \n\n\n\nThe subsequent retirement from politics of the Tunku in September 1970 was preceded \nby the hasty launch of the progressive conversion of English-medium primary schools into \nMalay-medium primary schools. The establishment of a full fledged Malay-medium National \nUniversity, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) was regarded largely as a gesture \naffirming the sovereignty of the Malay language. It was also the fulfillment of one of the key \ndemands on the PBMUM wish list (Muhammad, 1973: 74-6).\n\n\n\nDetermined to set the language policy in UM \u201cin order\u201d, the PBMUM asserted its position \non national language even more forcefully through organizing demonstrations, symposia and \ndialogue session with the Vice-Chancellor. On 5 October 1970, about 500 PBMUM members, \nduring a demonstration against the delay in using Malay as the medium of instruction in \nuniversity, tore down and burnt English-medium posters at the Speaker\u2019s Corner, and went \non to splash red and black paint over signs and notices in English on campus. Disapproving \nthe unruly approach, the UMSU council members issued statement condemning the incident. \nThe clash between UMSU and PBMUM10 led to the latter initiating a vote of no confidence \nagainst the 13th UMSU Council leadership (Weiss 2005: 303, Hassan 1984: 6, Bass 1971: 980-\n81).11 The situation in the campus was said to \u201ccome close to a racial (sic) riot\u201d (Chai, 1977: \n54; Muhammad, 1973: 118-120). This tension between the UMSU and PBMUM exposed the \nfault line between those English-educated students on the one hand and the Malay-educated \nMalay students on the other. The incidents led the National Operations Council to appoint a \ncommittee chaired by Dr. Haji Abdul Majid bin Ismail to investigate campus life of students \nin UM. The Majid Report described the national language policy as carrying with it \u201cthe \nominous prospect of racial violence erupting for the first time in the Campus\u201d (Abdul Majid, \n1971: 97).12\n\n\n\nThe tension put enormous pressure on the university authorities to hasten the \nimplementation of the Malay language as the medium of teaching in the university. Though it \nwas recognized that drastic change was not possible, each faculty and department was required \nto draw up a language policy implementation programme for approval by the university \nSenate and the University Council (Chai, 1977: 54). The PBMUM successfully lobbied the \nuniversity administration to adopt a new rule in 1974 that required science students, who were \nmostly Chinese, to pass their Malay language examination in the first year and not at a year \nof the student\u2019s choice, as was previously the case (Silverstein, 1976: 200). This triggered a \nboycott of lectures launched by the Science Society calling for a more systematic language \nprogramme (Hassan, 1984: 36-7). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          67\n\n\n\nIn effect, from the point of view of the non-Malay students, they felt unfairly victimized \ngiven the fact that the majority of them had gone through their entire schooling in the English \nlanguage. The Malay language course was not even offered during the two years of their \nsixth form prior to university entry due to the lack of qualified teachers (Abdul Majid, 1971: \n100). Many lecturers also shared the sentiment of the non-Malay undergraduates that hasty \nimplementation of the Malay language in the universities through various measures posed a \nmajor discriminatory burden on non-Malay students, especially at a time when all lectures \nwere still conducted in English. \n\n\n\nThe way in which the use of Malay language was implemented in public universities \ncreated a backlash among the non-Malay students towards the language.13 Rather than seeing \nthe Malay language as a tool for national unity, the prevalent sentiment among the non-\nMalays was that \u201cthey were trying to impose their language so that they could do better than \nus\u201d.14 As a consequence, the Chinese students perceived the Malay language as a burden and \nan instrument of discrimination which imposes unfair and unnecessary disadvantage on them. \nThe reaction of the Malay students was generally unsympathetic. One commonly held attitude \nwas illustrated by this response, \u201cWhen I failed English I didn\u2019t complain. Why should the \nChinese always complain when they do poorly in Malay?\u201d (Basham, 1983: 71-3).\n\n\n\nIn June 1972, the UMSU student council under the leadership of a Chinese student, \nSim Kim Chiew, was toppled following conflicts between the council and the editorial board \nof the UMSU newspaper (Muhammad, 1973: 174-6). This was regarded by Hassan Karim, \na contemporary student leader who later became the secretary-general of the Socialist Party, \nPSRM (Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia; which was previously called Parti Rakyat), as a defeat \nof the student Left as many of the council members were from the Socialist Club. Those who \nwere opposed to the council managed to garner support through the use of communalist \ndiscourse (Hassan, 1984: 8). In his evaluation of the weaknesses of the pre-1975 student \nmovement, Hassan noted that the \u201crace problem\u201d, among others, had been an important factor \nwhich weakened the student movement. This dynamic was particularly visible in the more \nmultiethnic student population of UM (Hassan, 1984: 16).15 Muhammad Abu Bakar who \nexamined student politics during this period commented that communal polarization among \nthe university students was just a reflection and extension of what was happening in the larger \nsociety (Muhammad, 1973: 124)\n\n\n\nHassan (1984) also noted how the government and university authorities resorted to \ncommunalist approach to weaken the cohesiveness of the multiethnic front of the student \nleaders. This tactic was especially salient in the way government and university administrations \nhandled a series of massive student protests in 1974 which marked the peak of university \nstudent activism. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n68          Ting\n\n\n\nThe agitation began with the Tasik Utara incident which occurred in September 1974. \nA group of 134 predominantly Malay squatter families in Tasik Utara outside Johor Bahru \nsolicited the assistance of the university student leaders when their appeal to the government \nto annul their eviction order was ignored. They were especially indignant that the ruling \ncoalition, the National Front, had reneged on their electoral pledge to protect their homes. The \nstudents collected financial donations in solidarity with the squatters. Massive demonstrations \nwere organized by the students which were met with brutal police confrontation. In the face \nof police repression, the UMSU student council subsequently decided to occupy the UM \nadministrative premises so as to put pressure on the government to accede to the demands of \nthe squatters. \n\n\n\nNon-Malay student leaders were supportive of these student actions under the leadership \nof UMSU. Hassan (1984: 12) noted that besides student unions of all the five universities (as \nwell as the student union of the University of Singapore), the Socialist Club and the Chinese \nLanguage Society (CLS) of UM also released press statements in support of the Malay \nsquatters in Tasik Utara. The majority of the UM student population, including non-Malay \nstudents, were also firmly behind UMSU when the latter\u2019s attempt to take over the university \nadministration was sabotaged by a rival group of Malay students who called themselves \n\u201cnationalists\u201d.16 A joint statement in support of UMSU and the squatters were issued in the \nname of various student bodies representing the residents in the hostels and outside, the \nChinese and Tamil language societies, as well as the academic societies of various faculties. \nThe students on campus also responded to the call by UMSU to boycott lectures except those \nfrom the Arts Faculty (Hassan, 1984: 36), who presumably were under the influence of the \n\u201cnationalist\u201d group. Hassan alleged that the Special Branch infiltrated the top leadership of \nthe PBMUM and PMIUM (which were behind the \u201cnationalist\u201d group) to counteract the \ninfluence of UMSU by carrying out sabotage work with a racist and religious discourse \n(Hassan, 1984: 41, 43-4).17 He also criticized the Vice-Chancellor of UM for playing up racial \nissues against UMSU during the crisis of the occupation of the UM administration (Hassan, \n1984: 13). A few days after the event, UMSU was suspended.\n\n\n\nAnother wave of student agitation occurred in December of the same year in solidarity \nwith poor peasants in Baling. These peasants had demonstrated in late November against \nfalling rubber prices and rising inflation. The government responded by another round of \narrests. At one point, more than 1,000 students were arrested (Hassan 1984:15). Subsequently, \nthe government released a White Paper accusing the CLS of UM as the instigator of the series \nof social actions by the university students, ranging from their support for the Tasik Utara \nlandless Malay squatters, the takeover of the UM administration building in September, as well \nas the student demonstrations urging the government to look into the plight of Malay peasants \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          69\n\n\n\nin Baling. The government alleged that the Malayan Communist Party had succeeded in \ninfiltrating the leadership of the CLS, which in turn exerted its influence over the Socialist Club \nmembers in the student council to create social disruptions and campus unrest (Government \nof Malaysia, 1974). The allegations of the government appeared to contemporary observers \nas an attempt to use the racial card to distract the people from the real problems highlighted \nby the students. It was noted that the Tasik Utara and Baling issues concerned principally the \nMalay community and that it was especially the Malay students, not only from UM but also \nfrom other universities who had turned up massively in the demonstrations (Silverstein, 1976: \n201).18 As noted by a journalist, \u201cprotest about Baling was\u2026a gut reaction from the (rural \nMalay) students\u2019 own experience of rural misery\u201d (Peiris, 1984). It was generally agreed \nthat the main thrust behind the student agitation on the plight of the Baling peasants were \nactually Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) or the Islamic Youth Movement), Persatuan \nKebangsaan Pelajar-pelajar Islam Malaysia (PKPIM) or National Union of Muslim Students \nof Malaysia, and the left-wing Parti Rakyat (Peiris, 1984; Silverstein, 1976: 202). 1974 marked \nthe ascendant influence of ABIM on campus, as well as the Islamic revivalist programmes \nspearheaded by it. Its plausible competitor as embodied in the Socialist Club was banned and \ndecimated in 1974 following the arrest and forced exile of its key student leaders. At least four \nlecturers, one of whom was an active member of Parti Rakyat, were also arrested.19 In May \n1975, drastic amendments were introduced by Dr. Mahathir, the Education Minister then, \nto the 1971 Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA)20 which further downgraded \nthe rights and status of university student council and prohibited the students from getting \ninvolved in politics or being associated with any \u201cunauthorized\u201d group. Provisions which \nempower the university board to suspend or dissolve the student union or the representative \ncouncil deemed \u201cdetrimental or prejudicial to the well-being or reputation of the University\u201d \nwere also incorporated into the university constitution (LRB, 2002: 50).\n\n\n\nIslamist Activism\nThe vacuum left by the disintegration of political activism was replaced by religious \n\n\n\nactivism by different groups of Islamic missionary (dakwah) movements which flourished \nfrom the 1970s. Dakwah groups on campus differed in orientation from those focusing \nexclusively on the spiritual aspect to others who tried to link Islam with social concerns. \nRegardless of their differences in theological positions or organizational approach, there was \na general emphasis towards Islamic orthodoxy, the infallibility of the Syariah and Islam as \na comprehensive system of life (ad deen) (Mohamad, 1981: 1044). Its ideal was to work \ntowards the total Islamization of the entire Malaysian society. It was estimated that by 1980, \nabout 15 per cent of the undergraduates and graduates of local universities \u201cworked for the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n70          Ting\n\n\n\npurification of Islam\u201d through their respective Muslim student societies or Persatuan Islam \n(Mohamad, 1981: 1041).21 Those who took to this idea of the reconstruction of Malaysian \nsociety along religious fundamentalist lines, though limited in number, formed the hardcore \nof the various Islamist organizations. By mid-1980s, Zainah Anwar (1987: 33) estimated that \n\u201cat least 60 to 70%\u201d of the Malay students were involved in Islamist movements.\n\n\n\nIn comparison with the pre-NEP period, it is obvious that non-Malay students became \nincreasingly marginalized from the campus-level student leadership from the mid-1970s. The \nMalay-dominated campus politics evolved into intra-Malay rivalry among various dakwah \ngroups centered on Islam and campus issues, as well as between the so-called \u201cMalay \nnationalists\u201d linked to the UMNO-controlled Gabungan Pelajar Mahasiswa Semenanjung \n(GPMS) or Federation of Peninsular Malay Students and the more anti-establishment Islamic \nelements affiliated to PKPIM and influenced by ABIM (Jomo and Ahmad, 1992: 88). Mohd. \nShuhaimi (1995: 50) noted that political pattern of campus student politics during the 1980s \nwas a reflection of the dynamics among various Malay (Islamist and non-Islamist) groups in \nthe society, as the latter covertly and overtly extended their influence on university students. \nOn the other hand, he also noted that in UM, UKM and USM where the Chinese students \nwere more sizeable, the latter would form their own platform and cooperate with a group \nwhich was deemed friendly or more accommodative to their interests. From time to time, \nthey were able to influence the winning chance of one group or another and play the role of \n\u201cking-maker\u201d (Mohd. Shuhaimi, 1995: 60-1, 89, 101).\n\n\n\nZainah (1987) distinguished the dakwah movement on campus into two different \nphases. She described the first period under the dominant influence of ABIM as a moderate \nphase.22 The \u201cnationalist\u201d group, despite overt blessings from the government, steadily lost \nstudent support in the late 1970s and early 1982 to the Islamic group supported by ABIM \nwho provided ideological guidance and leadership. The influence of ABIM in campus politics \ndeclined when Anwar Ibrahim, the president of ABIM, joined UMNO in 1982, which rendered \nABIM much less critical of the government and less vocal on social issues. \n\n\n\nIn UM, the anti-establishment role of ABIM was taken over by an Islamist group \nknown to the university authorities as the Islamic Republic Group, which took control of the \nmost influential Islamic organization on campus, the PMIUM. The Islamic Republic group \npropagated an ultra-conservative perspective of the Islamic Representative Council which \noriginated in the United Kingdom, which tended to \u201crelate narrowly to Islam and campus \nissues, occasionally overlapping with Malay concerns\u201d (Jomo, Hassan and Ahmad, 1989: \n154; Weiss, 2005: 314; Zainah, 1987). This heralded the apogee of the second wave of Islamic \nresurgence on campus for Zainah (1987). She noted that the group believed in establishing \nan Islamic Republic in Malaysia after Iran. Arguing that the existing secular government \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          71\n\n\n\nin Malaysia is \u201cillegitimate\u201d and \u201cinfidel\u201d as it is based on a man-made constitution, their \nstruggle was to replace the system with an Islamic Republic with the Quran and sunnah as its \nConstitution (Zainah, 1987: 35). On cultural issues, echoing the contemporary public discourse \nof PAS (Parti Islam Semalaysia), they were preoccupied with condemning behaviour deemed \n\u201cmorally decadent\u201d such as women wearing immodest clothing, public display of affections or \nthe staging of campus activities purely for entertainment purposes (Weiss, 2005: 315; Zainah, \n1990: 34).23 The administrations in various public universities made a concerted effort to rein \nin the influence of the pro-PAS Islamist groups of Malay students by imposing academic \nconditions for electoral candidates or modify electoral regulations to curb the hegemonic \ninfluence of Islamist activists in student hostel committees (Zainah, 1990: 32-4).\n\n\n\nDuring the 1980s, Sanusi (1989: 247) lamented that campus elections at times turned \ninto interethnic rivalry. According to his observation, election campaigns often turned racial \nand at times created tensions among the students. Many of the issues raised by the students \nalso appeared to him to be \u201ccommunal issues\u201d. \n\n\n\nChinese-Malay tension flared up in UKM in 1986 during the Tanglung (lantern) Festival \nheld by the UKM Chinese students. During the gathering, two Chinese student leaders spoke \npublicly against the speech of UMNO president delivered at the UMNO General Assembly \nand a procession was held as a gesture of protest against the speech. Feeling upset, Malay \nstudent leaders of the \u201cnationalist\u201d leaning or pro-government group asked the gathering to be \ndispersed. When their wishes were not granted, they started tearing up the lanterns and both \nsides were up in arms. The incident led to a massive boycott of the following campus election \nby Chinese students. Others voted for the rival Islamic student group, and feelings of anger \nlingered on for some time (Mohd. Shuhaimi, 1995: 102-3).\n\n\n\nIn UM towards late 1980s, the pro-UMNO nationalist group co-opted Chinese students \nto form a multiethnic front to contest against the anti-establishment coalition of Islamic groups \nled by pro-PAS faction. The victorious multiethnic Barisan Mahasiswa Bersatu (BMB) or \nStudents United Front projected themselves as \u201cliberal, multi-racial and nationalist\u201d. That \nthis projection is more for the ears of non-Malays could be gauged by the fact that the \nmultiethnic front still claimed Islam as \u201cthe basis of its struggle\u201d. The competing PMIUM \nwho lost the leadership control of the Student Council dismissed the victory as the rejection \nof the Malay students of their orientation, but merely \u201ca victory for the Chinese and Indian \nstudents\u201d (Zainah, 1990: 32-4).\n\n\n\nAn incident that occurred during the 1989/90 academic session illustrates the communalist \nmentality of the UM student representatives affiliated with BMB. Che Mohammad Che \nDollah, the Secretary-General of the UM student council, formed a working committee to \nimpeach the Vice-Chancellor, accusing him of appointing his non-Malay friendly colleagues \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n72          Ting\n\n\n\nto strategic positions in the university. The issue was raised in the Malaysian parliament. \nNonetheless, his deputy secretary, Tan Ah Kaw, took an opposing stand. Crisis arose when \nChe Mohammad was unable to continue his studies and his position was vacated. Tan Ah \nKaw as his deputy laid claim to succeed him but it was resisted by his Malay colleagues \nin BMB. The latter only managed to appoint a new Malay Secretary-General after several \nunsuccessful attempts due to lack of quorum (Mohd Shuhaimi, 1995: 86).\n\n\n\nIn the aftermath of the Anwar crisis and in the face of the increased rebellious streak \namong the Malay students, pro-establishment factions in a few universities made big efforts \nto persuade more Chinese students into standing as candidates (\u300a\u4e1c\u65b9\u65e5\u62a5\u300b/Oriental \nDaily, 31 August 2003). In UM, the pro-establishment camps tried to project a multiethnic \nimage by having two Chinese Lions dancing to the Malay drum beat and Indian flute music \nin leading their candidate nomination procession (\u300a\u4e1c\u65b9\u65e5\u62a5\u300b/Oriental Daily, 31 August \n2003). In UKM where the newly established CLS sided with the pro-establishment faction, \nthey resorted to distributing 2,000 mooncakes to woo the goodwill of potential voters on \ncampus, taking advantage of the conjunction with the Chinese Mooncake Festival (\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5546\n\n\n\n\u62a5\u300b/Nanyang Siang Pau, 5 September 2003). As during the previous decades, from time to \ntime, the rival pro-PAS group also collaborated with non-Malay students dissatisfied with the \nuniversity establishment to form a multiethnic electoral front.\n\n\n\nDespite the projection of this fa\u00e7ade of \u201cinterethnic cooperation\u201d, interethnic barriers \nremained. In effect, the need to artificially constitute a multiethnic front was based on the \npragmatic necessity of mobilizing support from an ethnic group with a candidate from the \nsame group. The extent of ethnic segmentation in student associative dynamic was strikingly \nillustrated by the fact that the student activism following the Reformasi movement after the \narrest of Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 was organized based on coalition and collaboration of student \nbodies organized along ethnic lines. The Malaysian Youth and Student Democratic Movement \nestablished in 1998, for instance, though intending to be multiethnic and to rally students \naround the issue of student rights, democracy and human rights, ended up organizing mainly \nChinese students. Another national level organization which was active during this period, \nGAMIS (Gabungan Mahasiswa Islam Semenanjung or Peninsular Muslim Undergraduates \nCoalition), regroups the PMIs in various campuses and hence was evidently an exclusively \nMuslim organization. Members of the \u201cUniversiti Bangsar Utama\u201d (UBU) group initiated by \na veteran student activist, Hishamuddin Rais, in 1998 and organized on a non-religious basis \nwere predominantly Malay. Indian students were organized under a group called Jawatankuasa \nMahasiswa Ladang (JKML) or Working Committee of Plantation Undergraduates).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          73\n\n\n\nSituation of Interethnic Interaction in Campus\nThe earliest campus survey on interethnic relations was carried out around 1966/67 \n\n\n\nby Alvin Rabushka using mailed questionnaires sent to a random sample of around 200 \nundergraduates in UM. It was found that only about a third of the Malay and Chinese \nundergraduates mixed with students from other ethnic groups. Other ethnic groups, being \nin the minority (altogether less than 15 per cent) on campus, were largely \u201cmixers\u201d, to \nuse Rabushka\u2019s term (1969: 59-60). Hence he concluded that the majority of the Chinese \nand Malay students were \u201cclearly \u2018communal\u2019 or ethnically inclined in their interaction \npatterns\u201d. He also found that 3 per cent among the Chinese mixer respondents and 11 per \ncent of Chinese non-mixers thought that their own cultural way of life was the best. This rate \nwas comparatively higher among the Malay respondents: 13 per cent of the mixers and 28 \nper cent of the non-mixers. These rates of \u201cethnocentricity\u201d were probably lower than the \nlater generations of undergraduates. However, when it came to the issue of intermarriage, \nhe found that only a third of the Chinese mixer respondents were willing to marry with \nMalays though almost half of them did not mind marrying with Indians. Curiously, despite \nthe higher proportion of Malay respondents who preferred their own culture, 73 per cent of \nthe Malay mixers professed that they were willing to marry Chinese while 60 per cent of them \nwere willing to marry Indians. These rates were correspondingly lower for the non-mixer \nrespondents for both ethnic groups (Rabushka, 1969: 62). \n\n\n\nIt should be noted that this generation of undergraduates was quite different from the \nsubsequent ones as the majority of them would have received their education in English-\nmedium schools.24 It is likely that most of them were from the more anglophile background \n(perhaps also correspondingly, more \u201cde-culturalized\u201d from the students\u2019 respective cultural \norigins) of their respective community. This might explain the relatively low rate of \nethnocentricity as mentioned above, unless they were just giving what they perceived to be \nthe \u201cpolitically correct\u201d answers. What appears to be striking was that even though many of \nthem were probably rather exposed to interethnic interaction throughout their school days, \nonly a third of them mixed around with other ethnic groups.\n\n\n\nA study done by John C. Bock in the late 1960s among more than 7,000 secondary \nschool students shed an interesting light on the attitude of this generation of students. He \nfound that students studying in English-medium schools with a heterogeneous ethnic mix, \nparticularly those studying in the Arts Stream, had the greatest sense of ethnic distrust (Chai, \n1977: 60). This sentiment of anxiety and alienation was especially due to the intensity of the \nsense of competition in the face of the impending public O-level Malaysian Certificate of \nEducation examinations which would determine their educational mobility. That this anxiety \nand alienation was translated into ethnic terms was due to the heightened awareness in these \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n74          Ting\n\n\n\nschools of the ongoing government efforts to nurture academically bright Malay students for \nfurther studies (Bock, 1978). In fact, almost every Malay student who was admitted into the \npre-university class (Form Six) was automatically given a scholarship irrespective of family \nincome (Takei et al., 1973: 12).\n\n\n\nThe communalist tone of campus politics became more and more salient from the \nlate 1960s onwards. The context of May 13 racial riots and the unresolved frustration and \nalienation confronted by the Malay-educated university students in a predominantly English-\nspeaking campus environment had led to their radicalization as a pressure group for immediate \nredress to their grievances (Abdul Majid, 1971: 97), and in doing so, exacerbated interethnic \nantagonism. The Majid Committee that was mandated in 1970 to investigate the state of \u201crace \nrelations\u201d in UM, noted that: \n\n\n\nIn general, it appears to us that race relations in the campus are as \nnormal and, in ordinary day-to-day dealings, as cordial as they are \noutside. Beyond these social and superficial levels, however, we \ndetect a mutual indifference on the part of one racial group to the \nfeelings, concerns and problems of the other. We believe a mutual \nlack of comprehension and understanding exists between the \ndifferent racial groups leading to polarization on serious political \nissues and even to hostility in times of student crises. \n\n\n\n(Abdul Majid, 1971: 29)\n\n\n\nAs the last significant multiethnic front forged by the student movement was collapsing \nin 1974, ethnic estrangement and discontentment among non-Malay university students in \nthe face of the policy impacts of the government\u2019s race-based affirmative action were already \nwidespread and simmering. Richard Basham, an anthropologist who was lecturing during \nthe academic year of 1973-74 in USM provided a vivid ethnographic record of the campus \nsituation. Besides the hasty imposition of the Malay language requirements, he noted that the \nissue of scholarships was one subject which frequently engendered bitterness among the non-\nMalay students, especially those from a lower socio-economic background. They questioned \nwhy scholarships were given to wealthy or middle-class Malays whose academic performance \nwas lower than theirs (Basham, 1983: 65).25 In addition, many bright non-Malays became \nresentful especially as they began their job search towards the final year of their studies and \nfound that they were being passed over for the positions they were interviewed due to the race \nfactor (Basham, 1983: 67-8). Not only was there explicit racial quota in the hiring of people \nin the public service, there was also constant government pressure on big companies to hire \nMalays in executive positions (Basham, 1983: 63). \n\n\n\nSuch sentiment of Malay versus non-Malay antipathy appeared to be mutually \nreinforcing. A student of Chinese descent who was adopted by a Malay family claimed that \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          75\n\n\n\nMalay acquaintances only warmed up to him when they realized that he was a \u201cMalay\u201d. \nSimilarly, the initial acceptance of Chinese strangers turned hostile when he answered their \nquestions posed in Chinese in Malay (Basham, 1983: 69). Malay students found the non-\nMalay students on the campus unfriendly and \u201ctoo serious\u201d and did not like to share room \nwith them (p. 73). Malay lecturers who had just returned from overseas studies and took over \nthe teaching positions also felt themselves alienated from non-Malay students and unable to \nestablish trust with them. One Malay lecturer expressed his indignation of being perceived as \nracially biased when he gave a Chinese student a low grade (Basham, 1983: 66).\n\n\n\nMalay students, on the other hand, generally expressed support for the government\u2019s \nracial preferential policy. Nagata (1984: 96) noted that comments and opinions voiced at \nseminars on campuses revealed a \u201cstrong support for the direction of government policies \nand Malay rights, sometimes combined with unabashed anti-Chinese sentiments\u201d. If there \nwere any complaints, it was more in the line that the government did not do enough in \nimplementing the \u201cquota\u201d, or that the government was not genuinely helping the poor Malays \nbut just creating a minority of rich Malays. Many of them brushed aside the criticisms of \nthe non-Malays as exaggerating the reality of the implementation of Malay preferences. They \nalso tended to defend the policy as aiming to help the rural poor, the majority of whom were \nincidentally Malays. They appeared to ignore instances which indicated that race rather than \npoverty or area of residence was the principal criteria of discrimination (Basham, 1983: 68-9). \n\n\n\nThis difference in perception could be due to the fact that government attribution \nof scholarships had generally favoured far more students from higher socio-economic \nbackground than those from a lower social status. One socio-economic survey of 1983 batch \nof university graduates found that more than 80 per cent of all state and federal government \nscholarships and bursaries were accorded to Bumiputera students. While it was found that \nthese awards benefited rich households far more than the poorer households regardless of \nethnicity, intra-Malay inequality of opportunity was comparatively greater than intra-Chinese/\nIndian inequality of opportunity. For every chance a poor Chinese or Indian household has \nof being awarded a scholarship, a rich Chinese or Indian household had 13 and 10 chances \nrespectively. The disparity between poor and rich Malay households was found to be one to \n21 chances (Selvaratnam, 1988: 192). Seen in this light, the sentiments of both the Malay \nand Chinese students mentioned above, probably mostly from poorer family background, \nwere quite justified. In addition, the expensive science boarding secondary schools26 and \nMARA junior science colleges set up purportedly to help prepare Bumiputera students from \nlow socio-economic and rural backgrounds in studying science-based discipline at home and \noverseas were in fact found to have recruited more than 60 per cent of its students from the \nmiddle and professional classes (Selvaratnam, 1988: 191). It is precisely in this way that the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n76          Ting\n\n\n\nNEP had failed to live up to its own promises.\nIn his survey of 693 students in the five public universities in 1978, Thangavelu \n\n\n\nMarimuthu concluded that \u201cin universities where there were greater racial and social mix in \nthe student population\u2026there was also a strong tendency for students to group together on the \nbasis of ethnicity\u2026the situation of social interaction does not seem to have improved over the \ndecade\u201d (Marimuthu, 1984: 49). \n\n\n\nAbdullah Taib (1984) and Agoes Salim (1986) apparently made similar observations \nand remarks. Agoes was quoted by Mansor (2000/1: 101-02) when referring to the campus \nsituation as saying that,\n\n\n\nthe children who were too young to know or understand the racial \nclashes of 1969 are now the young men and women in the colleges \nand universities. These same people were brought up with very \nheavy doses of Rukunegara. They were imbued with a sense of \njustice and fair play; they were taught (sic) about the need of racial \ntolerance and understanding; they were exhorted to work together \nfor the good of the nation. Yet these are the very people among \nwhom there is great suspicion and cleavage. There is very little \ninter-racial mixing among the students in these institutions and the \nsituation seems to get worse rather than better.\n\n\n\nAccording to Mansor, both authors noted that different ethnic groups settled into their \nown groups when attending lectures; tended to patronize canteens operated by their respective \nethnic members; that one ethnic group tended to gravitate to one particular campus activity \nwhile another preferred a different one; that Chinese students could not identify with the \nprogrammes organized by the Malay-dominated unions; that Malay students frequently made \nrequests to transfer rooms in order to be with students from the same ethnic group (Mansor, \n2000/1: 102).\n\n\n\nThe early years of 1980s were also a time when universities in the United Kingdom, \nAustralia and New Zealand, raised their tuition fees for foreign students, which rendered it \neven less affordable for the middle class non-Malay parents to send their children overseas \nfor further studies. This situation rendered admission into local universities among the non-\nMalays even more competitive (Loh, 2005).27 From the point of view of the non-Malays, \nthere was no lack of issues which stirred discontentment. In 1981, for instance, it was learnt \nthat despite the acute problems of shortage of doctors in the country, UM had over the past \ndecade limited its annual student intake of medical undergraduates to 128 even though it \ncould train a maximum of 160 students. Among the 128 students, one third of the places were \nallocated to the non-Malays. The reason given for the limitation of admission was that there \nwere not enough Malay students to fulfill the quota (Lim, 1982: 418-19). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          77\n\n\n\nBy the end of 1980s, the situation of campus racial segregation not only did not improve, \nobservers were raising alarm on the situation of ethnic relations in the entire national education \nsystem. In 1986, Kua (1990: 259) had noted that \u201cthe phenomenon of communal polarization \nhas become alarming in the National School System itself, right from primary level to \nthe institutions of higher learning\u201d. This situation in fact had been detected in secondary \nschools even during the 1970s. A survey of several high schools around 1974 indicated that \nfriendship between Chinese and Malay pupils was mainly intra-ethnic in nature regardless \nof school environment (Basham, 1983: 69). A similar trend was noted by Sanusi (1989: 246-\n47) for the decade of the 1980s. He noted that it was not uncommon for the undergraduates \nto be confronted for the first time with the need to deal with interethnic interaction in the \nuniversity. \n\n\n\nTo complete this brief overview of interethnic relations in campus, we will compare the \ndifferent approaches taken by two surveys which arrived at a non-alarmist interpretation of \nthe situation. The first is a comprehensive random survey on ethnic interaction conducted by \nCentre for Economic Development and Ethnic Relations (CEDER) of UM in 2002. \n\n\n\nThe CEDER survey confirmed the general perception that most students speak their \nmother tongue with friends from the same ethnic group. Malay respondents tended to be \nmonolinguistic, speaking the Malay language to all and were the least likely to speak English. \nCommunication between Chinese and Indian students was conducted mainly in English \n(Jahara et al., 2004: 18).28 The feedback from discussions with student leaders in focus groups \nalso confirmed that most of the students tended to mix with those from the same ethnic \ngroup. A student stated that he socialized less with students from other ethnic groups than he \nused to in secondary school.29 In one residential college, the attempt to implement interethnic \nroom sharing was scrapped due to strong opposition on religious grounds. Nevertheless, the \nmajority of students did not think that there were any serious problems pertaining to ethnic \nrelations on campus (Jahara et al., 2004: 66-9).\n\n\n\nHowever, contrary to the position of Sheela Abraham, the CEDER survey concluded \nthat interethnic interaction among undergraduates was \u201csatisfactory\u201d. The survey considered \nhaving five or more friends from other ethnic groups as \u201cindicative of high level of interethnic \ninteractions\u201d (Jahara et al., 2004: 10).30 It was found that 61 per cent of the Chinese respondents \nhad five or more Malay friends, 54 per cent of Malay respondents affirmed having five or more \nChinese friends, while between 60 to 90 per cent of Indian and other Bumiputera respondents \nreported having five or more Chinese or Malay friends (Jahara et al., 2004: 11). \n\n\n\nThe findings of the survey confirm limited or moderate interethnic interaction among \nuniversity students. While it may be a priori desirable for a population not to be ethnically \nsegregated in their interaction, it seems to be unwarranted to describe such a situation as \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n78          Ting\n\n\n\n\u201chostile ethnic relations\u201d or threatening racial harmony without more serious substantiation.\nAnother academic who defied the prevalent negative outlook and made optimistic \n\n\n\nassessment of campus ethnic relations was Mansor Mohd Noor. As a student under the \nsupervision of Michael Banton, Mansor developed a research technique called ethnic \nalignment (Banton and Mansor, 1992), which investigates the responses of university \nstudents on hypothetical situations involving day-to-day practical issues such as renting out \nhouses, child minding, shopping choices or seeking business partners. Four similar surveys \nwere carried out consecutively from 1996 to 1999 among an accumulated 1,880 respondents \nin USM (Mansor, 2000/1). He concluded that there is an increasing convergence among \nstudents in USM in terms of sharing universalistic values and that students tended less and \nless to behave based on communal reasoning. He argued from his survey that in terms of \neveryday dealings, self interests in terms of pragmatic gains outweighed ethnic preference; \nand personal obligation overrode ethnic considerations (Mansor, 2000/1: 94-96). This new \ntrend, for him, is a cause for optimism regarding ethnic relations in the country.\n\n\n\nCommenting on the diametrically opposite assessment of campus situation in the 1980s \nby Abdullah Taib and Agoes Salim in his article, Mansor reasoned that they were looking at \ninterethnic relations solely from the point of view of competition over educational resources \nand the distribution of the benefits of economic growth. He argued that while defence of \nethnic privileges at the political level inevitably led to interethnic hostility, one should not \noverlook a parallel, emerging trend whereby the educated elite from various ethnic groups \nincreasingly shared common universalistic norms (Mansor, 2000/1: 101-3).\n\n\n\nMansor\u2019s work is interesting in pointing out that there is more to ethnic relations than \njust interethnic interaction. His results seemed to indicate that to a greater or lesser extent, \nboth Malay and Chinese respondents generally expected pragmatism to override ethnic \nconsiderations in finding practical solutions to their day-to-day situations. Although in the \nminority, there was nevertheless a greater tendency among the Malay respondents to manifest \nethnic preference (Mansor, 2000/1: 95). It is unfortunate that Mansor did not attempt to \nexplore further other social indicators (such as the extent of the prior interethnic experience \nof individual respondents) which might have a bearing on these attitudes.\n\n\n\nWhat appears to be missing in the innovative and interesting research of Mansor \n(2000/1) is a lack of examination of his assumption on the different levels of causes of ethnic \npolarization. In the formulation of research questions to study ethnic alignment, three sources \nof potential conflict were identified, namely ethnic loyalty, individual self-interest and personal \nobligation. Research questions were formulated in such a way as to test the relative strength of \nethnic loyalty when the situation set it against self-interest or personal obligation (Banton and \nMansor, 1992). However, the way the question was set overlooks the situation when ethnic \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          79\n\n\n\nloyalty goes hand in hand with self-interest and/or personal obligation, which is the classic \nsetting of the problem in the Malaysian context of ethnic preferential treatment. In addition, \nhis argument appeared to assume that it was the cultural heterogeneity and ethnicism which \nwere the causes of racial polarization. Once everybody shared the same universal values, he \nreasoned, then consensus and harmony would prevail, political tension arising from disputes \nover special privileges notwithstanding. Yet the political factors and the institutional effects \nthat he did not measure, as we have seen, were arguably the main contributory causes to \ninterethnic animosity and mistrust. The interethnic division caused by dispute over rights and \nprivileges is not the expression of some form of primordialist, irrational thinking but could \nalso be seen as a rational reaction based on pragmatic considerations of self-interest which \ncoincide with and reinforces ethnic loyalty. \n\n\n\nConclusions\n\n\n\nIs the phenomenon of ethnic polarization reaching a worrying stage in the Malaysian \ncampus? With the caveat on the non-comparability of some of the empirical findings, it \nappears that the pattern of interethnic interaction had not really evolved in any substantial way \nsince at least the mid-1960s. There were arguably even more incidents of serious interethnic \ntension during the sixties than in the current situation. This brings to light the selective and \npartial way the older generation of Malaysians remember their past. The findings of Alvin \nRabushka and John Bock, as well as our examination of campus politics, also challenge the \ncommon argument that English-medium education was able to foster a greater interethnic \nintegration by bringing together students from different ethnic groups under a common roof. \nAs noted by the Abdul Majid in his Report (1971: 120):\n\n\n\nEven if the student comes from a background of multi-racialism \nsuch as an integrated school, there is a possibility that once alone \nin the University, he may tend to seek out the company solely of \nstudents belonging to his own race and gradually lose those values \nbased on integration and multi-racialism. \n\n\n\nWhile there was definitely a great divide between the English-educated and Malay-\neducated university students, it was arguably more a class difference rather than an ethnic \nschism. Whether it was the national language issue or the affirmative action policy, the \nultimate issue of contention was arguably social and economic mobility. The division was \nalso ideological as it could be seen that the UMSU leadership was actually multiethnic. \n\n\n\nDuring the subsequent phase, as Islamist activism took hold, the much reduced number \nof non-Malay students effectively participated as a minority, adopting the strategy of securing \na better bargain between the political options offered to them by competing Malay groups. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n80          Ting\n\n\n\nSelective interethnic cooperation persisted in campus politics, especially when non-Malay \nstudents constitute a significant minority, but it was carried out in different forms under \nmodified circumstances.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  The ethnic composition of the sample was 50 per cent Malay, 25 per cent Chinese and 25 per cent \nIndian.\n\n\n\n2  Elements listed were the fact that majority of the respondents spoke Malay, the national language, \nfluently; supported national leaders and expressed their sense of loyalty by choosing Malaysia as \ntheir preferred country of residence.\n\n\n\n3  A macro-statistical calculation revealed that a student who studied in a government-assisted \nEnglish-medium school has one chance in nine of entering the pre-university sixth form classes \nin 1967 while the ratio was one in 176 for the Malay-medium students (Takei et al., 1973: 25-6). \nA survey done in 1973 among almost 600 students in USM indicated that 63.3 per cent of the \nrespondents received primary education in English (Basham, 1983: 71).\n\n\n\n4  By then, a small proportion of Chinese students who received primary education in Mandarin \nwhile continuing their secondary schooling in English had also appeared. However, even in 1973, \nthe survey done in USM only found 22.4 per cent of its student sample as coming from Chinese \nprimary schools while 52.2 per cent of its respondents were ethnic Chinese (Basham, 1983: 72).\n\n\n\n5  Prior to this, it had gone through numerous stages of initiation and re-naming from its foundation \nas Socialist Club in 1959. Attempts to resurrect it took the names of Pantai Forum (1964), \nProgressive Club (1965) and Forum Mahasiswa (1966) before it was re-launched successfully \nas the Socialist Club in 1967 (Muhammad, 1973: 46). One of the obstacles to its formation was \nthe reticence of the government and the administration in approving its formation (Sanusi, \n1968: 53). Non-Malay students\u2019 lukewarm reception was also said to be a contributory factor \n(Junaidi, 1993: 21).\n\n\n\n6  The PKPM which was formed in 1958 was composed of student organizations at the teachers\u2019 \ntraining college and other specialized institutions of higher learning besides that of UM. The \nstudents from UM made up more than half of PKPM members and its headquarters was also \nlocated in the UMSU building. UMSU called the tune in the early PKPM. In fact, at least a \nquarter of the office-bearers of PKPM were also senior office-bearers in UMSU (Silverstein, \n1970: 14). It was only from the 1970s, with the establishment of more public universities, that \nthis monopoly of UMSU over PKPM was broken.\n\n\n\n7  A resolution to that effect was passed by the fifth annual conference of PKPM held in March 1963 \n(Silverstein, 1970: 15). \n\n\n\n8  A note was added to Dr. Mahathir\u2019s letter, stating that, \u201cThose who say they are descendants \nof Malays are requested to copy this letter and circulate it widely so that it may open their eyes \nand know what kind of man our leader is, the man who is known as \u2018THE HAPPY PRIME \nMINISTER\u2019\u201d (von Vorys, 1976: 375).\n\n\n\n9  Funston (1980: 224) noted that Dr. Mahathir \u201cgained even stronger support from Malay academics \nand tertiary students\u201d than UMNO party members. It was during this time that Anwar Ibrahim as \na student activist established contacts with Mahathir (Khoo, B. T., 1995).\n\n\n\n10  PBMUM demanded a withdrawal of the statement by UMSU which denounced the former as \n\u201cperpetuating acts of vandalism and destruction\u201d. In a heated public debate on the issue between \nthe two camps attended by more than three thousand students, three quarters of which were \nsupporters of the PBMUM, the UMSU president subsequently agreed to withdraw the statement \nin its entirety \u201cto avoid any unpleasant situation\u201d. Even then, PBMUM was not satisfied and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInterethnic Relations in Malaysian Campuses          81\n\n\n\ncalled for the resignation of the UMSU leadership as having lost the confidence of the student \nbody (Bass, 1971: 980-1, Muhammad, 1973: 116-122).\n\n\n\n11  The UMSU leadership was retained after the no-confidence motion was rejected by the student \ncouncil by a three to one margin on 18 October (Bass, 1971: 981).\n\n\n\n12  During the UMSU-PBMUM dialogue session, Anwar Ibrahim, a former PBMUM president, \nwarned that if UMSU president, Zainal Abidin Yusuf, did not withdraw his description of the \nacts of PBMUM as \u201cacts of destructions and vandalism\u201d, PBMUM \u201cwould not leave the venue \npeacefully\u201d (Muhammad, 1971: 120).\n\n\n\n13  In fact, from 1970, students were required to get a minimum of a \u201cpass\u201d for their Malay language \ntests besides other previous academic requirements for them to obtain the O-level Malaysian \nCertificate of Education (MCE). It was reported that in 1972, for instance, half of the total \ncandidates from English-medium schools failed to get their MCE because they failed their Bahasa \nMalaysia (Malay language) paper (Chai, 1977: 44).\n\n\n\n14  Among the common responses of non-Malay students concerning the implementation of the \nMalay language were: \u201cWhat good is Malay when there are almost no textbooks in it and all \nscientific and technical words are borrowed from English\u201d and \u201cThe Malays only want to force \nus to learn Malay so they can pass us in [their command of] English\u201d (Basham, 1983: 71).\n\n\n\n15  Nagata (1984: 96) mentioned that in UM, \u201cone of the two principal student bodies, the Gabungan \nMahasiswa, is openly and militantly anti-Chinese, as opposed to the more ethnically neutral \nBarisan Mahasiswa, whose members the former accuse of \u2018socialism\u2019\u201d.\n\n\n\n16  Apparently, the leaders of PBMUM, PMIUM and the Silat Gayong (a Malay martial art) groups \nwere behind the \u201cnationalists\u201d (Hassan, 1984: 38, 43-44; Silverstein, 1976: 200-201). The group \nstood for the 1974 UMSU election but won only one seat (Hassan, 1984: 40).\n\n\n\n17  The \u201cnationalist\u201d student activists claimed that the UMSU action in the name of the squatters was \nmerely a fa\u00e7ade to slow down the switch from English to Malay as the medium of instruction in \nthe university\u2019s science faculty, in which the majority of the students were Chinese. \n\n\n\n18  According to one estimate, 90 per cent of UKM and Mara Institute of Technology (ITM) students \nand 60 per cent of UM students took part. In UKM and ITM, an overwhelming majority of the \nstudents were Malay (Nagata, 1980: 408).\n\n\n\n19  They were Syed Husin Ali, Tengku Shamsul Bahrain, Lim Mah Hui and Gurdial Nijar (Munro-\nKua, 1996: 82). \n\n\n\n20  The replacement of the 1961 University Act by 1971 UUCA based on the recommendations of \nthe Majid Report was already decried previously as seeking to control and weaken the various \nstudent organizations (Hassan, 1984: 7).\n\n\n\n21  Alternatively, Nagata (1984: 177) in her detailed study of the phenomenon gave her estimation as \nfollows: approximately 20 per cent of UM students, 40 per cent of UKM students, 10 per cent of \nUTM and UPM students and \u201cbarely 10%\u201d of USM students.\n\n\n\n22  According to the argument of Zainah (1987: 24), the ABIM-dominated phase \u201cwas progressive \nin its appeal. It did not see Islam in the black and white manner that the later dakwah adherents \ndid. While it was critical of the government and of government policies that it considered unjust \nand oppressive, it never vociferously called for the creation of an Islamic state. It believed in \nIslamizing the ummah first along a gradual, moderate and progressive path\u201d. \n\n\n\n23  Malay students were discouraged even from watching the television which purportedly would \ndistract them into neglecting God. Male students who talked to girls, wore shoes or dressed up in tie \nand coat were reprimanded as exhibiting behaviour associated with infidels (Zainah, 1990: 32).\n\n\n\n24  A small number of Malay undergraduates in the Arts faculty would have gone through their entire \nschooling in Malay. By then, Malay students of such background had just begun to join UM in \nsmall numbers. Comparatively, those Malay students who received their schooling in English-\nmedium still stood a much better chance of passing their examinations and being successful in \ngetting enrolled into the university. A study made in 1972 found that only 2.6 cent of the Malay \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n82          Ting\n\n\n\nstudents attending the better equipped English-medium primary schools failed to continue with \ntheir secondary education while the corresponding proportion of dropouts from Malay-medium \nprimary schools were 34.7 cent. The trend was the same for Chinese and Tamil primary school \npupils compared with their English-medium counterparts (Chai, 1977: 37).\n\n\n\n25  For instance, a final year Chinese student whose father was a farmer shared her indignation \nthat despite the fact that she was poor and excelled academically, she was not offered a state \nscholarship, while another Malay girl from middle class background who performed less well did \n(Basham, 1983: 65).\n\n\n\n26  Each of them absorbed five times more than the financial allocation given to a normal day school. \nStudents in these schools were provided with free board and lodging and given stipends as pocket \nmoney plus free transportation to and from home during the three slots of school holidays every \nyear (Takei et al., 1973: 13).\n\n\n\n27  In effect, the rapid increase in the demand for local university education just could not be met \nfully by the number of places offered, despite continued annual augmentation of the latter. While \n67 per cent of the applicants were assured of a place in the university in 1970, only 18 per cent of \nthem could be admitted in 1986 (Selvaratnam, 1988: 187-8). \n\n\n\n28  Among Indian respondents, 79 per cent reported having spoken English to Chinese friends either \nfrequently or very frequently (Jahara et al., 2004: 19).\n\n\n\n29  This was also the current experience of the daughters of one lecturer interviewed by the author.\n30  We could of course take issue with the definition of \u201csatisfaction\u201d of interethnic interaction in \n\n\n\nthe survey, which could have been defined in a variety of other ways. The definition is no doubt \nan arbitrary one, and having five \u201cfriends\u201d from other ethnic groups does not say much about \nthe nature or depth of such friendships. Nevertheless, given the subjective nature of the concept \nof \u201csatisfactory interethnic relations\u201d, this is a commendable attempt to introduce some kind of \nindicator which could be compared, verified or disputed.\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nABDUL MAJID bin Ismail, Dato Dr. (Chairman) 1971. Report of the Committee appointed by the \nNational Operations Council to study Campus Life of Students in the University of Malaya, Kuala \nLumpur: Government of Malaysia.\n\n\n\nABRAHAM, Sheela J. 1999. National identity and ethnicity: Malaysian perspectives, paper presented \nat the Second International Malaysian Studies Conference, Institute of Postgraduate Studies and \nResearch, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.\n\n\n\nBANTON, Michael and MOHD NOOR Mansor 1992. The study of ethnic alignment: a new technique \nand an application in Malaysia, Ethnic and Racial Studies, October 15 (4): 599-613.\n\n\n\nBASHAM, Richard 1983. National racial policies and university education in Malaysia. 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The development of universities in South-East Asia to 1960, Minerva, Winter \nII (2): 167-196.\n\n\n\nSILVERSTEIN, Josef 1970. Burmese and Malaysian student politics: a preliminary comparative \ninquiry, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, March 1 (1): 3-22.\n\n\n\n----- 1976. Students in Southeast Asian politics, Pacific Affairs, Summer 49 (2): 189-212.\nTAKEI, Yoshimitsu, BOCK, John C. and SAUNDERS, Bruce 1973. Educational Sponsorship by \n\n\n\nEthnicity: A Preliminary Analysis of the West Malaysian Experience, Ohio: Center for International \nStudies, Ohio University. \n\n\n\nVON VORYS, Karl 1976. Democracy Without Consensus \u2013 Communalism and Political Stability in \nMalaysia, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.\n\n\n\nWEISS, Meredith L. 2005. Still with the people? The chequered path of student activism in Malaysia, \nSouth East Asia Research, 13 November (3): 287-332.\n\n\n\nZAINAH Anwar 1987. 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"\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese: \nIssues and Challenges\n\n\n\nCHAI Sen Tyng* and Tengku Aizan HAMID**\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n       The United Nations (UN) defines population ageing as a demographic process in which the \nproportion of older persons aged 60 years and above increases in a country or geographical area. \nDepending on the indicators of population ageing, Malaysia is expects to reach aged nation status \nwithin the next two decades. The Department of Statistics estimates that the number of older Malaysians \nis projected to reach 5.1 million in 2034, making up about 15 per cent of the total population. Out \nof the 2.2 million older Malaysians aged 60 years and above recorded in the 2010 census, the rate \nof ageing differs among the Malays, Chinese and Indians. Lower fertility, longer life expectancy and \nemigration have accelerated the rate of ageing among the Chinese, of whom one out of eight is an \naged person. This proportion is significantly higher than those of the Malays and Indians. Past \nstudies show that the Chinese elderly are less likely than other ethnic communities to live with their \nadult children. With advancing age, the demand for long-term health care facilities and services will \ngrow, especially in urban areas. The issues and challenges facing the older Chinese population are \ninextricably linked to their current socio-demographic and economic status. Old age does not mean \nfrailty and passive dependency. While there has to be some rethinking in the approach of our social \nprotection programmes as society ages, we need to place more emphasis on the empowerment of \nolder persons and their changing roles. In view of the more rapid ageing process of the Chinese, their \nunique socio-economic and cultural milieu will give rise to a distinctive ageing experience that will \ninfluence and drive the social changes of Malaysia in the coming decades.\n\n\n\nKey words: Population ageing, Malaysian Chinese, socio-economic conditions, issues and challenges \n\n\n\n*     CHAI Sen Tyng (\u8521\u4fe1\u5ef7) is a Research Officer at the Institute of Gerontology, Universiti Putra   \n      Malaysia, Malaysia. E-mail: chez1978@gmail.com \n**   Dr. Tengku Aizan HAMID is Director and Professor, Institute of Gerontology, Universiti Putra Malaysia,  \n       Malaysia. E-mail: aizan@upm.edu.my\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 1-13\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n     The UN defines population ageing as a demographic process in which the proportion \nof persons aged 60 years and above in a country or geographical area increases. The latest \nworld population ageing report indicates that declining fertility and mortality rates are \nturning population ageing into a phenomenon \u201cin nearly all the countries of the world\u201d (UN, \n2013: xii). While the most aged societies are found in developed countries, it is the developing \ncountries that account for the majority of older persons in the world. Between 2000 and 2030, \nthe older population in developing countries are envisaged to more than double in number \n(Kinsella and Velkoff, 2001). While population ageing occurs at different paces in different \nparts of the world (Uhlenberg, 2009: 1), and it is taking place most rapidly in less developed \nregions such as Asia and Latin America (Kinsella and He, 2009; Fu and Hughes, 2009; \nKinsella and Phillips, 2005). Malaysia is one of the countries that will experience significant \nand rapid ageing over the next few decades. It took developed countries such as France and \nSweden 115 years and 85 years respectively to double their population aged 65 years and above \nfrom 7 per cent to 14 per cent, but it will take developing countries such as Thailand and \nMalaysia about 20 years to reach this level. \n         According to Chen and Jones (1989: 1), a population may be regarded as \u201caged\u201d when \nthe proportion of those aged 60 years and above reaches 15 per cent. The report on National \nPolicy for Older Persons (Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, 2011: \n3) estimated that Malaysia will reach this milestone by 2030 based on the medium projections \nof the UN\u2019s World Population Prospects (2009). In this study, \u201colder persons\u201d and \u201c60+\u201d are \nused to refer to those aged 60 and above. It will examine the situation of population ageing \nin Malaysia from an ethnic perspective, using data from past national censuses, surveys and \nreports.  \n\n\n\nDemography of Population Ageing in Malaysia\n\n\n\n          In the 2010 population census, the total Malaysian population (excluding non-citizens) \nnumbered 26 million, of which 67.4 per cent were Malays and Bumiputera, 24.6 per cent \nChinese, 7.3 per cent Indians, and 0.7 per cent others. The ethnic distribution of older Ma-\nlaysians, however, is a reflection of demographic patterns of the past (Table 1). Out of the 2.2 \nmillion persons aged 60 years and above in 2010, 56.9 per cent were Malays and Bumiputera, \n35.6 per cent Chinese, 6.9 per cent Indians, and 0.5 per cent others. One out of eight Chinese is \nan \u201caged\u201d person, a proportion significantly higher than the Malays and Indians (one out of \nthirteen). The higher rate of ageing among the Chinese is attributed to their lower fertility, \nlonger life expectancy, and emigration (Tey, 2004).\n\n\n\n2 3\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese\n\n\n\nTable 1. Total Population and Population of Older Persons by Ethnicity, 2000 and 2010\n\n\n\n   \nSource: DSM, 2011; 2001\n\n\n\n       Between 2000 and 2010, the population aged 60 years and above increased by 5.5 per cent \nannually compared with 2.2 per cent for the total population. The largest difference in growth \nrates were recorded for those 75 years and above which grew by 6.5 per cent annually (DSM, \n2001 and 2011). Since 1980, the number of older Malaysians (excluding non-citizens) has \ndoubled to more than 2.18 million in 2010. In the next 30 years, this figure will reach 6 million, \nbut in relative terms, this section of the population will increase from 8.4 per cent in 2010 to \nalmost 17 per cent of the total population in 2040. From Table 2, it is evident that ethnic differences in \nthe rate of population ageing will persist, although the national proportion of the older Chinese \nwill shrink. The number of older Chinese is projected to grow from 0.78 million in 2010 to 1.85 \nmillion in 2040, whereas their proportion will double from 12.2 per cent to 26.1 per cent in the \nsame period. This means that by 2040, one out of four Chinese will be an elderly person.\n\n\n\nTable 2. Population and Percentage of Older Malaysians (60+) by Ethnicity, 1980-2040\n\n\n\n* Including Other Bumiputera\n\n\n\n  Source: DSM, 2001; 2011; 2012\n\n\n\nYear\n\n\n\n1980\n1990\n2000\n2010\n2020\n2030\n2040\n\n\n\nMalay* \n381.8\n568.4\n804.2\n\n\n\n1,242.9\n1,889.3\n2,709.1\n3,704.3\n\n\n\nChinese\n311.6\n359.3\n501.0\n777.6\n\n\n\n1,153.8\n1,540.3\n1,854.6\n\n\n\n                       Population ( 000)                    Percentage within respective Ethnic Group\nIndian\n\n\n\n60.1\n77.0\n93.9\n\n\n\n150.3\n254.7\n373.5\n473.9\n\n\n\nOthers\n  5.9\n10.8\n12.5\n12.0\n21.1\n33.9\n47.0\n\n\n\nTotal\n759.5\n\n\n\n1,015.6\n1,411.5\n2,182.8\n3,318.9\n4,656.8\n6,079.8\n\n\n\nMalay*\n  4.69\n  4.92\n  5.64\n  7.09\n  9.12\n11.42\n14.23\n\n\n\nChinese\n  6.99\n  7.20\n  8.80\n12.16\n16.90\n21.87\n26.13\n\n\n\nIndian\n  5.05\n  5.47\n  5.59\n  7.88\n12.15\n16.82\n20.99\n\n\n\nOthers\n6.26\n7.33\n4.62\n6.32\n6.89\n8.70\n9.85\n\n\n\nTotal\n5.47\n5.61\n6.45\n8.39\n11.08\n13.95\n16.95\n\n\n\n2 3\n\n\n\nEthnicity\n\n\n\nMalay and Bumiputera\n     Malay\n     Other Bumiputera\nChinese\nIndian\nOthers\nTotal Malaysian\nNon-Malaysian \nGrand Total\n\n\n\nTotal \n14,248,179\n11,680,421\n2,567,758\n5,691,908\n1,680,132\n\n\n\n269,697\n21,889,916\n1,384,774\n\n\n\n23,274,690\n\n\n\n  60+\n804,166\n673,983\n130,183\n501,007\n93,861\n12,467\n\n\n\n1,411,501\n40,164\n\n\n\n1,451,665\n\n\n\n  % 60+\n5.64\n5.77\n5.07\n8.80\n5.59\n4.62\n6.45\n2.90\n6.24\n\n\n\nTotal\n17,523,508\n14,191,720\n3,331,788\n6,392,636\n1,907,827\n\n\n\n189,385\n26,013,356\n2,320,779\n\n\n\n28,334,135\n\n\n\n 60+\n1,242,865\n1,037,383\n\n\n\n205,482\n777,622\n150,339\n\n\n\n11,978\n2,182,804\n\n\n\n68,412\n2,251,216\n\n\n\n  % 60+\n7.09\n 7.31\n 6.17\n12.16 \n 7.88\n 6.32\n8.39\n2.95\n 7.95\n\n\n\n2000                                                           2010\n\n\n\n,\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid\n\n\n\n       The increasing proportion of the older population can be attributed to the rapid decline in \nfertility and mortality rates. Malaysia\u2019s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) reached replacement levels in \n2010, but that of the Chinese touched the 2.1 level in 2002 (DSM, 2006). Admittedly, the drop \nin fertility levels is consistent across all ethnic groups (Figure 1). This phenomenon is attributed \nto delayed first age of marriage, postponement of childbirth, higher levels of female education, \nincreased use of contraceptives and early termination of childbearing (Tey, 2006). The mean \nage at first marriage for females, for example, was the highest among the Chinese at 27 years in \n2010, as against 25.4 years and 26.1 years for the Bumiputera and Indians respectively (DSM, \n2013b).\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Total Fertility Rate by Ethnicity, Malaysia, 1965-2012 \n* Peninsular Malaysia only \n\n\n\n   Source: DSM, 2001b; 2003; 2006; 2011b; 2013   \n\n\n\n     Differences in life expectancy at birth and at age 60 by ethnicity are similarly evident. The \nChinese, both males and females, enjoy the longest life expectancies at birth and at 60 among \nall ethnic groups. A Chinese woman at age 60 in 2013 can look forward to, on average, another \n22.3 years of life.\n\n\n\n4 5\n\n\n\nYear\n\n\n\nTo\nta\n\n\n\nl F\ner\n\n\n\ntil\nity\n\n\n\n R\nat\n\n\n\ne\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n1\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n19\n65\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n66\n*\n\n\n\n19\n67\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n68\n*\n\n\n\n19\n69\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n70\n*\n\n\n\n19\n71\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n72\n*\n\n\n\n19\n73\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n74\n*\n\n\n\n19\n75\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n76\n*\n\n\n\n19\n77\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n78\n*\n\n\n\n19\n79\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n80\n*\n\n\n\n19\n81\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n82\n*\n\n\n\n19\n83\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n84\n*\n\n\n\n19\n85\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n86\n*\n\n\n\n19\n87\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n88\n*\n\n\n\n19\n89\n\n\n\n*\n19\n\n\n\n90\n*\n\n\n\n19\n91\n\n\n\n19\n92\n\n\n\n19\n93\n\n\n\n19\n94\n\n\n\n19\n95\n\n\n\n19\n96\n\n\n\n19\n97\n\n\n\n19\n98\n\n\n\n19\n99\n\n\n\n20\n00\n\n\n\n20\n01\n\n\n\n20\n02\n\n\n\n20\n03\n\n\n\n20\n04\n\n\n\n20\n05\n\n\n\n20\n06\n\n\n\n20\n07\n\n\n\n20\n08\n\n\n\n20\n09\n\n\n\n20\n10\n\n\n\n20\n11\n\n\n\n20\n12\n\n\n\n5.6\n5.4\n\n\n\n5.2\n5.0\n\n\n\n4.7 4.6\n\n\n\n4.3\n4.1\n\n\n\n3.9 3.9\n\n\n\n3.6\n3.4 3.3\n\n\n\n3.1 3.0 2.9\n2.7 2.7 2.7\n\n\n\n2.4\n2.3 2.3\n\n\n\n2.0\n\n\n\n2.5 2.5 2.6 2.6 2.5 2.6 2.5\n\n\n\n2.2 2.1\n\n\n\n2.62.6\n\n\n\n2.1\n2.0 1.9 1.9 1.8 1.8 1.8\n\n\n\n1.7 1.7\n1.5\n\n\n\n4.6\n\n\n\n3.4\n\n\n\n1.5\n\n\n\n2.7\n\n\n\nIndianMalay & Bumiputera ChineseTotal\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese\n\n\n\nTable 3. Life Expectancy at Birth and at Age 60 by Ethnicity, Malaysia, 1991-2013\n\n\n\n* Including Other Bumiputera \n\n\n\n   Source: DSM, 1997; 2002; 2013c\n\n\n\n         According to medium projections by the UN (2012 revision), Malaysia\u2019s older population \nwill reach 9.7 million in 2050. In 2020, the nation\u2019s median age is estimated to be 30.3 years. \nAs shown in Table 4, Malaysia\u2019s old age dependency ratio (65+/15-64*100), potential support \nratio (15-64/65+), parent support ratio (85+/50-64*100) and ageing index (60+/<15*100) all \npoint to a rapid population ageing trend (UN, 2002). \n        In summary, Malaysia\u2019s population is nearing the end of the third stage of demographic \ntransition characterized by low birth and death rates as the fertility rate reaches replacement \nlevels. The country is now entering a stage where the demographic window is closing for the \nfirst population dividend (Bloom et al., 2002). Echoing Pala\u2019s observation in 2005 on the growth \nof older persons between the 1991 and 2000 censuses, \u201cthe demographic and social trends of \npopulation ageing in Malaysia are moving at a quicker pace than observed 10 years ago\u201d (Pala, \n1998; 2005). Malaysia\u2019s population is greying rapidly and one of the notable features of the \nageing phenomenon is the different rates of ageing among different ethnic groups. \n\n\n\nLife \nExpectancy\n\n\n\nAt birth\n    Total\n    Malay*\n    Chinese\n    Indian\nAt 60 years\n    Total\n    Malay*\n    Chinese\n    Indian\n\n\n\n                             1991                 2000                     2010                2013 (Estimated)\nMale\n\n\n\n69.2\n68.8\n70.7\n64.2\n\n\n\n16.1\n15.7\n16.8\n14.2\n\n\n\nFemale\n\n\n\n73.4\n71.9\n76.4\n71.4\n\n\n\n18.1\n16.9\n20.2\n17.6\n\n\n\nMale\n\n\n\n70.0\n69.0\n72.4\n65.7\n\n\n\n16.7\n15.9\n18.1\n15.2\n\n\n\nFemale\n\n\n\n74.7\n73.3\n77.6\n73.5\n\n\n\n19.0\n17.8\n21.1\n19.1\n\n\n\nMale\n\n\n\n71.9\n70.7\n74.4\n67.6\n\n\n\n17.9\n17.1\n19.1\n16.9\n\n\n\nFemale\n\n\n\n76.6\n75.4\n79.1\n75.7\n\n\n\n20.1\n19.4\n21.7\n19.8\n\n\n\nMale\n\n\n\n72.6\n71.3\n75.0\n67.9\n\n\n\n18.3\n17.6\n19.6\n17.4\n\n\n\nFemale\n\n\n\n77.2\n76.1\n79.7\n76.2\n\n\n\n20.6\n19.8\n22.3\n20.3\n\n\n\n4 5\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid\n\n\n\nTable 4. Selected Indicators of Population Ageing, Malaysia, 1950-2050\n\n\n\nSource: Tabulation from World Population Prospects: 2012 Revision (UN, 2013)\n\n\n\nEthnicity by Stratum\n \n\n\n\nFigure 2. Distribution of Older Malaysians by Ethnicity, Sex and Stratum, 2010\n\n\n\n                     Source: Hamid and Chai, 2013, tabulated from DSM, 2011\n\n\n\n6 7\n\n\n\n2020\n\n\n\n3,520\n2,253\n\n\n\n103\n10.7\n6.9\n0.3\n\n\n\n16.2\n5.3\n1.9\n\n\n\n30.3\n44.2\n9.9\n0.5\n\n\n\n10.1\n45.0\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing \nIndicators\n\n\n\n60+ Population (\u2019000)\n65+ Population (\u2019000)\n85+ Population (\u2019000)\n% 60+ Population\n% 65+ Population\n% 85+ Population\nCrude Birth Rate\nCrude Death Rate\nTotal Fertility Rate\nMedian Age\nTotal Dependency Ratio\nOld Age Dependency Ratio\nParent Support Ratio\nPotential Support Ratio\nAgeing Index\n\n\n\n1950\n\n\n\n 448\n 309\n  n/a\n  7.3\n  5.1\n  n/a\n42.7\n14.4\n  6.2\n19.8\n85.0\n  9.4\n  n/a\n10.7\n17.9\n\n\n\n1960\n\n\n\n 434\n 280\n n/a\n  5.3\n  3.4\n  n/a\n39.5\n  9.5\n  6.0\n17.6\n95.8\n  6.7\n  n/a\n14.9\n11.7\n\n\n\n1970\n\n\n\n 587\n 357\n  n/a\n  5.4\n  3.3\n  n/a\n31.4\n  6.7\n  4.6\n17.4\n92.5\n  6.3\n  n/a\n15.9\n12.0\n\n\n\n1980\n\n\n\n776\n495\n n/a\n 5.6\n 3.6\n n/a\n29.5\n 5.5\n 3.7\n19.6\n74.1\n 6.2\n n/a\n16.1\n14.4\n\n\n\n1990\n\n\n\n1,028\n658\n23\n5.6\n3.6\n0.1\n\n\n\n27.5\n4.7\n3.4\n\n\n\n21.6\n68.7\n6.1\n0.2\n\n\n\n16.4\n15.2\n\n\n\n2000\n\n\n\n1,449\n900\n37\n6.2\n3.8\n0.2\n\n\n\n20.1\n4.4\n2.5\n\n\n\n23.8\n59.1\n6.1\n0.3\n\n\n\n16.4\n18.6\n\n\n\n2010\n\n\n\n2,193\n1,369\n\n\n\n62\n7.8\n4.8\n0.2\n\n\n\n17.7\n4.7\n2.0\n\n\n\n26.1\n48.2\n7.2\n0.3\n\n\n\n13.9\n28.0\n\n\n\n2030\n\n\n\n5,218\n3,590\n\n\n\n177\n14.2\n9.7\n0.5\n\n\n\n13.4\n6.1\n1.8\n\n\n\n34.0\n46.9\n14.3\n0.7\n7.0\n\n\n\n63.9\n\n\n\n2040\n\n\n\n7,006\n5,001\n\n\n\n350\n17.6\n12.6\n0.9\n\n\n\n11.9\n7.2\n1.8\n\n\n\n37.4\n46.6\n18.4\n1.3\n5.4\n\n\n\n91.4\n\n\n\n2050\n\n\n\n9,747\n6,959\n\n\n\n626\n23.1\n16.5\n1.5\n\n\n\n11.4\n8.3\n1.8\n\n\n\n39.8\n51.3\n25.0\n2.3\n4.0\n\n\n\n133.3\n\n\n\nPe\nrc\n\n\n\nen\nta\n\n\n\nge\n o\n\n\n\nf T\not\n\n\n\nal\n E\n\n\n\nth\nni\n\n\n\nc \nPo\n\n\n\npu\nla\n\n\n\ntio\nn \n\n\n\nPo\npu\n\n\n\nla\ntio\n\n\n\nn \nin\n\n\n\n T\nho\n\n\n\nus\nan\n\n\n\nds\n \n\n\n\nMale\nFemale\nPercent(60+)\n\n\n\n16.6 8.9571.442.3338.5338.2309.5288.6 306.6 350 46.8 62.3\n\n\n\n5.46\n\n\n\n9.83\n\n\n\n11.84\n\n\n\n15.43\n\n\n\n8.027.86\n\n\n\n400\n\n\n\n350\n\n\n\n300\n\n\n\n250\n\n\n\n200\n\n\n\n150\n\n\n\n100\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n18\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\n12\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n0\nUrban                       Rural                        Urban                       Rural                       Urban                        Rural\n\n\n\n  Malay & Bumiputera                                  Chinese                                               Indian\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese\n\n\n\nCharacteristics of the Aged Chinese Population\n\n\n\n       Malaysian Chinese aged 60 and above currently stand at 877,200 in number, representing 13.4 \nper cent of the entire community, and 35.6 per cent of the total \u201caged\u201d population in the country \n(DSM, 2012). The 2010 census showed that 688,505 or 88.5 per cent of the elderly Chinese \nresided in urban areas (Figure 2). Although only 89,000 older Chinese lived in rural areas, they \nshowed the highest rate of ageing (Hamid and Chai, 2013). The fact that the \u201caged\u201d Chinese \nmales out-numbered the females may reflect the dominance of male immigration of the earlier  \nperiod. The male-female ratio of the aged was consequently the highest among the Chinese \n(104.2), whereas the figures for the Malays and Bumiputera (91.9) and Indians (87.0) were \nmuch lower. \n       Corresponding to the distribution of the Chinese population in the different states \nand federal territories, the older Chinese persons were located mostly in Selangor (14.8%), \nPerak (12.4%) and Johor (12.4%) (Table 5). However, the highest rates of ageing were found \nin Perak (17.9%), Perlis (17.0%) and Melaka (14.8%) (DSM, 2011). Older Chinese were \nrelatively more numerous than other ethnic groups in Penang (60.4%), Kuala Lumpur (54.3%) \nand Perak (44.3%).\n\n\n\nTable 5. Distribution of the Older Population and Older Chinese Population by State, \n2000 and 2010\n\n\n\n*  Federal Territories\n\n\n\n    Source: Author\u2019s tabulation from DSM, 2001; 2011\n\n\n\n6 7\n\n\n\nYear\n\n\n\nJohor\nKedah\nKelantan\nMelaka\nN. Sembilan\nPahang\nPerak\nPerlis\nPulau Pinang\nSabah\nSarawak\nSelangor\nTerengganu\n*Kuala Lumpur\n*Labuan\n*Putrajaya\nTotal\n\n\n\n                                              2000                                                             2010\nNumber  \n   60+ \n\n\n\n172,390\n130,900\n  94,857\n  51,115\n  63,378\n  71,385\n189,763\n  18,767\n103,605\n100,168\n 133,541\n189,644\n  54,856\n  74,962\n    2,334\n        n/a\n\n\n\n1,451,665\n\n\n\n% 60+ \nwithin \nState\n6.29\n7.93\n7.22\n8.04\n7.37\n5.54\n9.25\n9.18\n7.88\n3.85\n6.45\n4.53\n6.10\n5.43\n3.06\nn/a\n\n\n\n6.23\n\n\n\nNumber \n60+ \n\n\n\nChinese\n70,393\n23,939\n4,944\n\n\n\n19,314\n22,387\n20,616\n82,770\n2,447\n\n\n\n61,366\n21,675\n41,256\n80,865\n2,307\n\n\n\n46,028\n700\nn/a\n\n\n\n501,007\n\n\n\n% 60+ \nwithin \n\n\n\nChinese\n  7.68\n   9.91\n10.07\n10.83\n10.56\n  9.44\n12.87\n11.77\n10.42\n  8.27\n  7.68\n  6.57\n  9.50\n  8.22\n  7.38\n    n/a\n  8.80\n\n\n\n  Number           \n      60+ \n\n\n\n278,028\n184,087\n135,935\n79,422\n91,920\n\n\n\n122,719\n280,118\n25,499\n\n\n\n159,285\n138,386\n211,181\n334,289\n78,058\n\n\n\n127,825\n3,483\n\n\n\n981\n2,251,216\n\n\n\n% 60+ \nwithin \nState\n   8.30\n   9.45\n   8.83\n   9.67\n   9.00\n   8.18\n  11.91\n  11.01\n 10.20\n   4.32\n   8.55\n   6.12\n   7.53\n   7.63\n   4.01\n   1.35\n   7.95\n\n\n\nNumber \n60+\n\n\n\n Chinese\n112,001\n36,791\n7,284\n\n\n\n30,610\n32,881\n30,607\n\n\n\n124,168\n3,052\n\n\n\n96,166\n28,098\n62,734\n\n\n\n139,120\n3,644\n\n\n\n69,446\n1,000\n\n\n\n20\n777,622\n\n\n\n% 60+ \nwithin \n\n\n\nChinese\n10.82\n14.39\n 14.11\n14.76\n14.73\n13.26\n17.91\n16.97\n14.34\n  9.50\n10.86\n  9.65\n13.79\n10.60\n  9.99\n  4.18\n12.16\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid\n\n\n\nIssues, Challenges and the Road Ahead\n\n\n\n       The issues and challenges of the older Chinese population are inextricably linked to their \ncurrent socio-demographic and economic status. The patterns of co-residence, utilization of \nhealthcare facilities and wealth of the older Chinese population are examined using previous \nsurvey data from the Institute of Gerontology, Universiti Putra Malaysia and other sources.\n\n\n\nLiving Arrangement and Proximity of Adult Children\n       Past studies have consistently shown that patterns of co-residence are strongly linked to \nethnicity and culture (Davanzo and Chan, 1994; Chan and Davanzo, 1996). From the 2010 census, \nthe average size of private households was the smallest among the Chinese (3.7 persons), \nfollowed by the Indians (4.1 persons) and the Malays and Bumiputera (4.4 persons). Out of \nthe 6.3 million private households in Malaysia in 2010, 62.3 per cent were nucleus family \nhouseholds and 32.6 per cent were extended family households. However, only 20.7 per cent \nof the 1.6 million Chinese households were of the extended type (DSM, 2013d). Pala (2005) \nshowed that in the 1991 and 2000 censuses, households with older persons made up about 16 to \n17 per cent of the total private households in Malaysia.\n        A 2008 survey of 1,885 households by Nurizan Yahaya and others in Peninsular Malaysia \nfound that only 50 per cent of older Chinese lived with their adult children, compared with the \nsample average of 62.5 per cent (Yahaya et al., 2008). The same study showed that one-quarter \nof the older Chinese respondents had at least one child living overseas, compared with 6.6 \nper cent among the surveyed households (Figure 3). A 2014 survey of older persons in 2,322 \nhouseholds in the states of Johor, Perak, Kelantan and Selangor showed similar patterns \nof elderly co-residence with adult children (57%) among the older Chinese (49.4%), Malays \n(60.1%) and Indians (66.7%) (Hamid et al., 2014). It is evident that living arrangement and \nproximity of adult children were affected by a number of factors in relation to the characteristics \nof both the older parent(s) and their offspring. \n        With advancing age, the demand for long-term health care facilities and services will \ngrow, especially among the urban Chinese. The increase in female labour force participation \nrate raises the question on the availability of family caregivers, and the longevity of older \nMalaysians increases the need for specialized care for the aged. It is no coincidence that the \nmajority of residents in old folks\u2019 homes and nursing homes are Chinese. It would be easy to \nattribute the emergence of the private residential aged-care industry to the eroding social values \nof filial piety and responsibility, but the reality is that with fewer children (and children overseas), \nolder Chinese have limited options. The challenge lies in ensuring a minimum standard of care \nin these long-term nursing homes and extending the access of such facilities and services to \nlower and middle-income families.\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese 9\n\n\n\nFigure 3.  Location of Children of Respondents Aged 60 and Above (n = 1,809), 2008\n\n\n\n               Source: Yahaya et al., 2008 and unpublished data\n\n\n\nUtilization of Public and Private Healthcare \n      In a recent study, Krishnaswamy and her colleagues (2009: 449) pointed out that in \nMalaysia, \u201cunderutilization of health care services showed a complex ethno-cultural \nrelationship\u201d and that \u201crespondents from certain areas, ethnic groups, and backgrounds\u201d have \npoorer service utilization in general. \n       Tengku Aizan Hamid and her colleagues conducted a nationwide survey in 2005 among \n2,979 older persons to document their health-seeking behaviour in the three months prior to \nthe study. It was found that fewer older Chinese (57%) needed to access health care facilities \nand services compared with the Malays (67%) and Indians (71%), and they also relied less on \npublic hospitals and clinics (Hamid et al., 2005). In another national survey carried out \nby a Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM, 2009) research team on a sample of 1,309 older persons \nin 2008, similar patterns were found wherein 42 per cent of the Chinese respondents used only \nprivate health care facilities and services exclusively in the past six months prior to the study \n(Figure 4). In general, older Chinese have more health care options and are less reliant on \ngovernment hospitals and clinics. This may be attributed to their wealth and urban living, but it \nalso means that they will be more susceptible to the rising out-of-pocket spending on health care.\n     The growing prevalence of chronic illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, hypercho-\nlesterolemia, osteoporosis, and heart disease, including the co-morbidities of common \nnon-communicable diseases, varies across ethnic groups (Teh et al., 2014). The national health \ncare system is under considerable strain and increased public spending is needed to improve \nuniversal healthcare coverage to reduce the burden of care-giving among the target population \n(Barraclough, 1999; Chee and Barraclough, 2007). \n\n\n\n80.0\n\n\n\n70.0\n\n\n\n60.0\n\n\n\n50.0\n\n\n\n40.0\n\n\n\n30.0\n\n\n\n20.0\n\n\n\n10.0\n\n\n\n0.0\n\n\n\nPe\nrc\n\n\n\nen\nt (\n\n\n\n%\n)\n\n\n\nAt Least 1 Child Living in\nSame Address\n\n\n\nAt Least 1 Child Living in\nSame Area\n\n\n\nAt Least 1 Child Living in\nSame State\n\n\n\nAt Least 1 Child Living in\nAnother State\n\n\n\nAt Least 1 Child Living in\nAnother Country\n\n\n\n62.6 64.5\n\n\n\n49.8\n\n\n\n72.1\n\n\n\n53.3\n\n\n\n59.0\n\n\n\n29.8\n\n\n\n48.5\n\n\n\n60.3 61.8\n\n\n\n51.7\n\n\n\n65.4\n62.1\n\n\n\n59.8\n\n\n\n72.4\n\n\n\n62.5\n\n\n\n6.5\n2.5\n\n\n\n24.1\n\n\n\n7.4\n\n\n\nTotal                             Malay & Bumiputera                     Chinese                          Indian\n\n\n\nProximity of Child(ren)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFigure 4. Utilization of Public and Private Healthcare Facilities by Older Malaysians (n = 1,309), 2008\n \n Source: Hamid et al., 2008 and unpublished data\n\n\n\nWealth and Asset Ownership\n          The issue of income security in old age has been extensively discussed by many researchers \nin the literature (Hamid et al., 2004; Masud et al., 2012; Masud and Haron, 2014). Differences \nin income and financial situations among older Malaysians are evident across ethnic lines. \n           An analysis of the 2008 national survey data by Hamid and her colleagues found that older \nChinese reported a higher mean monthly income (RM1,024) than that of the Malays (RM666), \nother Bumiputera (RM482) and Indians (RM358). Only 14.3 per cent of the older Chinese \nrespondents reported zero income, compared with the higher figures for Bumiputera (16.6%), \nMalays (19.7%) and Indians (34.7%). Nevertheless, the same dataset showed that a majority \nof the Malays (83.8%) and Bumiputera (69.4%), Chinese (69.8%), and Indians (56.9%) own \nat least one residential property and with slightly lower figures for land ownership (Table 6). \nThis pattern is consistent with the \u201casset rich but income poor\u201d situation of the elderly in many \nother countries. \n\n\n\n10 11\n\n\n\n\u03c72     =   56.34\ndf   =   12\np    =   0.000\n\n\n\nMalay\n\n\n\n75\n\n\n\n5\n6\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\nIndian\n\n\n\n84\n\n\n\n53\n8\n\n\n\nOthers\n\n\n\n50\n\n\n\n17\n\n\n\n17\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\nOther Bumiputera\n\n\n\n80\n\n\n\n6\n4\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\nChinese\n5\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n42\n46\n\n\n\nPublic health care services and facilities only\nPrivate health care services and facilities only\nBoth public and private health care services and facilities\nNone/Others\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese10 11\n\n\n\nTable 6. Average Monthly Income and Asset Ownership by Ethnicity, 2008\n\n\n\n   \n  Source: Hamid et al., 2008 and unpublished data\n\n\n\n        It is important to note that old age is not all about frailty, vulnerability and passive \ndependency. A Chinese saying states that \u201chaving an older person in the family is like \npossessing a precious treasure\u201d (\u5bb6\u6709\u4e00\u8001, \u5982\u6709\u4e00\u5b9d). The idea behind the saying is that older \npersons are a source of wisdom and knowledge founded on their life experiences. Unfortunately, \nmany older persons are not only marginalized in the national development but also constantly \nignored in their own home. While there has to be some rethinking in the approach of our social \nprotection programmes as the society ages, more focus is needed in the empowerment of older \npersons and their changing roles. Older persons should be viewed as a resource rather than a \nburden to the society. The older generations have contributed to the prosperity of the nation as a \nwhole, and we have a responsibility to reciprocate their past contributions. In her book (1954: \n337), Pearl S. Buck pointed out that \u201cour society must make it right and possible for old people \nnot to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares \nfor its helpless members.\u201d\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n      Population ageing in Malaysia accords with a general demographic trend that is seen \nin many countries in the world. The ethnic diversity of the population in Malaysia is indeed \nunique because of the differences in the rates and patterns of ageing according to ethnicity and \nthe social and cultural factors that come into play. It is evident that the Chinese community is \nageing faster than their Malay and Indian counterparts. It is this community that will bear the \nimpact of the many problems and issues associated with ageing ahead of the Malays and \nIndians. The unique socio-economic and cultural milieux of the Chinese are likely to accelerate \nthe process of ageing. As the Chinese ageing phenomenon is the precursor of future trends of \ndemographic development of Malaysia, it is essential that effective and practical strategies be \nput in place to deal with the future needs of the nation as a whole. \n\n\n\nEthnicity\n\n\n\nMalay\nOther Bumiputera\nChinese\nIndian\nOthers\nTotal\n\n\n\n                                                      Monthly Income                             Asset Ownership\n\n\n\nNumber \n\n\n\n  740\n   301\n  189\n    72\n      7\n1,309\n\n\n\nNo Income (%)\n\n\n\n19.7 \n16.6\n14.3\n34.7\n14.3\n19.0\n\n\n\nMean (RM)\n\n\n\n   666.09\n   482.01\n1,024.05\n  358.19\n  871.47\n   659.61\n\n\n\nStandard \nDeviation  \n   975.45\n   742.47\n1,555.49\n   987.98\n   806.17\n1,048.56\n\n\n\nProperty (%) \n\n\n\n83.8\n69.4\n69.8\n56.9\n14.3\n77.0\n\n\n\nLand (%)\n\n\n\n72.6\n55.1\n43.9\n25.0\n71.4\n61.8\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChai and Hamid12 13\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nBARRACLOUGH, S. 1999. Constraints on the retreat from a welfare-oriented approach to public health  \n        care in Malaysia, Health Policy, 47(1): 53-67.\nBLOOM, D., CANNING, D. and SEVILLA, J. 2002. The Demographic Dividend: A New Perspective  \n        on the Economic Consequences of Population Change, Population Matters. California: RAND.  \nBUCK, P.S. 1954. My Several Worlds: A Personal Record, New York: Pocket Books.\nCHAN, A. and DAVANZO, J. 1996. Ethnic differences in parents\u2019 coresidence with adult children in  \n        Peninsular Malaysia. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 11(1): 29-59.\nCHEE, H.L. and BARRACLOUGH, S. 2007. Health Care in Malaysia: The Dynamics of Provision,  \n        Financing and Access, New York: Routledge.\nCHEN, A. J. and JONES, G. 1989. Ageing in ASEAN: Its Socio-Economic Consequences, Singapore:  \n        Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.\nDAVANZO, J. and CHAN, A. 1994. Living arrangements of older Malaysians: Who co-resides with  \n        their adult children? Demography, 3(1): 95-114.\nDepartment of Statistics, Malaysia (DSM) 1997. Abridged Life Tables, Malaysia, 1991 - 1996. Kuala  \n        Lumpur: DSM.\n----- 2001. Population Distribution and Basic Demographic Characteristics. Population and Housing  \n        Census of Malaysia, 2000. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2001b. Vital Statistics Time Series, Malaysia, 1963-1998. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2002. Abridged Life Tables, Malaysia (Preliminary Release), 1999-2001. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2003. Vital Statistics, Malaysia, 2003. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2006. Vital Statistics, Malaysia, Special Edition, 2001-2006. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2011. Population Distribution and Basic Demographic Characteristics 2010. Population and Housing  \n         Census of Malaysia, 2010. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2011b. Vital Statistics, Malaysia 2010. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2012. Population Projections, Malaysia: 2010-2040. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2013. Vital Statistics, Malaysia 2012. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2013b. Education and Social Characteristics of the Population 2010. Population and Housing Census  \n        of Malaysia, 2010. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2013c. Abridged Life Tables, Malaysia, 2010-2013. Putrajaya: DSM.\n----- 2013d. Characteristics of Household 2010. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia, 2010.  \n        Putrajaya: DSM.\nFU, T. and HUGHES, R. (eds) 2009. Ageing in East Asia: Challenges and Policies for the 21st Century.  \n        London: Routledge Press.\nHAMID, T.A. and CHAI, S.T. 2013. Meeting the needs of older Malaysians: Expansion, diversification  \n        and multi-sector collaboration. Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, 50(2): 157-174.\n-----, MASUD, J. and CHAI, S.T. 2004. Socioeconomic status of older Malaysians: A gender comparison,  \n        Malaysian Journal of Family Studies, 1(1): 54-69.\n-----, MASUD, J., ABDUL RASHID, S.N.S., YASSIN, Z., AHMAD, Z., IBRAHIM, R., ISMAIL, N.A.,  \n        ABDULLAH, S.F.Z., CHAI, S.T. 2008. Review of the national policy for the elderly and plan of  \n        action. Unpublished data. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese12 13\n\n\n\n-----, HARON, S.A., IBRAHIM, R., ISMAIL, N.W., MOHAMED NOR, N., ALJUNID, S.M., ONG,  \n        F.S., KAMARUZZAMAN, S.B., SHAFIE, A.A., RAZALI, R., MOHAMED SHARIFF, A.R.,  \n        SAID, R., MASUD, J., MUHAMMAD NUR, A., SALLEH, M., YUSOFF, S., AZMAN A., \n        MADON Z., AHMED, Z., MASTURA, A., KAHAR, R., HARUN, S., KORIS, R., CHAI, S.T.,     \n        BAGAT, M.F., ABDULLAH, S.S. and ISMAIL, N.A. 2014. Identifying psychosocial and \n        economic risk factors and quantifying the costs of age-related cognitive impairment: Implications  \n        of population ageing in Malaysia. Unpublished data. \n-----, LOW W.Y., ISMAIL, R., YAHAYA, N., ABDUL RASHID, S.N.S., ABU SAMAH, A.,  \n        EBENEZER, E.G., YUSOFF, S., YAU, W.K., DRAHMAN, I. and SHABAS, S. 2005. Mental \n        health and quality of life of older Malaysians. Unpublished data. \nKINSELLA, K. and HE, W. 2009. An Aging World: 2008. International Population Reports, P95/09-1,  \n        Washington: U. S. Census Bureau.\n----- and PHILLIPS, D.R. 2005. Global aging: The challenge of success. Population Bulletin, 60(1): 5-42.\n----- and VELKOFF, V. A. 2001. An Aging World: 2001. International Population Reports, P95/01-1.  \n         Washington: U. S. Census Bureau.\nKRISHNASWAMY, S., SUBRAMANIAM, K., LOW, W.Y., AZIZ, J.A., INDRAN, T., RAMACHANDRAN,  \n         P., HAMID, A.R. and PATEL, V. 2009. Factors contributing to utilization of health care services in  \n         Malaysia: A population-based study, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, 21(4): 442-450.\nMASUD, J. and HARON, S.A. 2014. Income disparity among older Malaysians. Research in Applied  \n        Economics, 6(2): 116-131. \n-----, SABRI, M.F. and HARON, S.A. 2012. Ethnic differences in financial practices of Malaysian elderly.  \n        Malaysian Journal of Consumer and Family Economics, 15: 54-70.\nMinistry of Women, Family and Community Development (2011). Dasar dan Pelan Tindakan Warga  \n        Emas Negara. Putrajaya: KPWKM.\nPALA, J. 2005. Population Ageing Trends in Malaysia. Monograph Series, Population Census 2000.  \n        Putrajaya: Department of Statistics, Malaysia. \n----- 1998. Senior Citizens and Population Ageing in Malaysia. Population Census Monograph Series.  \n        Kuala Lumpur: Department of Statistics, Malaysia. \nTEH, J.K.L., TEY, N.P. and NG, S.T. 2014. Ethnic and gender differentials in non-communicable diseases  \n        and self-rated health in Malaysia, PLoS ONE, 9(3): e91328. Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0091328.\nTEY, N.P. 2004. Causes and consequences of demographic change in the Chinese community in Malaysia.  \n        In The Chinese Population in Malaysia: Trends and Issues, edited by Voon Phin Keong, Kuala  \n        Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies:  15-48.\n----- 2006. Population and development trends. In Our People Our Future: Malaysian Population in  \n        Perspective, edited by Y.L. Wong  and N.P. Tey, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press: 7-28.\nUHLENBERG, P. 2009. International Handbook of Population Ageing. New York: Springer.\nUnited Nations (UN) 2013. World Population Ageing 2013. Population Division, Department of  \n        Economic and Social Affairs, ST/ESA/SER.A/348, UN: New York.\n----- 2013b. World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision. Available from Population Division, Department  \n        of Economic and Social Affairs Website, http://esa.un.org/unpp/\n----- 2002. World Population Ageing: 1950-2050. New York: Population Division, Department of Economic  \n        and Social Affairs.\nUniversiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) 2009. Laporan Akhir Kajian Semula Dasar Warga Tua Negara dan  \n        Pelan Tindakan Dasar Warga Tua Negara. Serdang: UPM Consultancy and Services.\nYAHAYA, N., HAMID, T.A., ABU SAMAH, A., OTHMAN, M., ARIF, A.M.M., and SABRI, B. 2008.             \n        Patterns of social relationships and psychological well-being among older persons in Peninsular  \n        Malaysia. Unpublished data. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n47\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 1-34\n\n\n\nExamining the Demographic Changes of the \nEthnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975\n\n\n\nRamses AMER*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis study examines demographic developments of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam since 1975. \nIt begins with the patterns of demographic change since the mid-1970s that shows a considerable \ndecline in the number of Chinese as indicated by the official censuses of 1976 and 1979. The period \nwas characterized by large-scale migration of the Chinese out of the former Democratic Republic of \nVietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the former Republic of Vietnam (ROV or South Vietnam). The \npolicies of socialist transformation were a major factor in the exodus from the South while in the North \nit was the deterioration in relations between Vietnam and China that triggered the exodus. The Chinese \npopulation has continued to diminish up to 2009 but at a more moderate pace than in the late 1970s.\n\n\n\nKey words:  Ethnic Chinese, Vietnam, China, demography, migration\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nThis study investigates demographic developments relating to the ethnic Chinese in \nVietnam. A core dimension is the patterns of growth and decline in the number of Chinese \nin Vietnam since 1975 when the Vietnam War came to an end. The context in which the \ndemographic changes have taken place is outlined and factors influencing the patterns of \nchange and their effects on migration flows are identified and analysed.\n\n\n\nThe terms \u201cChinese community\u201d and \u201cethnic Chinese\u201d refer to persons living in Vietnam \nwho identify themselves as being of Chinese ethnicity, regardless of their citizenship. The term \n\u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d is not used as it denotes a citizen of either China or Taiwan.1 Vietnamese \n\n\n\n*  Dr. AMER is Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Research, Senior Research Fellow, Department \nof Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, Sweden. E-mail: ramsesamer@gmail.com\n\n\n\nThis study is an updated and revised version of selected parts of a paper prepared for \nthe 7th Conference of The International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO) \non \u201cMigration, Indigenization and Exchange: Chinese Overseas from Global Perspectives\u201d \norganized by Nanyang Technological University and Chinese Heritage Centre, Singapore, 7\u201310 \nMay 2010 (Amer, 2010a). It draws on research on the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam carried out by \nthe author since the late 1980s. The final work on the study was carried out while the author was \nVisiting Senior Fellow, Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Humanities and \nSocial Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2          Amer\n\n\n\nresearch on the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam uses the term \u201cmicroethnic\u201d to denote all minority \ngroups in the country and \u201cmacroethnic\u201d to denote the majority group, i.e. Kinh, which is \nthe official name used in Vietnamese censuses. The rationale is that terms such as \u201cChinese \nminority, Overseas Chinese, Chinese Community, or Chinese migrants\u201d have derogatory and \ndiscriminatory connotations associated with the nationality policies of the French colonial \nauthorities and the authorities in South Vietnam (Mac, 1994a: 219 and 1994b: 42). However, \nthe terms \u201cChinese community\u201d and \u201cethnic Chinese\u201d are used in this study. \n\n\n\nOfficial terminology in the Vietnamese censuses in the former North Vietnam and also \nin Vietnam as a whole after 1975 identifies three ethnic groups as ethnic Chinese. These are \nthe Hoa, the Ng\u00e1i, and the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu.2 Vietnamese authorities seem to associate the Hoa as Han \nChinese in origin and the Ng\u00e1i and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu as non-Han people from China.\n\n\n\nThis study begins with an outline of the demographic developement of the Chinese \nfollowed by an examination of the policies and developments in the former Republic of \nVietnam (South Vietnam) after 1975; the exodus of Chinese from the former Democratic \nRepublic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in 1978; and the large-scale exodus by boat in 1978 \nand 1979. The relability of the Vietnamese population statistics is next assessed, following \nwhich developments relating to the Chinese in the country since 1979 and the continued \ndecline of the Chinese population are examined. The study concludes by giving a summary \nof the main findings and the broad analysis. \n\n\n\nDemographic Developments after 1975\n\n\n\nThe first official census was carried out in unified Vietnam in 1979, and repeated \nthereafter every ten years. A census carried out in the former South Vietnam in early 1976 \nprovides the basis for an official estimate for the whole country. This estimate and the four \ncensuses of 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009 provide data on the Hoa and the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu. The 1979 \ncensus provides a figure on the Ng\u00e1i group, namely, 1,318 persons (Census 1979, 1983: 104). \nThis group is omitted in the 1989 census, but re-appears in the 1999 census with a figure of \n4,841 (Census 1999, 2001: 21), and is reported as 1,035 in the 2009 census (Census 2009, \n2010: 135). Given the lack of comparative data for the Ng\u00e1i and the small number of the \ngroup it will not be the subject of further attention in this study. \n\n\n\nThe population of the Hoa in Vietnam has declined unabated since 1976 (Table 1). From \n2.6 per cent of the total population in 1976, the Hoa made up barely 1 per cent in 2009 (Table \n2). The population in Vietnam as a whole has been growing since 1976 and the Hoa were the \nsecond largest ethnic group after the majority Kinh community. In 1989, they had dropped to \nfifth place and continued to decline further to eighth place by 2009. The Hoa community is \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           3\n\n\n\nthe only major ethnic group whose number has diminished between 1976 and 2009 (Census \n1976, 1976: 18, Census 1979, 1983: 104, Census 1989b, 1991: 66, Census 1999, 2001: 21, \nCensus 2009, 2010: 134). 3\n\n\n\nTable 1. Number of Hoa in Vietnam 1976, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009\nEstimate/Census Total Increase/Decrease (%)\n1976 1,236,000 -\n01-10-1979 935,074 -24.35\n01-04-1989 900,185 -3.73\n01-04-1999 862,371 -4.20\n01-04-2009 823,041 -4.78\n\n\n\nSources: Census 1976, 1976: 18; Census 1979, 1983: 104; Census 1989b, 1991: 66; Census 1999, \n2001: 21; Census 2009, 2010: 134 \n\n\n\nTable 2. The Hoa as a Percentage of the Total Population of Vietnam, \n1976, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009\n\n\n\nEstimate/Census Hoa Total Population % of Hoa \n1976 1,236,000 48,060,000 2.57\n01-10-1979 935,074 52,741,766 1.77\n01-04-1989 900,185 64,375,762 1.40\n01-04-1999 862,373 76,323,173 1.13\n01-04-2009 823,071 85,846,997 0.96\n\n\n\nSources: Census 1976, 1976: 18; Census 1979, 1983: 104; Census 1989b, 1991: 66; Census 1999, \n2001: 21; Census 2009, 2010: 134\n\n\n\nIt is necessary to examine the demographic evolution of the Hoa in the former North \nVietnam and South Vietnam after 1975. Census data show a significant and dramatic \ndepopulation of the Hoa community from a quarter of a million in 1974 to a mere 53,000 in \n1979, or a decline of 79 per cent. The number has since hovered around 50,000 or so up to \n2009 (see Table 3).\n\n\n\nTable 3. Number of Hoa in Former Democratic Republic of Vietnam\n in 1974, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009\n\n\n\nCensus Total Increase/Decrease (%)\n01-04-1974 256,534 -\n01-10-1979 53,672 - 79.08\n01-04-1989  49,040  - 8.63\n01-04-1999 50,172  +6.39\n01-04-2009 52,116  +3.87\n\n\n\nSources: Census 1974, DRV, 1976: 28; Census 1979, 1983: 105-115; Census 1989b, 1991: 68, 70-91; \nCensus 1999, 2001: 22-50; Census 2009, 2010: 148-164\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           5\n\n\n\nIn the former South Vietnam, the decline in the population of the Hoa community was \ncontinuous but more gradual. After a 7.6 per cent reduction between 1976 and 1979, the \ndecline had stabilized at 3 to 5 per cent between each census up to 2009 (Table 4).\n\n\n\nTable 4. Number of Hoa in Former Republic of Vietnam \n in 1976, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009\n\n\n\nCensus Total Increase/Decrease (%)\n01-02-1976 949,825 -\n01-10-1979 877,691 - 7.59\n01-04-1989 850,614 - 3.09\n01-04-1999  809,516 -5.08\n01-04-2009 770,955 - 4.76\n\n\n\nSources: Census 1976, ROV, 1976: 339; Census 1979, 1983: 115\u2013124; Census 1989b, 1991: 69, 91-\n114; Census 1999, 2001: 51-82; Census 2009, 2010: 149-225 \n\n\n\nChanges in the population of the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu group contrast sharply with that of the Hoa. \nUnlike the Hoa, this group has been growing in number from 57,440 in 1974 to 146,821 in \n2009. The growth is particularly significant in relative terms in the 1980s and 1990s (Table \n5). 4 \n\n\n\nTable 5. Number of S\u00e1n D\u00ecu in Vietnam in 1974, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009\nCensus Total Increase/Decrease (%)\n01-04-1974 57,440 -\n01-10-1979 65,808 + 14.57\n01-04-1989  94,630 + 43.80\n01-04-1999 126,237 + 33.40\n01-04-2009 146,821 + 16.31\n\n\n\nSources: Census 1974, DRV, 1976: 28; Census 1979, 1983: 104; Census 1989b, 1991: 66; Census 1999, \n2001: 21; Census 2009, 2010: 148\n\n\n\nThe distribution of the Hoa and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu ethnic groups in the major cities and provinces \nin 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009 is shown in the Appendices. It is clear that, unlike the Hoa, the \nmajority of the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu reside in the former North Vietnam. \n\n\n\nFrom the mid-1970s to 2009, the decline in the population of the Hoa is in sharp contrast \nto the growth of the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu. This period has witnessed an overall growth in the Vietnamese \npopulation. Given this situation, the study will explore contending explanations to the \ndemographic decline of the Hoa ethnic group between 1975 and 2009 with a focus on the late \n1970s. 5 As the pattern of Chinese migration from Vietnam varied considerably and different \nfactors affected the outflows from different parts of the country, it is necessary to study the \nsituations in the North and the South of the country separately. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           5\n\n\n\nThe causes behind the decline of the ethnic Chinese population will be sought within the \ncontext of the overall policy of the Vietnamese authorities towards this community. Socialist \neconomic policies to nationalize private trade, enterprises and land were adopted to transform \nSouth Vietnam into a socialist and classless society in line with the North Vietnam model \n(Amer, 1991: 16, 24). The implementation of such policies directly affected Chinese business \ninterests and could have forced some Chinese to leave. However, the most dramatic decline \nin the Chinese population occurred in former North Vietnam during the second half of the \n1970s, and this decline cannot be explained by the implementation of socialist policies that \nhad been in place since 1954. Other causes have to be identified, both internal to Vietnam and \nin its relations with China.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese in the South: Spring 1975 to Spring 1978\n\n\n\nEconomic Policies\nAfter the end of the war in 1975 the Vietnamese authorities faced two major challenges. \n\n\n\nThe first was to rebuild the country that had been devastated by the Vietnam War, and the other \nwas to transform the economy and life in South Vietnam in keeping with the socialist ideals \nof the North (On the Eve, 1986: 12, K. Nguyen, 1985: 2). One of the measures to cope with \nunemployment in the larger cities, primarily in Ho Chi Minh City,6 was to send people to so-\ncalled New Economic Zones (NEZ). Parts of the countryside in the South had been abandoned \nduring the war arising from the forced movement of the population into strategic hamlets and \nthe spontaneous migration to the cities to avoid the war. After 1975 a NEZ programme was \nintroduced to carry out the resettlement of areas abandoned during the war (The Boat People, \n1979: 25-26). The NEZ was also connected with the restructuring of the economy. The aim \nwas to encourage people who were found in \u201cunproductive\u201d activities in the larger cities to \nengage in production in the NEZ. This would fulfil the goals of increasing food production \nby cultivating more land and promoting state control of the economy. In agriculture, the \nauthorities attempted to collectivize the peasantry in the South. This succeeded in the centre \nof the country, but not in the Mekong delta, which remained largely non-collectivized even \nby the end of the 1970s (4th National Congress, 1977: 64, 95; Fforde and De Vylder, 1988: 61 \nand 1996: 128-129; The Boat People, 1979: 25-26; Vo, 1990: 72-79).\n\n\n\nThe Vietnamese authorities also initiated several moves in order to gain control over the \neconomic life of the South. In late September 1975 a currency reform was announced. The \nold currency was to be replaced and a certain amount of the new currency would be put into \nstate-controlled accounts (Tran, 1993; Woodside, 1979: 394). At the same time a campaign \ncode-named \u201cX1\u201d was launched against the \u201ccomprador bourgeoisie\u201d who had large assets \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           7\n\n\n\nand whose industrial and commercial properties were to be confiscated (Tran, 1993: 81-82; \nVo, 1990: 64-66). To curb speculation, hoarding of goods, and tendencies to monopolize \nthe market, enterprises were mandated to register their machinery, vehicles, spare-parts, and \nstocks (Stern, 1985a: 259-263 and 1987a: 123-124).\n\n\n\nBeginning in October 1975 a campaign was launched to establish consumers\u2019 co-\noperatives, initially to serve as an alternative to the open market but eventually to effect \ncontrol over the distribution of goods. In June 1976 special taxes were imposed on excess \nprofits to curb hoarding of commodities and speculation by businessmen (Tran, 1993: 83; \nWoodside, 1979: 395). Despite continued efforts during 1977, state control over the economy \nin the South was not achieved (Stern, 1987a: 132-133; Woodside, 1979: 392-398).7 \n\n\n\nThese failures prompted the authorities to implement harsher measures on the capitalist \ndominated economy and a campaign code-named \u201cX2\u201d was launched on 23 March 1978 \n(Amer, 1991: 84; BBC/SWB/FE 1978a: B5-9; Vo, 1990: 89). The clampdown on private \nbusiness affected the entire Ho Chi Minh City but was most severe in Cholon in which ethnic \nChinese were concentrated (Chanda, 1986: 231-233; Chang, 1982a: 27; Vo, 1990: 89). The \ngoods of thousands of retailers were confiscated and many persons were ordered out of the \ncity to settle in the NEZ. The authorities stepped up the establishment of consumer and \nmarketing co-operatives and state-run stores in an attempt to gain control over trade and \non 31 March all private trade in the country was banned (Chang, 1982a: 2; Stern, 1987a: \n134-135, 141; Vietnam Courier, May 1978: 14-15; Vo, 1990: 89-90). Finally, the currency \nreform introduced on 3 May removed the old and foreign currencies in exchange for only a \nlimited amount of the new currency for each person or family (Chanda, 1986: 233; Evans and \nRowley, 1984: 54).\n\n\n\nIn view of their economic prominence in the country, the Chinese were most adversely \naffected by the new policy of socialist transformation. In 1975 the Chinese community \ncontrolled the largest share of the processing industry, wholesale trade, and import-export \ntrade and about half of the retail trade and the banking and finance sectors (Tran, 1992: 18; Vo, \n1990: 68).8 The clampdown on private trade launched in late March 1978 put a large number \nof Chinese out of work. The former businessmen and traders were \u201cshifted to production\u201d, i.e. \nsent to the NEZ. Life was hard in the NEZ and very different from that in the cities and many \nopted to leave the country (Amer, 1991: 56).\n\n\n\nHowever, Chinese business networks that still remained were used to organize illegal \nchannels to help those who wanted to leave the country. Despite the anti-bourgeoisie \ncampaign, trade links between the Chinese in Vietnam and in other Southeast Asian states, in \nparticular Singapore, continued to function (Stern, 1987a: 141).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           7\n\n\n\nSocialist Transformation and Its Target\nOutwardly, the policy of socialist transformation was not targeted against any particular \n\n\n\nethnic group (Duy, 1978: 83-89; T. Nguyen, 1978: 11-17). In fact, Vietnamese research on the \nethnic Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City made no reference to the policy of socialist transformation \nof the late 1970s (Mac, 1994a: 208-212 and 1994b: 36-38). \n\n\n\nThe policy to transform the economy of the South into a socialist one was bound to \nimpact the Chinese community more severely than any other ethnic groups, and this was \nreadily acknowledged by the Vietnamese authorities (Tien, 1978: 28-30). Not surprisingly, \nthe majority of those who were arrested in the first campaign against the \u201ccomprador \nbourgeoisie\u201d in September 1975 were ethnic Chinese. The trial against \u201cspeculators and \nhoarders\u201d in January 1976 counted many Chinese among the prosecuted. Nevertheless, the \nnew economic policies were not aimed solely at the Chinese as other ethnic groups were also \naffected.9 In actual fact, policy statements by the Vietnamese referred only to the need to \nbreak the economic structure and the capitalist dominance (Do, 1978: 51-57; 1979: 10-18; C. \nNguyen, 1975: 24-28; Vu, 1978a: 103-111 and 1978b: 67-79). A Vietnamese source argued \nthat:\n\n\n\nTo restore and develop our economy and advance to socialism, \nwe must eliminate the comprador bourgeoisie and carry out the \nsocialist transformation of private capitalist trade and industry - \nregardless of whether or not it is a Hoa or a Vietnamese (Tien, \n1978: 29) \n\n\n\nThere were cases in which businessmen who had established good contacts with \nrepresentatives of the new authorities before and/or after 1975 were treated more leniently \nthan others. Such preferential treatment benefited businesspeople of both Chinese descent \nand other ethnic groups. \n\n\n\nPolitical Dimension\nIt is likely that the Vietnamese authorities were aware of the problems that they had to \n\n\n\nface from the Chinese community in the re-structuring of the economy of the South, but they \nwere probably not expecting political challenges. However, the Vietnamese claimed that this \nwas precisely what happened. Vietnamese research shows that the period from spring 1976 to \nspring 1979 was characterized by an \u201cexplosion\u201d of the \u201cChinese-national\u201d idea among the \nChinese in Ho Chi Minh City (Mac, 1994a: 209 and 1994b: 36). In fact, as early as May 1975, \nseveral incidents were reported to have taken place and Vietnam alleged that agents from \nChina helped set up several new organizations among the Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City. One \nof the main goals of these organizations was a campaign to encourage the Chinese to acquire \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           9\n\n\n\nChinese citizenship and in which the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi was allegedly involved \n(Vietnam Courier, 1978a: 73-74 and 1978b: 82; De L\u2019affaire, 1978: 83-101). \n\n\n\nChina made several allegations relating to how the Vietnamese authorities acted with \nregard to the question of citizenship of the ethnic Chinese. First, in January 1976 \u201cChinese \nresidents\u201d in the former South Vietnam were allegedly required to register their citizenship. \nSeemingly the result of the registration campaign did not satisfy the Vietnamese authorities \nas more ethnic Chinese than expected claimed to be Chinese citizens. Second, according \nto China, the ethnic Chinese were ordered to register again but this time according to \ntheir citizenship status in the pre-1975 period. Third, China claimed that in February 1977 \n\u201cChinese residents\u201d were required by the Vietnamese authorities to fill in printed forms to \nreceive \u201ccitizenship cards\u201d. Fourth, China accused Vietnam of discriminating against the \nethnic Chinese by cancelling household registers, reducing food rations, withholding jobs, \nand imposing exorbitant taxes, with the aim of forcing them to become Vietnamese citizens. \nIn essence, China was protesting against the oppressive character of the Vietnamese actions \n(Peking Review, 1978b: 28-29). \n\n\n\nThe Vietnamese description of the above course of events was that immediately after \nthe \u201cliberation\u201d of South Vietnam in 1975, Vietnam had undertaken a registration of foreign \nresidents and no \u201cVietnamese of Chinese origin\u201d had asked to be registered. The Vietnamese \nstandpoint was that the issue of the nationality of the ethnic Chinese had been settled \nbefore 1975 and they were to be regarded as Vietnamese citizens. However, the Vietnamese \nauthorities regarded some members of the Chinese community as foreign nationals and they \nwere treated accordingly. The Vietnamese also emphasized that these persons had not been \nforced to become Vietnamese citizens (Vietnam Courier, 1978a: 72; Ky, 1978: 23-28). \n\n\n\nAlthough the two versions contradicted each other on some central issues, it can be \nassumed that a number of ethnic Chinese declined to register themselves as Vietnamese \ncitizens in January 1976. The registration campaign was in fact part of the preparations for \nelections to the National Assembly to be held in April 1976 (Porter, 1982: 85; The Socialist \nRepublic of Vietnam, 1985: 43). It can also be assumed that the Vietnamese authorities at \nleast started to treat as \u201cforeign residents\u201d those ethnic Chinese who refused to register \nas Vietnamese citizens and this implied restrictions on employment opportunities and \ninvolvement in economic activities (Amer, 1991: 41). These restrictions were formalized in \n1978 (Decision No. 122-CP, 1978: 8-9):\n\n\n\nForeign nationals residing in Vietnam can choose their trade \nor profession freely, in keeping with Vietnamese law, with the \nexception of the following:\n\n\n\n1. Fishery.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           9\n\n\n\n2. Forestry.\n3. Repair of communications and radio and television equipment.\n4. Driver of motor coaches and skipper of motor launches.\n5. Printing, engraving and type casting.\n6. Type-writing, mimeographing, photocopying. \n\n\n\nFor the exercise of their trade or profession, foreign nationals shall register their \noccupation with a competent Vietnamese organ. \n\n\n\nThe policies of the Vietnamese authorities towards the ethnic Chinese led to open \nprotests. In March 1978 several demonstrations by the Chinese were reported in Ho Chi \nMinh City (Chang, 1982a: 26). Several hundred persons demonstrated against the sending \nof people to the NEZ and against the drafting of young men into the army. Some demanded \nto be repatriated to China (Chanda, 1986: 232; Chang, 1982a: 26). Another demonstration \ninvolving about 100 persons occurred in August 1978 to demand, among other things, Chinese \ncitizenship (Mac, 1994a: 210 and 1994b: 37). \n\n\n\nThe main reason for rejecting Vietnamese citizenship seemed to be that the pragmatic \nreasons for adopting it during the pre-1975 years so as to engage in many economic activities \nwere no longer justified.10 An additional reason for claiming to be Chinese citizens in the \npost-1975 period was most probably the hope that, as foreign nationals, the ethnic Chinese \nwould be allowed to leave the country, just as the French and Indian nationals were allowed \nto do so (Amer, 1991: 54, 1992: 12; Benoit, 1982: 158). \n\n\n\nThe political and economic changes after 1975 led to a steadily increasing number of \npeople leaving South Vietnam by boat. By the end of 1976 some 5,619 had arrived in other \nSoutheast Asian states and the number rose to 21,276 a year later.11 In 1978 the number of \n\u201cboat people\u201d rose sharply from 2,500 a month to 5,000 (see Figure 1). \n\n\n\nThere is a connection between the number of people leaving the South by boat and the \neconomic policies of the Vietnamese authorities. The trends in departure by boat in 1978 and \n1979 indicate other factors behind the exodus. Before discussing this issue, it is necessary to \nexamine events taking place in the North Vietnam in 1978. \n\n\n\nThe Exodus of Ethnic Chinese from the North in 1978\n\n\n\nChinese and Vietnamese Views on the Exodus\nIndications of the large-scale exodus of the Chinese became evident on 30 April 1978 \n\n\n\nwhen the Head of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council in Beijing claimed \nthat the Vietnamese authorities had stepped up their expulsion of \u201cChinese residents\u201d from \nthe early part of the month. Chinese sources stated that the number of expelled persons had \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           11\n\n\n\nreached 40,000 and seemed to be increasing (BBC/SWB/FE 1978b: C/3; Note of the Foreign \nMinistry of PRC, 1978: 49; Godley, 1980: 35). \n\n\n\nAt the bilateral level China had raised the issue of the expulsion exercise with the \nVietnamese on three occasions. However, despite the Chinese reaction, the exodus continued \nand more than 50,000 people had crossed over to China by mid-May and increased to \nmore than 160,000 by July (Note of the Foreign Ministry of PRC, 1978: 51; On Viet Nam\u2019s \nExpulsion of Chinese Residents, 8 August, 1978: 39 and 9 June, 1978: 12). \n\n\n\nIn this context it should be noted that the Vietnamese authorities began to move the \npopulation away from the border between Vietnam and China in 1977 in order to improve \nsecurity in the north-western border provinces. By October 1977 the Vietnamese authorities \nwere expelling ethnic Chinese who were illegally residing in the country. These Vietnamese \nmeasures were reportedly affecting only a small number of the Chinese living in the border \nregion (Porter, 1980: 56; Note of the Foreign Ministry of PRC, 1978: 49). China raised the \nissue with Vietnam on 27 October 1977 (Note of the Foreign Ministry of PRC, 1978: 51). If \nthe events in 1977 did not seem to have caused any exodus, what were the reasons behind the \nsudden and massive exodus of ethnic Chinese from the northern parts of Vietnam, beginning \nin April 1978? \n\n\n\nChina alleged that Vietnamese policies were responsible for the outflow of ethnic Chinese \nand the stepping up of the expulsion and extension of the area affected by the campaign had \nled to an increase in the number of people who left. The Vietnamese authorities were accused \nof having \u201cpurposefully applied a policy of discrimination, ostracism, and persecution against \nChinese residents\u201d (Note of the Foreign Ministry of PRC, 1978: 50-51).\n\n\n\nVietnam rejected these allegations and claimed that the outflow had been triggered by a \ncampaign launched by China in order to frighten the Chinese community in Vietnam. China \nwas accused of using loudspeakers along the border, radio broadcasting and the infiltration of \nits agents among the Chinese in Vietnam. The central theme of the campaign was the probable \noutbreak of war between the two countries in which the Chinese community in Vietnam \nwould be caught in the middle (Amer, 1991: 47-48; Y. Nguyen, 1978: 40-50) \n\n\n\nChina refuted claims that it had instigated the rumour campaign (On Viet Nam\u2019s \nExpulsion of Chinese Residents, 25 July, 1978: 171-175 and 15 August 1978: 56; Peking \nReview, 1978a: 15) and implied that the Vietnamese authorities themselves were spreading \nthe rumours. However, refugees leaving Vietnam mentioned that Vietnamese authorities \nhad attempted to halt the exodus by reassuring them that war would not break out between \nVietnam and China (Benoit, 1982: 150-151; The Boat People, 1979: 85-87). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           11\n\n\n\nFactors Behind the Exodus\nTo understand the impact of the rumours of impending war in the border region, it is \n\n\n\nnecessary to examine the context within which the rumours were spread. First, the Vietnamese \nauthorities were conducting a campaign against Chinese illegally residing in the country. \nSecond, Vietnam was moving people away from the border, in a move that confirmed the \nrising tension between the two countries. These Vietnamese actions gave credence to the \nrumours of an approaching war. Under these circumstances the Chinese in Vietnam became \nacutely aware of the mounting tension between the two countries. Caught in a dilemma, many \nopted to leave for China rather than be trapped in a war. This triggered the outflow of Chinese \nfrom the border provinces and had a snowball effect throughout northern Vietnam.12 Hence \nthe prime reason behind the exodus from the border provinces was the fear of a war between \nChina and Vietnam. 13\n\n\n\nChinese living in other parts of North Vietnam that were removed from the border \nregions were relatively less affected by the rumours of impending war. Nevertheless, policies \nwere also introduced to curb private trade in the North. In the case of Haiphong, a third \nof the market activities were still in the hands of private traders in 1977. This campaign \nagainst private trade affected a considerable number of people, among them many ethnic \nChinese (Woodside, 1979: 404). Similar campaigns in other places might not have caused the \noutflow of Chinese to China in the spring and summer of 1978 but most probably added to \nthe pressure to leave. \n\n\n\nThe major part of the Chinese in the North lived in Quang Ninh province and worked \nmainly as fishermen, foresters and craftsmen. In the urban areas they were mainly workers \nand technicians. The Chinese community of North Vietnam played an economic role that \nwas different from that of their counterpart in the South. Prior to the exodus some 160,000 \nChinese were found in Quang Ninh province, comprising slightly more than a fifth of the total \npopulation. The Chinese provided much needed manpower to the industrial and mining sectors \nand the departure of almost the entire Chinese community badly disrupted the economy of the \nprovince (V. Nguyen, 1978: 54-55). \n\n\n\nAnother issue that caused anxieties within the Chinese community was the question of \nnationality (Benoit, 1982: 145). According to Vietnamese authorities, the issue of citizenship \nhad been settled in the 1950s and the ethnic Chinese were regarded as Vietnamese citizens. \nSome refugees viewed the issue of citizenship as important both for economic and sentimental \nreasons while others showed less concern about it. 14\n\n\n\nFrom the above analysis it may be concluded that the major underlying and immediate \nfactor behind the exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam in 1978 was the rumour of an \nimpending war between China and Vietnam. Other factors such as the question of nationality, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n12          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           13\n\n\n\nthe expulsion of illegal Chinese migrants from the border region and economic policies aimed \nat curbing private business contributed to the exodus but did not trigger it.15\n\n\n\nThe Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam from mid-1978 to mid-1979\n\n\n\nContinued Exodus and Vietnam\u2019s Response\nThe situation of the ethnic Chinese during the year from mid-1978 cannot be properly \n\n\n\nunderstood without taking into account the diplomatic discussions between China and \nVietnam on the question of the Chinese in Vietnam in June-July and August-September 1978. \nThe discussions ended without any agreement and exacerbated bilateral relations. To stem \nthe large-scale influx of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, China decided to close the border in \nJuly 1978.16 But some 40,000 persons still managed to enter China to increase the total to \n200,000 by the end of 1978 (Chang, 1982a: 52). The closure of the border led to an increase \nin departures by boat either to China or to Hong Kong (Wain, 1981: 73-74).\n\n\n\nIn June 1978 two events raised the hopes of those who wanted to leave Vietnam. \nFirst, China dispatched two ships to repatriate \u201cvictimized Chinese residents\u201d. Second, the \nVietnamese authorities started to register ethnic Chinese who wanted to leave for China. \nEstimates of the extent of registration of the Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City ranged from 30-40 \nper cent to about 75 per cent by the end of 1978 (Benoit, 1982: 88-89; Chang, 1982a: 39-40; \nPorter, 1980: 57).\n\n\n\nThe Vietnamese initiated the registration campaign despite the fact that no agreement \nexisted between the two countries. In the absence of any forthcoming agreement from the \nnegotiations, the Chinese ships returned empty. Thus the large number who had registered to \nleave the country began to search for alternative means to do so. \n\n\n\nSuspicious of the loyalty of the Chinese community, Vietnam responded to the situation \nwith two main measures. The first was the expulsion of ethnic Chinese from the Communist \nParty, the administration, and the army as well as from all employment regarded as sensitive \nto national security. This policy was most effectively carried out in former North Vietnam, \nwhere the Chinese had been integrated into the socialist system since 1954 (Benoit, 1982: \n140, 149, 152; The Boat People, 1979: 88; Wain, 1981: 73). The other was the introduction of \na system of semi-legal departure that was open only to the Chinese and administered by the \nPublic Security Bureau (PSB). In essence, Chinese who wanted to leave had to pay, through \nChinese organizers, a fixed fee that was handed over to a PSB official. Furthermore, they had \nto pay for boat, fuel, and other necessities like anyone else who attempted to leave (Amer, \n1991: 85-87; Benoit, 1982: 116-133, 157-160; Chang, 1982a: 50, 1982b: 222-223; Porter, \n1980: 57-58; The Boat People, 1979: 108-112; Wain, 1981: 16-35, 84-122).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           13\n\n\n\nThe Semi-legal Departure System and the \u201cBoat People\u201d Crisis\nIn order to assess when the semi-legal departure system was introduced and for how \n\n\n\nlong it was in operation, the patterns of arrivals of people to various destinations in East and \nSoutheast Asia during 1978 and 1979 have to be examined (Figure 1).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n20,000\n\n\n\n10,000\n\n\n\n1978\n\n\n\nJa\nnu\n\n\n\nar\ny\n\n\n\nFe\nbr\n\n\n\nua\nry\n\n\n\nM\nar\n\n\n\nch\nA\n\n\n\npr\nil\n\n\n\nM\nay\n\n\n\nJu\nne\n\n\n\nJu\nly\n\n\n\nA\nug\n\n\n\nus\nt\n\n\n\nS\nep\n\n\n\nte\nm\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nO\nct\n\n\n\nob\ner\n\n\n\nN\nov\n\n\n\nem\nbe\n\n\n\nr\nD\n\n\n\nec\nem\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nJa\nnu\n\n\n\nar\ny\n\n\n\nFe\nbr\n\n\n\nua\nry\n\n\n\nM\nar\n\n\n\nch\nA\n\n\n\npr\nil\n\n\n\nM\nay\n\n\n\nJu\nne\n\n\n\nJu\nly\n\n\n\nA\nug\n\n\n\nus\nt\n\n\n\nS\nep\n\n\n\nte\nm\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nO\nct\n\n\n\nob\ner\n\n\n\nN\nov\n\n\n\nem\nbe\n\n\n\nr\nD\n\n\n\nec\nem\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\n1979\n\n\n\n40,000\n\n\n\n30,000\n\n\n\n60,000\nNumber of Refugees\n\n\n\n50,000\n\n\n\nFigure 1. Arrivals of Vietnamese Refugees by Boat in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong in 1978 and 197917\n\n\n\nThere are at least three explanations for the patterns shown in Figure 1. The first is \ndeparture by land to China up to mid-July 1978 and, following the closure of the border, \nby boat primarily to Hong Kong. The second is that the Chinese were not singled out for \ndiscrimination prior to August 1978. The last explanation is that persons leaving Vietnam by \nboat did not arrive in the countries of destination until several weeks later. The statistics in \nFigure 1 seem to indicate that the semi-legal departure system began in August 1978 which is \nwhy the arrivals by boat in other countries increased sharply from September 1978.\n\n\n\nThe volume of refugees increased gradually each month in 1978, reached a peak in \nNovember before falling off in early 1979. It rose sharply again in April and May and reached \nan apogee in June and petered off in the last three months of the year. To explain these \nfluctuations, it is necessary to ask if the Vietnamese authorities had changed the semi-legal \ndeparture system and/or their policy towards the ethnic Chinese, and what was the impact of \ninternational events on the situation in Vietnam during this period.\n\n\n\nThe decline in the number of arrivals between December 1978 and March 1979 may \nindicate a shift in policy that made it more difficult for people to leave. If this was so, this \npolicy must have been implemented in November, taking into consideration the time needed \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n14          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           15\n\n\n\nto reach the different destinations by boat. The policy shift was probably connected to a \nconference on refugees held in Geneva in December 1978 where the Vietnamese refugee \nproblem was discussed. However, the figures do indicate that the shift in policy may have \nbeen disregarded or ineffective in parts of the country (Amer, 1991: 87; Benoit, 1982: 160; \nPorter, 1980: 58; The Boat People, 1979: 108, 124-129; Wain, 1981: 69, 193).\n\n\n\nThe sharp increase in the number of arrivals during the period April-June 1979 indicates \nthat the semi-legal departure system was again fully implemented and most likely stepped up. \nIn view of the increasing number of \u201cboat people\u201d from Vietnam to other countries from April \nto June 1979, a new conference on refugees was convened in Geneva in July 1979 in which \nthe Vietnamese representatives pledged to do their utmost to stem the outflow of people \n(Wain, 1981: 221, 225). The decline in the number of Vietnamese refugees to other countries \nin July indicated that Vietnam had indeed begun to halt the outflow in June. That the decline \nin July was not a temporary fluctuation was confirmed by the sharp drop in the number of \narrivals in October to the pre-April 1978 level. \n\n\n\nFurthermore, a feature of the exodus was the large number of people heading for Hong \nKong. From Figure 2, it is clear that the number of arrivals reached \u201ccrisis\u201d proportions during \nthe months of April to July 1979 (Mignot, 1984: 20; JCFAD Australia, 1981: 71) (Figure 2). \nThe majority of these boat people were ethnic Chinese who made up, according to an estimate \nof arrivals between 1 January and 21 July 1979, 83.2 per cent of the total (Mignot, 1984: 21). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n0\n\n\n\n10,000\n\n\n\n5,000\n\n\n\n1978\n\n\n\nJa\nnu\n\n\n\nar\ny\n\n\n\nFe\nbr\n\n\n\nua\nry\n\n\n\nM\nar\n\n\n\nch\nA\n\n\n\npr\nil\n\n\n\nM\nay\n\n\n\nJu\nne\n\n\n\nJu\nly\n\n\n\nA\nug\n\n\n\nus\nt\n\n\n\nS\nep\n\n\n\nte\nm\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nO\nct\n\n\n\nob\ner\n\n\n\nN\nov\n\n\n\nem\nbe\n\n\n\nr\nD\n\n\n\nec\nem\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nJa\nnu\n\n\n\nar\ny\n\n\n\nFe\nbr\n\n\n\nua\nry\n\n\n\nM\nar\n\n\n\nch\nA\n\n\n\npr\nil\n\n\n\nM\nay\n\n\n\nJu\nne\n\n\n\nJu\nly\n\n\n\nA\nug\n\n\n\nus\nt\n\n\n\nS\nep\n\n\n\nte\nm\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\nO\nct\n\n\n\nob\ner\n\n\n\nN\nov\n\n\n\nem\nbe\n\n\n\nr\nD\n\n\n\nec\nem\n\n\n\nbe\nr\n\n\n\n1979\n\n\n\n15,000\n\n\n\n25,000\nNumber of Refugees\n\n\n\n20,000\n\n\n\nFigure 2. Arrivals of Vietnamese Refugees by Boat in Hong Kong in 1978 and 197918\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           15\n\n\n\nJudging from accounts given by refugees reaching Hong Kong during the period of \nApril-June 1979, the Vietnamese authorities were implementing a policy that was tantamount \nto an expulsion of the remaining ethnic Chinese in the North. Some refugees reported that the \nChinese were assembled at information meetings by the Vietnamese authorities and informed \nof the threat of a new Chinese military intervention (this occurred in the wake of the Chinese \nattack on Vietnam in February-March 1979).19 They were offered two options, either to be \ntransferred to the NEZ, at a safe distance from Vietnam\u2019s border with China, or to leave the \ncountry. Many of the Chinese were well established in Vietnamese society and had remained \nin the country in spite of the increased pressure on them during 1978. However, by the time of \nthe meetings many had opted to leave. Others who given their background were pessimistic \nabout establishing themselves in a new country chose to remain and be transferred to the NEZ \n(Benoit, 1982: 140-152; Porter, 1980: 58-59; Quinn-Judge, 1985: 4; Wain, 1981: 77-78). \n\n\n\nReliability of Vietnam\u2019s Population Statistics20\n\n\n\nWhether the official figures of Hoa in Vietnam correctly reflect the magnitude of the \nexodus of ethnic Chinese in 1978 and 1979 is an issue that has to be addressed. An assessment \nof the number of people who left the country during these two years could help resolve this \nissue.\n\n\n\nFrom the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 to the end of September 1979, 306,851 \npersons reached the shores of neighbouring countries by boat (JCFAD Australia, 1981: 71, \n73; UNHCR, 1980; Wain 1981: 227).21 This figure does not take into account that there was \nan estimated 10 per cent to as much as 70 per cent of casualties among those who the country \nby boat (Chang, 1982a: 59-60 and 1982b: 230; Condominas and Pottier, 1982: 91; The Boat \nPeople, 1979: 80-81; Wain, 1981: 83). The best approximation available seems to be around \n10 per cent. This was because the northern route to Hong Kong was safe from pirates and the \nboats followed the Chinese coastline to avoid bad weather or for ease of obtaining provisions. \nAnother reason was that Western resettlement officers working among the arriving refugees \nassessed that some 10 per cent would have perished. Lastly, as the refugees reacted strongly \nto news that boats had capsized, it was unlikely that such tragedies were common (The Boat \nPeople, 1979: 81; Wain, 1981: 83).\n\n\n\nIf the figure of the number of boat people from Vietnam is increased by 10 per cent, \nthe total number of departing persons would be 337,536. The percentage of ethnic Chinese \namong those leaving by boat has been estimated at 60-70 per cent,22 or between 202,521 \nand 236,275 persons based on a total number of departing persons of 337,536. An estimated \n260,000 persons23 left by overland route to China among whom 230,000 were reported to \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n16          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           17\n\n\n\nbe ethnic Chinese.24 According to these estimates a total of 597,536 persons would have left \nVietnam by September 1979 and the total number of ethnic Chinese among them would have \nbeen in the range of 432,521 to 466,275.\n\n\n\nOfficial Vietnamese statistics in 1976 show a total of 1,236,000 Hoa or 2.57 per cent of \nthe total population.25 The 1979 census reported that 935,074 persons were Hoa out of a total \npopulation of 52,741,766. If the estimated 597,536 who had left are added to that figure, the \ntotal population in Vietnam would have been 53,339,302 at the time of the 1979 census.26\n\n\n\nAssuming that the Hoa population had remained at 2.57 per cent of the total population \nof 53,339,302, as in 1976, they would have numbered 1,370,820 in 1979. This would \ncorrespond to a difference of 435,746, which corroborates well with the above estimate of \nthe number of ethnic Chinese who had left Vietnam. It may be concluded that the Vietnamese \nfigure for 1979 regarding its Hoa population of 935,074 may be regarded as reasonable.27\n\n\n\nThe Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam since late 1979\n\n\n\nChanges in Economic Policies\nVietnam faced many problems in 1978 and 1979. Internally there was the mass exodus \n\n\n\nof primarily ethnic Chinese coupled with a worsening economic situation. Externally \nVietnam was engaged in military conflicts with Cambodia, leading up to Vietnam\u2019s military \nintervention in late December 1978,28 and with China, leading to the Chinese attack on \nVietnam in February-March 1979.29 The Vietnamese authorities responded to the challenge \nof the economic crisis by revising its economic policies. The decision was taken at the Sixth \nPlenum (Fourth National Congress) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of \nVietnam (CPV) in September 1979. In the agricultural sector one of the policy changes was \nthe introduction of a \u201ccontract system\u201d by which families could \u201ccontract\u201d land on short \nterm basis for their own use and to sell the produce from the land. In the industrial sector, \npriority was given to the production of consumer goods and incentives were used to stimulate \nproduction. Private enterprises and co-operatives were encouraged in the light and export \noriented industries (Fforde and De Vylder, 1996: 130-131; Stern, 1985a: 346-348 and 1985b: \n523-525; Tan, 1985: 23-31; Vo, 1990: 82, 91).\n\n\n\nThese moves to liberalize the economy led to the re-emergence of private markets and \ndistribution systems. Despite these reforms, the economy continued to deteriorate in 1980 \nand prompted the authorities to respond by introducing directives to expedite implementation \nof the reforms in early 1981 (Fforde and De Vylder, 1996: 131-132; Stern, 1985a: 350-351, \n357-365 and 1985b: 525-527, 530-534; Tan, 1985: 36-37). \n\n\n\nThe re-enforcement of the reforms resulted in a temporary improvement of the economy \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           17\n\n\n\nbut at the cost of higher inflation. Another side-effect of the revival of a private sector was \ndiminishing state control over the economy. To counter this development, the Third Plenum \n(Fifth National Congress) of the CPV\u2019s Central Committee in December 1982 launched a \ncampaign to gain control over private business and industry through registration, regulations, \nand taxation over a period up to 1986 (Stern, 1985a: 351-352, 359-367, 1985b: 528, 531-536, \n1988a: 144 and 1988b: 120-121; Tan, 1985: 37-44).30 \n\n\n\nThe liberalization of the economy benefited ethnic Chinese involved in business but the \ncampaign to assert state control over the economy must also have affected them. The goal of \nthe authorities was seemingly to diminish the predominance of Chinese business in certain \nsectors of the economy. This was reflected in official references to Chinese-dominated sectors \nof the economy as the worst offenders against the new regulations (Amer, 1991: 112-113; \nStern, 1985a: 352-353 and 1985b: 527). These references could also reflect the re-emergence \nof Chinese influence over some sectors of the economy that was contrary to the ambition of \nthe authorities to promote state control. \n\n\n\nWith the continued disappointment of economic development during the first half of the \n1980s, a more thorough liberalization of the economy was introduced by the Sixth National \nCongress of the CPV in December 1986, i. e. the policy of renovation or \u201cDoi Moi\u201d (6th \nNational Congress, 1987; Fforde and De Vylder, 1988: 71-73 and 1996: 142-144; Stern, \n1987b: 269-279 and 1988a: 144-145 and 1988b: 120-121; Vo, 1990: 160-169, 181-187). Real \nchanges did not take place until early 1988 and new targets for economic development were \nset at the Seventh National Congress of the CPV in 1991 (EIU, 1995-96: 13-14; 7th National, \n1991). The policy of reform and renovation was endorsed and re-affirmed in the Eighth to \nEleventh National Congresses between 1996 and 2011 (8th National Congress, 1996; 9th \nNational Congress, 2001; 10th National Congress, 2006; and 11th National Congress, 2011). \n\n\n\nThe economic reforms introduced in September 1979 gave the ethnic Chinese, who \nhad the ability and the means, opportunities to engage in private business activities. While \nthe Chinese were successful in exploiting the new opportunities, uncertainties over longer-\nterm prospects led them to take a cautious approach. The more thorough economic reform \npolicies and their implementation since the late 1980s made it possible for the Chinese to \nexpand their business activities and to gain control over a substantial part of the economy. \nAs their confidence over the authorities\u2019 long-term economic objectives improved, they \nbegan to increase their investments by drawing resources pooled within the community or \nfrom relatives who had left the country after 1975, and through joint ventures with foreign \npartners. The early 1990s saw the emergence of large Chinese controlled companies such as \nthe Viet-Hoa Construction Company (also in hotel and banking), Viet Huong Instant Noodle \nProcessing Company, and Binh Tien (Biti\u2019s) Footwear Enterprise.31 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n18          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           19\n\n\n\nVietnam\u2019s Policies towards the Ethnic Chinese\nDuring 1979 and the first half of the 1980s the ethnic Chinese were still regarded as some \n\n\n\nkind of \u201cfifth column\u201d working in favour of China\u2019s interests. The Vietnamese authorities \nseemed to perceive the Chinese as a coherent group only in relation to China. But certain \nofficials began to realize that they could contribute to the development of the economy (Stern, \n1985a: 353-357 and 1985b: 532-533). The \u201cChina-connection\u201d continued to be a theme in \nVietnamese publications up to 1985. Nevertheless, the trend was towards making a distinction \nbetween different social strata of the Chinese community (Dang et al., 1984: 259, 263-264; \nK. Nguyen, 1985: 385-386, 398-401; Unger, 1987-88: 613).\n\n\n\nIn November 1982 the CPV adopted Decree No. 10, which included \u201cguide-lines\u201d with \nregard to the \u201cHoa people\u201d. The most important clause was a reference to the \u201cHoa people\u201d \nas Vietnamese citizens with the same duties and rights as all other citizens of the country. \nHowever, it was also decreed that the Hoa were not accepted as officers in the armed forces \nand other security related employment.32 This seems to confirm that \u2013 due to the suspicions \nof their allegiance \u2013 the ethnic Chinese had earlier been removed not only from positions that \nwere deemed sensitive from a security point of view, been also from ordinary jobs. \n\n\n\nIn October 1986 the government adopted Decree No. 256 which was important for its \nsilence on any restrictions on employment of the Chinese in different fields of society. It also \nreaffirmed the citizenship of the Hoa and their duties and rights (Mac, 1994a: 174-179). In Ho \nChi Minh City the Municipal Party Committee adopted Decree No. 23 in 1985 and Decree \nNo. 85 in 1990 to re-activate the role of the Chinese in such fields as education, culture and \njournalism.33\n\n\n\nThus, the second half of the 1980s witnessed a policy trend aimed at re-integrating the \nChinese into Vietnamese society. Initially efforts in re-integration were frustrated by the CPV \ndecree of 1982. Eventually, in the early 1990s preparatory work on a new decree relating to \nthe Chinese was initiated.34 In June 1991, the Seventh National Party Congress of the CPV \nadopted a policy to guarantee to the Hoa community: \n\n\n\nall civil rights and civic duties, to respect their culture and script, \nand to create conditions for them to work confidently, contribute \nto the building of Vietnam and cultivate friendly relations between \nthe peoples of Vietnam and China (7th National Congress, 1991: \n124) \n\n\n\nThe first issue to be addressed in the new Decree would be to restore full civil rights \nand duties to the \u201cHoa\u201d community along the lines expressed in Decree No. 256. It is also \nnoteworthy that the CPV identified a positive role for the community in contributing to \ngood relations between Vietnam and China. This has to be understood in the context of the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           19\n\n\n\nprocess of normalization of relations between China and Vietnam that became formalized in \nNovember 1991.35 \n\n\n\nWhile work on a new Decree was in progress, the re-integration process of the Chinese \ncommunity continued in practice, as can be seen in the field of education. In Ho Chi Minh \nCity a society was set up in the early 1990s to assist in preparing a Chinese curriculum and \nto raise funds for Chinese education.36 Fund raising is essential as the Government is not able \nto provide adequate funding for the education sector generally. Also in Ho Chi Minh City \nmeasures were taken to encourage Chinese students to enrol in higher education, though \ninitial success was not comparable to that in primary education.37 \n\n\n\nThe new Party Decree No. 62 was adopted on 8 November 1995 and formulated in \naccordance with the aims outlined at the Seventh National Party Congress in 1991. The most \nimportant aspect of the new Decree was the removal of the most discriminatory clause in the \n1982 Decree that had placed restrictions on employment. The recognition of the Chinese as \nVietnamese citizens enjoying the same rights and duties as all other citizens includes those \njoining the CPV and the mass organizations of Vietnam. The cultural and educational rights \nof the Chinese are safeguarded to allow Chinese children to learn \u201cMandarin\u201d in schools \nand to gain access to tertiary education. The Decree also sets forth favourable conditions \nto mobilize the economic potential of the Chinese community to take part in the economic \ndevelopment of the country. It is also notable that the Decree makes a distinction between \nthe \u201cHoa\u201d who are Vietnamese citizens of Chinese ethnic origin and the \u201cHoa Kieu\u201d who are \nChinese citizens of China or Taiwan residing in Vietnam.38 \n\n\n\nOn 3 August 1996 the Vietnamese Government adopted Decree No. 501 relating to the \nethnic Chinese. Whereas the CPV Decree of 1995 provides general guidelines, the Government \nDecree is a legislative decision that contains detailed provisions for implementation in \npractical terms.39 Through these CPV and Government Decrees, the formal re-integration of \nthe Chinese into Vietnamese society is put in place. \n\n\n\nThe Orderly Departure Programme\nSince 1979 a considerable number of Chinese have left Vietnam either through \n\n\n\nthe Orderly Departure Program (ODP)40 or illegally by boat. The ODP was a programme \nthrough which people with relatives living aboard could leave from 1979 to 1994. As many \nChinese had left during the \u201cboatpeople crisis\u201d of 1978-1979, a considerable number of \nthose who remained had relatives living abroad and were thus eligible to leave through the \nODP. According to unofficial estimates, about 50 per cent of those departing through the \nODP during the period that was run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees \n(UNHCR) (1979-1991) were ethnic Chinese. Up to the mid-1980s the Chinese made up some \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n20          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           21\n\n\n\n70 per cent of the ODP departures, and steadily decreased thereafter to about 20 per cent in \n1991.41 By the end of 1991, 352,300 persons had officially left through the ODP (UNHCR, \n1993: 26),42 among whom were some 175,000 Chinese who left between 1979 and 1991. \n\n\n\nThe declining percentage of ethnic Chinese among those leaving through the ODP can \nbe explained by two factors. The first was the overall improvement of relations between \nthe Vietnamese authorities and the Chinese, and the other was the liberalization of the \nVietnamese economy. However, despite the declining percentage of Chinese among those \nwho left through the ODP, they still made up a much larger percentage than their share of the \noverall Vietnamese population. \n\n\n\nAssessing the Continued Decline in the Number of Ethnic Chinese\n\n\n\nThe censuses of 1999 and 2009 clearly indicate that the Hoa population has continued \nto decline during the 1990s and the 2000s. The ODP was still in effect in the early years of \nthe period 1989 to 2009, but ceased to be a direct factor thereafter. However, it is a fact that \nthe large-scale migration in the late 1970s coupled with legal departure through the ODP had \ncreated a substantial number of ethnic Chinese living abroad and hence a larger number of the \nChinese (Hoa) remaining in Vietnam have relatives abroad. The percentage of Chinese with \nrelatives residing abroad is much higher than other ethnic groups in Vietnam. The population \nfigures do indicate a continued migration of Chinese from Vietnam at a higher pace than their \nown natural growth in Vietnam. The extensive family links overseas among the Hoa with the \nlarge numbers who left Vietnam in 1978 and 1979 still has an impact on the demographic \ndevelopments of the community. The re-settlement of those who had first reached other \nSoutheast Asian countries and Hong Kong and later settled primarily in Australia, North \nAmerica and Western Europe made possible legal migration through the ODP up to 1991 and \nthrough national programmes thereafter; hence the continued decline in the number of Hoa \nas shown in the 2009 census. \n\n\n\nConclusions\n\n\n\nThis study shows that after 1975 and in particular during 1978 and 1979 there was \nlarge-scale migration of ethnic Chinese or Hoa from Vietnam. This process accentuated \nthe imbalance in the distribution of the Hoa between the North and South of Vietnam, a \nphenomenon that is originally caused by the large influx of Chinese migrants to the South \nduring the second half the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. About \nhalf of the Hoa currently live in Ho Chi Minh City and 93.7 per cent live in the South.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           21\n\n\n\nWhile the Hoa have suffered from a relative decline in number since 1975, the S\u00e1n \nD\u00ecu group has been growing at a seemingly uninterrupted pace over the same period. It may \nbe argued that the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu have not been targeted by any discriminatory measures of the \nVietnamese authorities. One explanation for this is that the majority of the S\u00e1n D\u00ecu live in \nrural areas of the North and away from the border with China. Based on the Vietnamese \ncensuses up to 2009 there is no indication that the Hoa population has been growing in size. \nInstead, the trend is towards a continued decline as indicated by the 2009 census. \n\n\n\nIt is unlikely that a return migration of ethnic Chinese to Vietnam will occur in the \nfuture. There is considerable reluctance to allow those who left in the 1970s to return to \nVietnam. One of the reasons is the need to keep out anti-Party and anti-Government activists. \nAnother reason is that this policy would create a precedent with repercussions especially with \nreference to refugees who left Vietnam for China in 1978 and 1979. UNHCR (2013) statistics \nshow that Chinese refugees who entered China in 1978 and 1979 and their descendants \nhave now reached 301,018 in number. The return of these refugees was discussed during \nnegotiations for full normalization of relations between China and Vietnam in 1991 but did \nnot result in any agreement. This issue continues to remain as a potential source of tension in \nbilateral relations.43 \n\n\n\nWhat could then be the assessment of the situation of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam \nand the policies of the Vietnamese authorities since 1975? The situation of the Chinese in \nVietnam appears to have stabilized in the 1990s with the formal re-integration of the Hoa \ncommunity into Vietnamese society. This situation may be contrasted with the one prevailing \nin the late 1970s. In looking back at the evolution during the second half of the 1970s and \nthe policies of the Vietnamese authorities during that period, two major observations can be \nmade. First, the implementation of economic policies contributed to the mass migration of \nthe Chinese primarily from the South. Second, the deterioration of relations with China led to \nthe adoption of increasingly discriminatory policies towards the Chinese. As has been argued \nin a recent study, the human security of the ethnic Chinese was \u201cseriously affected\u201d and that \n\u201cdiscriminatory policies toward the remaining ethnic Chinese in Vietnam caused an even \ndeeper human security crisis for this community\u201d (Amer, 2012: 474). \n\n\n\nWhile the Party Decree of 1995 and the Government Decree of 1996 were formal \nattempts to re-integrate the Chinese into Vietnamese society, future policy decisions with \nregard to the Chinese community are likely to be limited in scope or piecemeal in nature. \nRe-integration at the local level, as in Ho Chi Minh City where almost 50 per cent of the Hoa \nlive, was accomplished in practice by the early 1990s. It would seem that this re-integration \nprocess had its own momentum that out-paced that at the national and central levels. Based \non this line of argument, the 1995 and 1996 Decrees seem to re-confirm an evolution that had \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n22          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           23\n\n\n\nalready taken place in Vietnamese society. \nA pertinent question to ask is whether the process of integration will be pursued further \n\n\n\nor if there are potential pitfalls that may lead to the re-emergence of past problems and \npossibly a new mass migration of Chinese. The future development will depend on the nature \nof official economic policies that had been a major contributing factor to the mass migration \nof the Chinese from the South in the past. As long as the policies of economic renovation \nand reform are pursued, such a situation will not recur. Another important consideration is \nthe impact of relations between China and Vietnam. In principle, the maintenance of good \nbilateral relations will benefit the Chinese in Vietnam. If a deterioration of relations occurs \nit could produce some negative repercussions on the Chinese but unlikely to cause another \nexodus similar to that of the late 1970s as there are no longer large Chinese communities \nliving in the border region or in other parts of the North. The repercussions on the Chinese \nin the South can be expected to be limited as they live far away from the Chinese border and \nare unlikely to be caught in a new conflict situation. Given the geographical distribution of \nthe Chinese in Vietnam the authorities have less reason to be concerned about the loyalty of \nChinese in a future conflict with China. Consequently, discriminatory measures against the \nChinese community are also less likely to be implemented in the future. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           23\n\n\n\nAppendix 1\n\n\n\nNumber of Hoa and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu in Vietnam based on the Census of 1979 \nCity/Province/Region Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nHa Noi Capital 3,817 1,762\nHo Chi Minh City 475,739 no figure\nHai Phong City 3,618 no figure\nHa Tuyen Province 11,581 5,211\nCao Bang Province 1,997 no figure\nLang Son Province 4,057 no figure\nLai Chau Province 2,116 no figure\nHoang Lien Son Province 1,891 no figure\nBac Thai Province 4,866 20,542\nSon La Province no figure no figure\nVinh Phu Province no figure 14,222\nHa Bac Province 11,843 11,798\nQuang Ninh Province 5,117 10,477\nHa Son Binh Province no figure no figure\nHai Hung Province 1,584 1,004\nThai Binh Province no figure no figure\nHa Nam Ninh Province no figure no figure\nThanh Hoa Province 1,085 no figure\nNghe Tinh Province no figure no figure\nBinh Tri Thien Province 1,407 no figure\nQuang Nam \u2013 Da Nang Province 6,688 no figure\nNghia Binh Province 3,509 no figure\nPhu Khanh Province 7,820 no figure\nThuan Hai Province 15,470 no figure\nGia Lai \u2013 Kon Tum Province 1,140 no figure\nDak Lac Province 1,870 no figure\nLam Dong Province 12,066 no figure\nSong Be Province 20,458 no figure\nTay Ninh Province 7,727 no figure\nDong Nai Province 85,379 no figure\nLong An Province 5,342 no figure\nDong Thap Province 4,567 no figure\nAn Giang Province 16,157 no figure\nTien Giang Province 11,004 no figure\nBen Tre Province 8,317 no figure\nCuu Long Province 20,491 no figure\nHau Giang Province 92,200 no figure\nKien Giang Province 37,232 no figure\nMinh Hai Province 40,064 no figure\nVung Tau \u2013 Con Dao Region 3,144 no figure\nTotal of Cities/Provinces/Reg. 931,363 65,016\nOfficial Total 935,074 65,808\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n24          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           25\n\n\n\nAppendix 2\n\n\n\nNumber of Hoa and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu in Vietnam based on the Census of 1989\nCity/Province/Special Area Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nHa Noi City 2,648 2,728\nHo Chi Minh City 433,551 6\nHai Phong City 2,210 7\nCao Bang Province 1,226 6\nHa Tuyen Province 12,151 8,153\nLang Son Province 2,532 61\nLai Chau Province 2,512 2\nHoang Lien Son Province 1,339 20\nBac Thai Province 3,433 28,471\nSon La Province 136 11\nVinh Phu Province 323 20,928\nHa Bac Province 14,049 17,060\nQuang Ninh Province 3,567 14,691\nHa Son Binh Province 242 19\nHai Hung Province 1,188 1,265\nThai Binh Province 123 3\nHa Nam Ninh Province 418 5\nThanh Hoa Province 603 2\nNghe Tinh Province 309 4\nQuang Binh Province 31 0\nQuang Tri Province\nThua Thien - Hue Province\nQuang Nam-Da Nang Province\n\n\n\n100\n477\n\n\n\n4,460\n\n\n\n0\n0\n0 \n\n\n\nQuang Ngai Province\nBinh Dinh Province\n\n\n\n570\n1,764\n\n\n\n0\n0\n\n\n\nPhu Yen Province 970 1\nKhanh Hoa Province\nThuan Hai Province\n\n\n\n4,769\n14,313\n\n\n\n0\n11\n\n\n\nGia Lai-Kon Tum Province 963 5\nDac Lac Province 2,440 31\nLam Dong Province 11,180 21\nSong Be Province 17,456 72\nTay Ninh Province 4,900 0\nDong Nai Province 107,867 283\nLong An Province 2,793 0\nDong Thap Province 5,315 0\nAn Giang Province 17,910 1\nTien Giang Province 7,902 0\nBen Tre Province 7,213 0\nCuu Long Province 21,619 0\nHau Giang Province 103,905 0\nKien Giang Province 35,236 0\nMinh Hai Province 41,006 1\nVung Tau-Con Dao Special Area 1,935 0\nTotal of Cities/Provinces/Special Area 899,654 93,868\nOfficial Total 900,185 94,630\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           25\n\n\n\nAppendix 3\n\n\n\nNumber of Hoa and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu in Vietnam based on the Census of 1999\nCity/Province Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nHa Noi 1,530 182\nHai Phong 1,229 35\nHa Tay 170 99\nHai Duong 1,147 1,516\nHung Yen 68 12\nHa Nam 39 9\nNam Dinh 109 4\nThai Binh 69 0\nNinh Binh 33 0\nHa Giang 6,369 26\nCao Bang 163 18\nLao Cai 794 28\nBac Kan 1,153 84\nLang Son 2,452 112\nTuyen Quang 6,768 11,007\nYen Bai 669 37\nThai Nguyen 2,573 37,365\nPhu Tho 274 95\nVinh Phuc 53 32,495\nBac Giang 17,375 23,779\nBac Ninh 57 53\nQuang Ninh 3,382 17,216\nLai Chau 2,838 41\nSon La 147 25\nHoa Binh 179 5\nThanh Hoa 327 8\nNghe An 189 11\nHa Tinh 16 0\nQuang Binh 27 0\nQuang Tri 107 1\nTT \u2013 Hue 390 5\nDa Nang 2,299 3\n\n\n\nCity/Province Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nQuang Nam 1,106 23\nQuang Ngai 230 0\nBinh Dinh 880 7\nPhu Yen 536 29\nKhanh Hoa 3,731 2\nKon Tum 127 36\nGia Lai 670 34\nDak Lak 5,016 626\nHo Chi Minh 428,768 39\nLam Dong 15,352 383\nNinh Thuan 2,479 12\nBinh Phuoc 7,947 155\nTay Ninh 3,892 0\nBinh Duong 14,455 11\nDong Nai 102,444 541\nBinh Thuan 11,204 30\nBR - Vtau 10,761 25\nLong An 2,721 5\nDong Thap 2,629 0\nAn Giang 11,256 3\nTien Giang 4,917 3\nVinh Long 6,091 0\nBen Tre 5,213 0\nKien Giang 32,693 0\nCan Tho 22,824 0\nTra Vinh 9,835 1\nSoc Trang 68,404 1\nBac Lieu 22,619 0\nCa Mau 10,576 0\nTotal of Cities and \nProvinces\n\n\n\n862,731 126,237\n\n\n\nOfficial Total 862,371 126,237\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n26          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           27\n\n\n\nAppendix 4\n\n\n\nNumber of Hoa and S\u00e1n D\u00ecu in Vietnam based on the Census of 2009\nCity/Province Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nHa Noi 2,134 832\nHa Giang 7,062 74\nCao Bang 132 89\nBac Kan 1,062 232\nTuyen Quang 5,982 12,565\nLao Cai 822 24\nDien Bien 2,445 22\nLai Chau 802 33\nSon La 195 35\nYen Bai 597 37\nHoa Binh 156 42\nThai Nguyen 2,064 44,134\nLang Son 2,147 213\nQuang Ninh 4,375 17,946\nBac Giang 18,539 27,283\nPhu Tho 231 228\nVinh Phuc 72 36,821\nBac Ninh 118 124\nHai Duong 1,242 1,872\nHai Phong 1,171 89\nHung Yen 41 83\nThai Binh 61 28\nHa Nam 28 6\nNam Dinh 154 22\nNinh Binh 25 9\nThanh Hoa 288 30\nNghe Anh 156 26\nHa Tinh 15 3\nQuang Binh 22 1\nQuang Tri 90 8\nThua Thien Hue 429 6\nDa Nang 1,684 9\nQuang Nam 943 49\nQuang Ngai 173 2\n\n\n\nCity/Province Hoa S\u00e1n D\u00ecu\nBinh Dinh 651 5\nPhu Yen 482 38\nKhanh Hoa 3,034 5\nNinh Thuan 1,847 3\nBinh Thuan 10,243 57\nKon Tum 138 105\nGia Lai 653 137\nDak Lak 3,476 236\nDak Nong 4,686 617\nLam Dong 14,929 662\nBinh Phuoc 9,770 365\nTay Ninh 2,495 5\nBinh Duong 18,783 383\nDong Nai 95,162 850\nBa Ria \u2013 Vung Tau 10,042 138\nThanh Pho Ho Chi \nMinh\n\n\n\n414,045 224\n\n\n\nLong An 2,690 2\nTien Giang 3,863 4\nBen Tre 3,811 0\nTra Vinh 7,690 2\nVinh Long 4,879 0\nDong Thap 1,855 0\nAn Giang 8,075 2\nKien Giang 29,850 3\nCan Tho 14,199 1\nHau Giang 6,363 0\nSoc Trang 64,910 0\nBac Lieu 20,082 0\nCa Mau 8,911 0\nTotal of Cities and \nProvinces\n\n\n\n823,071 146,821\n\n\n\nOfficial Total 823,071 146,821\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           27\n\n\n\nNotes\n1  For a discussion of the origins of the term \u201cOverseas Chinese\u201d, see Wang (1985: 69-84). \n2  Based on decision No. 121 \u2013 TCTK/PPCD on the \u2018Nomenclature of Vietnamese ethnic groups\u2019 \n\n\n\nby the General Department of Statistics on 2 March 1979. The \u2018Nomenclature\u2019 has been used in \nDang et al. (1984, 1986, 1993, 2010). See also The Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1985: 45-51). \n\n\n\n3  A major ethnic group is defined as numbering at least 40,000 persons in the 1979 census. \n4  The figure for 1974 refers to the DRV only. The 1976 census in the former ROV put the number \n\n\n\nof S\u00e1n D\u00ecu at nine persons (Census 1976 \u2013 ROV, 1976: 340). \n5  Unless otherwise indicated, the terms \u201cethnic Chinese\u201d or \u201cChinese\u201d are used synonymously \n\n\n\nwith \u201cHoa\u201d. \n6  Saigon, the capital of the ROV, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City on 2 July 1976 and encompasses \n\n\n\nSaigon and Cholon which is mainly inhabited by ethnic Chinese. The core of Cholon corresponds \nto Districts 5 and 6 in Ho Chi Minh City. \n\n\n\n7  Widespread drought in the North in 1977 caused a deficit of several million tons of rice in the \ncountry (On the Eve, 1986: 12). \n\n\n\n8  For a detailed study on the economic activities of the ethnic Chinese prior to 1975, see Tran \n(1993: 41-76). \n\n\n\n9  On arguments that the authorities were solely attacking Chinese businessmen and trying to \ninterrupt the social order of the Chinese community, see Stern (1985a: 259\u2013275, 1987a: 120-\n134). \n\n\n\n10  For further details pertaining to the ROV policies towards the ethnic Chinese see Amer (1991: \n18-23, 2011b: 177-185). On the situation of the ethnic Chinese in the ROV, see also Li (2011: \n52-61). \n\n\n\n11  The number of registered arrivals was 377 in 1975, 5,242 in 1976 and 15,657 in 1977 (JCFAD \nAustralia, 1981: 71; The Boat People, 1979: 31). \n\n\n\n12  According to China, 95 per cent of the more than 160,000 persons who reached China up to \nlate July/early August 1978 were from northern Vietnam (On Viet Nam\u2019s Expulsion of Chinese \nResidents, 25 July 1978: 173 and 28 July 1978: 177).\n\n\n\n13  China refuted the notion that the rumours of war were the cause of the exodus and blamed it on \nthe Vietnamese who were said to be persecuting the Chinese, see for example, On Viet Nam\u2019s \nExpulsion of Chinese Residents (10 June, 1978: 124-125). \n\n\n\n14  These refugees were from Hanoi and not the border provinces, see Benoit (1982: 144-145). \n15  The rumours of an impending war between China and Vietnam and other factors behind the \n\n\n\nexodus are discussed and assessed by Han (2009: 20-28). \n16  For an overview and analysis of the diplomatic dispute between China and Vietnam over the \n\n\n\nquestion of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, see Amer (1991: 57-77). \n17  For a discussion on the reliability of different statistics on the refugees, see Amer (1991: 82-84, \n\n\n\n96). It is noted that up to mid-1979 ethnic Chinese made up an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of the \nrefugees. \n\n\n\n18  Figure 2 is derived from Amer (2011a). The figures are taken from Mignot (1984: 20) with \nreference to the UNHCR. With reference to the Hong Kong Government\u2019s Monthly Statistical \nReport of June 1993, Skeldon (1994: 98) provides a total number of 77,863 for the two years \nthat differs slightly from Mignot\u2019s total figure of 77,277. But there is a considerable discrepancy \nbetween the respective year, 1978 and 1979, in the two sources. Skeldon puts 1978 at 9,115 and \n1979 at 68,758, while Mignot puts 1978 at 5,257 and 1979 at 77,277. One of the reasons for \nthis discrepancy seems to be that Skeldon (1994: 92) refers to the arrival 3,318 people on one \nfreighter on 23 December 1978 and they were obviously not included in the December figure \nprovided by Mignot (1984: 20), i.e. 19 people. \n\n\n\n19  The most extensive and detailed study on the Chinese attack on Vietnam in February-March 1979 \nis Chen, 1987 (Chapter five deals specifically with the military operations: 98-117). \n\n\n\n20  The section is derived from Amer (1991: 105-108).\n21  The figure does not include the 130,000 persons who arrived in the United States in 1975.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n28          Amer Demographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           29\n\n\n\n22  Author\u2019s communication at the UNHCR office in Hanoi on 7 February 1990.\n23  Figures provided by China to the UNHCR (UNHCR, 1989).\n24  An estimated 30,000 of the 260,000 were Vietnamese (Chang, 1982a: 57). According to one \n\n\n\nestimate, quoted in the Census 1989a (1991: 3), the 260,000 were all \u201cVietnamese of Chinese \norigin\u201d.\n\n\n\n25  In Amer (1991: 106-107) the percentage was put at 2.575. Thus the calculations in the following \nwill yield slightly different figures compared with the earlier study.\n\n\n\n26  This total figure disregards the fact that people leaving leads to a decrease in the number of births. \nThus, under normal conditions the figure for the total Vietnamese population would have been \nsomewhat higher.\n\n\n\n27  As in Amer (1991: 107-108 footnote 11) the following line of argument by Chang must once \nagain be refuted: \u201cAlthough the boat people have included both Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese, \nif the 70 per cent proportion, which the ethnic Chinese are estimated to have constituted of boat \nrefugee population may be used as a general guide, one can well also conclude that the entire \nChinese population in South Vietnam has now been all but completely eliminated.\u201d (Chang, \n1982a: 60, 1982b, 320). \n\n\n\n28  For a historical background to the conflict between Cambodia and Vietnam, see Heder (1978: \n3-17). For an analysis of the conflict, see Heder (1982: 22-67). For a detailed study of the \nterritorial claims of the two countries during the military conflict, see Amer (1994a: 195-201). \n\n\n\n29  The dispute relating to the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam was the issue which brought the conflict \nbetween China and Vietnam to public attention, but other factors also contributed to the \ndeterioration of bilateral relations and eventually to the Chinese attack in 1979, such as different \nperceptions of the Soviet Union and relations to and influence in Cambodia. For a detailed account \nof the overall deterioration of bilateral relations, see Amer (1994b: 357-363, 368-376; 1999: 69-\n72, 98-104; 2004: 113-116); Chen (1987); Duiker (1986); Gilks (1992); Lawson (1984); Ross \n(1988); and Woodside (1979: 381-409). \n\n\n\n30  It should be noted that Vo (1990: 124-169) does not refer to such a campaign. \n31  Information about these companies has been obtained during the author\u2019s visits to Ho Chi Minh \n\n\n\nCity in November 1993, December 1994, December 1995, December 1996, and December 1997. \nFor more details on the economic activities of the ethnic Chinese in the 1980s and early 1990s, \nsee Tran (1993: 87-100). \n\n\n\n32  Based on discussions with researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in February-March 1992, \nNovember 1993, December 1994, December 1995, November-December 1996, and December \n1997. See also Hiebert (1991: 24); Tran (1993: 90). \n\n\n\n33  Personal communication, Mr. Nghi Doan, Representative of the 6th Municipal Committee of Ho \nChi Minh City, 26 March 1992. Mr. Nghi Doan was also Head of the Chinese Committee as well \nas Honorary Chairman of the Sponsorary Society of Teaching Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City. \n\n\n\n34  Based on author\u2019s discussions with researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City between 1992 \nand 1997. \n\n\n\n35  For details on the normalization process between China and Vietnam, see Amer (1994b: 363-368, \n376-383; 1999: 73-74,105-108; 2004: 117-121). \n\n\n\n36 Personal communication, Mr. Nghi Doan on, 26 March 1992. \n37  Based on author\u2019s discussions with researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in February and \n\n\n\nMarch 1992, November 1993 and December 1994. \n38  Author\u2019s discussions with official and researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in December \n\n\n\n1995, in November-December 1996; and in December 1997. \n39  Author\u2019s discussions with officials and researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in November-\n\n\n\nDecember 1996, and December 1997. \n40  On 12 January 1979 it was announced that the Vietnamese Government had decided to permit \n\n\n\nthe orderly departure of persons who wished to leave the country. On 30 May 1979 an agreement \nwas reached between Vietnam and the UNHCR to facilitate the implementation of this Orderly \nDeparture Program (ODP) (Those Who Leave, 1979: 22, 39-40, Vietnam Courier, 1979: 3).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemographic Changes of the Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam Since 1975           29\n\n\n\n41  The estimates obtained through the author\u2019s communication with Mr. Nguyen Trong Dieu of the \nODP in Hanoi on 6 March 1992. \n\n\n\n42  Official figures obtained by the author through the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry in Ho Chi Minh \nCity in December 1996 put the number of persons who had left though the ODP up to the end of \n1991 at 351,708. \n\n\n\n43  Author\u2019s discussions with officials and researchers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in February-\nMarch 1992, in November 1993, December 1994, December 1995, November-December 1996, \nand December 1997. The issue of the ethnic Chinese who left for China in 1978-1979 was \nincorporated in the Joint Communiqu\u00e9 issued the end of CPV General Secretary Do Moi and \nPrime Minister Vo Van Kiet\u2019s visit to Beijing from 5 to 10 November 1991 (BBC/SWB/FE 1991: \nA3/1, Vietnam Courier, 1991a: 1, 3, b:1, 3).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\n4th National Congress, 1977. Communist Party of Vietnam 4th National Congress: Documents, Hanoi: \nForeign Languages Publishing House.\n\n\n\n6th National Congress, 1987. 6th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Hanoi: \nForeign Languages Publishing House. \n\n\n\n7th National Congress, 1991. Communist Party of Vietnam 7th National Congress: Documents, Hanoi: \nVietnam Foreign Languages Publishing House. \n\n\n\n8th National Congress, 1996. Communist Party of Vietnam VIIIth National Congress: Documents, \nHanoi: The Gioi Publishers.\n\n\n\n9th National Congress, 2001. 9th National Congress. 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In The Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora: Revisiting the Boatpeople, \nedited by Y. W. Chan, Routledge Contemporary Asia Series, London and New York: Routledge, \nTaylor & Francis Group: 36-51. \n\n\n\n----- 2011b. Examining the demographic developments relating to the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam since \n1954. In Migration, Indigenization and Interaction: Chinese Overseas and Globalization, edited \nby L. Suryadinata, Singapore: World Scientific and Chinese Heritage Centre: 171-229.\n\n\n\n----- 2012. Vietnam and challenges to human security, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 24 (4), \n465-479.\n\n\n\nBENOIT, C. 1982. Vietnam\u2019s \u2018boat people\u2019. In The Third Indochina Conflict, edited by D.W.P. Elliot, \nBoulder, Colorado: Westview Press: 139-162.\n\n\n\nBBC/SWB/FE 1978a. British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part Three, \nFar East. 5773: B5-9. \n\n\n\n----- 1978b. British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part Three, Far East. \n5802: C/3. \n\n\n\n----- 1991. British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part Three, Far East. \n1227: A3/1. \n\n\n\nBOUDET, P. 1942. La conqu\u00eate de la Cochinchine par les Nguy\u00ean et le r\u00f4le des \u00e9migr\u00e9s chinois (The \nconquest of Cochinchine by the Nguyens and the role of the Chinese migrants). Bulletin de \nl\u2019\u00e9cole fran\u00e7aise d\u2019Extr\u00eame-Orient (Bulletin of the French School of the Far East), 42: 115-132. \n\n\n\nCensus 1974, DRV, 1976. D\u00e2n S\u00f4\u2019 chia theo d\u00e2n t\u00f4c (To\u00e0n mi`\u00ean B\u00e1c), in D\u00e2n S\u00f4\u2019, N\u00fa\u00f3\u2019c c\u00f4ng h\u00f2a xa \nh\u00f4i ch\u00fa ngh\u00eca, Vi\u00eat Nam, Tho t\u00e0i li\u00eau t\u2019ong di`\u00eau tra d\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 to\u00e0n mi\u2019\u00ean Bac 4-1974, v\u00e0 di`\u00eau d\u00e2n \ns\u00f4\u2019 mi`\u00ean Nam 2-1976, Luu h\u00e0nh n\u00f4i b\u00f4. H\u00e0 N\u00f4i: T\u00f4ng cuc th\u00f3ng k\u00ea.\n\n\n\nCensus 1976, 1976. D\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 c\u00e1c t\u00f4c chia theo nam nu, D\u00e2n S\u00f4\u2019, N\u00fa\u00f3\u2019c c\u00f4ng h\u00f2a xa h\u00f4i ch\u00fa ngh\u00eca, Vi\u00eat \nNam, Tho t\u00e0i li\u00eau t\u2019ong di`\u00eau tra d\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 to\u00e0n mi\u2019\u00ean Bac 4-1974, v\u00e0 di`\u00eau d\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019mi`\u00ean Nam \n2-1976, Luu h\u00e0nh n\u00f4i b\u00f4. H\u00e0 N\u00f4i: T\u00f4ng cuc th\u00f3ng k\u00ea.\n\n\n\nCensus 1976, ROV, 1976. D\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 chia theo d\u00e2n t\u00f4c (S\u00f4\u2019 b\u00ecnh qu\u00e2n nam 1976), in D\u00e2n S\u00f4\u2019, N\u00fa\u00f3\u2019c c\u00f4ng \nh\u00f2a xa h\u00f4i ch\u00fa ngh\u00eca, Vi\u00eat Nam, Tho t\u00e0i li\u00eau t\u2019ong di`\u00eau tra d\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 to\u00e0n mi\u2019\u00ean Bac 4-1974, v\u00e0 \ndi`\u00eau d\u00e2n s\u00f4\u2019 mi`\u00ean Nam 2-1976, Luu h\u00e0nh n\u00f4i b\u00f4. H\u00e0 N\u00f4i: T\u00f4ng cuc th\u00f3ng k\u00ea.\n\n\n\nCensus 1979, 1983. Population by ethnic groups, in C\u00f4ng h\u00f2a x\u00e3 h\u00f4i ch\u00fa ngh\u00eea Vi\u00eat Nam, D\u00e2n S\u00f4\u2019 Vi\u00eat \nNam 1 - 10 \u2013 1979, H\u00e0 N\u00f4i: Ban ch\u00ed dao t\u2019\u00f4ng dieu tra d\u00e2n so trung u\u2019o\u2019ng: 104-124. \n\n\n\nCensus 1989a, 1991. Population size and growth, in Viet Nam Population Census - 1989, Detailed \nAnalysis of Sample Results. Hanoi: General Statistical Office: 3. \n\n\n\nCensus 1989b, 1991. Population by ethnic group and sex. In Vietnam Population Census \u2013 1989, \nComplete Census Results, Volume I, Hanoi: Central Census Steering Committee: 66-114. \n\n\n\nCensus 1999, 2001. Population by ethnic groups, sex and province. In Population and Housing Census \nViet Nam 1999, Ha Noi: Nah Xuat Ban Thong Ke: 21-111. \n\n\n\nCensus 2009, 2010. Table 5 Population by Urban/Rural Residence, Sex, Ethnic Group, Socio-\nEconomic Region, and Province/City, 1/4/2009, in The 2009 Vietnam Population and Housing \nCensus: Completed Results. Hanoi: Central Population and Housing Census Steering Committee: \n134\u2013225. From the web site of the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (http://www.gso.gov.vn/\ndefault_en.aspx?tabid=515&idmid=5&ItemID=10799) (accessed 18 October 2011). \n\n\n\nCHANDA, N. 1986. Brother Enemy: The War after the War: A History of Indochina since the Fall of \nSaigon, Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers. \n\n\n\nCHANG, P-M. 1982a. 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"\n\nBook Review\n\n\n\nDiana Lary*\n\n\n\nTo cite this book review: Diana Lary (2023). China as a federated nation: A review of Negotiating \nA Chinese Federation: The Exchange of Ideas and Political Collaborations between China\u2019s Men \nof Guns and Men of Letters, 1919\u20131923 by Vivienne Xiangwei Guo. Malaysian Journal of Chinese \nStudies 12(1): 121\u2013123. http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0009\nTo link to this book review: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0009\n\n\n\n Communist China\u2019s hatred of federalism is profound and visceral. Beijing\u2019s response to the \nperennial and constant tension between the centre and the regions of China is a tough emphasis \non centralism, and bitter attacks on anyone or any system that suggests devolution of power. The \nantipathy to federalism is fed by the equally perennial attachment to the province/region, the \nattachment that led the youthful Mao Zedong to give his enthusiastic support to federalism, and \nself-rule for his own province, Hunan.\n Vivienne Guo\u2019s lucid study of federalism is based in the key period 1919\u20131923 when centralised \npower based in Beijing was waning, when foreign threats were lessened after the disaster of World \nWar One, and when a multitude of ideas, Chinese and foreign, was floating around in China. One \npopular idea on government was federalism, the devolving of power to the provinces, in the manner \nof other .1  The logic of devolution is real. The differences in spoken languages, cuisine, pride in \nprovincial history have created strong provincial identities that fuel the desire for greater autonomy. \nBut federalism is in conflict with the ideal of a strong, centralised China. Since the beginning of \nthe Chinese state political, military, ideological divisions along regional lines have been seen as \nthreats to the central state. Devolution was a slippery slope leading to the collapse of the state, a \ndisaster not unknown, given the long periods of division in China\u2019s history. In the early Republic \nprovincial identities flourished, nowhere more so than in the rich southern provinces of Guangdong \nand Hunan. \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\nChina as a federated nation: A review of Negotiating A Chinese Federation: The Exchange of Ideas and \nPolitical Collaborations between China's Men of Guns and Men of Letters, 1919\u20131923 by Vivienne \nXiangwei Guo, Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp. ix, 266 pp.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 121\u2013123\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n122\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n 1919\u20131923 was also a time when the deep division between men of the gun and men of letters, \nwas blurred. Guo looks at the federalist efforts of two military men. Chen Jiongming (\u9648\u70af\u660e), in \nGuangdong, was a graduate of the traditional examination system, a lawyer and a soldier. His ideal \nwas \u201ca modern Guangdong in a modern China.\u201d He encouraged and financed political thinkers, \nnotably anarchists. Under him Guangdong was a \u201cMay 4th crucible.\u201d His problem was with the \nunwavering centralist Sun Yat-sen, who saw Chen only as a means to foster his centralising ideal of \nlaunching a northern expedition to reunite China. Chen ousted Sun from Guangzhou once, but was \nsoon ousted himself. Zhao Hengti (\u8d75\u6052\u60d5), a soldier trained in Japan, actually proclaimed Hunan\u2019s \nprovincial constitution, with the collaboration of leading Hunanese men of letters, Tan Yankai (\u8c2d\n\u5ef6\u95ff) and Xiong Xiling (\u718a\u5e0c\u9f84). He held power until 1926. \n The blurring of the division between civil and military did not last; the military became \ndominant, notably in the twelve years of war from 1937 to 1949. But the division remains strong in \nWestern scholarship on China. The disdain for the military ignores the parallel military world, and \nthe importance of the military in political change; China\u2019s modern military was born out of the need \nto resist foreign incursion; the same military brought down the last dynasty. Guo\u2019s perceptive study \ngoes far to breaking down the facile stereotypes of men of letters and men of the gun.\n Federalism has not had a long history in modern China. The system has been damned by \nboth the Guomindang and the Communist Party, condemned as a precursor to separatism and the \ndread \u201csplitism\u201d (\u5206\u88c2\u4e3b\u4e49). The Guomindang, after Sun Yat-sen\u2019s death, did launch the Northern \nExpedition in 1926, in the name of anti-warlordism and anti-imperialism. Military commanders, \nexcept those in the revolutionary armies were labeled warlords, all equally venal, ignoring the \ndifferences between them, some educated, some not, some progressive, some backward. The only \nway to escape the term was to be \u201crelabeled\u201d as a revolutionary general, to be \u201cturned\u201d by the \nGuomindang. The result was that in the 1928 national \u201creunification,\u201d the Guomindang controlled \nwith certainty only five provinces. Guangdong was back under another regional military figure, as \npopular as Chen Jiongming had been, Chen Jitang (\u9648\u6d4e\u68e0) (no relation). \n Guo\u2019s scholarship is outstanding. She uses the widest possible range of sources, including a \nunique form of communication, the circular telegram (\u901a\u7535). These were combinations of statements \nof principle, attacks on opponents and publicity announcements. They were widely reproduced by \nnewspapers and magazines eager for column inches.  In this way competing ideas were circulated \nsimultaneously. \n This book, with its high scholarship and its persuasive argument, gives hope for the rebirth of \ntwo key aspects of modern China where there is alarming absence in Western scholarship. One is \nthe strength and persistence of regional and provincial attachments, not just in the border regions \npopulated by non-Han peoples, but in major provinces, notably Guangdong, the fountainhead of \neconomic modernisation. The suspicion of southern devolution is alive and well. There are no \n\n\n\nDiana Lary\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n123\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nCantonese on the 20th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The other is the importance of \nChina\u2019s military and military culture, a dominant part of China\u2019s economic and political world, but \nvirtually unknown outside China.\n A footnote on filial devotion in keeping the contributions of leading figures alive. Chen \nJiongming has been rescued from obscurity by the devoted efforts of his son, Chen Dingyan \n(\u9648\u5b9a\u708e),  just as Pai Chung-hsi or Bai Chongxi (\u767d\u5d07\u79a7) has been given his rightful place in \nRepublican history through the books of his son, the celebrated writer Pai Hsien-yung or Bai \nXianyong (\u767d\u5148\u52c7). And a second footnote: a lovely autocorrect on p.24: \u201cConfusion notions of \nfamily relationships\u201d must be a correction for \u201cConfucian.\u201d\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1 The common translation of federalism is \u8054\u7701\u81ea\u6cbb,\u201cself-government amongst linked provinces.\u201d\n\n\n\n* Dr. Diana Lary is Professor Emerita, Department of History, University of British Columbia, \n   Canada. Email: lary@mail.ubc.ca\n\n\n\nNegotiating A Chinese Federation\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of \nAsian Workers in Canada: Voices from the Shop Floor  \n\n\n\nWilla LIU Lichun*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n      This paper examines safety and health training among Asian immigrant workers in Canadian \nmanufacturing and warehousing workplaces. Based on interviews with 29 newcomers in the Greater \nToronto Area, Canada, the paper focuses on safety and health training provided by employers and \nemployment agencies to Chinese, Indian and Filipino immigrant workers when they first entered \nthe Canadian labour market. It also explores the gaps and major barriers in training, newcomers\u2019 \ninformational and educational needs as well as their self-oriented, informal learning to prevent job \nrisks, body injuries and harms. Some recommendations are suggested for future research and for \nsafety and health training for new immigrant employees whose first language is not English. \n\n\n\nKey words: Workplace safety and health training; Asian immigrants; Chinese, Filipino and Indian \n                     workers  \n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n      Each year, over a quarter million new immigrants enter Canada as permanent residents \n(Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2010). However, these immigrants are not a homogenous \ngroup. Prior to the 1980s, most immigrants to Canada were of European origin. Since the late \n1990s, the majority have been skilled immigrants from Asia, especially China, India and the \nPhilippines. Immigrants are important contributors to the economic growth of Canada. As the \nbaby boomers are retiring, Canada relies on internationally-trained skilled immigrants to fill \njobs. The 2006 Canadian Census shows that one in five Canadian workers was an immigrant \n(Chui, Tran and Maheux, 2007), and by 2011, immigrants accounted for 100 per cent of net job \ngrowth in Canada (Human Resources and Skill Development Canada, 2002).\n        Yet, immigrant workers are among Canada\u2019s most vulnerable people when it comes to \ntheir workplace safety and health. Firstly, the need for financial security often forces newcomers \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 29-47\n\n\n\n*  Dr. Willa LIU Lichun (\u67f3\u4e3d\u6625) is Research Scholar at the Centre for Women Studies in Education,  \n    Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6 Canada.  \n    E-mail:willaliu16@gmail.com \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\nto accept a trade-off between the search for high wages and employment in positions lower \nthan those of local workers (Cobb-Clark and Hildebrand, 2006). Secondly, most newcomers \nare forced to engage in precarious jobs as their employment options are limited by poor English \nability and low education levels (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2009).\n        Many immigrants are not given adequate pre- and on-the-job safety and health training \n(Kosny and Lifshen, 2012) and they are less likely to raise safety and health issues for fear of \nlosing their jobs. Furthermore, coming from a different culture, these immigrants may have \ndifferent perceptions or knowledge of job risks from those of Canadian-born employees. This \nposes a further challenge for newcomers when they first enter the Canadian labour market.\n          This paper examines safety and health training for Asian immigrant workers in Canadian \nmanufacturing and warehousing workplaces. Based on interviews with 29 Asian newcomers \nin the Greater Toronto Area in Canada, the focus is on newcomers\u2019 perceptions of the safety \nand health training they received from employers and job placement agencies. It also \nexplores challenges and barriers that newcomers encountered at work, their informational and \neducational needs, and their strategies to prevent job risks and bodily injuries and harms when \nthey first entered the Canadian labour market. This paper concludes with some recommendations \nfor future research on safety and health training for new immigrant workers whose first \nlanguage is not English.  \n\n\n\nLiterature Review\n\n\n\n        Immigrant workers are vital to the Canadian labour market. According to the 2006 \nCanadian Census, skilled immigrants (i.e. those coming to Canada specifically for the purpose \nof employment) made up almost 60 per cent of all new permanent residents in Canada.  However, \nupon arriving in Canada, many highly skilled immigrants have difficulty finding jobs that are \ncompatible to their education and experience mainly because their foreign credentials are not \nrecognized (Chen, Smith and Mustard, 2010), they have limited Canadian social networks, lack \nCanadian work experience, and do not have adequate English proficiency (Kosny et al., 2012). \nAs a result, a large proportion of new immigrants take on low-skilled and poorly paid sales \nand service jobs in order to quickly enter the Canadian labour market. Minority immigrants in \nparticular are at risk, as they are most likely to take jobs with the lowest pay and poorest working \nconditions. This is particularly the case with young immigrant workers and older workers \n(Teelucksingh and Galabuzi, 2005).  \n        Initially, new immigrants are more likely to take up occupations which demand more \nphysical strength (Smith et al., 2009). Consequently, they are also more exposed to occupational \nsafety and health hazards than non-immigrant workers (Kosny et al., 2012). Data from a large \nsurvey in the United States also indicate that immigrants were disproportionately employed in \nindustries and occupations with high injury and fatality rates, largely due to poor English ability \nand lower average levels of education (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2009). A Canadian study finds \n\n\n\n3130\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\nthat nearly one million Canadian workers experienced nonfatal injuries that led to time off \nwork in 2005 (Association of Workers Compensation Boards of Canada, 2006). New immigrant \nworkers, especially among males, employed in physically demanding occupations are exposed \nto more workplace hazards and are at increased risk of work-related injuries than Canadian-born \nworkers (Smith and Mustard, 2010). A recent study that looked at the relationship between \neducation and job mismatch and work injury finds that men recently immigrated to Canada \nwho have higher educational qualifications than are required for their current jobs are three \ntimes more likely to report a work-related injury than male immigrants who have been in the \ncountry for over a period of time and are not over-educated for their jobs (Premji and Smith, \n2013). Several factors may contribute to immigrants\u2019 participation in risky jobs: language \nbarriers, financial challenges, discrimination in the labour market, and different perceptions \nof job risks (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2009; Premji and Smith, 2013). Coming from different \ncultural and linguistic backgrounds, new immigrant workers may perceive work-related risks \ndifferently from the locals or may have less English ability to understand job risks (Faulk et al., \n2011). \n        Despite their increasing importance to the aging Canadian labour force, little is known on \nwhat safety training is provided for new immigrants when they enter the labour market (Kosny \nand Lifshen, 2011). A recent web-based review of safety resources available to newcomers to \nCanada indicates that there is a lack of systematic and centralized approach to address \nworkplace safety and health issues, even in provinces such as Ontario and British Columbia, \nwhich have the largest number of new immigrants to Canada. Furthermore, most of the information \ndirected at newcomers concerning employment standards, occupational safety and health and \nworkers\u2019 compensation, is only available in English or French (Kosny and Lifshen, 2012).           \n      This study contributes to the literature on immigrant workers by focusing on their \nworkplace safety and health training and its impact on their daily safety practices. In particular, \nit examines the challenges and barriers they encountered as well as the efforts and strategies \nthey employed to make their workplace safe and healthy. \n\n\n\nMethods\n\n\n\n         Data used in this paper were collected as part of a large project on Essential Skills through \nSafety and Health (ESSH). Funded by the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills, Human \nResources Development Canada, the project examines safety and health training to new \nimmigrant workers from China, India and the Philippines, the top three source countries of \nimmigrants to Canada. Altogether 29 new migrant workers were interviewed individually or \nin small groups. The majority of the immigrant workers are male and married, who had been \nin Canada for less than three years and were employed through temporary employment \nagencies. At the time of interviews, all of them were working in manufacturing or warehousing \nworkplaces across the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. This study aims to examine \n\n\n\n3130\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\nsafety and health training provided for these workers and its impact on their daily safety \npractices in the companies, some of which are large and well-known chains and others are \nsmall and medium-sized enterprises. The study also highlights the challenges and barriers the \nnewcomers encountered, the gaps in their work-related safety training, the informational and \neducational needs of the newcomers as well as the learning they undertook to ensure safety and \nhealth in the manufacturing workplaces. \n         Of the 29 newcomers interviewed in this research, 12 were Mandarin-speaking immigrants \nfrom mainland China, nine were Tagalog-speaking immigrants from the Philippines and eight \nwere new immigrants from India. All the participants were skilled immigrants who had \nprofessional jobs prior to immigration. Only a few of them had previously worked in manufacturing \nsettings but in a professional or management capacity rather than as line staff on the factory \nfloor. Unlike their Chinese and Filipino fellow workers, who came directly from their home \ncountries, the majority of the Indian participants had worked or studied in different countries \nbefore landing in Canada. The participants have been living in Canada for less than three years \nand were chosen mainly because they were still fresh in their jobs and in the process of learning \nto adapt to the new culture and working environment. Thus, they were able to compare their \nexperiences in their home countries and in Canada.\n        Participants for this research were recruited through various sources, including employment \nagencies, immigrant settlement organizations and individual contacts. Each of the interviews \nlasted between an hour and an hour and a half. The interviews were taped and transcribed, and \ninterviews conducted in Mandarin or Tagalog were also translated into English. \n        This research provides the participants an opportunity to tell their stories and to have \ntheir voices heard. By making known their complaints, these immigrant workers become more \naware of what they have experienced on the shop floor, the adjustments they have made, and \nthe learning they have undertaken to stay safe and healthy in Canadian manufacturing and \nwarehousing workplaces. More importantly, their voices may prod the authority concerned into \naction to alleviate their plight at the workplaces. It is also hoped that measures will be taken \nto help new immigrant workers to adapt to and blend quickly into the local culture, and \nconsequently be rewarded fairly for their contribution to the companies they are working for.   \n\n\n\nFindings\n\n\n\nPerception of Workplace Safety and Health Training\n       Nearly all the newcomers we interviewed have a post-secondary education and international \nprofessional work experience. However, at the time of interviews most of them were doing \nmanual labour on production lines in manufacturing and warehouses. The vast majority of the \nrespondents (90%) said that they received some forms of training on safety and health when \nthey entered the labour market. However, only a small number of the participants (12%) said \nthey had safety training directly from the companies they were working for. Most of the \n\n\n\n3332\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\nparticipants (76%) reported being trained only by the job placement agencies that hired them \nor by employment agencies before or later on by the companies where they were placed. Still \na small number of participants (10%) said they did not receive any safety training before or \nduring their employment. Chinese#2, who has a Ph.D. from China but worked as a temporary \nemployee in a large warehouse, said the training he received from the employer was both \nsubstantial and helpful. Chinese#5, who was previously a business manager but a machine \noperator in a factory after immigration, said that the mentorship he received (e.g. working \nunder the guidance of an experienced co-worker) in the first week of work was quite helpful, \nas operating three packaging machines simultaneously requires complicated skills. However, \nthe official training was not provided for him until after the initial three months when he \nbecame a full-time employee.  \n        In contrast, a few of the respondents, all hired by an employment agency, said that they were \nnot provided with any safety training for their jobs and that they had to learn or figure out by \nthemselves how to do their job safely. Chinese#6, who was a packer in a printing shop, said the \nonly safety training that he received from the employment agent was to watch a video that had \nlittle to do with his packing job in the printing shop. \n\n\n\n                 I remember the video I watched at the agency was mainly about explosives and \n                 corrosives. There is no content on the safety knowledge I needed in the printing \n                  factory. For example, the zone where forklift runs is very dangerous. But \n                 nobody told us about it until we found out by ourselves \u2026. I got small cuts on \n                 my fingers several times, about 5 or 6 times, before I figured out how to avoid it. \n                 They should have given us training on that. (Chinese#6, male)\n\n\n\n        Thus, it is not surprising that Chinese#6 did not give a high rating to the training he received. \n\u201cIf the full score is 100, I would give it a 50,\u201d he said. Similarly, Chinese#1, who used to work \nin a plastic factory before it was closed down for safety issues, shared a similar view on safety \ntraining given by an employment agency. \n\n\n\n                 The agency trains you just to get you into the door. That\u2019s no training for what \n                 you actually do. When you go in, it\u2019s so different. You learned the labeling of \n                  chemicals in general, not the chemicals you work with. (Chinese#1, male)\n\n\n\nChinese#1 recalled having had to work with toxic chemicals without proper protection:\n\n\n\n                 Our work required us to use acids to melt things. When I put the foam in the \n                  machine for so long, and when I opened it up, the green smoke popped up. \n                  My eyes, the water just came down my chest, and my breath almost stopped. \n                  It\u2019s just like burning...(Chinese#1, male)\n\n\n\n3332\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\n          Many of the Tagalog-speaking Filipino newcomers, who got their jobs through an employment \nagency, described their safety and health training as follows:\n\n\n\n   When you apply at an agency, they give you a pamphlet on safety and health. \n                 That\u2019s it.  When you get to your placement, it\u2019s up to you on how to apply these.\n                 (Filipino#2, female)\n                 \n                 [Employment agency] gives an orientation to everyone they\u2019ve hired but this \n                 orientation talks about things like what will happen if you\u2019re tardy...on office \n                    policy...and then they send you to your area and you don\u2019t know anything \n                 about it. You just learn as you go along. (Filipino#5, male)\n\n\n\n    In the workplace, you just do what you\u2019re being told. You handle that specific \n                   part.  But there\u2019s nothing...no training... (Filipino#7, female)\n\n\n\n       Many of the Filipino immigrants found the safety training provided by the employment \nagency too general to be helpful to them to do the specific job they were assigned.  \n                 \n                 On our first day, we were so nervous. We don\u2019t know what to do...they just give \n                 us orders. (Filipino#7)\n \n        Others said that they had to use their own judgement to determine whether what they did \nwas safe or not. Many of the Indian interviewees emphasized the importance of practical, but \nlargely missing, on-the-job safety training, as the majority of them got their job through a \ntemporary job placement agency.\n\n\n\n                 When I started working here, they didn\u2019t show me anything...if you tell someone \n                  that with this thing you will lose a body part, that person will be careful, \n                   obviously.  But if you don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to hurt you, you don\u2019t care, \n                 right? (Indian#6, male)\n           \n    You can say to a worker or teach him, that \u201cThis is a knife, this is a belt...\n                 when you go there, you have to tie up your belt, you have to keep the knife \n                 here.  When you cut the boxes, your knife should be in this direction.\u201d Unless \n                 the worker performs himself at the site, he may not be able to remember all \n                 these things. (Indian#4, male)\n \n        Despite the absence of on-the-job training, the new immigrant workers showed great \nconcern for their safety and health at work. Most of them also admitted that Canadian \nworkplaces are on the whole safer than those in their home countries, as the majority of the \nCanadian workplaces make safety their top priority. \n\n\n\n3534\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\n        Interviews with the newcomers also revealed that safety regulations are better enforced \nin some large companies than in small enterprises. This is probably because large companies \nusually have more financial resources and manpower for safety and health training for their \nnew employees. However, many respondents, especially those who worked in large companies, \nalso reported that efficiency is equally, if not more, emphasized than safety at work. According \nto some newcomers, they value safety but they also found some of the safety regulations go \nagainst efficiency (e.g. carrying only one item at a time) or are impractical (e.g. having another \nperson to help move heavy objects while working on an assembly line). Yet efficiency is \nusually the only criterion that determines whether they can keep their job or not. Here is a quote \nfrom Chinese#2, whose job was to sort out items on an assembly line at a large warehouse:\n\n\n\n   We are required that boxes over 20 kilograms have to be lifted with two people \n                  or more\u2026it is impossible for anyone to find a person to help you right away. \n                  Possibly, the other person close to you is busy with his own task and is unable \n                 to help you out, as the assembly line runs really fast.\u2026 If I can\u2019t find a \n                  person within a limited time, I\u2019ll have to lift it by myself. (Chinese#2, male)\n \n        Overall, the newcomers we interviewed were very much aware of the extensive safety rules \nand regulations and were able to observe those safety rules.  However, many newcomers also \npointed out that if they follow every single safety rule, they may not be able to get the job done \nwithin the required time, as many tasks have a time limit. While they appreciate the great \nemphasis that Canadian manufacturers put on their workers\u2019 safety and health, the immigrant \nworkers said that the inconsistency between safety norms and efficiency prevented them from \nbeing as productive as they would like to be because productivity was the only indicator on \nwhich they were evaluated for their performances. As a consequence, they sometimes had to \ncompromise their safety and health concerns for efficiency and productivity in order to keep \ntheir jobs. \n\n\n\nChallenges and Barriers in Workplace Safety Training and Practices\n          In this study, nearly all newcomers reported a downward mobility after immigration, \nmoving from professional jobs in office environments in their home countries to becoming \nlow-skilled labourers in Canada. As it was the first time for most of them to work in manufacturing \nsettings, they had to adjust to not only new types of jobs but also new working environment, \nnew workplace norms and culture. \n\n\n\n                 In India, we know everything. If something happens, we know where to go \n                 and what to do.Here everything is new for us. It will take some time before we \n                 have proper ideas about Canadian safety. (Indian#1, male)\n\n\n\n3534\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\n        Many of the Chinese newcomers talked about the differences between Canadian and \nChinese workplace cultures. \n\n\n\n    In Chinese culture, we value hard work. But here you must obey the rules. \n                 (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\n   When we first came to this company, they asked us what comes first. We said \n                 efficiency comes first. They said no, safety comes first. (Chinese#10, male)\n\n\n\n         Coming from a country where hard work and efficiency are highly valued and innovation \nto increase efficiency is greatly encouraged, many of the Chinese immigrants found that some \nof their efforts to increase productivity, such as taking on extra workload and helping their \nco-workers with their work, are not appreciated and sometimes even discouraged. \n\n\n\n    Once a Chinese co-worker carried a pile of books, our manager told her to \n                   just carry three each time. She felt so wronged when she was told \u201cif you do it \n                 again, you will be sent home.\u201d (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\n    I think Chinese people care more about efficiency. They believe the best way to\n                 contribute to their work is working faster. Sometimes they don\u2019t pay that much \n                 attention to safety. (Chinese#9, male)\n\n\n\n         Chinese newcomers also noticed that Chinese values on hard work and efficiency were \nnot always shared by other non-Chinese co-workers. Others found that their attempts to \nincrease productivity were disliked by their co-workers. As a result, one of the adjustments \nthat many of the Chinese newcomers made was to follow the Canadian workplace culture by \nnot \u201cworking too fast\u201d. \n\n\n\n    When I first started to work in this company as a work associate at a large \n                 warehouse, I found they (the other employees) are not happy if you work too \n                   fast. (Chinese#2, male)\n \n    Sometimes, the full-time employees do not understand why we help other \n                 Chinese newcomers, as they are earning money for what they do. Sometimes, \n                 we also help the full-time employees, if we see they are overwhelmed. However, \n                 they are not very happy with our help. They don\u2019t like us to work too fast. \n                 (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\n         Another frequently mentioned challenge for new immigrant workers is language barriers. \nThis is especially the case with the Mandarin-speaking Chinese immigrants. \n\n\n\n3736\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\n    Some of our new hires have very poor English, but the safety training was \n                 all given in English, so if they can\u2019t understand the content, it\u2019ll be dangerous \n                   for their work. (Chinese#8, male)\n\n\n\n       Although none of them reported English as a barrier for them to understand safety and \nhealth instructions at work, most of the Chinese interviewees said that they have difficulty \ncommunicating effectively with their non-Chinese co-workers and supervisors. Over a \nthird of the Chinese participants said that lack of proficiency in the English language is the \nmain reason why they ended up doing manual labour in the factories. They also believed that \nlack of English greatly limited their opportunities for promotion and restrained, their ability \nto defend themselves when conflicts arose or to negotiate for better work hours and job \nopportunities.\n \n                 If you speak good English, you have more chances to get a lighter job in other \n                 departments. (Chinese#9, male)\n \n                 Even though our factory is bilingual, most of the workers use English to \n                 communicate\u2026.Since we can\u2019t speak English, sometimes they even don\u2019t want \n                to communicate with you. So some of the skills or training they don\u2019t want to \n                  share with you. (Chinese#10, male) \n\n\n\n          While all the Tagalog-speaking Filipino workers are fluent in English, they also reported \nchallenges understanding \u201cCanadian slang\u201d and Canadian intonations and pronunciations.  \n\n\n\n                There are definite language barriers. Sometimes, especially if you\u2019re a newcomer, \n                 there are intonations and pronunciations that you can\u2019t understand.  It\u2019s hard \n                 to understand if you\u2019re new especially if you are not used to the surrounding \n                 community and the people you are with. (Filipino#3, female)\n\n\n\n    And then when white people talk to me, they slur, they mumble their words \n                 and it makes it harder on my part to understand what they\u2019re talking about \n                 and their instructions are so vague. (Filipino#5, male)\n\n\n\nSome of the Tagalog-speaking Filipino participants talked about English as a barrier to \ncommunication with other non-English speaking co-workers. \n \n   In the Philippines, we have what we call \u201cCarabao\u201d English...I can understand \n                  it, but others here may not. Different nationalities have specific types of \n                 English spoken there. If you cross-communicate this with different nationalities, \n                 there are different connotations even if you are both speaking English! \n                 (Filipino#1, male)\n\n\n\n3736\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\n      But our co-workers, they are not fluent in English so it\u2019s hard to understand \n                 what they mean. (Filipino#3, female)\n\n\n\nSome Filipino participants also reported clashes with other ethnic co-workers due to language \nbarriers: \n\n\n\n    Sometimes people give different meaning to what you are saying because of \n                 the limitations on the vocabulary they have or different meanings of words \n                  used in their countries. They may find a word offensive when it wasn\u2019t meant \n                 to be. (Filipino#1, male)\n \n        Many newcomers view English as their biggest barrier to get back to their previous \nprofession or to move ahead in their new job. Some said that lack of English proficiency puts \nthem at a disadvantaged position when competing for jobs dominated by native speakers. For \nexample, Chinese#3 blamed English as his major obstacle to get back to his trained profession \nof supply chain, despite his Canadian education and his previous work experience in this field. \nFrustrated after searching in vain for a job in his trained area, he said, \u201cAll I hope now is just \nto get a stable job.\u201d \n\n\n\nVulnerability of Working for an Employment Agency\n        Studies show that workers\u2019 sense of belonging, their feeling of being safe and secure \nin the workplace, and their ability and desire to contribute to a safe and healthy workplace are \ncrucial to the success of a company (Faulk, 2012). However, these characteristics were clearly \nmissing from the immigrant workers we interviewed due to the nature of their employment. The \nmajority of these workers in this study were hired and paid by employment agencies. This \nmakes them extremely vulnerable to exploitation, as employment agencies provide jobs only \nbased on market needs, which fluctuate with the seasons and the economic situation. Whenever \nthere are fewer orders, the temporary immigrant workers are the first to let go.\n\n\n\n                 It\u2019s the mentality of the management because they decided to get the temporary \n                 workers, which means they have no responsibility, they are hands off. They won\u2019t \n                 have to care about them. If they\u2019re injured, they\u2019ll be laid off and replaced by \n                 somebody else. (Filipino#5, male)\n\n\n\nMany newcomers talked about the disadvantages of working for an employment agency. For \nexample, the lack of job security prevented them from speaking up about their safety and health \nconcerns for fear of losing their jobs.\n\n\n\n    When you have trouble or complaints, they won\u2019t call you. (Chinese#1, male)\n\n\n\n3938\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\n                 Look, if you complain, you\u2019ll be seen as a whiner and you get removed. \n                 (Filipino#5, male)   \n\n\n\n                 If the supervisor is not happy with your work, your speed, he will let you go \n                 home. He (the agent) may call you on any day to ask you not to come back \n                  for work. As part-time, we are disposable when there are fewer orders. \n                 (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\n         Apart from the lack of job security, the newcomers said that they were excluded from the \nmany benefits enjoyed by full-time employees, including company-sponsored training \nprogrammes, over-time pay, and medical insurance. \n\n\n\n                 We learned everything by ourselves. But for the full-time members, they hold \n                 regular meetings on safety issues. But not for us, there is nothing, as we are \n                 temporary workers. (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\n                 Medical insurance is covered only for those full-time employees. We don\u2019t have \n                 those benefits because we work part-time. (Chinese#2, male)\n\n\n\n                 Full-time employees have benefits and overtime, getting 1.5 times if they work \n                 more than 44 hours a week. For us part-time employees from the agency, there \n                 is no benefit and overtime. We are paid by hour. (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\n                 In our company, they provide free language training, but only for full-time \n                 workers. They said it has nothing to do with part-time workers. We do the same \n                 thing as the full-time workers, but we don\u2019t have any benefits. And our wage \n                 is only half of that of the full-time employees. If you count the benefits in, we \n                 have less than half. (Chinese#10, male)\n\n\n\nMany respondents claimed that their temporary status made them feel like outsiders who were \nnot treated with respect by the management. \n\n\n\n                 I found that my company is kind of cold. Our supervisors never communicate \n                 with us. They only sit there and watch us. They only call us Chinese. They \n                 only say this Chinese and that Chinese. I don\u2019t think they respect us at all. \n                 They don\u2019t even bother to learn our names. They don\u2019t want to know anything \n                 about us. They only know that we work for them and we are Chinese. \n                 (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\n       The disrespectful treatment not only hurts newcomers\u2019 self-respect but also their sense \nof belonging and, more importantly, their motivation to contribute, which are crucial to the \nsuccess of a company. \n\n\n\n3938\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\n                 I don\u2019t feel like I am a part of that company. I don\u2019t feel proud of my company \n                 either. I don\u2019t even feel that I belong there. ... I feel they (supervisors) treat us \n                 as materials rather than human beings\u2026. The only motivation for me to go \n                 to work is money. (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\nFurthermore, nearly all the interviewees said that there is no channel for them to voice their \nsafety concerns and they do not know what their right is when they are injured at work. \n\n\n\n   We don\u2019t have such a system (for workers to raise safety issues). One day a \n                 worker who didn\u2019t wear sleeves at work was punished for it. It turned out that \n                 she was allergic to the sleeve material, but there was no way for her to report. \n                 (Chinese#9, male)\n\n\n\n        New immigrant workers voice their concerns repeatedly over the fact that, in the \nmanufacturing workplaces, their temporary status does not make them feel as an equal and \nvalued member of the community. As a result, many do not feel secure to speak up on their \nsafety and health issues, even though hearing workers\u2019 safety concerns is an important step to \nreduce and prevent work-related injuries and compensations.  \n\n\n\nChallenges in Accessing Compensation after a Work-Related Injury\n        In her study on immigrant workers in the United States, Brown (2003) found that \nimmigrant workers were reluctant to speak up about dangerous safety and health conditions \nor report injuries because they did not have the skills (e.g. language and education) to \ntake action or because of workers\u2019 fear of reprisal and job loss.  In this study, many newcomers \nreported facing similar situations when they suffer minor injuries due to lack of adequate \nknowledge and protection equipment. Furthermore, language barriers and insufficient \nknowledge of their rights prevented or delayed them from filling injury claims to employers \nand to the workers\u2019 compensation board. In many cases, they chose not to report the incidents \nfor fear that it might affect their job. Sometimes, even when they reported, they did not receive \nany compensation because of their temporary worker status. Chinese#7, who worked in a meat-\npacking factory, said that there was no one he could turn to for compensation when he was hit \nby a box and broke his glasses at work, as neither the factory nor the employment agent claimed \nresponsibilities for it.\n\n\n\n                 I talked to the supervisor about the incident and asked if I can get reimbursed \n                  for a new pair of glasses. The supervisor said he can\u2019t do anything about it. \n                 When I turned to the agent, he said he cannot help either. So I was really angry \n                 about it. I was only asking for compensation for my glasses, what if my eyes \n                 were hurt? Will they do the same to me? (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\n4140\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\nTo make things worse, Chinese#7 found that after his complaint, the agent reduced his weekly \nhours of work from 40 hours to 20 hours. \u201cIf you complain too much,\u201d he said, \u201cthey think \nyou are a trouble maker and will reduce your work hours or even stop giving you any work.\u201d  \nChinese#1 had an accident and hurt his back when he was working in a plastic factory, due to \nan absence of safety training and protection equipment. The factory did not report his accident \nnor did they give him a break. When he lodged a complaint to the Workplace Safety and \nInsurance Board (WSIB), he was moved to a different job. Later, when his injury got worse, he \nwas sent home for a whole week without any pay. What hurt him most was that there was a lack \nof solidarity among his co-workers. \n\n\n\n                 A lot of people don\u2019t support one another. When I got injured at work, the person \n                 who worked with me was asked questions about me, but he said he saw nothing. \n                 (Chinese#1, male)\n\n\n\nIt was only after the closure of the factory that the workers realized that they needed \nto support each other. \u201cWe realized that we must all work together. We must stand up for our \nrights,\u201d revealed Chinese#1, who is working at a Workers\u2019 Service Centre, providing support \nfor other workers in need of help. Similarly, Chinese#7 also realized after his accident that \ntemporary workers needed stronger support from the government when voicing their safety \nissues and defending their right for compensation. \n\n\n\n                 If workers have a place to have their complaints heard anonymously, and if the \n                 government can get some of the employers\u2019 improper behaviours penalized, \n                 this will improve the workers\u2019 situation and protect their interests.\n                 (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\nFor the newcomers, the employment agency-manufacturer relationship complicated their \nsituation and exacerbated their vulnerability in case of accidents and physical injuries.  \nTherefore, they hope that there is a stronger workers\u2019 rights organization that can provide legal \nassistance and act on workers\u2019 behalf. \n\n\n\nNew Environment, New Learning\n         Despite the many challenges and barriers they encountered at work, many newcomers \nwe interviewed revealed what and how they learned to adjust to their new working \nenvironment. One of the things that many newcomers spoke about is learning about the new \nCanadian workplace safety culture. \n\n\n\n                 I learned that you have to follow safety procedures step by step and can\u2019t skip \n                 any of them. I also find that in China we care more about the results, but here \n                 they pay more attention to the procedures. I think the procedures are equally \n                 important. (Chinese#3, male)\n\n\n\n4140\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\n                 In India everyone is relaxed about everything. If there is an accident, they won\u2019t \n                 be bothered about it.  Here, there is maximum safety.  The police and other people \n                 will come within 5 or 10 minutes and will try to save the lives. (Indian#1, male)\n \n                 It (Safety training) was useful for me because I never learned this kind of thing, \n                 never seen this kind of thing.  In India, we never used to do this, we just go to \n                 work. (Indian#5, male)\n\n\n\nAll new immigrant employees showed great appreciation for the safety culture in Canadian \nworkplaces. Several among them said their workplace training made them more safety \nconscious and more likely to follow safety rules and regulations at work. Here is a quote from \nChinese#11, the only Chinese woman in this research.\n\n\n\n                 I used to take a pile of books when I packed. Now I took one book at a time. \n                 I find that here the Canadian culture is more respectful for the rules. In China, \n                 we always want to contribute more, but here, no, we are required to work safely. \n                 (Chinese#11, female)\n\n\n\nFilipino immigrant workers talked about learning new strategies to protect themselves from \nbeing bullied by other employees when they first started.  \n\n\n\n    I\u2019ve learned to feel people out to figure out what they\u2019re like; I\u2019ve learned \n                 how to get along and be cooperative.  One can say that I learned to play with \n                 them.... because if you don\u2019t learn, if you don\u2019t understand what the dynamic \n                 is, they\u2019ll oppress you\u2026.  In [name of company], if they find out that you\u2019re a \n                 newcomer, they just boss you around, they\u2019ll bully you. (Filipino#8, female)\n\n\n\nHowever, several newcomers said they learned not to speak up about their safety concern or \nmake any complaint about safety hazard in their work for fear of losing their job. \u201cIf you complain \ntoo much, they will view you as a trouble maker and will reduce your hours of work or send you \nhome,\u201d said Chinese#7, who had a minor accident at work but did not receive any compensation \nfor it. Several newcomers said that they learned to accept inequality and job discrimination by \nchanging their own attitude and way of thinking. \n\n\n\n                 If you don\u2019t like it, you can go to a different agent. But many times, we just \n                 comfort ourselves by accepting the unfair treatment because we think such \n                 work is only temporary, once we get a better job, we will quit this job. \n                 (Chinese#7, male)\n\n\n\n                \u201cYou just have to adapt to what is in your environment. That\u2019s right.\u201d  We tell \n                 ourselves, \u201cOk, you are in Canada, you know from the start that it\u2019s going to be \n                 like this ...\u201d (Filipino#5, male)\n\n\n\n4342\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\n                 Look, for us, we have to go through mental conditioning.... There will be a \n                 paradigm shift for us...we have to shift our paradigm...to manage our expectations...\n                 so it\u2019s more mental...(Filipino#7, female)\n\n\n\n         It is clear that not all learning is positive. In the process of adapting to their working \nenvironment and workplace dynamics, newcomers learned to accept their new realities, \nincluding learning to manage their expectations and behaviours instead of voicing their unfair \ntreatment by their employers.\n\n\n\nPlans for the Future\n       For many of the temporary workers, lack of job security, unequal treatment in pay and \nbenefits deprived them of a sense of belonging, and more importantly, reduced their motivation \nto work to their full capacities and their long-term interest to work for the company and in their \nemployers\u2019 success.\n\n\n\n                 If they make sure that their workers are proud to work at [name of company] \n                 permanently, with benefits, I\u2019ll work harder.  And I know that the company cares \n                  for me.  But here, there\u2019s nothing...there\u2019s no care.  As I\u2019m temporary, so I don\u2019t \n                 have to care. (Filipino#5, male)\n\n\n\n       The majority of the new immigrants are thinking of changing their jobs. At the time of \ninterviews, several respondents were already taking courses at colleges with the hope of getting \na better-paid job in the future. For example, Chinese#4, previously a surgeon but a machine \noperator in Canada, had already started a two-year diploma programme in nursing at a \ncommunity college two weeks before the interview.\n\n\n\n                 I am considering changing to a job closer to my major (medicine). I am thinking\n                 about finding a RPN (Registered Practical Nurse) job after two years (of study). \n                 I also plan to take the exams for physicians in five years. Now I have only \n                 taken one. (Chinese#4, male)\n\n\n\nChinese#6, who used to be a manager but worked as a labourer after immigration, was \nactively seeking new job opportunities after doing a number of manual labour. As soon as \nhe became qualified for employment insurance (EI), he left his job and registered to attend \na government-funded training programme for unemployed workers. He hoped to become a \nsocial worker after completing his programme, helping other new immigrants with issues on \nsettlement, community services and workers\u2019 rights.  Chinese#9, an engineer prior to immigration, \nwas brushing up his English at an adult high school as part of his preparation for returning to \ncollege. Two other participants, who had advanced degrees and work experience from other \n\n\n\n4342\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\ncountries before immigration, said they were actively looking for professional jobs in their \ntrained areas. \n\n\n\n                 I want to apply for a governmental food inspector position in the future. \n                 The job I am working now gives me a lot of pressure. As a quality controller, \n                 I am at the front line. If there is an accident, it will be my responsibility. I don\u2019t \n                 want to do it for long term. (Chinese#8, male)\n\n\n\nOne newcomer said that he wanted to start his own business after completing a diploma at a \ncollege, but sought in vain for a job in his trained area. Still a few respondents said they do not \nknow what to do yet mainly because their English was not good enough for them to find a \nprofessional job. \n       Of the 11 new Chinese immigrants interviewed, only three of them said they would stay \nin their current job mainly because their wives were already studying at a Canadian college \nor university and they needed to work to support their families. The only exception was \nChinese#12, an engineer who found a technician position in an auto parts factory shortly before \nthe interview.\n\n\n\n                 My current job matches my profession perfectly. My short term plan is to keep \n                 this job for a couple of years, and then I will try to get some professional \n                 certificates, such as P. Eng. (professional Engineer). With it, I will have more job \n                   opportunities, and they will no longer question my qualifications/abilities for \n                  similar jobs. (Chinese#12, male)\n\n\n\nChinese#11, the only Chinese woman in this study, said she will return to China after her only \ndaughter goes to university two years later.  Filipino#1, who had worked as a nurse in several \ncountries, was taking courses in the Personal Support Worker programme at a college. Meanwhile \nshe also worked as a temporary worker to support her family and to pay for her tuition. Overall, \nmany new immigrants saw re-schooling as an opportunity for them to upgrade their skills and \nto get out of the labour-intensive manufacturing jobs, which are high in job risks and lack job \nsecurity. \n\n\n\nConclusions and Recommendations\n\n\n\n       Literature on workplace safety suggests that effective safety training is beneficial to \nboth employers and employees, as it helps to reduce claims and costs of workplace injuries \n(Faulk, 2012). In this study the majority of the Asian immigrant workers from China, India \nand the Philippines have received some forms of training on safety and health when they first \nentered Canadian manufacturing and warehousing workplaces. While some newcomers found \n\n\n\n4544\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\ntheir training helpful in their assigned work, many, especially those trained by employment \nagencies, reported a mismatch of their training and the jobs they were assigned to do. In a \nfew cases, inadequate training and a lack of supply of proper personal protective equipment put \nthem at risk, resulting in minor injuries and cuts while performing their work.  \n       Consistent with the literature on immigrant workers (Brown, 2003; Kosny et al., 2012; \nOrrenius and Zavodny, 2009; Premji and Smith, 2013), Asian immigrant workers in this study \nexperienced a number of challenges when they entered the Canadian labour market. Language \nbarriers, financial problems, and labour market discrimination have channelled many new \nimmigrants, who were highly educated professionals in their home countries, into low-paid, \nhigh-risk manual labour in manufacturing workplaces in Canada.  Although they were prepared \nand keen to adapt to new work environments and appreciate the prioritized safety culture in \nCanadian workplaces, the newcomers felt they were discriminated in terms of pay, benefits and \nemployer-sponsored training programmes that are available only to full-time employees. As \ntemporary employees hired by employment agencies, many newcomers felt they do not have \nthe job security and a sense of belonging to voice their concerns over safety and health and to \nwork to their full capacities. \n         To promote safer and healthier workplaces, employment agencies need to collaborate with \nmanufacturers in providing customized safety and health training to meet the specific needs of \nthe workers for their specific positions. The forms of training should also be diversified, \nranging from videos and written tests to on-site demonstrations, hands-on practices, and \nmentorship (i.e. working with a mentor).  It is also important that all employees are provided with \nadequate personal protective equipment. \n        To foster a sense of community and belonging and a strong safety and health culture, \ntemporary employees should be treated equally as their full-time, permanent co-workers. These \nshould include equal pay, equal job opportunities/security/stability, equal level of training on \nsafety and health, as well as equal benefits, such as medical insurance for dental care, vacations \nwith pay, and equal on-the-job English training. \n       Further research is required to explore effective ways to promote safety practices among \nnew immigrant workers. Participants in this research have proposed some ways which may be \nhelpful in promoting workplace safety and cultural diversity. These include putting up signs and \nposters in ethnic languages in workplaces where newcomers concentrate. Training materials and \nimportant documents on employment standards, occupational safety and health and workers\u2019 \ncompensation should also be made available in major ethnic languages. To increase newcomers\u2019 \nawareness of work-related risks and to promote communication and a sense of community, \nthe newcomers proposed creating a newspaper by the workers for the workers, inviting \nemployers and employees to contribute their personal stories about safety and health, to share \ntheir knowledge and experiences as well as their interest on work-related topics. Meanwhile \nit is important to have a mechanism or venue that allows or encourages workers to express \n\n\n\n4544\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLiu\n\n\n\nopenly their concerns on safety and health-related issues without the fear of having their \njobs compromised. \n        Given that almost all manufacturing new hires will be immigrants in the next decade, \nworkplace safety and health trainers need to be innovative when designing and developing safety \nand health training programmes in order to meet the needs of the linguistically and culturally \ndiverse new employees. Effective safety and health training will not only make the Canadian \nworkplace safer and healthier, it will also promote a sense of belonging for its new employees \nwhose first language is not English. \n\n\n\nAcknowledgments\n\n\n\n       This research was supported by the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills, Human \nResources and Skills Development Canada. The author wishes to thank Johanna Faulk and the \nresearch team for their support in conducting the research. The author also gives special thanks \nto the newcomer workers who participated and shared their experiences in the research. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAssociation of Workers\u2019 Compensation Boards of Canada 2006. Key Statistical Measures \u2013 2005, \n       Toronto: Association of Workers\u2019 Compensation Boards of Canada.\nBROWN, M.P. 2003. Immigrant workers: do they fear workplace injuries more than they fear their \n       employers? In Gender, Race, Class, and Health: Intersectional Approaches, edited by A.J. Schulz  \n       and L. Mullings, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 228-258.\nCHEN, C., SMITH, P., and MUSTARD, C. 2010. The prevalence of over-qualification and its association \n       with health status among occupationally active new immigrants to Canada, Ethnicity and Health, \n       15(6): 601-619. \nCHUI, T., TRAN, K., and MAHEUX, H. 2007. Immigration in Canada: A Portrait of the Foreign-born \n       Population, 2006 Census, Ottawa: Minister of Industry, Catalogue no. 97-557-XIE.\nCitizenship and Immigration Canada 2010. Facts and Figures 2009. Immigration Overview: Permanent and            \n       Temporary Residents, Citizenship and Immigration Canada.\nCOBB-CLARK, D. and HILDEBRAND, V. 2006. The wealth and asset holdings of U.S.-born and \n       foreign-born households: Evidence from the SIPP data, Review of Income and Wealth, 52: 17-42.\nFAULK, J. 2012. Conveying safety messages\u2014in any language, Canadian HR Reporter, March 12.\n-----, LIU, L. W., SAKHAWAT, A., THAWAR, T., TUNGOHAN, E., and WOLFE, R. 2011. Improving        \n         Health and Safety Training for Newcomers in Manufacturing Workplaces, Toronto: Canadian\n       Manufacturers and Exporters.\nGRAVEL, S., BOUCHERON, L., and KANE, M. 2003. Workplace health and safety for immigrant \n       workers. In Montreal: Results of an exploratory study, PISTES: Perspectives Interdisciplinaires \n       sur le Travail et la Sante.\nHuman Resources and Skill Development Canada 2002. Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for \n       Canadians, Hull: Government of Canada, RH64-13. \n\n\n\n4746\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorkplace Safety and Health Training of Asian Workers in Canada\n\n\n\nKOSNY, A.A. 2012. A national scan of employment standards, occupational health and safety and  \n       workers\u2019 compensation resources for new immigrants to Canada, Canadian Journal of Public Health, \n       103(1): 53-58. \n-----, and LIFSHEN, M. E. 2011. Review of Safety Resources for Recent Immigrants Entering the      \n       Canadian Workplace, Toronto: Institute for Work and Health.\n-----, MACEACHEN, E., LIFSHEN, M., SMITH, P., JAFRI, G. J., and NEILSON, C. 2012. Delicate\n       dances: Immigrant workers\u2019 experiences of injury reporting and claim filing, Ethnicity and Health, \n       17(3): 267-290.\nORRENIUS, P. M., and ZAVODNY, M. 2009. Do immigrants work in riskier jobs?, Demography, 46(3): \n       535-551.\nPREMJI, S. and SMITH, P. M. 2013. Education-to-job mismatch and the risk of work, Injury Prevention, \n       19(2): 106-111.\nSMITH, P. M., and MUSTARD, C. A. 2009. Comparing the risk of work-related injuries between \n       immigrants to Canada and Canadian-born labour market participants, Occupational and Environmental \n       Medicine, 66(6): 361-367.\n----- 2010. The unequal distribution of occupational health and safety risks among immigrants to Canada \n       compared to Canadian-born labour market participants: 1993-2005, Safety Science, 48(10): 1296-\n       1303.\nTEELUCKSINGH, C. and GALABUZI, E. 2005. Impact of Race and Immigrant Status on Employment \n       Opportunities and Outcomes in the Canadian Labour Market, Toronto: CERIS: Centre of Excellence \n       for Research on Immigration and Settlement, Report no. 22.\n\n\n\n4746\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nRevenue vs Morality: \nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling \n\n\n\nin the Federated Malay States to 1912\n  \n\n\n\nJohn G. BUTCHER*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n       One of the most important sources of revenue for the early government of the Protected Malay \nStates was the farms that gave the prominent Chinese businessmen who held them the exclusive \nright to operate gambling houses and issue passes for gambling in other places. Initially, British \nofficials had no qualms about deriving so much revenue from the gambling losses of the Chinese \nworkers who were the target of these farms. In 1894, however, they were forced to defend the farms \nwhen the Colonial Office asked the authorities in Malaya to look into the possibility of abolishing \nthe farms. Most officials argued that, far from encouraging gambling, the farms actually restricted \ngambling. In keeping with the view that Chinese were born gamblers they claimed that any attempt \nto abolish the farms would merely drive gambling underground and foster lawlessness. In the \nend the Colonial Office acquiesced and the gambling farms continued to provide the Federated \nMalay States (FMS) with a large source of income for several more years. In 1905, however, an \nanti-gambling petition signed by nearly all the leading Chinese businessmen forced the government \nto reconsider its policy. After first introducing a number of reforms to the farms, the government \ndecided in 1911 to replace the farms with licensed gambling houses, and the following year it \nprohibited gambling altogether. But the structure of the revenue system of the FMS remained in \nplace, as the government came to rely on its opium monopoly as the most effective means of extracting \nrevenue from Chinese workers. \n\n\n\nKey words: gambling, Chinese workers, revenue farms, Federated Malay States, British colonial  \n          policy \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 1-13\n\n\n\n*  Dr. John G. BUTCHER taught at Griffith University in Brisbane from 1979 to 2011. His research   \n    interests include British colonial society in Malaya, revenue farming in Southeast Asia, the history of  \n    the marine fisheries of Southeast Asia, and the history of maritime claims in the Indonesian archipelago.    \n           This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation symposium on  \n    \u201cTensions of Empire: Colonial Control and Visions of Rule\u201d held at Mijas, Spain, in November 1988.  \n    E-mail: butcherjg@gmail.com\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n       One of the most important sources of revenue for the early government of the Protected \nMalay States was the gambling farms. The export duty on tin and the import duty on opium \nwere larger sources of revenue, but, according to an estimate made in 1894, gambling farms \nstill accounted for about one-eighth of the government\u2019s total income (CO273/194b). In brief \nthe gambling farms operated in the following manner. Every three years the Resident of each \nstate called for tenders for what was known as the \u201cgeneral farm\u201d, which was made up of the \npawnbroking and spirit (alcohol) farms as well as the gambling farm. The gambling farm, by \nfar the most lucrative of the three, consisted of the exclusive right to operate gambling houses \nand to issue passes for gambling in other places. Leading Chinese businessmen submitted tenders \nstating how much rent they were prepared to pay the government each month for the general \nfarm. All other things being equal, the government awarded the farms to the highest tenderer, \nbut the monetary value of the tender was only one consideration. Officials often awarded \nthe farm to a businessman who perhaps had not offered the highest rent but who could be \nexpected to invest capital and import labour to develop tin mining in the district for which he \nwould hold the farm. The reasoning here was that a mine operator who also held the farm would \nhave a powerful incentive to bring in more workers from China because he could, once he had \npaid his fixed rent to the government, profit from the pawning, drinking, and gambling \nof these workers. To put it somewhat differently, a mine operator could use the farm as a way \nof reducing his labour costs, which because of the labour-intensive nature of Chinese mining \nmethods constituted his greatest expense. As for the government, it could look forward to \nincreasing revenue from the export duty on tin and, when the farm came up for renewal, higher \nbids and therefore higher rents from the farm.1 Having made his decision about the tenders, the \nResident signed a contract with the successful tenderer, now the \u201cfarmer\u201d. As far as gambling \nwas concerned, the farmer was bound by his contract to observe certain rules and regulations. \nHe was, for example, forbidden to conduct lotteries, in some places the farmer was required \nto exclude Malays from gambling houses, and he was supposed to get the approval of a \ngovernment officer before issuing a pass for gambling in places other than the recognized \ngambling houses, but for the most part he was left to his own devices. In fact, his contract \ngranted him certain powers to protect his monopoly.\n       As this description suggests, those officials most closely involved in the administration \nof the Malay States had no qualms about the morality of the gambling farms. Presumably they \nbelieved, or at least paid respect to the notion, that gambling was a vice. As expressed by a \ncommission that in 1886 investigated gambling in the Straits Settlements, where most forms \nof gambling had been illegal since the abolition of gambling farms in 1829, gambling brought \nabout such evils as \u201cthe sapping of the springs of industry [and the] promotion of idle and \nworthless habits, with their concomitant temptation to crime\u201d (CO273/143a). But unlike \nthe authors of the gambling commission\u2019s report officials in the Malay States did not regard \n\n\n\n32\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\ngambling farms as the source of such evils. They accepted that lotteries were pernicious \nbecause they exposed everyone\u2014young and old, men and women, Malays and Chinese\u2014\nto the temptations of gambling, but, as mentioned, these were expressly forbidden under the \nfarm\u2019s rules. Thus, the farms posed no moral dilemmas. Nor for that matter was there any need \nto defend or explain the farms. The farms had existed long before the British took over the \nadministration of the Malay States in the 1870s, and, it was assumed, they would continue to \nexist for a long time to come.\n\n\n\nThe Colonial Office\u2019s Challenge\n\n\n\n       Early in 1894 this state of mind received a sharp jolt when the Secretary of State for the \nColonies, Lord Ripon, wrote to the Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Charles Mitchell, \nwho was also the High Commissioner for the Protected Malay States, asking him to look into \nthe possibility of abolishing the gambling farms, particularly if it could be demonstrated that the \nfarms encouraged gambling. Mitchell\u2019s first response was to write privately to the Assistant \nUnder-Secretary, Edward Fairfield, to find out whether he really needed to respond to the \ndespatch. The gambling farm was, he wrote, \u201can excellent institution\u201d by which \u201ca large revenue \nis taken with the cheerful assent of everyone concerned\u201d (CO273/194a). In his reply Fairfield \nmade it very clear that Lord Ripon did expect the Governor to look into the matter, as the farm \nwas \u201ca thing he could not undertake to defend if it were publicly challenged\u201d. In stark contrast \nto Mitchell, Fairfield described the policy of farming out the monopoly for gambling as one \u201cof \nsharing in the profits of Gambling and sanctioning a system which affords a strong temptation \nto officials on the spot to administer it so as to foster this vice of gambling and impoverish \nthe Chinese Labouring Class\u201d (CO273/194b). Shortly after this letter was sent, Lord Ripon \ninformed Mitchell by telegram that the Perak general farm, for which tenders were being called, \nshould be leased for less than the usual three years. The clear implication was that once the \nnew contract had expired the Colonial Office would demand the abolition of the gambling \nfarms (CO273/194c). Faced with this direct challenge to the gambling farms, Mitchell, the \nResidents of the various states, and the Colonial Secretary produced several lengthy letters and \nreports that provide an excellent basis for studying how officials \u201con the spot\u201d in the Malay \nStates viewed their task as the representatives of imperial Britain. I will first outline what I \nperceive as the overwhelmingly dominant view.\n       Those officials who expressed the dominant view rejected the suggestion that the gambling \nfarms encouraged gambling. In fact, they insisted, the farms restricted gambling. It was in \nthe interests of the farmer to prevent any gambling from taking place except on his premises. \nMoreover, the gambling houses were only open certain hours and nothing was done to \nattract attention to them. The assumption made by most officials was that the Chinese were \nby nature \u201chabitual gamblers\u201d (CO273/202a). The Chinese in the Malay States were, they \nsaid, particularly prone to gambling because they were engaged in mining, which in and of \n\n\n\n32\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\nitself was a risky undertaking. Furthermore, it had to be recognized that these miners were \nsingle men living alone without the company of women. In these circumstances the gambling \nhouses \u201care now the daily resort and the sole amusement of thousands of hard-working men\u201d \n(CO273/202b). Thus, the government might pass legislation prohibiting gambling, but the \nChinese would gamble anyway. Public gambling was illegal in the Straits Settlements, but, \nofficials pointed out, the Chinese gambled surreptitiously. If the Straits government had been \nunable to suppress gambling, then, reasoned officials, the government could not possibly \nsuppress it in the Malay States, where Chinese mining camps were spread out over a vast area. \nIt also had to be acknowledged, officials stated, that the Malay States did not yet have a proper \npolice force with which to enforce a prohibition. Even if it did have a large number of police, \nthere was the very real danger that a ban on gambling would corrupt the police, as had \nhappened in the Straits Settlements. If by some means the government actually succeeded \nin suppressing gambling, many Chinese would leave the Malay States, thereby destroying the \nprosperity of the States. Since, according to officials, no such prohibition could be enforced, the \nChinese would continue to gamble. Because they would no longer do so under the auspices of \nthe farm, however, cheating, of which they said there was now none, would become common, \nfights would take place, and there might even be serious riots. In brief, declared the Governor, \nthe present system \u201cprevents the disintegration of society\u201d (CO273/202a).\n       As those who expressed the dominant view acknowledged, the government derived a great \ndeal of money from gambling, but, they argued, there was no point in abandoning a valuable \nsource of revenue when prohibition would prove not only ineffective but destructive. This \nrevenue was badly needed at a time when the states were just beginning to be developed. In any \ncase, officials suggested, it was hardly fair to attack the gambling farms in the Malay States \nwhen Her Majesty\u2019s government in Britain collected revenue from \u201cthe English lower orders\u201d \nby means of a tax on alcohol (CO273/202a). It was, moreover, hypocritical to attempt to \nprevent the Chinese in the Malay States from gambling when speculation in shares, betting on \nhorses, and playing cards were acceptable, or at least legal, activities. As the Resident of Perak, \nFrank Swettenham, put it, in presenting the views which he claimed were those of the \u201cnatives\u201d \nof the state but which were clearly his own as well, it would be intolerable to interfere with an \nold and \u201ccomparatively harmless practice\u2026by which a section of the population contributes to \nthe revenues of the State by a percentage on the characteristic Chinese desire to make a possible \nlarge gain on the certainty of a small risk\u201d (CO273/202c).\n         This then was the reasoning most officials used to justify the gambling farms. I think it can \nbe said that if one were to accept some of its premises, such as the idea that gambling \nwas inherent to the Chinese, this reasoning had a certain internal logic. At the same time it was \nbased on a fair measure of self-deception. The evidence contained in official reports of \nthe period, including some of those prepared in defence of the farms, indicates very strongly \nthat the holders of gambling farms used every means possible to encourage gambling. Indeed, \nit would have been surprising if they had not done so, for the impetus behind farming was that \n\n\n\n54\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\nthe farmer would attempt to extract as much money as possible since he could keep for himself \nwhatever he collected over and above his obligations to the government. It was standard practice \nfor an employer to obtain a pass from the farmer to open gambling tables at the time he paid his \nworkers (which was once or twice a year), for the farmer then to provide and run the tables, and \nfor the farmer and the employer, if they were not the same person, to share in the profits. This \narrangement comes through quite clearly in one of the reports written in 1894 (CO273/202b), \nas it does from evidence presented to the gambling commission in 1886 (CO273/143b). \n         Nevertheless, if we consider the situation in which officials governed in the Malay States \nit is understandable that they genuinely believed, or found it very easy to convince themselves, \nthat the farms restricted gambling. Put simply, the gambling farms were almost irresistible as a \nsource of revenue, not only for the routine administration of the Malay States but also for \nfulfilling the plans officials had for the development of the states. The gambling farms provided \na highly effective means of raising money from a highly transient population that at this point \nwas still largely controlled by the leading Chinese businessmen rather than by British officials, \namong whom were just two or three who could speak Chinese. Moreover, as in the case of the \nother farms, the gambling farms enabled the government to raise a large revenue with virtually \nno investment at all on its part, in marked contrast to, say, railways, which the government was \nbeginning to build. As Fairfield suggested in his response to Mitchell, the gambling farms were \nnot the only possible means of meeting the government\u2019s needs: the government could have \ncompensated for the loss of the gambling farms, and in the process taxed the same group of \npeople, by increasing the cost of opium to consumers (CO273/194b). But the sheer convenience \nof the gambling farms made them easy to justify in the circumstances then existing. If \nwe accept, at least for the sake of argument, that morality is shaped by circumstance, then the \ndominant view regarding the gambling farms makes sense in relation to the social and \nadministrative context in which officials operated.\n        Even so, the dominant view was questioned by one official, W.H.Treacher, the Resident \nof Selangor, who endorsed one of the conclusions of the Straits gambling commission that a \nfarm had the effect of encouraging gambling. According to Treacher, Chinese mine workers had \nnot been accustomed to gambling before their arrival. After earning some money in the Malay \nStates, they \u201care induced to visit the gaming houses licensed by the Government either by the \nexample of their acquaintances or by the solicitations of those who desire to fleece them\u201d. \nTreacher argued that it would be possible to call on the support of employers and headmen to \nsuppress gambling. As evidence, he reported that some of the leading Chinese in Selangor, \nincluding the holders of the general farm, who were two of the leading mine operators, \nadvocated the prohibition of gambling. Finally, unlike other officials, Treacher was able to \nimagine at least some change in the prevailing relationship between the leading Chinese \ncapitalists and the great mass of Chinese workers. Thus, while agreeing that the government \nbadly needed the revenue the gambling farms had produced, he put forward the view \nthat \u201ceventually the real prosperity of the country would be enhanced by the prohibition of \n\n\n\n54\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\ngambling, the money now lost by the many and falling into the hands of the few being spent in \nthe country in more legitimate ways, or being taken back to China by the successful emigrants \nand so advertising the name of Selangor in China and swelling the number of our Chinese \nImmigrants, who are the mainstay of the State\u201d (CO273/202d).\n       Treacher\u2019s views made no impact whatsoever on his fellow officials in Malaya. They \ndid, however, recognize that unless the government appeared to go some way to meeting \u201cthe \nviews of a powerful, almost political party in England\u201d it might be forced to prohibit gambling \naltogether (CO273/202e). Most of them therefore suggested a few reforms to the farms. For its \npart, the Colonial Office capitulated. It accepted the argument that it would be impossible to \nenforce a prohibition of gambling, particularly if implemented suddenly. The Colonial Office \ngranted the Residents permission to relet the farms for a three-year term on the understanding \nthat the future of the farms would again be considered at the end of the term. In the meantime \nofficials were to bring in, at their discretion, some of the reforms they had suggested, including \nreducing the number of hours gambling houses could be open and restricting the freedom of \nfarmers to grant passes for gambling outside the recognized houses. In view of how much \npressure the Colonial Office had put on officials in Malaya, all this was a huge retreat, but in \nminutes written for internal discussion officials in the Colonial Office took refuge in the notion \nthat \u201cwe cannot legislate for purely Native States as if they were civilized and European\u201d. \u201cWe \ncan\u201d, wrote one, \u201cuse the fiction that we advise but do not govern as a reply to objections \nin Parliament\u201d (CO273/202f ). In 1898, near the end of the three-year term of the farms, the \nGovernor simply conveyed to the Colonial Office a letter from Sir Frank Swettenham, now \nthe Resident General of what had become the Federated Malay States (FMS), stating that there \nhad not been a single complaint about the farms and that \u201cthe best and wisest course\u201d was the \npresent policy (CO273/241a). By this time the Colonial Office had fully acquiesced to the \ndominant view about the farms. \u201cWe are not\u201d, wrote one official in London, \u201cbound to force on \nthese Protected States our own ideas about State regulation of such a vice as gambling with the \ncertain result of increasing the practice in a more serious and dangerous form while depriving \nthe States of a considerable revenue which they cannot spare\u201d (CO273/241b). 2         \n         Whatever the moral issues involved, the gambling farms were indeed excellent money \nspinners. From the 1890s to the early years of the twentieth century the government\u2019s income \nfrom the gambling farms kept pace with the rapid rise in total revenue. In 1897 \ngambling accounted for $700,000 out of a total revenue of $8,300,000. By 1905 it accounted \nfor $2,100,000 out of a total of $24,000,000. The government was not the only one to profit \nfrom the farms. During these years the leading revenue farmer, Loke Yew, became fabulously \nrich, in large part because of the farms and the way he linked them to his tin mining operations. \nThus, the government\u2019s income from gambling constituted only part, perhaps even the smaller \npart, of the total amount of money gambled away by Chinese in the Malay States.\n\n\n\n76\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\nThe Anti-Gambling Petition\n\n\n\n         In 1905 the question of the morality of the farms re-emerged in what was for most officials \na completely unexpected manner when virtually all the leading Chinese businessmen in the \nFMS signed a petition calling on the government to abolish the farms and prohibit gambling. \nAccording to the petitioners, the gambling farms \u201chave been the direct cause of the degradation \nof tens of thousands of [our] countrymen\u201d and responsible for \u201cfully three-fourths of the crimes \nperpetrated within the Federated States\u201d. Gambling, they proclaimed, \u201cis the most fertile \nnursery of covetousness, envy, rage, malice,\u2026falsehood, and foolish reliance upon blind \nfortune\u201d and \u201crobs habitues of the finest senses of honour and of the greatest and most irrevocable \ntreasure\u2014time\u201d (CO273/321a). Most officials treated the petition with at least some scorn. \nThey noted that it had been initiated by European missionaries and young Chinese reformers \nrather than by the leading signatories. The leading signatory, Foo Choo Choon, had in fact \nsimultaneously submitted a tender for the Perak general farm and had recently been on a \ngambling spree in Penang. One official suggested that Foo had used the petition as a means \nof tricking Loke Yew into not tendering for the Perak farm.3As for the request being made, \nofficials regarded the petitioners as extraordinarily naive, for the big mine operators, most of \nwhom had signed the petition, would soon have to deal with fights among their workers, who \nwould begin gambling illegally without the regulating influence of the farm. Nevertheless, \nofficials had to acknowledge that regardless of the sincerity and wisdom of the signatories \nthe government could no longer insist that the Chinese would be implacably opposed to \nabolition and prohibition. Moreover, even those officials who still believed strongly that the \nfarms provided the only way to regulate and restrict gambling no longer depicted them as \u201can \nexcellent institution\u201d as Mitchell had referred to them just a decade earlier. The Secretary for \nChinese Affairs described how the gambling houses used bright lights, music, and theatrical \nperformances to induce \u201cthe ordinary coolie\u201d to gamble (HCO1292/1905). And the Resident of \nPerak commented that because the holder of the gambling farm also controlled the pawnbroking \nfarm, a gambler \u201cmay practically gamble the clothes off his back\u201d (CO273/321b). It is clear that \nby 1905 officials had a far better idea of what was going on than they had in 1894 or at least \nwere more prepared to see things that they had preferred to ignore earlier. The bureaucracy was \ngrowing, and there were many more Chinese-speaking officials. At the same time, however, \nofficials were not aware of, or prepared to acknowledge, that the unlimited right to issue passes \nfor private gambling that the farmer still enjoyed gave him the means to promote gambling \nvirtually anywhere. As a consequence most officials believed that the right thing to do was to \nreform rather than change radically the gambling farms.\n       As officials in Malaya discussed what to do, certain Members of Parliament who had \nreceived copies of the petition pressed the Colonial Office to act. One of them, Robert Laidlaw, \nwho had extensive business interests in Malaya, went to \u201cthe very roots of the matter\u201d, as one \nnervous Colonial Office official put it, by asking why the FMS government continued to farm \n\n\n\n76\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\nout and profit from the gambling monopoly at a time when it had a substantial revenue surplus. \nThe Under Secretary\u2019s reply, prepared for him by the Colonial Office, indicates just how much \nthe Colonial Office had adopted the reasoning used by officials in Malaya. Since \u201cin the case \nof the Chinese gambling is a national habit\u201d, total prohibition was out of the question. The \ngovernment therefore had no choice but \u201cto regulate the practice of gambling so that it may do \nas little harm as possible\u201d. The alternative to licensed gambling houses would be, he \ncontinued, \u201csecret gambling hells\u2026. A prohibition, which could not be made effective, would \nlead to the corruption of the native police force by bribery and blackmail\u201d (CO273/322). He \nassured Parliament that the government was \u201canxious\u2026to put an end to the existing system \nas soon as possible\u201d but that it would be necessary \u201cto accustom the Chinese population by \ndegrees to the idea of prohibition\u201d.4\n\n\n\nReform and Prohibition\n\n\n\n       Over the next few years the FMS government brought in a number of reforms. The \nSuppression of Gaming Enactment, introduced first in Negri Sembilan and then in the other \nstates as existing farm contracts lapsed, designated certain areas where gambling (of the type \nin which the \u201chouse\u201d profits by having the odds in its favour or taking a commission \non winnings) was prohibited. The enactment did not apply to the main towns and mining areas \nwhere most Chinese lived, but it did include many small towns and some plantation districts \nwhere Chinese worked. At the same time the government amended the farm regulations to \nprevent the farmer from doing such things as employing female croupiers that, according to \nofficials, enticed people to the gambling houses. As the Resident of Perak had suggested in \nhis comments on the petition, the different elements of the general farm tended to reinforce \none another: the holder of the general farm did everything he could to encourage drinking and \ngambling because these led to more pawning which in turn made further drinking and \ngambling possible. According to the Resident of Negri Sembilan, the general farm was \u201ca \ngigantic machine continuously working to enrich a few capitalists at the expense of the general \npublic\u201d (SS3709/1907). As a result of such sentiments, showing an awareness of \u201cthe general \npublic\u201d that did not exist a few years earlier, the government at first leased the pawnbroking \nfarm separately but then abolished it and instead issued licences for individual pawnshops.\n        Up to this time most officials assumed that while the gambling farms should be reformed \nthey were still a necessary, even if no longer \u201cexcellent\u201d, institution. Beginning in about 1909, \nhowever, a few of them began to attack the farms in an unprecedented fashion. By far the most \nprominent and influential of these was William Cowan, Protector of Chinese for Selangor and \nNegri Sembilan, who apparently had had a part in promoting the anti-gambling petition of \n1905. In a series of memorandums Cowan brought the farms under the closest possible \nscrutiny. He described in great detail how the operators of gambling houses contravened the \nrule that gamblers should not be allowed to play on credit, how they tricked unsuspecting \n\n\n\n98\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\ngamblers into particularly risky games, and how they defrauded gamblers. And he \ndemonstrated in a way that all his colleagues had to accept that the long-held notion that the \nfarmer would stamp out private gambling because it infringed his monopoly was nothing but a \nsham. As Cowan showed, the farmer used his privilege of issuing passes for private gambling \n(at the nominal fee of 50\u00a2) to promote and profit from gambling in every possible location \nwithout any of the restraints that applied to the recognized gambling houses. Thus, the farmer \nflouted the usual rules preventing women and children from gambling, restricting gambling to \ncertain hours, forbidding the lending of money to gamblers, banning alcohol on the premises, \nand stipulating the games that could be played (see SS3292/1909, 3802/1910, and 3997/1910). \nIn Cowan\u2019s words the farm system \u201cundoubtedly has a tendency to encourage public gambling\u201d \nand placed the Chinese community \u201cat the mercy of the Farmers\u2026whose one idea is to squeeze \nand fleece\u201d (SS3231/1911). Having destroyed the whole justification of the gambling farms,       \nCowan concluded that they had to be abolished.\n        Cowan\u2019s attack came at a time when the revenue farm system as a whole was being \ndismantled in Malaya. The government had begun replacing the great opium farms of the Straits \nSettlements with a government-run monopoly. In the FMS the opium import duty farms had \nall been abolished by 1900 and replaced by government collection of the duty. By 1911 the \ngovernment opium monopoly encompassed the FMS as well as the Straits Settlements. The \ncollapse of the farm system should be seen in relation to the great economic and administrative \nchanges that had taken place since the 1890s. Whereas the farms had once been the leading \ninstrument for promoting investment, it was now Western limited liability companies that \npoured capital into the FMS. Whereas it had been assumed that the farm system had promoted \nimmigration, a few officials now argued that the farms, particularly the gambling farms, \ndiscouraged immigration by impoverishing workers and giving the Malay States a poor \nreputation in China, which of course was the argument Treacher had advanced in 1894 \n(SS1973/1911). Whereas the government had had to rely on farms for revenue, it now had new \n(and generally more reliable) sources of revenue, such as the railways and the export duty on \nrubber. And, whereas the government had once had only a vague idea of what was going on \nwithin the area it purported to govern, it now could enquire quite literally into the nooks and \ncrannies of the realm, as exemplified by Cowan\u2019s reports. Most importantly, the government \nnow had the capacity, if it so chose, to run monopolies itself, as demonstrated most forcefully in \nthe case of the opium monopoly, or even to contemplate the possibility of stamping out activities \nthat it might declare to be illegal. In 1911 the gambling farms remained as \u201cthe only relic\u201d of \nthe revenue farm system (SS3802/1910).\n         The question then was what should replace the gambling farms. One possibility, of course, \nwas to abolish the farms and declare gambling illegal, but I have no evidence that officials in \nMalaya seriously considered this. Instead, officials, most notably Cowan, believed that the \ngovernment should license individual gambling houses after calling for tenders for each house. \nThis arrangement would, they argued, have many advantages. Since the holders of licences \n\n\n\n98\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\nwould not be able to grant passes for private gambling, gambling would be strictly confined to \nthe gambling houses, where the police could ensure that all gambling took place according to \nthe rules. At the same time much of the profit that had gone to the farmer would now go to the \ngovernment. In brief, the government would have the best of all worlds, regulated and restricted \ngambling on the one hand and lots of revenue on the other. This was in fact the arrangement \nthat the government introduced in January 1912. During 1912 the government collected nearly \ntwice as much revenue from the licensed gambling houses as it had from the farms in each of \nthe previous two years, when the farmers had got the farms on the cheap and made stupendous \nprofits. It seems clear that most officials in Malaya regarded the licensing system as close to \nideal, for they still firmly held the view that prohibition was impossible. As the recently retired \nResident of Perak explained to the Royal Colonial Institute in March 1912, \u201cyou must either \nsuppress [gambling], which is the euphonious term for prohibiting it, as has been done in the \nColony of the Straits Settlements, or you must regulate it. No reasonable person, of course, \nsupposes that it has been suppressed in the Colony, and no one, with any knowledge of Chinese, \nis so sanguine as to think that it can be suppressed in the Malay States\u201d (Birch, 1912: 345).\n      Just six months later, however, the FMS government announced that it would prohibit \ngambling as of the first day of 1913. In introducing the Common Gaming House Enactment \ninto the newly formed Federal Council, the Governor insisted that the decision had come \n\u201cfrom this side, and not from the home government\u201d (Federal Council Proceedings, 1912: \nB105). In fact, the Governor had recently been virtually directed to prohibit gambling as soon \nas possible by the Secretary of State, who had to deal with many embarrassing questions about \nthe licensed gambling houses ever since tenders had been called for in Malayan newspapers \n(HCO1245/1912). Nevertheless, during 1912 officials in Malaya quite rapidly became more \nreceptive to the possibility of prohibition. This was partly because they believed that despite the \ngreat revenue the government was collecting from the gambling houses gambling was declining \namong the Chinese. Far more importantly, it was because all the leading Chinese businessmen \nand many Chinese organizations, very much caught up in the revolutionary spirit in China at \nthe time, strongly supported and on some occasions actively pushed the idea of prohibition. In \nsharp contrast to the leading Chinese, most members of the European community vigorously \nopposed prohibition. The leading English-language newspaper in the FMS argued that it was \nhypocritical to forbid gambling of the type the Chinese had engaged in but allow betting on \nhorses and that prohibition would simply drive gambling underground (Malay Weekly Mail, 3 \nOctober 1912). European \u201cunofficials\u201d in the Federal Council supported the view that prohibition \ncould not be enforced, for as one of them explained \u201cthe poor Chinese cooly is born to gamble\u201d, \nand that the enactment would \u201cbring into existence the odious spawn of informers\u201d and corrupt \nthe police. While acknowledging that \u201cthe outside public\u201d opposed the enactment, the \nGovernor insisted that the government could not continue to take revenue from gambling when \nthe leaders of the Chinese community all wished prohibition.5 Thus, although the government \n\n\n\n1110\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\naccepted certain minor amendments, the Federal Council passed the legislation late in \nNovember 1912.\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n        For the government the loss of revenue was great, 6 but by this time the government\u2019s opium \nmonopoly was providing an effective means of accomplishing the same end of taxing Chinese \nworkers. The Chinese paid more for their opium, much as Fairfield had suggested in 1894. \nAs a result, the government could claim to be discouraging consumption, but it also collected \nmuch more revenue from opium than it had previously. In fact, the increased revenue from \nopium more than made up for the loss of the gambling farms. Gambling was lost as a source of \nrevenue, but what might be called the structure of the revenue system remained firmly in place. \nThe burden of taxation still fell heavily on the Chinese working class.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1    For more on the farms and their relationship to the tin industry, see Wong, 1965; Sadka, 1968; \n      and Butcher, 1983a.\n2    The Colonial Office had in fact imposed its own ideas about state regulation of one other \u201cvice\u201d, \n      namely, prostitution, in 1894 when the Secretary of State ordered the state councils to repeal laws \n      modelled on the Contagious Diseases Acts that required all brothels and prostitutes to be registered \n      and prostitutes to submit to regular medical examinations. Officials in Malaya deeply resented this \n      order, for they believed that the moral standards which had led to the repeal of the Contagious \n      Diseases Acts in Britain could not be applied to the society they governed. As Swettenham argued \n      in 1891, \u201cmorality is dependent on the influences of climate, religious belief, education, and the feeling\n      of society.\u201d When praising the farms in his 1898 letter Swettenham slipped in the comment that \n      unlike in the case of gambling he could give no assurance that \u201cthe best and wisest course\u201d was being \n      followed with respect to prostitution (CO 273/241a). At the time Swettenham and other officials \n      were trying to persuade the Secretary of State to reconsider the order made in 1894 on the grounds \n      that compulsory registration had protected prostitutes from exploitation. In the end the Secretary of \n      State prohibited any formal system of registration, but he did permit the government to keep a list \n      of \u201cknown\u201d brothels and prostitutes and to introduce laws penalizing brothel-keepers who prevented   \n      prostitutes from taking their grievances to the Protector of Chinese or from getting treatment for venereal  \n      disease. Prostitution was an even more sensitive moral issue than the gambling farms for the Colonial   \n      Office, but even in this case officials in Malaya eventually succeeded quite well in pushing their   \n      point of view (Butcher, 1979: 195-196).\n3    For more on the petition see Butcher, 1983b.\n4    An important provision of the enactment, a direct result of the anti-gambling petition, which as the     \n      Legal Adviser put it \u201centitles the Government to claim support from an hitherto unexpected quarter\u201d, \n      was that owners of mines and plantation were liable to be fined if gambling took place on premises      \n      under their control and they had not tried to prevent it (CO273/321c). In this respect the enactment  \n      resembled legislation in China.\n5    Federal Council Proceedings (1912: B111, 114-115). To the comment that the Chinese were born to     \n      gamble the Chinese member of the council replied that \u201cit is not true that the Chinese are born \n      gamblers. They gamble because they are given a chance to do so\u201d (1912: B113). There are strong \n      hints in a number of sources that European mine and plantation operators feared that if the gambling \n\n\n\n1110\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nButcher\n\n\n\n      revenue were lost they would be expected to start paying more taxes, but none of the European \n      unofficials on the Federal Council explicitly expressed this concern.\n6    The government also had to meet the cost of setting up and running a department to police the \n      enactment (HCO1348/1912). \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAbbreviations used in archival references:\n        CO (Colonial Office, The National Archives, United Kingdom), \n        HCO (High Commissioner\u2019s Office, Arkib Negara Malaysia), \n        SS (Selangor Secretariat, Arkib Negara Malaysia).\nBIRCH, E.W. 1912. The Federated Malay States. In Honourable Intentions, edited by Paul H. Kratoska,  \n        Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1983: 336-365.\nBUTCHER, John G. 1979. The British in Malaya: The Social History of a European Community in \n        Colonial South-East Asia, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.\n----- 1983a. The demise of the revenue farm system in the Federated Malay States, Modern Asian Studies,  \n        17: 387-412.\n----- 1983b. An historical enigma: The anti-gambling petition of 1905, Journal of the Malaysian Branch  \n        of the Royal Asiatic Society, 56(1): 1-9.\nCO273/143a. Report of Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Question of Public Gambling in the  \n        Straits Settlements, p.2, in 66 of 22 February 1887.\nCO273/143b. C.V. Creagh, \u201cEvidence taken before the Commission\u2026Gambling in the Straits Settlements\u201d, \n        in 66 of 22 February 1887.\nCO273/194a. Mitchell to Fairfield, private of 23 March 1894.\nCO273/194b. Fairfield to Mitchell, 30 May 1894, in private of 23 March 1894.\nCO273/194c. Telegram of 25 July 1894, in private of 23 March 1894.\nCO273/202a. Mitchell to Ripon, confidential of 8 February 1895.\nCO273/202b. W.E. Maxwell, \u201cMemorandum by the Colonial Secretary\u201d, 9 July 1894, in confidential of  \n        8 February 1895.\nCO273/202c. F.A. Swettenham, \u201cMemorandum by the British Resident, Perak\u201d, in confidential of \n        8 February 1895.\nCO273/202d. \u201cMemorandum by the British Resident, Selangor\u201d, 18 May 1894, and Treacher to Colonial  \n        Secretary, 27 July 1894, in confidential of 8 February 1895.\nCO273/202e. Resident of Negri Sembilan to Colonial Secretary, 12 December 1894, in confidential of \n        8 February 1895.\nCO273/202f. Minute by R.M., 24 March 1895, on Mitchell to Ripon, confidential of 8 February 1895.\nCO273/241a. Resident General to acting High Commissioner, 4 October 1898, in confidential of \n        12 October 1898.\nCO273/241b. Minute by E.W., 16 November 1898, in confidential of 12 October 1898.\nCO273/321a. Petition of Governor, in 332 of 23 August 1906.\nCO273/321b. Resident of Perak (E.W. Birch) to Resident General, 23 September 1905, in 332 of \n        23 August 1906.\nCO273/321c. L.P. Ebden, 25 September 1906, in confidential of 4 October 1906.\n\n\n\n1312\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBritish Policy towards Chinese Gambling in the FMS to 1912\n\n\n\nCO273/322. Winston Churchill, reply of 3 December 1906, extract from Hansard.\nFederal Council Proceedings 1912.\nHCO1292/1905. Secretary for Chinese Affairs, memorandum, 6 November 1905.\nHCO1245/1912. Harcourt to Young, 8 August 1912.\nHCO1348/1912. Documents related to the prohibition of gambling.\nMalay Weekly Mail, 3 October 1912. Editorial.\nSADKA, Emily 1968. The Protected Malay States 1874-1895, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya  \n      Press.\nSS3709/1907. R.C. Grey, 22 May 1907.\nSS3292/1909. Cowan, report on gambling.\nSS3802/1910. Cowan, 10 April 1911.\nSS3997/1910. Cowan, report on gambling.\nSS1973/1911. Correspondence regarding the gambling farms. \nSS3231/1911. Cowan, 30 March 1911.\nWONG Lin Ken 1965. The Malayan Tin Industry to 1914, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.\n\n\n\n1312\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nBook Review \n\n\n\nPenang: Rites of Belonging in a Malaysian Chinese Community, by Jean Elizabeth DeBernardi, \nSingapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2009, 318 pages (Paperback ISBN 978-\n9971-69-416-6) ; Hokkien Nursery Rhymes in Old Penang\u300a\u8001\u69df\u57ce\u00b7\u8001\u7ae5\u8c23\u300b(in Chinese), \ncompiled by Toh Teong Chuan, Kuala Lumpur: Mentor Publishing Sdn. Bhd., 2011, 178 pages \n(Paperback ISBN 978-983-3941-827).\n\n\n\n         Penang was the earliest British colonial \u201cbridgehead\u201d that was established in the Malay \nPeninsula in 1786. British hegemony subsequently penetrated into various other Malay sultanates \nso that by the early twentieth century the entire peninsula came to be known as British Malaya. \nAn integral part of the colonialization process was the immigration of peoples from surrounding \nterritories notably from China, India, and the islands of present-day Indonesia. The Chinese \ncommunity grew rather rapidly in number as it sought to claim a stake in the economic future \nof Penang. This community comprised a diversity of dialect groups from south China of which \nthe most dominant, until today, are the Hokkiens, more correctly known as Minnan or south \nFujian. \n        Despite more than two centuries since the beginning of the \u201cmodern\u201d history of Penang, \nserious studies or documentation of the Chinese or Hokkien have surfaced only in recent \ndecades. Interest among the latest publications on the Chinese of Penang are those on folk \nbeliefs and folk poetry. Representing the former is Jean DeBernardi\u2019s Penang: Rites of Belonging \nin a Malaysian Chinese Community and a sample of the latter is Hokkien Nursery Rhymes in \nOld Penang (in Chinese), compiled by Toh Teong Chuan. One is a serious academic endeavour \nby a foreign scholar and the other is a labour of love by a native son in his attempt to salvage \nthe disappearing treasure trove of Hokkien folk literature.\n         DeBernardi\u2019s study is based on anthropological observations and field techniques and \nskilfully integrated with documentary materials including Colonial Office files, Straits Settlements \nRecords, and accounts of nineteenth century Chinese society of Penang by Lieutenant Colonel \nJames Low, James Logan and other British officials. Its intention is to examine the manner by \nwhich Penang Chinese established their identity through folk beliefs and rites.  She embarked \non her field research on Chinese folk beliefs in Penang in 1979. She had learned Mandarin to \nfacilitate her research and, upon arrival in Penang, began to master the local version of the \nHokkien dialect. With this special advantage, she was able to employ popular terms and phrases \nto give local flavour to her analysis. She was also able to decipher words uttered by a medium \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 69-72\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTan\n\n\n\nin the midst of a trance in her narrative on the collective memory of Penang Chinese. The book \nis divided into two parts: religion and society in colonial Penang and religions and the politics \nof ethnic revival in contemporary Penang.\n         The study is an illuminating account of how the Chinese won the acceptance of colonial \nauthorities in carrying out their religious activities. Conflicts between the colonial administration \nand Chinese folk beliefs were described. An example was a case in 1857 that involved the Kong \nHok Keong (Guan Yin) temple. On one occasion, the temple followers were made to adjust \ntheir religious schedule so as not to interfere with the Sunday prayers of the neighbouring St. \nGeorge\u2019s church. The police attempted to regulate the religious procession of the temple when \nBruce Roberson, deputy police inspector and son-in-law of Straits Settlement Governor-General \nEdmund Blundell, rejected the application of the temple to celebrate the birth of the Goddess \nGuan Yin. The officer ordered that the stage erected by the temple be dismantled on a Saturday \nand be re-erected the following Monday. When this order was not followed, Roberson \npersonally led the police to dismantle the stage.     \n          The study examines the role of religion in the life of the Chinese and how Chinese identity \nand rights were exercised through the celebration of specific traditional festivals. The revival \nof Chinese folk beliefs, according to the study, is an expression of Chinese social coherence \nand identity as well as the community\u2019s attempt to counter the bias in official policies from the \ncolonial period right through to present-day regulations on the practice of Chinese cultural \nactivities. Among the reaction of the community was the establishment of a special committee to \nhold religious events and which has now taken on the duty of raising funds to support Chinese \neducation in the state.  \n      There are certain misconceptions in the author\u2019s discussion of the role of folk beliefs \namong the Chinese. This role is not entirely confined to what are superstitious practices in the \nname of religion. As an outsider, the author\u2019s over-emphasis of the symbolic meanings of religious \nactivities may have overlooked the deeper meanings and sanctity of religious rites. For \nexample, the perception that the Nine Emperors festival is a sign of the revival of Chinese folk \nreligion is questionable. This festival has indeed been held since the early twentieth century \nnot only in Penang but also in other towns especially Kuala Lumpur. Similarly, to claim that \npraying to the God of Heaven on the ninth day of the Chinese New Year is practised only by the \nHokkiens is not entirely correct. This tradition is also followed by some other dialect groups at \nleast from the 1970s.   \n        These minor misconceptions do not distract recognition from the value of the book in its \nanalysis of the relations between religious practices and identity among the Chinese of Penang. \nThe publication is a serious academic product that deserves close study by all who are \ninterested in folk culture and the Chinese. What is presented in the book is representative of not \njust Penang but other parts of Malaysia where the Chinese are found in substantial numbers.\n         The delightful publication on Hokkien Nursery Rhymes in Old Penang is in effect a \ncollection of selected folk poems. The compiler\u2019s intention is more than to entertain but, more \n\n\n\n70 71\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Review70 71\n\n\n\nsignificantly, to revive the receding memory of a rich cultural past of the Hokkiens of Penang. \nAs the practice of folk religion is an expression of identity of the practitioners, so also the \nrecitation or singing of folk poetry and rhymes. Unlike religious practices which have wide \nappeal to a large following, the folk rhymes are in danger of slipping into oblivion.    \n        The compiler is a native of Penang who is passionate in his efforts to capture the many \nfading faces of this old settlement. Through oral history, he has meticulously recorded facets \nof community life of the past, the origins of road names, the sceneries of old Penang and \nother subjects. These have helped to preserve the collective memories of the community and \nto enhance its sense of belonging. Some of these publications have now been used as gifts to \nofficial visitors to Penang. \n        Nursery rhymes are valued not so much as a literary form as in their relevance as a cultural \nheritage. Despite the relatively short history of settlement of the Chinese in Malaysia, many \naspects of the cultural heritage in various forms are being neglected, discarded, or simply \nforgotten as a result of the onslaught of economic development. Efforts to compile and salvage \nthis art form are highly commendable and should serve as an example to those who appreciate \nthe memories of the past.   \n        The collection consists of 44 Hokkien nursery rhymes compiled between 2001 and 2011. \nThey were sourced from all levels of Chinese society, including the highest as represented by \nthe late Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu/\u6797\u82cd\u4f51 (1919-2010) who once served as the Chief Minister \nof Penang. The rhymes deal with children\u2019s games, advice to women, daily life, and many \nothers. They reflect the traditional values of Chinese society in an earlier period of history. The \npiece entitled \u201cThe daughter-in-law should know\u201d advises that a daughter-in-law should sleep \nlate and wake up early, tidy up the house, clean the tables and chairs, and the bowls and \nchopsticks. She is to speak well of her husband\u2019s brothers, and of impeccable family upbringing. \nIn effect, it describes what the \u201cgood daughter-in-law\u201d should be, namely, hardworking \nand dutiful in looking after the household and its members. The rhyme also sings the praise of \nher parents for bringing up the \u201cgood daughter-in-law\u201d. While fulfilling the social mores of \nthe past, the \u201cgood daughter-in-law\u201d then was in reality a \u201cdomestic helper\u201d and, from the \nperspective of gender equality, someone who occupied a subordinate position in the household \ninto which she was supposedly happily married.\n        Another rhyme compares the background of two grandmothers in the family, one \na local-born nyonya and the other from China. The local-born grandma did not bind her feet \nwhile the grandma from China did not chew betel nuts and sirih leaves. This alludes to a bygone \nage when polygamy was an accepted practice among the Chinese. The male, already married \nwhen he left his ancestral village to look for his fortune in Malaya, settled down and married a \nlocal woman. Years later, he returned to China to bring back his stranded wife who would then \nhave to co-exist with a local woman. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTan\n\n\n\n         Some of the rhymes contain a mixture of local language or dialect, presented in colloquial \nHokkien style. Each poem is accompanied by international phonetic symbols. In keeping \nfaithfully to the Penang version of the Hokkien dialect, the collection may well serve as a \nuseful reference for academic studies relating to, among other topics, Chinese cultural heritage \nand localization, philology, and provide clues to sensitive gender issues of old Penang.\n\n\n\nTAN Ai Boay (\u9648\u7231\u6885)\nUniversiti Tunku Abdul Rahman \n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n72\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGuidelines for Submission \nThe Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies welcomes the submission of manuscripts that have not \nbeen published or submitted for publication in printed or electronic form. Manuscripts should be \nwritten in English and should not normally exceed 10,000 words, including footnotes and references, \nand submitted in Microsoft Word files in Times New Roman font size 12. Authors are to obtain \npermission to reproduce copyright materials including tables, maps and diagrams and to include \nproper acknowledgements in the text. Reviews of books published in English or Chinese should \nnot exceed 2,000 words in length. The book title, author, place of publication and publisher, year of \npublication, total number of pages and ISBN numbers should be stated clearly. The full name and \naffiliation of the reviewer are placed at the bottom of the review.   \n\n\n\nThe manuscript should be submitted according to the format below:\n\n\n\n1. Title Page: to show the title of the paper, full name of author, with the family name in capital letters,  \n    institutional affiliation, full postal and e-mail addresses. \n\n\n\n2. Abstract: In 200-300 words and a list of key words.\n\n\n\n3. Headings: All headings should be clear and concise and follow a logical sequence. Avoid having  \n    more than three levels of headings. \n\n\n\n4. Illustrations: All maps, graphs and other diagrams should be numbered consecutively as figures  \n    and black and white photographs as plates. All illustrations should be accompanied by  \n    brief captions and, wherever appropriate, acknowledgements of sources or copyright should be  \n    stated and placed below the figures or plates. All illustrations should be reproducible to conform  \n    to a page size of 180cm x 240cm.  \n\n\n\n5. Statistical Tables: Tables are numbered consecutively and complete with appropriate captions.        \n    Source references, if any, must be stated clearly. Measurements and statistics should be given in         \n    metric units. \n\n\n\n6. Citations: References to sources should be cited in the text according to the (Author, year: pages)  \n    format. To cite a work of reference by three or more authors, state only the first author followed   \n    by et al. Different works by the same author and published in the same year, for example, 2010,     \n    should be stated as 2010a, 2010b and so on. Reference to authors with identical family names \n    should include their initials, for example, Wang, G.W. 1991; Wang, L.C. 1991). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n    Citations of works in Chinese are stated as, for example, \u6731\u6770\u52e4/Zhu Jie Qin, 2008: 58-60. Citations  \n    based on personal communications should be stated as, for example, Wang Gungwu, conversation   \n    with the author, Singapore, 8 June 2010.   \n\n\n\n7. Notes: Notes are used only for explanatory purposes and numbered consecutively in the text. All   \n    notes are placed at the end of the article and before the list of References.   \n\n\n\n8. References: The manuscript must include a list of works complete with bibliographic details and  \n    arranged alphabetically by author and placed under \u201cReferences\u201d. The format for listing  \n    publications is as follows:\n\n\n\n    (i)    Books: SONG Ong Siang 1967. One Hundred Years\u2019 History of the Chinese in Singapore, Singapore:    \n           University of Malaya Press (First published in 1923).   \n    (ii)   Articles: SALMON, Claudine 2007. Cultural links between Insulindian Chinese and Fujian as  \n           reflected in two late 17th-century epigraphs, Archipel, 73: 167-194.\n    (iii) Collections: WANG Gungwu 1990. Merchants without empire: the Hokkien sojourning communities. \n           In The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350- 1750,\n           edited by James D. Tracy, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press: 400- 421.  \n    (iv) Theses: TAGLIACOZZO, Eric 1999. Secret Trades of the Straits: Smuggling and State-Formation \n           Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1870-1910, Ph. D. thesis, Yale University.\n    (v)  Internet sources: DEBERNARDI, Jean 1996. Chinese in Southeast Asia, Encyclopedia of World \n           Cultures. http://www.encyclopedia.com (assessed on 16 Jan. 2011).\n    (vi) Chinese sources: Titles in Chinese are to be shown in simplified characters and accompanied by \n           a translation in English. These are listed separately and in alphabetical order according to the  \n           Pinyin system as follows: \n           Books:    \u6731\u6770\u52e42008.\u300a\u4e1c\u5357\u4e9a\u534e\u4fa8\u53f2\u300b\uff0c\u5317\u4eac\uff1a\u4e2d\u534e\u4e66\u5c40\uff08ZHU Jie Qin 2008. A History of    \n                            Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Co\uff09.\n           Articles: \u9648\u56fd\u660e1992.\u3008\u5728\u7f8e\u534e\u4eba\u5bb6\u5ead\u4ef7\u503c\u53d6\u5411\u7684\u53d8\u8fc1\u3009\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6d77\u5916\u534e\u4eba\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\n\n\n\n             \u4e8c\u671f\uff1a111-121 (CHEN Guo Ming 1992. Changing trends in the family values of   \n                        Chinese Americans, Journal of Overseas Chinese Studies, No. 2: 111-121).\n\n\n\nManuscripts may be addressed to the Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies and sent by e-mail to \nmjcs@newera.edu.my. Contributors of articles and book reviews will receive two copies of the journal \nand 20 free reprints. The Editorial Board reserves the right to make available an electronic version of \nthe journal for easy access in the New Era College website: Url:http://www.newera.edu.my.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulation Ageing and the Malaysian Chinese: \nIssues and Challenges\n\n\n\nCHAI Sen Tyng and Tengku Aizan HAMID\n\n\n\nReprinted from\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nVol. 4, No. 1, 2015: 1-13\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction through \nWorkplace Learning in Small and Medium \n\n\n\nTourism Enterprises in Malaysia \n\n\n\nSHAMUNI Kunjiapu and RUHIZAN Mohamad Yasin\n\n\n\nReprinted from\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nVol. 4, No. 1, 2015: 15-29\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn-Service Teacher Training in \nMalaysian Chinese High Schools: \n\n\n\nCurrent Situation, Characteristics, and Issues\n\n\n\nWONG Shwu Huey \n\n\n\nReprinted from\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nVol. 4, No. 1, 2015: 31-45\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Early Maritime Chinese Diaspora in \nSoutheast Asia: Ports, Routes, and Communities \n\n\n\nWU Xiao An \n\n\n\nReprinted from\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nVol. 4, No. 1, 2015: 47-58\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Review \n\n\n\nPenang: Rites of Belonging in a Malaysian Chinese \nCommunity, by Jean Elizabeth DeBernardi; \n\n\n\nHokkien Nursery Rhymes in Old Penang, \ncompiled by Toh Teong Chuan (in Chinese) \n\n\n\nTAN Ai Boay\n\n\n\nReprinted from\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nVol. 4, No. 1, 2015: 69-72\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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"\n\nBOOK REVIEW\nSocio-historical Development of the Kampung Cina Settlement in Kuala Terengganu, by Tan Yao \nSua and Kamarudin Ngah, Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, \n2013, 103 + x pages (ISBN 978-967-5832-81-9).\n\n\n\n         This historical monograph on the Kampung Cina (meaning literally, Chinese Village) Settlement \nin Kuala Terengganu provides a pleasant read, as it gives a compact and careful reconstruction of \nthe historical context in which the settlement came into existence. The book includes many valuable \nhistorical and contemporary photographs of the settlement, some of which date back to the beginning \nof the twentieth century. All the transliterated words are accompanied by the corresponding Chinese \ncharacters, which help to ease the comprehension of older readers who are unfamiliar with the \nPinyin system.\n         The well-structured contents are presented in nine short chapters, including the introduction \nand conclusion. Chapter Two discusses Terengganu and early Chinese maritime trade in Southeast \nAsia. It refers specifically to the two prehistorical Dong Son drums found in the state which suggest \nthat its port polities had been part of the Southeast Asian trading networks since early times. The \nbulk of the chapter nonetheless gears towards providing an overview of the more than two millennia \nof historical development of Chinese maritime trade. In relations to Southeast Asia, the overview \nunderlines how the Chinese maritime trading activities contributed to the emergence of coastal polities \nand trading ports in Southeast Asia which also provided the backdrop of the development of port \ntowns in Terengganu.\n       Chapter Three combs through early Chinese records, in search for indications of Chinese \nknowledge or awareness of the presence of port towns in Terengganu. The task is complicated by the \nvariable transliterations of place-names used by different authors, and the geographical uncertainty \nof the named locations in most texts. The likelihood of regular Chinese contacts with Terengganu at \nthe latest by the thirteenth century is judged to be strong as evidenced not only by references in \nChinese records to the name of the state, transliterated as Dengyanong (\u767b\u7259\u4fac) but also corroborated \nby the discovery of Song dynasty (960-1279) coins in Dungun. Yet the lack of mention of any \nChinese settlements in Terengganu in any of these early Chinese records intrigues Tan and Ngah.\n       Chapter Four examines the background of the Hokkien-speaking Chinese pioneer settlers at \nthe settlement. These settlers had originated from Zhangzhou Prefecture (\u6f33\u5dde\u5e9c) and later on, \nQuanzhou Prefecture (\u6cc9\u5dde\u5e9c), both situated in the southern part of Fujian province. The authors \nnote the age-old involvement of Hokkien people in overseas trading activities. They were among \nthe earliest Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia. The significance of their trading activities for the \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 83-86\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTing\n\n\n\nMelaka sultanate may be inferred from the fact that the first headman of the Melaka Chinese \ncommunity during the latter part of the sixteenth century was from Zhangzhou, and one of the \nSyahbandar (harbour master) of Melaka was appointed to oversee Chinese traders among whom \nthose from Zhangzhou were specifically mentioned. The discovery of ancient tombs dating back to \nthe Ming era (1368-1644) indicates that the earliest settlers had resided in Terengganu from the first \nhalf of the seventeenth century, even though it cannot be confirmed that they settled at Kampung \nCina. Tan and Ngah surmise that the genealogical dating of the oldest clan in the settlement, the \nLim clan, would have provided corroborating evidence to such effect, had the two earliest, \nundocumented generations of the pioneering forefathers of the clan been taken into account. \n     Chapter Five highlights the position of Kuala Terengganu as the most popular international \ntrading port between the Indian and Pacific Oceans among European traders throughout the \neighteenth century. The authors point out that the Chinese constituted the leading \u201cmerchant class\u201d \nin Terengganu (p. 41). While trade continued to thrive during the nineteenth century, Kuala Terengganu \nexperienced a gradual decline in the face of the competitive rise of Singapore as an international \ntrading port city, and the subsequent large-scale economic activities which developed along the west \ncoast of the Malay Peninsula.\n          Chapter Six discusses early prominent Chinese leaders who were appointed by Terengganu \nsultans to official positions such as the Chinese Kapitan (Headman) and Low Tiey (Elderly man), as \nhis intermediary with the local Chinese community. A Chinese Kapitan was vested with certain \nexecutive, administrative and judicial powers over his community, and was granted the special right \nby the sultan to issue token tin coins, jokoh, for business transactions. Tan and Ngah refer to a recently \nuncovered ancestor tablet stating the deceased as a Chinese Kapitan from 1734 to 1820 which, \nnotwithstanding some doubt arising from the rather lengthy duration of the office, would have been \nan indication of the sizeable existence of the Chinese settlement by early eighteenth century. \n        Chapter Seven narrates the establishment and works of traditional institutions or organizations \nsuch as temples and clan-based associations in the settlement. Material evidence confirms their \nformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in contrast with the early establishment of \na temple in the more inland Tirok, which was in existence since 1762. \n           Chapter Eight looks at how the various historical changes in the regional trading dynamics and \nthe advent of land transportation (which impacted negatively on the use of waterways as the means \nof transportation at the Terengganu River estuary) had led to the gradual loss of economic vitality \nand demographic decline of the settlement. Various attempts at reviving local economic development \nand cultural restoration are on course.\n        The authors have mobilized a comprehensive range of historical sources and research \ntechniques such as archeological, archival, genealogical, historical, ethnographic and oral history \napproaches, in order to piece together the socio-historical development of Kampung Cina at Kuala \nTerengganu. Their postulate of the development of the historic settlement as being spurred by the \nage-old Chinese maritime trading activities in the region, at the site of a once flourishing \ninternational trading port, is convincing. \n\n\n\n8584\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Review\n\n\n\n        With its establishment dating back to at least the first half of the eighteenth century, it is \nnoteworthy that the settlement has been in continuous existence for more than three centuries, or \neven pushing back an additional half a century before that. Its history highlights the fact that Kuala \nTerengganu was once an internationally well-known port of call, notwithstanding the better known \nheight of prosperity attained by the maritime entr\u00eapot economies of Kedah, Melaka, and Johor-Riau \nbefore it.\n        A lingering question after reading the book is the extent to which the Chinese settlers were \nhistorically involved in pepper cultivation in Terengganu. Tan and Ngah report that a Qing dynasty \ndocument entitled An Eye-Witness Account of a Maritime Country (\u300a\u6d77\u56fd\u95fb\u89c1\u5f55\u300b) written in \n1730 mentions Terengganu as being known for the export of superior quality pepper, but identifies \nthe people of Terengganu as from the Malay race, and that there was no mention of any Chinese \nresiding in the state (pp. 30-31). This omission from the document, however, obviously cannot be \ntaken as indicative of their absence, as another contemporary travelling narrative of Captain \nAlexander Hamilton who called at Trangano in 1719 clearly indicates their presence. Hamilton\u2019s \naccount states explicitly that the local Chinese were involved in the export of pepper and gold. Their \nrole was mainly as maritime traders, with no mention of any engagement in pepper planting (p. 40), \ndespite a fleeting reference to their involvement in sugar cane cultivation. But Carl Trocki (1997: \n89) cites the same passage to infer that the Chinese would have been involved in pepper cultivation \neven though he acknowledges that Hamilton \u201cdoes not actually say whether these were produced \nby Chinese labour\u201d. In order to comprehend this element of ambiguity, it is worth citing in full what \nHamilton has said in his accounts (1930: 83):\n\n\n\n                 The Hills are low, and covered with ever-green Trees, \n                                      that accommodate the Inhabitants with Variety of delicious \n                                      Fruits, such as Lemons, Oranges, Limes, Mangoes, Mangostans,\n                                      Rambostans, Letchees and Dureans: And in the Vallies, Corn, \n                                      Pulse, and Sugar-canes. The ground is cultivated by the Chinese, \n                                      for the lazy Malayas cannot take that Trouble. \n\n\n\n                                      The Product of the Country is Pepper and Gold, which are \n                                      mostly exported by the Chinese. About 300 Tuns are the \n                                      common Export of Pepper, and we have it almost for one half \n                                      of the Price that we pay for Malabar Pepper. \n\n\n\n        One would deduce from the text that if the ground was cultivated by the Chinese and that \nthe \u201cMalayas\u201d could not be bothered about doing so, then the Chinese would logically be the ones \nwho produced the pepper rather than the latter. This inference would not be far-fetched as there was \nprecisely an increased prevalence of Chinese settlers as planters (and miners) in the region during \nthat time. In effect, Trocki (1997) cites the accounts of Hamilton in the context of his study of the \nhistorical emergence of Chinese labourers\u2019 settlements in Southeast Asia from the end of the \n\n\n\n8584\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTing\n\n\n\nseventeenth century, possibly through locally based Chinese merchants as intermediaries. These \nChinese labourers were recruited to settle in various parts of Southeast Asia during this time to work \neither as miners of gold or tin, or planters of gambier, sugar cane and pepper.\n     Andaya and Andaya (1982), citing an unnamed Thai chronicle, state that the Terengganu ruler \nencouraged the settlement of Chinese pepper planters, and that by mid-eighteenth century, pepper \nplantation there was largely a Chinese domain (p.94). Pepper production, as noted by Tan and Ngah, \nrose from about 300 tons at the beginning of the eighteenth century to more than a thousand tons \ncalculated based on the stated maximum production of 17,000 pikul (one pikul is equivalent to 62.5 \nkg) annually towards the end of the century. While it is unclear as to whether the bulk of the pepper \ncultivation was in the vicinity of the Kampung Cina Settlement, this historical information would \nbe an important piece of zigsaw in completing our historical understanding of the nature of early \nChinese settlements in Terengganu.\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nANDAYA, Barbara Watson and ANDAYA, Leonard Y. 1982. A History of Malaysia, Hampshire: \n         Macmillan Education Ltd.\nHAMILTON, Alexander 1930. A New Account of the East Indies (Vol. 2), London: The Argonaut Press.\nTROCKI,  Carl A. 1997. Chinese pioneering in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia. In The Last Stand of   \n          Asian Autonomies Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750-  \n           1900, edited by Anthony Reid, Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd. and New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press: \n          83-101.\n\n\n\nHelen TING Mu Hung (\u9648\u7a46\u7ea2) \n                 Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS)\n\n\n\nUniversiti Kebangsaan Malaysia\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n86\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2013, 2(1): 107-110\n\n\n\nChinatowns in a Globalizing Southeast Asia, edited by Leo Suryadinata and Ang Cher Kiat, \nPhotographs and Captions by Zhuang Wubin. 168 pages, (hardcover ISBN-13:978-981-08-\n2184-5) Singapore: Chinese Heritage Centre, 2009. \n\n\n\nChinatowns in a Globalizing Southeast Asia is meant to be \u201ca sophisticated survey of \nthe different Chinatowns\u201d in Southeast Asia based on the theme of \u201cglobalization\u201d and to \n\u201cinject a renewed interest in the often overlooked corners\u201d of the region (p. 3). It takes the \nreaders on a journey to discover \u201cthe origins and transformation\u201d of these Chinatowns and to \nshow their \u201cexotic\u201d and \u201cunique\u201d cultures, traditions and heritage, and the adaptability and \ntenacity of the Chinese overseas. Despite these intentions, the book is in fact brief in words \nand lavish in the display of photographs. \n\n\n\nThe publication is indeed a rare and much-needed study on the Chinatowns of Southeast \nAsia. Ten Chinatowns are identified, one in each of the capital cities in the region. The \nimmediate question that comes to mind is not so much the presence of, but rather what is, a \n\u201cChinatown\u201d. \n\n\n\nSome \u201cChinatowns\u201d have actually originated as \u201cChinese settlements\u201d. Phnom Penh \nmay have \u201cgrown out of a Chinese settlement\u201d that also became the capital of Cambodia in \nthe early fifteenth century (p. 102). The birth of Kuala Lumpur preceded the advent of British \n\u201cprotection\u201d. In Bangkok, a \u201cChinatown\u201d could have appeared from 1782, and the current \none in Yaowarat Road was built only in the 1900s. By then the Chinese had made up half the \npopulation of Bangkok (p. 24). This numerical dominance would qualify Bangkok more as a \nChinese-Siamese town rather than a Siamese city with a \u201cChinatown\u201d. \n\n\n\nThe origins and growth of others were contemporaneous with colonial rule. The \nChinatowns of Manila and Jakarta had evolved through repeated colonial persecutions and \nmassacres. Binodo in Manila occupied an area given by the Spanish Governor of Manila \nin 1594 (p. 86). The Jakarta Chinatown was associated with the Dutch plan to build up the \ncity into a major port in the early seventeenth century. The Dutch saw the need for Chinese \nlabourers, artisans and tradesmen and encouraged them to settle in Batavia (p. 56). After the \nmassacre of the 1730s, the Chinese in Jakarta were resettled outside the city walls which \nbecame the Chinatown of today. Cholon appeared in the seventeenth century and has since \nbeen the centre of Chinese settlement in South Vietnam (p. 40). Yangon\u2019s Chinatown emerged \nafter the second Anglo-Burmese war in 1852. Before World War Two, half the population \nof the city were Indians and Chinese (p. 150). Similarly, while Singapore\u2019s origin was the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n108          Voon\n\n\n\noutcome of colonial rule, it was soon dominated by Chinese settlers and has been so ever \nsince. \n\n\n\nIt is stated that \u201csome countries do not have clearly identifiable Chinatowns\u201d and Brunei \nis cited as an example (p. 2). The Chinese population of Brunei (37,600 of whom a quarter are \ncitizens) is miniscule. Yet, despite the absence of \u201ca distinct Chinatown\u201d, businesses in the \ncity centre are mostly in Chinese hands (p. 10). Similarly, the presence of \u201cChinatowns\u201d in \nKuala Lumpur and Singapore does not accord with conceptual reality. Malaysian Chinese do \nnot look upon Petaling Street as a \u201cChinatown\u201d. Its recent conversion into a pedestrian street \nat night and, with official blessings, the erection of an archway claiming it to be a \u201ccultural\u201d \nstreet, is purely to cater to the tourist industry. As the book acknowledges, the area is now \nsuffocated by foreign hawkers peddling their wares along five-foot ways and the street itself \n(p. 71). \n\n\n\nThe publication raises an interesting question on the nature of \u201cChinatowns\u201d. As an \nentity, the Chinatown is much more than a physical phenomenon, and it is by no means \neasily identifiable in the Southeast Asian context. Unlike the Chinatowns in Europe or \nAmerica, the towns associated with Chinese settlement in Southeast Asia are of older origins \nor contemporaneous with European colonial rule. In most cases, the initial development of \nmany of these capital cities was intimately associated with the pioneering role of Chinese \nimmigrants. \n\n\n\nKuala Lumpur and Singapore bear the typical characteristics of \u201cChinese towns\u201d \nrather than those of \u201cChinatowns\u201d. Other capital cities in their early phases of development \nmight have been so as well. Singapore and the many towns of Malaysia are the outcome of \nspontaneous pioneering and a reflection of the dominant presence of the Chinese community. \nColonial policies had allowed them a great deal of leeway to pursue their dreams. Fully \nrelying on their own initiatives, capital and labour, the Chinese were among the earliest in \nopening mines, agricultural holdings and in the building of modern townships. They were the \ncreators of jobs, revenue and wealth from which the colonial authorities derived immense \nbenefits. They were their own masters and charted their own destinies and many enjoyed high \nsocial status. Until today, many Chinese still conduct their business and live in rows of two-\nstorey \u201cshop-houses\u201d with their common \u201cfive-foot ways\u201d. Such towns are rather unique and \nhardly found among Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia. The ethnic composition \nof Singapore and most of the towns along the west coast states of Peninsular Malaysia and \nthose in Sarawak and Sabah is such that they are in appearance and character typical \u201cChinese \ntowns\u201d. Nowhere is the existence of the \u201cChinatown\u201d evident, for large areas of the towns are \noccupied by Chinese shop-houses that symbolize local commerce and trade. In Malaysia, the \n\u201cChinese towns\u201d have become an integral part of the Malaysian townscape.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews           109\n\n\n\nThe idea of the \u201cChinatown\u201d in Southeast Asia is often the creation of the romantic \nmind with an eye for the tourist trade. What constitutes a \u201cChinatown\u201d is therefore of little \nconsequence. \n\n\n\nIn Europe, the first Chinese immigrants arrived in port cities that have been in existence \nfor centuries. In the west coast America and Australia, the Chinese found themselves in \nnewly-established towns in European-settled territories that were being opened up for gold \nmining. Some eventually moved on to older cities such as New York. The Chinese were \neffectively \u201clate-comers\u201d who congregated in the \u201cold\u201d quarters of the host cities. Beyond \nthese enclaves, few Chinese were to be found. \n\n\n\nThe early Chinatowns in the West were more than the physical manifestation \nof neighbourhoods inhabited by ethnic Chinese and enclosed by host societies. Their \n\u201cChineseness\u201d is clearly defined by demographic, social and economic characteristics. The \nChinatowns are kept apart from and marginalized by the host societies. The early waves of \nChinese who arrived in the West were welcomed as labourers, not as sojourners or neighbours. \nThese Chinatowns were among the earliest ethnic \u201cstreets\u201d characterized by a history of \nracial discrimination and even demonization. Some were no better than \u201clegally enforced \nghettos\u201d and were true enclaves settled by unwelcomed settlers. \n\n\n\nThe \u201cChinatowns\u201d of Southeast Asia are clearly not the same entities in the historical, \neconomic and socio-cultural contexts as those of the West. They are fully integrated into the \nlocal and national economies. A fundamental difference between the early \u201cChinatowns\u201d of \nEast and West is the social standing of the Chinese inhabitants in the eyes of the host societies. \n\n\n\nThe colonial rulers had no intention of large-scale settlement in the hot, humid and \ninsalubrious climate of their tropical possessions. They relied on large numbers of hardworking \npeople to fill and develop the vast emptiness of their newly-acquired territories. These they \nfound among the Chinese, Indians and Javanese. Located at the fringe of power, they were \nleft largely alone to pursue their economic interests. Chinese immigrants in particular were \nable to open up new enterprises in mining, agriculture, trade and commerce and some became \nlandowners. \n\n\n\nThe \u201cChinatown\u201d then is more than a place. In its original \u201cversion\u201d in the West, it \nwas an enclave in which the residents lived as \u201coutsiders\u201d and differentiated from the host \nsocieties. The attributes associated with the Chinatowns in this publication are different from \nthose in the West where the Chinatowns have gone through a dark period in their history \nand are certainly not the glamorous-sounding places of contemporary tourism. Some of the \n\u201cChinatowns\u201d of Southeast Asia, and certainly the many \u201cChinese towns\u201d in Malaya as well \nas Singapore, have experienced a more normal path of growth and development. \n\n\n\nCredit must be given to the authors for bringing out a much-needed publication on \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n110          Voon\n\n\n\nthe important and neglected subject of Chinatowns in Southeast Asia. But if more attention \nis given to the mechanics and dynamics of the development of the selected Chinatowns in \nthe historical and spatial contexts, the reader will be able to draw deeper insights on the \nunderlying nature of the \u201cChinatown\u201d.\n\n\n\nVOON Phin Keong\nNew Era College \n\n\n\nMalaysia\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities \nwith Confucian Virtues\n\n\n\nJui-Aik Tan*, Kian-Aun Law** and Yet-Mee Lim***\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Jui-Aik Tan, Kian-Aun Law and Yet-Mee Lim (2023). Enhancing Managers\u2019 \nCognitive Capabilities with Confucian Virtues. Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies 12(1): 53\u201381. \nhttp://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0005\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0005\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 53\u201381\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n This conceptual study aims to enhance the understanding of how a manager\u2019s cognitive \ncapabilities (mental level) that underpin his dynamic capabilities (behaviour level) may be improved \nby practising Confucian virtues in the decision-making process. Dynamic capabilities refer to the \nmanner with which managers create, extend, and modify the ways in which firms conduct business. \nThe literature on the cognitive underpinning of dynamic capabilities of managers is focused mainly \non the Western perspective of rational thinking and privilege variance-based understanding, with \nlimited attention to the interaction between cognition and emotion, and insufficient attention to \nfactors that guide a manager\u2019s thoughts and actions. A key lesson of Confucian teachings is to \ninstil proper individual behaviour and its core virtues call for the consistency between words \nand action. This paper argues that the core Confucian virtues of r\u00e9n (\u4ec1) or benevolence may \nenhance individual managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for sensing new business opportunities, \nthe core Confucian virtues of zh\u00ec (\u667a) or wisdom may enhance individual managers\u2019 cognitive \ncapabilities for seizing business opportunities, and the core Confucian virtues of l\u01d0 (\u793c) or propriety \nmay enhance individual managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for transforming firms\u2019 assets. To increase \nprocess-based understanding, three process frameworks are proposed to explain how the virtues of \nr\u00e9n, zh\u00ec and l\u01d0 may improve these managers\u2019 mental abilities. Lessons drawn from the experience \nof successful Chinese entrepreneurial managers indicate how particular Confucian virtues could \nsharpen the mental abilities of managers, distinguish individual managers\u2019 dynamic capabilities, \ngive rise to strategic changes, and improve their organisational performance in a highly volatile \nwork environment. The process frameworks and entrepreneurial experience increase understanding \n\n\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n54\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nof the origin of firm performance differences by tracing and presenting how the difference in \nindividual managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities may emerge. This study lacks empirical support to \nincrease the credibility of the three process-oriented conceptual framework, which may be validated \nand enriched by further case study research. Besides, this study focuses on Confucian virtues. \nHowever, it offers little analysis of the fact that it needs the support of learning. Further research is \nneeded to explore how Confucian learning may mitigate this weakness for a flawless state of virtue.\n \n \n Keywords: Managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities, Confucian virtues, dynamic capabilities, \n                            entrepreneurship, strategy and firm performance\n \n\n\n\n Introduction\n\n\n\n The literature on dynamic capabilities1 suggests that enhancing managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities \nfor effective strategic change and organisational performance is the key to achieving better firm \nperformance (see Helfat & Peteraf, 2015; Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011). In contrast to a manager\u2019s \ncapabilities to take physical actions, cognitive capabilities2 is part of a manager\u2019s capabilities that \ntake mental actions to acquire, organise, and process information in order to fulfil managerial tasks \n(Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Strategic management studies\u2019 central concern is how a firm may achieve \nbetter performance (Teece et al., 1997). To address the question, Teece et al. (1997) proposed the \nconcept of dynamic capabilities as an organisational level construct to identify the origins and \nmethods of wealth generation by businesses operating under fast-changing conditions. However, \ndrawing on an individual level of analysis, Adner and Helfat (2003) found that different managers \nmake different decisions for strategic change in a changing environment, which is a central factor \nthat distinguishes the performance of the firm among managers. This phenomenon can be understood \nthrough the concept of \u201cdynamic managerial capabilities.\u201d According to Helfat and Martin (2015, p. \n1281) these are \u201cthe capabilities with which managers create, extend, and modify the ways in which \nfirms make a living.\u201d They proposed the concept of \u201cmanagerial cognitive capabilities\u201d to explain \nvariations in managers\u2019 capacities to perform mental activities, which may produce differences \nin dynamic managerial capabilities. Managerial cognitive capabilities refer to \u201cthe capacity of an \nindividual manager to perform one or more of the mental activities that comprise cognition\u201d (Helfat \n& Peteraf, 2015, p. 835). The literature on dynamic capabilities suggests that the differences among \nindividual managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities significantly explain variations in the performance of the \nfirm. This implies that the enhancement of a manager\u2019s cognition improves his/her mental activities, \nwhich in turn would enhance the performance outcome of the firm.   \n However, a review of the management literature shows that research has focused chiefly \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n55\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\non improving cognition by deploying either an individual\u2019s rational cognitive (e.g., experience \naccumulation) or emotional (e.g., empathy) capabilities (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011), thereby \nneglecting the interaction of the two capabilities and its resulting process of strengthening \ncognition for better firm\u2019s performance (Foss & Lindenberg, 2013). Rational cognitive capabilities \nthat underpin the dynamic capabilities of managers can be strengthened through: 1) activities that \nadd experience or knowledge, such as practising repetitively or practising in different contexts or \ndomains of application (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015); 2) attention training (Verhaeghen, 2021), such as \nWestern and Eastern mindfulness (G\u00e4rtner, 2011; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2006); and 3) imagination, \nsuch as the application of design thinking (Liedtka, 2015). Emotional capabilities that underpin \nmanagers\u2019 dynamic capabilities can be enhanced through empathy, such as simulation and re-\nexperience to understand another\u2019s cognition and emotion (Jian, 2021). Therefore, applying \ncognition in the literature offers little insight into the elements that guide a manager\u2019s thoughts \nand actions (Calori, 1998). This oversight is caused by insufficient attention to considerations \nof philosophy in the study of managerial cognition (Calori, 1998), and omits the underpinning \nstructures that support cognitive activities, which is the key to identifying the origin and method \nof wealth creation. Filling this research gap is vital to guide managerial processes and practices \ntowards strategic change and a firm\u2019s survival and success in a volatile environment (Teece et al., \n1997), such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.\n The research question of this study is \u201chow do Confucian virtues strengthen managers\u2019 cognitive \ncapabilities?\u201d In the Western culture, although Aristotelean \u201cmean\u201d3 and \u201cphronesis\u201d4 or practical \nwisdom are valuable concepts of virtue, their system of virtue ethics is grounded in Aristotle\u2019s \narguments for contemplation as the single ultimate purpose of all human beings (Bertland, 2009). \nEmbracing any one objective as the only human aim is unlikely to be acceptable in a world that \nvalues the diversity of individuals and goals. Moreover, the Aristotelean purpose focuses only on \nrationality (Bertland, 2009). It can lead to evil ends (Bertland, 2009), especially when there is \ncomparatively little concern for harmony (Koehn, 2019). Conversely, little is known about the \nway Confucian virtues may contribute to the cognitive origins of managers\u2019 dynamic capabilities, \nwhich entail effective strategic change and wealth generation. Confucianism is adopted in this \nstudy because the Great Learning, a core Confucian text, stresses that virtue is the origin of wealth \n(Legge, 2013) and that the interaction and alignment between an individual\u2019s rational cognition \n(e.g., wisdom) and emotion (e.g., benevolence) is of great importance. As social ethics is central \nto Chinese philosophical thought (Romar, 2013), insights from Confucianism can guide what a \nmanager ought to do, and thus to provide the philosophical perspectives that have hitherto been \nneglected in the strategic management literature (Calori, 1998). \n To answer the research question, this study on Confucian virtues as the underpinnings of \nmanagers\u2019 cognition expands the proposition of Helfat and Peteraf (2015) that managers\u2019 mental \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n56\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nabilities reinforce their dynamic capabilities for sensing new business opportunities,5 seizing new \nbusiness opportunities,6 and transforming firms\u2019 assets.7 The analysis of Confucian virtues involves \nreference to relevant Confucian classics as well as research findings on Confucianism, business \nethics, and Chinese businesses. The analysis of the effect of virtues on managerial cognition is based \non the research findings on the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities, dynamic managerial \ncapabilities, social psychology, and cognitive psychology. The objective is to present new process-\noriented8 instead of variance-oriented9 (Mohr, 1982) conceptual frameworks about how Confucian \nvirtues strengthen the cognitive foundations of managers\u2019 dynamic capabilities. These are required \ncapabilities for managers to be more competent in forecasting, understanding, and adapting to a \nvolatile environment. Despite the growing number of studies on dynamic managerial capabilities, \nthe focus is mainly on variance-oriented empirical and conceptual research rather than on process-\noriented research. \n The objective of this study is threefold. First, to incorporate Confucian virtues in a Chinese \ntheory of management to complement and provide novel insights into the Western idea of dynamic \ncapabilities and managerial cognitive capabilities (Leung, 2009). Second, to contribute to a better \nunderstanding of the origin and manner of wealth creation through a process-oriented analysis of \nthe influence of Confucian virtues on managers\u2019 mental abilities. The process-oriented analysis \ntakes the form of a chain of sequential events and activities to show the processes under observation \nin this study rather than relying on the use of correlations, predictions and variables commonly \napplied in variance-oriented research and quantitative research method (Cloutier & Langley, 2020). \nThird, to propose three process-oriented conceptual frameworks to provide guidelines for applying \nthe concepts of r\u00e9n, zh\u00ec and l\u01d0 to strengthen managers\u2019 cognition. \n Following the critical review of the literature relating to the foundations of dynamic managerial \ncapabilities, the concept of managerial cognitive capabilities is introduced to provide the contextual \nbackground of the study. The relevant Confucian concepts of virtue are discussed to demonstrate how \nthese virtues may strengthen managers\u2019 capacities to perform various mental activities relating to \nmanagerial decisions. The conclusion will present the key findings of the study. However, it will also \nraise the limitations of the analysis as well as suggest possible avenues for future research on the subject. \n\n\n\nThe Impact of Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities on Strategic Change and Firm Performance \n In the search for the root causes behind variations in firm performance, strategic management \nresearchers have found that the influence of senior corporate leaders on firm performance exceeds \nthose of other key factors such as macro-economic conditions, presence in a profitable industry, \nand company circumstances (Hambrick & Quigley, 2014). The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is \nincredibly influential because of his decision-making power and heavy responsibilities that affect \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n57\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nchanges and outcomes, including the formation of the top management team and new strategies \n(Hambrick & Quigley, 2014).  Hence the differences in the managerial style among CEOs may be \nexamined to identify the root causes behind the variations in the strategic change and performance \nof different firms. The differences among CEOs vary according to human capital, social capital, \nand managerial cognition categories. Managers rely on these factors to make decisions to bring \nabout change. Consequently, different emphasis given to these three factors can produce divergent \nmanagerial decisions that may produce contrasting firm performance (Adner & Helfat, 2003). \n Human capital is a product of one\u2019s learning, which is reflected in the level of knowledge and \nskills developed from experience, education, and training (Helfat & Martin, 2015). In this regard, \na CEO\u2019s educational background is positively correlated with research and development spending \n(Barker & Mueller, 2002), but not with the strategic interpretation of information or changes in \nongoing organisational practices (Thomas, Clark & Gioia, 1993). A CEO\u2019s tenure in the current \nposition is positively correlated with the firm\u2019s entrepreneurial activities (Cao et al., 2015), but \nnegatively correlated with its level of diversification (Boeker, 1997). Social capital is the term used \nto mean the goodwill that results from a manager\u2019s relationship with other people, which opens doors \nto resources and information (Helfat & Martin, 2015). According to McDonald and Westphal (2003), \nthe CEO who consulted other managers with different functional backgrounds was often positively \nrelated to product market diversification but negatively related to geographic diversification.   \n Managerial cognition is an umbrella term that covers knowledge structures, mental processes, \nand emotions (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Dimov (2010) found that entrepreneurs\u2019 beliefs about \nthe feasibility of new opportunities and their ability to exploit them mediate the impacts of \nentrepreneurial experience (a type of human capital) and the early planning of new ventures. \nNadkarni and Narayanan (2007) further revealed that the complexity of top management knowledge \nstructures leveraged for strategy development positively affects strategic flexibility. \n The previous studies signify conflicting results concerning the dominant influence of managerial \ncognition in shaping strategic change. This suggests that further research is needed to understand \nthe ways managerial cognition may be sharpened. It is crucial to focus on managerial cognition \nbecause the development and deployment of both social capital and human capital depend on an \nindividual\u2019s cognitive abilities (Adler & Kwon, 2002). However, despite the potential for managers\u2019 \nmental competency to improve their dynamic capabilities, research in the dynamic capability area \nhas devoted limited attention to the investigation of the psychological processes, and Confucian \nvirtues in particular, that involve the interaction between rational cognition and emotion for the \nimprovement of managerial cognition.   \n\n\n\nManagers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n Researchers have proposed that a manager\u2019s cognitive capabilities are needed to support his/her \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n58\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ndynamic capabilities for sensing new business opportunities, seizing new business opportunities, and \ntransforming firms\u2019 assets (e.g., Helfat & Peteraf, 2015; Teece, 2007). These cognitive capabilities \nimply the capacity of the manager to shape (Teece, 2007), recognise, and create opportunities, as \nwell as foresee competitive threats (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011).  \n A manager\u2019s cognitive capabilities for sensing new business opportunities are associated with \nthe mental abilities of perception and attention. Perception refers to the mental activities that process \nperceptual data from the external environment to generate valuable and meaningful information \nrelated to that environment (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Perception supports opportunity identification \nthrough its mental functions of interpreting data and recognising emerging patterns in the external \nenvironment. Attention is a mental condition that involves direct cognitive resources towards some \ncomponents of the environment rather than others and is characterised by the central system is ready \nto react to sensory input (American Psychological Association [APA], 2018a). Attention reinforces \nthe sensing capabilities by orienting mental resources towards relevant information to facilitate \nenvironmental scanning as well as the recognition of business opportunities (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). \nA manager\u2019s cognitive capabilities for seizing new business opportunities reflect the manager\u2019s \nreadiness to take advantage of opportunities and overcome potential threats (Kump et al., 2019). \nThe mental skills that underlie seizing activities are problem-solving and reasoning. Problem-\nsolving is the process by which people try to overcome obstacles, develop strategies to go from \nwhere they are to where they want to be, or arrive to conclusions by utilising advanced mental \nfunctions like reasoning and creativity (APA, 2018b). Reasoning is the process of utilising rational \nprocedures like formal rules of logic to find answers to problems (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). The \nproblem-solving and reasoning skills are applied in evaluating and creating investment decisions \nand business models to seize opportunities.   \n The cognitive capabilities for transforming firms\u2019 assets refer to the mental capacity to select, \nstrengthen, align, recombine, and reconfigure assets and organisational structures (Teece, 2007). \nThese capabilities are needed to address corresponding changes in the external environment and \npreserve corporate growth and profitability brought about by sensing new business opportunities \nand seizing new business opportunities. Social cognition and language are the mental abilities \nunderpinning transforming firms\u2019 assets (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). \n Social cognition refers to mental activities in generating thinking related to; understanding, \nperception, categories and judgment of the interactions among people (APA, 2018c). Social \ncognition may support transforming activities because it influences social skills that can establish \nco-operation and minimises resistance among organisation members to achieve the objectives of \ntransforming firms\u2019 assets (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). \n Language is defined as forms of verbal and non-verbal communication. Firstly, as a verbal \ncommunication, it will underpin transforming firms\u2019 assets by convincing organisation members to \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n59\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nsupport new initiatives (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Secondly, as a non-verbal means of communication \nin sign language or computer language, it supports the transforming of firms\u2019 assets via facial \nexpressions and gestures that elicit required reactions from other organisation members.\n Researchers have consistently found that individual differences in these mental abilities affect \ntask performance. One of the critical differences is culture. In Western culture, the application of \nmanagers\u2019 cognition is more consciously controlled, purely rational, emotionally restrained, and \nfree of social biases to make an objective, dispassionate decision (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011). \nHowever, recent findings in cognition research hint that conscious rationality frequently has \nlimited influence in decision making (Slingerland, 2010).  At the same time, effortless attention \nand spontaneous habits precede conscious awareness, exerting a more significant influence on an \nindividual\u2019s behaviour (Slingerland, 2010). In this regard, guidance from Confucian virtues to \nenhance a manager\u2019s unconscious thinking and mental abilities becomes valuable. Confucianism \nemphasises effortless action and attention in conducting virtuous acts, which serve as hallmarks \nof authenticity and ethical proficiency, and provide higher context sensitivity and flexibility in \ndecision making (Slingerland, 2010).\n \n\n\n\nConfucian Virtues and Cognitive Capabilities\n Confucianism refers to \u201ca social ethic which encourages a lifetime pursuit of moral excellence\u201d \n(Romar, 2013, p. 985). The system of social ethics is based on the teachings of Confucius, which \nconsists of a set of d\u00e9 or virtues (\u5fb7), x\u00edng or practices (\u884c) and y\u00ec or skills (\u827a). Confucianism is a \ndominant traditional philosophy that is the foundation of Chinese culture. Research on Confucianism \nin Chinese business enterprises consistently found that the management practices of these firms are \nheavily affected by Confucianism (see Chou & Cheng, 2020; Hui, 2022; Tian et al., 2022; Tsai & \nTsai, 2022). Writings on Confucianism and Chinese business indicate that elements of Confucian \nthought have a decisive influence on Chinese managerial behaviour and practices (see Cheung & \nChan, 2005, 2008; Yao, 2002; Zhu, 2015),\n The corpus of Confucian thought is embedded in the four classics, including the Great \nLearning (Ni, 2017). According to the Great Learning, virtue is the origin of wealth as it attracts \npeople to the virtuous person. This classic suggests that the relationship between wealth and virtue \nis similar to the relationship between the fruit and root of a tree (Legge, 2013). Zhong and Bao \n(2016) commented that this notion follows the theory of economics, which offers unique insights \ninto the core objectives of the dynamic capabilities perspective to understand where wealth comes \nfrom and how it is generated by businesses under fast-changing conditions (Teece et al., 1997). \n Virtue refers to \u201ca state of human character (associated with the mind) that guides people to \ndo \u2018good\u2019\u201d (Hackett & Wang, 2012, p. 870). Virtue is a product of the interaction and integration \nof emotion and cognition. Although virtue is initiated by emotion, its development rests on \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n60\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ncognition (Nichols, 2011; Vir\u00e1g, 2016). Confucianism advocates more than 50 virtues (Hackett \n& Wang, 2012). As this study aims to trace the origin that contributes to the improvement of \nmanagers\u2019 mental abilities that support their dynamic capabilities, process-oriented analysis is \nused to propose a possible process of r\u00e9n (\u4ec1) or benevolence, which may strengthen managers\u2019 \ncognitive capabilities for sensing new business opportunities, of zh\u00ec (\u667a) or wisdom may strengthen \nmanagers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for seizing business opportunities, and of l\u01d0 (\u793c) or propriety may \nstrengthen individual managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for transforming firms\u2019 assets, rather than \nutilise variance-oriented analysis to test exhaustive numbers of virtues that are sufficient to enhance \nmanagers\u2019 mental abilities (Poole & Van de Ven, 2010). R\u00e9n is arguably the most essential virtue \nof Confucianism and fundamental to moral behaviour (Chen, 2013). Zh\u00ec is vital to materialise the \nbenefits of r\u00e9n (Thompson, 2007). L\u01d0 can complement r\u00e9n by providing an expression of r\u00e9n (Hu \net al., 2021). Connections among these virtues are consistent with complementary relationships \namong the three types of managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities. Managers implement sensing activities \nto discover new business opportunities, which will then be captured with seizing activities (Teece, \n2007). To maintain the profitable growth resulting from sensing and seizing activities, managers has \nto transform firms\u2019 assets to adapt to different conditions of firms in different stages of growth and \nchanges in the external environment (Teece, 2007).   \n\n\n\nR\u00e9n \n R\u00e9n means \u201cbenevolence\u201d, \u201chumaneness\u201d, and \u201chumanity\u201d (Ni, 2017). It is the ability to empathise \nwith others (Wong, 2017).  It is a unique type of awareness that enables a person to feel sorrowful \nupon noticing the sufferings and hardships of others (Wong, 2017).  A manager who is imbued with a \nstrong sense of r\u00e9n is inherently conscious of the feelings of others. The manager is likely to possess \nan enhanced level of cognitive abilities for sensing new business opportunities. The manager is more \nlikely to have an empathic feeling when other people are suffering and is thus motivated to learn \nabout customers\u2019 pain points that signify their latent needs (Figure 1). This is because r\u00e9n can create \n\u201ctransference,\u201d which is the mental action of understanding others\u2019 perspectives, interests, needs, and \npreferences (Wong, 2017). Notably, Figure 1 follows a process perspective presentation (Cloutier & \nLangley, 2020), while Confucian thinking is process-oriented (Lai, 2006).\n The empathic feeling stimulated by r\u00e9n is crucial for sensing new business opportunities. \nZhu (2015) found that emotion is a necessity in Chinese entrepreneurs\u2019 business decisions. Livnat \n(2004) proposed that the emotive element of a benevolent initiative comprises of the motivation to \nalleviate the suffering of the beneficiary and the emotions of care and concern. Since empathetic \nfeelings encompass care and concern for other human beings and things, such feelings are likely to \nraise awareness and encourage a benevolent manager to ease suffering by seeking to comprehend \ncustomers\u2019 pain points and the problems involved. \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n61\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nFigure 1 \nR\u00e9n and the Cognitive Capabilities for Sensing New Business Opportunities\n\n\n\nSource: Proposed by authors  \n\n\n\n R\u00e9n may improve capabilities for attention, especially towards identifying and understanding \npotential customers\u2019 issues. Without r\u00e9n, the feeling of care and concern are less likely to emerge, \ngiving rise to \u201cinattentional blindness\u201d (Simons & Chabris, 1999), which means the inability to \nnotice a happening while working on other things (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Inattentional blindness \nmay occur when a manager runs a business to achieve rational economic incentives only, thereby \nneglecting to pay attention to other important firm objectives (Romar, 2002). In contrast, Zhu (2015) \ndocumented that business practices are improved when Chinese entrepreneurs allocate attention to \nboth benevolent purposes and economic purposes. For example, a Chinese entrepreneur helps an \nemployee\u2019s father to overcome a critical health problem when the employee is away travelling for \na business opportunity. Benevolent attention can also be extended to other stakeholders, such as \ncustomers and business partners. Therefore, r\u00e9n may increase a manager\u2019s attention to the problems \ncustomers or other parties face and translate their pain points into information about latent customer \nneeds or new opportunities (Zhu, 2015).\n In addition, r\u00e9n may enhance a manager\u2019s perception abilities to improve accuracy in \nperceiving new problems as opportunities. The idea of love within the concept of r\u00e9n (Wong,2017), \nmay empower a manager to understand customer needs from the customer\u2019s perspective rather than \nthe manager\u2019s perspective. This is because r\u00e9n teaches one how to love people from the perspective \nof love-receiver rather than the love-giver (Huang, 2005). Sensing new business opportunities \nthrough the customer\u2019s perspective would undoubtedly increase the accuracy of customer needs \nidentification, as their perspective is a better source of information about actual customer needs. \nKurtmollaiev et. al. (2018) found that adopting users\u2019 perspective can generate deeper customer \ninsights and improve sensing capabilities. \n Several empirical studies have shown that r\u00e9n improves managers\u2019 cognition for sensing new \nbusiness opportunities. Tian et al. (2022) reported that FOTILE\u2019s founder saw potential demand \n\n\n\nOthers are \nsuffering\n\n\n\nWithout r\u00e9n \n(benevolence) \n\n\n\nLittle to no \nempathetic \n\n\n\nfeeling\n\n\n\nWith r\u00e9n \n(Benevolence)  \n\n\n\nEmpathetic \nfeeling\n\n\n\nCustomers\u2019 \npain point\n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n62\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nfor a new product upon learning that lung cancer could be caused by inhaling cooking smoke. In \ntheir study of business leaders in Singapore and Brunei, Low and Ang (2012) revealed that an \ninterviewee with a caring mindset  achieved sales success from product improvement by acting on \ncustomer feedback. Similarly, Ip (2002) showed that the founder of China\u2019s Weizhi Group achieved \nconsiderable revenue growth by introducing a product refund policy to compensate for counterfeit \nor sub-standard goods. \n\n\n\nZh\u00ec (Wisdom)\n Zh\u00ec refers to \u201cthe intellectual capacity of human beings that makes knowledge or the learning \nof a skill possible\u201d (Kim, 2014, p. 59). According to Confucius, \u201cthe wise are free from perplexity\u201d \n(Ni, 2017, p. 244). Zh\u00ec has at least three essential components: (1) the ability to foresee the possible \noutcomes of different courses of action and deeply consider ideal ways to accomplish specific goals; \n(2) the ability to appreciate virtuous conduct and devotion to it; and (3) the ability to develop an \nintellectual understanding that enables a person to know or be conscious of more things from a \nsingle source of information (Van Norden, 2007). The wise can understand swiftly and accurately, \ndeliberate competently on taking the ideal action to attain desired ends, and anticipate and evaluate \nthe possible effects of different courses of action.\n Figure 2 shows that a manager imbued with zh\u00ec will enhance his cognitive abilities for seizing \nopportunities, specifically in the form of novel products, processes, or business models (Teece, \n2007). These may call for decisions to strategically invest in development and commercialisation \nactivities, technological competencies, complementary resources, and capabilities (Teece, 2007; \nMatysiak et al., 2018). The mental skills of reasoning and problem solving, which are enhanced \nby zh\u00ec, are helpful in making and evaluating investment decisions and business models to seize \nopportunities (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). In this regard, a business model may exist as a specific \nproblem-solving system to determine target customers, meet their needs, and fulfil their satisfaction \nto gain financial return (Baden-Fuller & Haefliger, 2013). To overcome difficulties through problem \nsolving, zh\u00ec may be needed to conduct effective means-end deliberation to detect the most effective \ncourse of action to meet desired goals (Van Norden, 2007).\n Zh\u00ec may improve problem solving by producing the best means to achieve objectives as in ideal \ninvestment options and appropriate business models to seize opportunities (Van Norden, 2007). \nProblems encountered in strategic decision making that deal with opportunities are usually complex \nand ill-defined (Brightman, 1978). Complexity arises when \u201cthe problem\u2019s current and goal states, \nalong with obstacles encountered along the way, are diverse, dynamic during their resolution, \ninterdependent, and/or not transparent\u201d (Chevallier, 2016, p. 6). An instance of the complexity \nof a problem can be found in selecting a career that is both financially and emotionally rewarding \n(D\u00f6rner & Funke, 2017). Complex problems concern dynamic systems that problem-solvers must \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n63\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\naddress during uncertainty (Funke et al., 2018). These dynamic systems are characterised by (1) \nlack of transparency, which refers to the unavailability and inaccessibility of pertinent information, \n(2) complexity, which denotes the quantity of interconnected elements, (3) interconnectedness, \nwhich represents the elements\u2019 relationships, (4) dynamics, which denotes their changes over time, \nand (5) conflicting objectives (Funke et al., 2018).\n Complex problem solving calls for zh\u00ec to overcome transparency issues, which typically require \ninformation retrieval. Zh\u00ec may be exercised to develop nuanced, holistic, and responsive intellectual \nawareness for clearer perceptions as well as to guide and deliver felicitous responses (Varela, 1999; \nThompson, 2007). A more precise understanding of a situation can be achieved with intellectual \nawareness because it involves self-cultivated attention to not only the parts of a situation, but also the \nparts\u2019 relationship with the whole situation in their entirety that may help perceive the overall structure \nof a complex problem (Varela, 1999). Information retrieval becomes more comprehensive as \u201call \nrelevant aspects are included, not just those which fit the reduction of a categorical analysis\u201d (Varela, \n1999, p. 28). The resulting information is vital for generating skillful and well-tailored reactions to \nachieve goals and establish desired situations accurately (Thompson, 2007). \n\n\n\nFigure 2 \nZh\u00ec and the Cognitive Capabilities for Seizing New Business Opportunities\n\n\n\nInformation \n\n\n\nCreation of solutions \n\n\n\nUnderpinned by wisdom\u2019s ability to:\n\n\n\ngenerate the intellectual understanding \nneeded in complex problem-solving \nto address intransparency, complexity, \ninterconnectedness, dynamics, and \ncompeting goals\ncreate the intellectual understanding \nrequired to solve ill-defined problems \nto facilitate analogical reasoning\n\n\n\nSeizing opportunities\n\n\n\nBusiness models \nStrategic investments\n\n\n\nSelection of the best solution \n\n\n\nUnderpinned by wisdom\u2019s ability to:\n\n\n\nprovide guidance for achieving goals\naim for the goals\n\n\n\nEvaluation of solutions \n\n\n\nUnderpinned by wisdom\u2019s ability to: \n\n\n\nweigh the pros and cons and assess \nsituations  \nanticipate possible effects of different \nactions\n\n\n\nSource: Proposed by authors\n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n64\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n The man of zh\u00ec is quick to understand complex situations and capable of finding solutions to \nproblems arising from different sources. Zi Gong, a student of Confucius, once confessed that \u201cHui \nhears one point and thereby knows ten; I hear one point and know two\u201d (Ni, 2017, p. 153). Hui\u2019s \nability to gather more information and insights from one source would demonstrate that he was \nmore capable of addressing complex situations by considering a range of interconnected elements. \nThe implication is that the ability of knowing additional things allows one to visualise the entire \nimage from a specific portion of the total (Ni, 2017).\n The ability of knowing additional things is effective in dealing with a complex problem\u2019s \ndynamic issues, a feature of dynamic systems of a complex problem that refers to changes happening \nin a complex problem as time passes. Fischer et al. (2012) suggest that dynamic decision making \nand prediction are needed to deal with the dynamics feature of a complex problem or the changes \nin complex problems. Dynamic decision making is the process of making goal-oriented decisions \nthat depend on prior decisions and their effects in a situation where things can change naturally or \nas a result of prior decisions (Fischer et al., 2012). An example of dynamic decision making is the \ndecision to adopt a low-price strategy to increase market share and the number of units produced \nwith the prediction of subsequently cost of producing a similar item will decrease because of the \nincrease in competence of production from larger quantity of production (Rahmandad et al., 2021). \nThe example shows that dynamic decision making and prediction can benefit from the ability of \nknowing additional things that enables an understanding of the dynamics between earlier actions \nand later actions. This is evident in Confucius\u2019 remark about Zi Gong: \u201cbeing told about what was \nin the past, he knows what is to come after\u201d (Ni, 2017, p. 92).\n Similarly, tackling competing goals relies on the manager\u2019s zh\u00ec to gain additional insights. \nDynamic decision making can be applied to handle competing goals which arise from the complex \nand interconnected nature of human relations and affairs (Thompson, 2007). A case in point is the \nsacrifice of short-term profits to achieve a long-term productivity increase. This may involve the \nproper balance between employee treatment, long-term productivity, and short-term profits. The \nability of knowing additional things may be helpful in dealing with the dynamics between employee \ntreatment, long-term productivity and short-term profits to overcome potential problems that come \nfrom these three competing goals. Better employee treatment calls for the manager\u2019s zh\u00ec to engage \nin virtuous conduct, conceive the best course of action and foresee potential consequences. The \nneed to balance competing goals arises when some objectives are contradictory and call for the zh\u00ec \nto understand different expected consequences from the means adopted to attain specific objectives \n(Fischer et al., 2012).  \n Next, zh\u00ec can help to solve ill-defined problems through its analogical reasoning. Ill-defined \nproblems are those in which the initial state, goal, or operations of a problem and constraints on \nthe solution are impossible to be known at the outset, such as the selection of a script for a movie \nproduction (Smith & Kosslyn, 2014). Ill-defined problems may be solved with analogical reasoning, \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n65\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nwhich involves searching for a problem that is in some ways similar to the ill-defined problem at \nhand so that the solutions of the analogical problem can be employed as references to produce new \nsolutions for the present ill-defined problem (Gick & Holyoak, 1980). An example of analogical \nreasoning is how Zi Gong knew what was coming after hearing about things in the past (Ro\u0161ker, \n2014), which signifies the link between analogical reasoning and zh\u00ec via Zi Gong\u2019s foresight from \nadditional things. Another example is in Confucius\u2019 confession, \u201cto those who have been presented \none corner but do not from it figure out the other three, I do not repeat my lesson\u201d (Ni, 2017, p. \n195). These four corners are analogies connected by their common attributes to relate the known to \nnew and unknown things (Ro\u0161ker, 2017).\n The evaluation of solutions calls for two abilities of zh\u00ec. The first is the ability to weigh pros and \ncons and assess situations before acting according to one\u2019s sense of appropriateness or righteousness \nto generate the most favourable outcome (Thompson, 2007). The wise would consider the larger \ncontext of events and human affairs to benefit the greater community, such as society, humanity, \nor nature, rather than only themselves or their clan (Thompson, 2007). The second is the ability to \nanticipate the possible effects of different actions (Van Norden, 2007), which can be compared and \nmatched with the most favourable outcome.\n The most effective course of action would be selected after evaluating different solutions. For \nthis purpose, at least two abilities of zh\u00ec are required to select the solution that best accomplishes \nthe objectives. First, zh\u00ec provides the proper direction for achieving objectives under varying \nconditions, like guiding an arrow to hit a bird (Thompson, 2007). Second, zh\u00ec encompasses the \nskill to aim for objectives by adapting to changing situations rather than rigidly adhering to a set of \nguidelines (Thompson, 2007).\n The discussion above illustrates the ways manager\u2019s zh\u00ec can strengthen problem solving and \nreasoning, which underpin effective strategic and investment decision making as well as business \nmodel design for seizing opportunities (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Zh\u00ec facilitates reasoning while \nincreasing the accuracy, sense of direction, flexibility, and new knowledge needed for problem \nsolving. An individual with superior zh\u00ec is more likely to be able to reason effectively. An example \nof a man of zh\u00ec is Li Kashing, the Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa and arguably the world\u2019s richest \nChinese, who solved the problem of expanding his business (McDonald, 2012). He analogised his \nbusiness expansion following the way the Yangtze River accepts many tributaries to grow large, \nwhich involved treating people with politeness, being acceptable towards them, exercising caution \nin rejecting them, and developing personal relationships with them (McDonald, 2012). In this \nexample, the phenomenon of the Yangtze River can be analogically connected to the first \u201ccorner\u201d \nConfucius taught his students, whereas the behaviours of being polite, more acceptable, reluctant \nto reject, and personally connected are comparable to \u201cthe other three corners\u201d he expected his \nstudents to figure out themselves.   \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n66\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n Empirical research has provided evidence that zh\u00ec enhances managers\u2019 cognition for seizing. \nThe founder of a real estate succeeded in expanding his business by adopting innovative game-\nchanging practices grounded on a tree-planting method (analogical reasoning) involving care for the \nroots and the trunk for the tree to grow sufficiently to generate a long-term return. This was in contrast \nto a transplant method to harvest a short-term gain from the transplanted tree that was unlikely to \nadapt to the environment (Tsai et al., 2011). The founder of a food company was conscious of the \nConfucian wisdom of \u201crowing a boat upstream, if the boat is not moving up, it will come down\u201d (F. \nL. T. Yu, 2008, p. 261) to capture growth opportunities with several strategic moves such as tracking \nand meeting changes in customers\u2019 demands and preferences, and business expansion with chain \nstore franchising which was previously perceived as a threat to company reputation. The founder \nof Taiwan\u2019s Acer Group applied zh\u00ec to expand his business by drawing on his inspirations from the \nsuccess of McDonald. The company mimicked its business model to operate overseas business units \nto assemble new PCs like fast-food restaurants and to achieve economy of scale by treating Acer\u2019s \nfactories as \u201ccentral kitchens\u201d (Shih, 1996). \n    \nL\u01d0 (Propriety)\n L\u01d0 is \u201ca disposition connected with following the rites\u201d and translated to mean \u201cpropriety,\u201d \n\u201cetiquette,\u201d \u201critual,\u201d and \u201crites\u201d (Van Norden, 2007, p. 117; Romar, 2013). L\u01d0 is the practice of \nproper individual conduct to promote mutual benefits. An action is deemed appropriate when \nan individual\u2019s actions, speech, and feelings are in harmony with his/her role in a given society \n(Lee, 2013). According to Confucius, \u201cin performing ritual propriety, it is better to be sparing \nthan extravagant. In mourning, it is better to express deep sorrow than be particular about tedious \nformalities\u201d (Ni, 2017, p. 115). The expression of sorrow should be in accordance with the feeling \nof sorrow as determined by the mourning situation. Under conditions of harmony, language and \ncommunication become more persuasive, and the practice of l\u01d0 can enhance the power of language \nand communication. In itself, harmony contributes to greater social coherence as a whole (Lee, \n2013). Hence, l\u01d0 may improve relationships with other organisation members, lower their resistance \nto change, and induce their co-operation in transforming firms\u2019 assets. The manner in which propriety \nstrengthens managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for transforming firms\u2019 assets is shown in Figure 3.\n Cheung and Chan (2008) found that Hong Kong Chinese CEOs assume the role of a supportive \nteam member among their colleagues, fill their inner dispositions with team spirit, communicate \nsufficiently with co-workers in a group setting and show good affection and concern in their \nrelationships with colleagues. Within the organisation, the harmony between the CEOs in the \nperformance of their leadership role and their disposition will promote workplace coherence, mutual \nbenefits and understanding, which in turn may lead to better co-ordination, collaboration, dedication \nand the full play of talent in the organisation (Cheung & Chan, 2008). \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n67\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nFigure 3 \nL\u01d0 and Cognitive Capabilities for Transforming Firms\u2019 Assets\n\n\n\nIndividual\u2019s social roles and \ninterpersonal relationships \n\n\n\nEmbodying proper inner disposition and \nmotivations \n\n\n\nEncompasses:\nfeelings\ncomprehension about specific situations \n\n\n\nImprovements to transformational \nactivities\n\n\n\nCommunal harmony\nMutual benefits\n\n\n\nMutual understanding\n\n\n\nConducting appropriate outer performances \n \nManagerial use of communication:\n\n\n\nLanguage (e.g., speech with the right \ntone)\nNonverbal behaviour (e.g., actions like \nsuitable facial expressions)\nEmotional expression (e.g., emote \nsorrow)\n\n\n\nImplementing L\u01d0 \n\n\n\nInvolves:\n\n\n\nrealising moral potential by creating \nproper ways of conduct involving \nsocial communication, such as more \nformal ceremonies and more informal \nbehaviours (Lee, 2013).\nachieving harmony between an \nindividual\u2019s roles, inner dispositions, \nand outer performance so that these \nways of communication are deemed \nappropriate (Lee, 2013).\n\n\n\nTransformational activities \n\n\n\nExamples:\n\n\n\nCoordinated adaption of strategic assets\nOvercoming resistance to change\n\n\n\nSource: Proposed by authors\n\n\n\n Studies show that l\u01d0 strengthens managers\u2019 cognition for transforming firms\u2019 assets. Chou \nand Cheng (2020) showed that the founder of a leading Taiwanese real estate company instilled \nhumanistic values and Confucian virtues in employees through leading by example, mentorship, \nformal training sessions, business philosophy lectures, and conducting symbolic ceremonies, rituals \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n68\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nand honouring heroes. These practices helped employees better understand and satisfy customer \nneeds and enabled them to treat customers as friends with respect. Tian et al. (2022) reported that \nFOTILE\u2019s founder encouraged his employees to follow Confucianism in their actions and treat \nFOTILE like a family to naturally take customers\u2019 concerns into account to produce products of \nsuperior quality. The founder explained the philosophy, acted as a role model to his employees \nand conducted company rituals, such as a formal \u201cThree Reflections Meetings\u201d for his employees \nto examine and be responsible for shortcomings in their work through the Confucian way of self-\nreflection. Similarly, Hui (2022) found that Haier Group\u2019s founder organised ceremonies to honour \nthe firm\u2019s heroes to encourage his employees and to win their support. The founder transformed his \nemployees\u2019 mindset of selling inferior quality refrigerators at lower prices into establishing Haier\u2019s \nquality-centred product standards. This was accomplished by repeated communications about a \npublic event of smashing the inferior quality refrigerators by him together with the workers who \nmade them.\n \n\n\n\nDiscussion and Conclusion\n\n\n\n The previous discussion focuses on selected Confucian virtues that may form the basis of \nmanagerial cognitive capabilities. These virtues help to improve a manager\u2019s mental processes \nabout attention, perception, problem solving, reasoning, social cognition, and language skills. A \nmanager imbued with Confucian virtues practises virtuous conduct through psychological activities \ninvolving the interaction between emotion and cognition. These activities are essential in the face of \nthe growing demand for managerial competency in crafting and implementing strategic change.\n The present study contributes to advancing dynamic capabilities research in three ways, namely, \nby being scientific, revelatory, and practical (Corley & Gioia, 2011). Firstly, it incorporates some \nof the cardinal Confucian virtues to contribute dynamic capabilities research by demonstrating the \nrelevance of these virtues in strengthening managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for sensing new business \nopportunities, seizing new business opportunities, and transforming firms\u2019 assets. In particular, it \nexplores the function of r\u00e9n in sensing new business opportunities, zh\u00ec in seizing new business \nopportunities, and l\u01d0 in transforming firms\u2019 assets. The role of Confucian virtues in engaging affect-\ncognition interaction for more effective dynamic capabilities cannot be accomplished by either \ncognition or emotion alone (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011). For example, in sensing new business \nopportunities, the feeling of sorrow (affect) brought by r\u00e9n is essential to generate sensitivity \n(managers\u2019 ability to allocate attention) to others\u2019 suffering, which may signal potential business \nopportunities. Confucius taught that zh\u00ec can seize business opportunities, provided that r\u00e9n exists \nto preserve these opportunities (Ni, 2017). The literature suggests that firm performance is related \nto the possession and differences in human capital, social capital and managerial cognition (Helfat \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n69\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n& Martin, 2015). Similarly, the implementation of individual mental aptitude can increase and \ncapitalise on human and social capital (Alomani et al., 2022; Brymer et al., 2012). The present \nstudy is thus a step forward to understanding where firm performance differences come from by \nextending Helfat and Peteraf\u2019s (2015) analysis of managerial cognition with Confucian virtues.\n Secondly, the study is revelatory by demonstrating the application of Confucian virtues may \ngenerate differences in managerial cognitive capabilities, which in turn may result in a higher \nlevel of dynamic managerial capabilities that can create effective strategic change for better \nfirm performance. Helfat and Martin (2015) call for research on the root of firm performance \nimprovement by examining the processes of how resources owned by individual managers (e.g., \nmanagers\u2019 cognition, knowledge and personal relationship with others) that support dynamic \nmanagerial capabilities influence strategic change, together with the process of how the strategic \nchange affects firm performance. Helfat and Peteraf (2015) emphasised that one source of \ndifferences in managers\u2019 cognition is improving managers\u2019 intellectual capacity via practice, which \nleads the processing of information in mind to shift from controlled mode to automatic mode and \nbecomes path-dependent. Information processing in the mind can be categorised into two types of \nprocess, namely automatic and controlled mental processes (Stanovich & West, 2000). Automatic \nmental processes demand comparatively less mental effort and provide fast reactions to external \nstimuli and data, while controlled mental processes require much control from consciousness and \ninvolve the use of rational methods, analysis and formal rules of logic (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Path \ndependence refers to the reliance on previously learned knowledge and firms\u2019 history in selecting \nthe strategic direction a firm will move forward (Teece et al., 1997). Increasing the reliance on \nautomatic mental processes can cause biases in decision making and confine an individual\u2019s mindset \nto existing knowledge, which may result in resistance to change and unable to see new technologies \nand changes in customer needs from new perspectives (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015; Haase et al., 2009). \nThis problem highlights the need for additional ways of enhancing managerial cognition. As \nshown earlier, the application of r\u00e9n can enhance managers\u2019 cognitive capabilities for sensing new \nbusiness opportunities, which is vital to generate insights about potential business opportunities \nand to identify and react to environmental changes. This can counteract the weaknesses of the path \ndependence of cognitive capabilities, such as restraining firms from discovering novel ways to \ngenerate value (Bohnsack et al., 2014). \n In seizing new business opportunities, differences generated through zh\u00ec are critical in \naddressing the lack of transparency, complexity, interconnectedness, dynamics, competing \ngoals, and unfamiliar conditions. As these issues characterise the volatile environment in which \ndynamic capabilities operate, zh\u00ec has a unique contribution to superior reasoning and problem-\nsolving capabilities that underpin superior dynamic managerial capabilities. Zh\u00ec will increase the \nunderstanding of how dynamic capabilities function in a volatile environment. In transforming \n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n70\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nfirms\u2019 assets, differences produced through l\u01d0 render communication cognitively and emotionally \nmore convincing in gaining co-operation and minimising resistance to change. This implies that \nthe harmonious relationship promoted through l\u01d0 is valuable. As the relationship is durable, these \nvirtues are suitable for transforming firms\u2019 assets that require long-term commitment, like strategic \ninvestments (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). \n One of the causes of differential firm performance may be explained by considering the role of \nConfucian virtues in a way that differs from the existing literature findings. This is revelatory and \ncounters the criticism that Confucianism is authoritarian and paternalistic and thus represses human \nnature (Ip, 2009; Wong, 2017). Resorting to the practice of Confucian virtues may benefit both \nmanagers and employees. This argument is in line with the teachings of Confucius that virtues are \npart of human nature and are non-repressive (Ni, 2017),\n Thirdly, the study is of practical utility through the development of three process-oriented \nconceptual frameworks that uncover how Confucian virtues strengthen managers\u2019 cognitive \ncapabilities for their enhanced dynamic capabilities, which lead to more effective strategic change \nand improved firm performance. This helps overcome the lack of process-oriented study in the \ndynamic managerial capabilities literature and fills the research gap in existing studies that reveal \nthe contradictory impacts of managerial human capital, managerial social capital, and managerial \ncognition on strategic change. Central to these process-oriented conceptual frameworks are the \nprocesses of adopting and applying Confucian virtues for heightened mental performance, \npaving the way for more effective managerial behaviours. These insights and the emergence of \ndifferences in managers\u2019 cognition exemplified by the sequence of events are unlikely to be made \navailable through the variance-based approach and quantitative research method that emphasises \nrelationships between variables and detail abstraction to produce variables (Cloutier & Langley, \n2020). Moreover, practitioners who aspire to improve firm performance can apply these process-\noriented conceptual frameworks by taking necessary actions to strengthen managers\u2019 cognitive \ncapabilities (Corley & Gioia, 2011). This complements Helfat and Peteraf\u2019s (2015) insights that \nmanagerial mental processes vary across individuals. However, they provided little knowledge on \nhow these differences emerge.  \n Two shortcomings deserve further study. First, the three process-oriented conceptual frameworks \nneed more empirical support to enhance credibility (Guba, 1981). Empirical studies should advance \nthe knowledge of the influence of Confucian virtues on managerial cognitive capabilities by employing \ncase study research, which is suitable for investigating processes and process-oriented conceptual \nframeworks (Cornelissen, 2017). These frameworks can be exploited to direct the initial stages of a \nstructured case study aimed at building theory (Carroll & Swatman, 2000).  \n Second, this study is focused on Confucian virtues but provides little analysis of the fact \nthat it needs the support of learning (Ni, 2017). Confucius warned that loving r\u00e9n, zh\u00ec, x\u00ecn (trust), \n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n71\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nuprightness, courage, and steadfastness without loving learning might lead to corresponding flaws \n(Ni, 2017). His teachings imply that individuals differ in their competency to apply virtues since \nlearning is needed for the appropriate use of virtue to exploit its latent merits and avoid its latent \nflaws. Lin (2018) proposed Confucian learning as personal development to become a gentleman \nin pursuing one\u2019s life goal, rather than merely accumulating knowledge for its own sake. Ni \n(2017) argued that Confucian teachings are not instructions that impose restrictions on individual \nconduct but to impact skills to allow one to live better. Despite the possibility of contradictory \ninterpretations, knowledge and empirical evidence are lacking on how Confucian learning may \nmitigate weaknesses for a flawless state of virtue. These are issues for future studies to ponder.  \n\n\n\n*  Jui-Aik Tan [\u9648\u5a01\u5b87] is a PhD student, Institute of Postgraduate Studies and Research, \n    Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Sungai Long Campus, Malaysia. Email: juiaik@gmail.com\n\n\n\n**   Kian-Aun Law [\u5218\u5efa\u5b89] is  Associate Professor, Department of International Business, Faculty of \n   Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Sungai Long Campus, \n      Malaysia. Email: lawka@utar.edu.my\n\n\n\n***Yet-Mee Lim [\u6797\u6708\u7f8e] is  Associate Professor, Graduate Business School, UCSI \n  University Kuala Lumpur Campus, Malaysia. 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The role of qing (positive emotions) and li (rationality) in Chinese entrepreneurial \n decision making: A Confucian ren-yi wisdom perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(4), \n 613\u2013630. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1970-1\n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n79\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\nDynamic capabilities are first introduced as an organisation\u2019s ability (Teece et al., 1997). \nAmong influential definitions of dynamic capabilities, the recommended definition is \u201cthe \ncapacity of an organisation to purposefully create, extend, or modify its resource base\u201d (Helfat \net al, 2007, p. 4). This study focusses on the dynamic capabilities of managers. Dynamic \ncapabilities of managers are another type of dynamic capabilities (Ambrosini & Altintas, \n2019), which denotes \u201cthe capabilities with which managers create, extend, and modify the \nways in which firms make a living\u201d (Helfat & Martin, 2015, p. 1281). This type of dynamic \ncapabilities is reflected in management activities to achieve management objectives, suggesting \nthat dynamic capabilities are put in place by individual managers rather than organisations \n(Ambrosini & Altintas, 2019). Dynamic capabilities are essential to develop and maintain \ncapabilities to manage better than competitors, to support strategic change for the improvement \nof firm performance, to address rapidly changing environment, and to make changes to the \nenvironment (Helfat & Peteraf, 2009).\nCognitive capabilities refer to the part of cognition that conducts activities or functions of cognition \nand is different from the part of cognition that exists as representations of external realities stored \nin mind (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Cognitive capabilities can perform a range of mental activities. \nProcesses of knowing, such as attention, reasoning and recall, involve cognitive capabilities (Helfat \n& Peteraf, 2015). In addition, representations of information and external realities in mind may be \nretrieved, created, or changed by cognitive capabilities in the circumstances like thinking about a \nproblem to produce possible ideas of solutions (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015).\nOne of the main ideas of Aristotle\u2019s virtue ethics is his theory of the mean (Kaptein, 2017). In \nthe theory, the term \u201cmean\u201d denotes an intermediate state that avoids the potential problem of \nmoral purposes being destroyed by the practice of either too many or too few moral actions \nand moral sentiments that represent virtues (Kaptein, 2017). Achieving the specific mean of a \nhuman action and emotion is less about overcoming excessive virtues by reducing the quantity \nof virtues or avoiding deficient virtues by increasing the quantity of virtues but more about \ntailoring the action and emotion commensurate to the individual actor\u2019s abilities, resources, \nactivities, circumstances and target audience, and to be as precise as possible rather than \nmoderate at hitting the point of mean (Sim, 2007). In the context of organisation, the mean \nbetween the two extreme amounts of virtue can be viewed as an essential feature of any virtue \nneeded to foster ethical behaviour and deter unethical behaviour among organisation members \n(Kaptein, 2017).\nPhronesis is commonly translated as practical wisdom and refers to the capacity to make wise \ndecisions and take effective actions to accomplish a goal (Scalzo & Fari\u00f1as, 2018). Practical \n\n\n\n1 \n\n\n\n2\n\n\n\n3\n\n\n\n4\n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n80\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nwisdom is responsible for working on how to achieve the target rather than determining the \ntarget as the good end (J. Yu, 2007). In management, practical wisdom is seen as experiential \nknowledge that empowers managers to quickly and wisely make decisions (Nonaka & \nTakeuchi, 2021).\nDynamic capabilities for sensing new business opportunities are the capacity to accumulate \ninformation that suggests new business opportunities, such as scanning, searching, exploring, \nlearning and interpreting technological possibilities and customer needs (Teece, 2007). New \nbusiness opportunities may be created or discovered from existing information or generated \nfrom novel information and knowledge (Teece, 2007). Dynamic capabilities for sensing new \nbusiness opportunities are supported by managers\u2019 cognitive abilities for sensing new business \nopportunities, like attention and perception (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015).\nDynamic capabilities for seizing new business opportunities are the capacity to take new \nbusiness opportunities through launching novel products, services or processes (Teece, 2007). \nTo achieve a successful launch, these capabilities involve devising or choosing an appropriate \nbusiness model, investing in developing and commercialising the new offerings, preserving \nand upgrading technological competencies and complementary assets, as well as in the most \npromising technologies and designs (Teece, 2007). Dynamic capabilities for seizing new \nbusiness opportunities are supported by managers\u2019 cognitive abilities for seizing new business \nopportunities like problem solving and reasoning (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015).\nDynamic capabilities for transforming firms\u2019 assets are the capacity to renew firms\u2019 assets \ncontinuously to match with firms\u2019 changing conditions in different stages of their growth and \nchanges in the external environment (Teece, 2007). These capabilities involve generating, \nusing, safeguarding and reconfiguring firms\u2019 assets (Teece, 2007). Dynamic capabilities for \ntransforming firms\u2019 assets are supported by managers\u2019 cognitive abilities for transforming \nfirms\u2019 assets, like social cognition and language (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015).\nThe process orientation of a study refers to the nature of a study to build a process theory. \nProcess theory explains movements in the development of what happens over time in an \nindividual, an organisation or other social entity (Van de Ven, 2007). The explanations of \nprocess theory are presented in terms of the sequence of events that result in an outcome, such \nas putting action A into practice, followed by action B to get outcome C (Langley, 1999). Unit \nof analysis of process theory is event (Welch & Paavilainen-M\u00e4ntym\u00e4ki, 2014), not a variable \nthat is normally used in a quantitative research method or research method to produce variance \ntheory (Mackenzie, 2000). Variable acts as an encapsulation of the process under a research\u2019s \ninvestigation (Mackenzie, 2000). The chains of events constitute causality in process theory \n(Langley et al., 2013). Satisfactory explanations of process theory rest solely on necessary \ncauses, which means each event in the sequence of events is essential but may not be sufficient \n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\nTan, Law and Lim\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n81\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nfor the outcome of the process under investigation to happen (Poole & Van de Ven, 2010). \nProcess theory assumes the world is an open system where outcomes can be heavily affected \nby unexpected events and human manipulation (Poole & Van de Ven, 2010). The assumption is \nneeded in this study because the world in this view allows managers with dynamic capabilities \nto take an active role in driving strategic change to influence the external environment (Kirova, \n2023), and adapt to changing environment (Helfat & Martin, 2015).\nThe variance orientation of a study refers to the nature of a study to develop a variance theory. \nVariance theory employs connections among independent and dependent variables to explain \nphenomena (Langley, 1999). These variables are units of analysis in variance theory and \nabstraction of the phenomenon under research investigation that encapsulate the key features \nof the phenomenon (Poole & Van de Ven, 2010). In variance theory, variables are causes that \nhave instant, efficient and regular effects (Poole & Van de Ven, 2010). Satisfactory explanations \nof variance theory require both necessary causes and sufficient causes, which implies that \nvariables included in research are necessary and sufficiently for producing a result (Poole & \nVan de Ven, 2010). Variance theory assumes the world is a closed system (Poole & Van de \nVen, 2010), a system where a conjunction of events happens regularly, such as an event that \nmay represent an input factor is regularly accompanied by another event that may represent \na result of the earlier event (Bhaskar, 2008). A closed system may not apply to social reality \n(Poole & Van de Ven, 2010), because it is artificially developed, controlled and isolated from \nreality (Bhaskar, 2008).\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\nEnhancing Managers\u2019 Cognitive Capabilities\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n*  Dr. LAM Chee Kheung was a former Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Southeast Asian \nStudies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. E-mail: ytlam@pc.jaring.my\n This paper is based on my book entitled A Biography of Wee Kheng Chiang that was published \nin Chinese in 2005. Sources of information for the research included published accounts, reports, \nrecords and interviews to ensure clarity, truth and fairness in presentation.\n Thanks are due to numerous individuals some of whom had passed away when the book \nwas published and to family members who furnished materials, photographs and insights. The \ncomments and suggestions on the draft by Dr. Voon Phin Keong are gratefully acknowledged.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 18-39\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak: \nEntrepreneur Extraordinaire\n\n\n\nLAM Chee Kheung*\n\n\n\nAbstract \n\n\n\nThis paper is a study of Wee Kheng Chiang, one of the outstanding Chinese entrepreneurs and \nphilanthropists in Sarawak. A first generation local-born Chinese from a humble family, Kheng Chiang \nrose to preeminence in business and his community. Known for his wealth and entrepreneurship, \nhis success was attributed to his hard work, foresight and alertness to business opportunities both in \nSarawak and Singapore. Luck had smiled on him and so had adversity befell him. \n\n\n\nHis shining accomplishments in business allowed him to contribute unselfishly to the good cause \nof Chinese culture, education and social welfare services to Sarawak society as a whole, thus earning \nhim the title of \u201cFather of Philanthropy\u201d.\n\n\n\nUnlike many successful entrepreneurs, he was able to chart a smooth transition in passing \nhis various businesses to the next generation before he retired. The wisdom of this decision is well \nvindicated by the outstanding performance of businesses helmed by his children. \n\n\n\nKey words:  Business personages, Sarawak Chinese, entrepreneurship, and business performance\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nThe life of Wee Kheng Chiang (1890-1978) is a shining example of a rags-to-riches \nstory. He came from an early Sarawak Chinese family whose origins were no different from \nother families living in humble circumstances. Yet he accomplished much more in life than \nthe vast majority of his fellow men and citizens. The story of his life is best portrayed with \nthe broad sweep of the brush on canvas rather than with a pen on paper. He lived to a ripe old \nage and his achievements in many different areas of endeavour that spanned across business, \ncommunity services and charitable work were well beyond the reach of all but the tiny few. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         19\n\n\n\nHis work and achievements were acknowledged by the state which honoured him with a \ndistinguished title known by the honorific of Dato Sri.1 \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang was not born into wealth but into abject poverty and hardship. He started \nlife facing a future like any other person, with a probability of \u201cmaking good\u201d in life no \nbetter than the next person. Yet he overcame these initial handicaps to build up a business \nempire with a remarkable spirit of enterprise and foresight. He lived through four \u201cregimes\u201d \nthat had characterized the administration of Sarawak. The first 52 years were spent under the \nrule of the White Rajahs2 which began in 1841. He survived the harsh rule of the Japanese \nOccupation between 1941 and 1945, saw a revival of his business and fortunes during the \nearly post-war period when Sarawak ended the Brooke rule to come under Britain as a colony. \nThis lasted for 17 years until Sarawak opted for independence by joining the Federation of \nMalaya, Singapore and British North Borneo (Sabah) to form the Federation of Malaysia in \n1963. \n\n\n\nMany among the younger generations of Chinese settlers would continue to strive to \nrealize the unaccomplished dreams of their parents or grandparents. Wee Kheng Chiang was \nan outstanding example who achieved fame and wealth that was denied his father. While \nmany people admired his forceful style and qualities, he could not have blossomed forth so \nbrilliantly in Sarawak without various factors coming into play. One may delve into these \nfactors to discover the reasons behind his many successes that others could only dream of. \nOne wonders if he won the confidence of persons who had helped him in his career, or he \nhad special talents to excel in all that he chose to be involved in, or that he possessed the urge \nto persist in the face of adversity. One may also wish to understand how and why he was \nmotivated by this inner desire to excel and to play a larger than life role in society. These and \nmany other queries may be probed to gain a better insight into the life and accomplishments \nof one of the leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists of Sarawak. \n\n\n\nGrowing Up\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang, the second of three sons, was born on 22 July 1890 in a simple \nwooden thatched house not far from Kuching, already the principal township of Sarawak \nthen. His father, Wee Tee Ya, had migrated from China from the Quemoy (Jinmen) district \nof Fujian province. His ancestral village was located in the remote hinterland where the soils \nwere infertile and agriculture unproductive. He therefore migrated at his prime age with some \nelders from his home village in search of greener pastures overseas, but had to leave behind \nhis newly married wife. Not long after he settled down in Sarawak, he married a local-born \nChinese woman, Choo Kim Kiaw, who was to bear him three sons and one daughter. Tee Ya \nnever saw his first wife again. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n20          Lam\n\n\n\nLike many immigrants, Tee Ya led a life of struggle and hardship in Sarawak as he \nengaged in vegetable farming, pig rearing, and poultry keeping. He had to eke out a living \nand lived under poor and unhygienic conditions. Malnutrition and physical strain took their \ntoll on his health and that of his wife. He suffered from cholera and succumbed to it when he \nwas only in his thirties. His eldest son was eight years old, Kheng Chiang was six, and the \nyoungest was just three. \n\n\n\nWee Tee Ya left nothing except his unfulfilled dream of making good in Sarawak. His \nlife was an unmitigated failure as he left his widowed wife and three young sons facing a \nbleak and uncertain future. Kheng Chiang was already conscious of his helplessness as he \nwitnessed his mother struggling to fend for the family. The sense of poverty was deeply \ningrained in the child as it borne hard on the family with devastating and dreadful effects. Yet, \namong the Chinese community, Tee Ya\u2019s premature departure and abject failure in life was \nnot an isolated case. It was in fact one of many such tragic cases in the local community. But \nlife went on and the family was undeterred by the misfortune that had befallen it. \n\n\n\nA year after her husband\u2019s departure, Madam Choo Kim Kiaw sent Kheng Chiang and \nhis elder brother back to their father\u2019s ancestral village in Quemoy Island (Jinmen). This was \nto let the children fulfil their father\u2019s last wish to take care of his wife in China. This was a \nnoble gesture on the part of Madam Choo in keeping with the hallowed traditions of filial \npiety and ancestral worship. Despite the immense pain of separation, she dutifully dispatched \nthe two young boys back to their ancestral village in a junk that sailed via Singapore.\n\n\n\nBoth the boys were well taken care of by their \u201cfirst\u201d mother who treated them like her \nown children. The elder boy was to return to Sarawak four years later, leaving Kheng Chiang \nremain behind in the village. Fate had it that when an epidemic broke out in Quemoy, Kheng \nChiang too was sent back to Sarawak to escape the likely fate of being struck down as a \nvictim. He was fifteen years old then. His \u201cfirst\u201d mother had begged a relative who happened \nto travel to Sarawak to bring Kheng Chiang with him. This again was a magnanimous move \non the part of the Kheng Chiang\u2019s mother in China though she would miss Kheng Chiang in \nher old age. Despite the emotional strain of parting, she was nevertheless farsighted enough \nto put the welfare of the boy before her own. Had Kheng Chiang continued to live in China, \nhis own fate and that of his future family would have been radically different from what he \nwas about to chart for himself in Sarawak in the years ahead. \n\n\n\nThe agony of separation from his \u201cfirst\u201d mother notwithstanding, Kheng Chiang on \nhis homeward journey was inspired by a few things that he observed and which were to \nhave an impact on his life. First, he noticed that the cabin of the ship was larger and could \naccommodate more passengers and cargo compared with the junk that he traveled in nine \nyears ago. He was puzzled as to why the owner, the captain and the senior officials of the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         21\n\n\n\nship were Europeans and not Chinese, while all the passengers were Chinese. Already in his \nyoung mind, he felt that the shipping business should not be the monopoly of foreigners. His \ninsights were to prompt him eventually to venture into the shipping business. Second, he \nlearned from the many passengers from Quemoy who knew Singapore that it was a bustling \ncity with a flourishing trade in local produce and imported goods as well as a financial sector. \nAs a busy market place of businessmen and companies from different countries, it would be \na fascinating place in which to do business. This awareness of the importance of Singapore \ncould have sown the seed of his venture into the banking business there many years later. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang never saw his \u201cfirst\u201d mother again. When he went back to his ancestral \nvillage about ten years later, already a successful businessman, he could only visit her \ngraveyard. He rebuilt and beautified her tomb in a gesture to show his love and appreciation. \nHe would make an annual trip to the village to perform ancestral worship before Qingming \n(the Chinese All Souls\u2019 Day) to offer his thanksgiving for several years in succession. He \nheld on to the belief that the annual visit to the grave was essential as the soul of the deceased \nrequired offerings of food, clothing, shelter and \u201cmoney\u201d from the descendants. Through this \nact of piety, all who knew him looked upon him as a model of a filial son. \n\n\n\nUpon his return to Sarawak from Quemoy after an absence of eight years, Kheng Chiang \nstayed in the same old house with his own mother and siblings. He readily shared the same \nchores at the pig farm. Each day he would spend much time and efforts to gather wild leaves \nfrom the countryside to feed the pigs.\n\n\n\nLife was hard but it instilled in Kheng Chiang a resolve to improve his life and that of \nthe family. He was aware of the teachings of the great Chinese philosopher Mencius, that \n\u201cIf heaven wants to give a great mission to a person, his mind must be exerted, his body \nmust be trained, by doing this, it could inspire his spirit, strengthen his mind, and increase \nhis capability\u201d (\u6797\u93ae\u570b/ Lin Chen Kuok 1983:193). Mencius further stressed that \u201cHe who \nexerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature. He who knows his nature knows Heaven. \nTo preserve one\u2019s mind and to nourish one\u2019s nature is the way to save Heaven\u201d. The intense \nhardships that Kheng Chiang endured in his teenage years were to motivate him to strive for \nsuccess later in life.\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang started school at the age of sixteen. This was the price that he paid \nfor his eight years of stay in Quemoy. It was fortunate that there was no age restriction in \nadmission to school then. He enrolled in St Thomas\u2019, a mission school that was known for its \nstrict discipline and excellent academic performance. The teachers were mostly British and \nEuropean missionaries or teachers. The need to help out in the pig farm and sharing various \nchores at home deprived him the luxury of spending much time on his lessons. While his \nresults were average, his good conduct won praise from his teachers. He was often nominated \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n22          Lam\n\n\n\nto participate in extracurricular activities and would perform with distinction. The five years \nspent in St Thomas\u2019 instilled in him certain leadership qualities that were to stand him in good \nstead later in life.\n\n\n\nThe years in school taught him the ability to speak and write English. This was a \ndecidedly intellectual strength in a society in which illiteracy was high and in which only a \nhandful of Chinese commanded the skills in English. The English language was an essential \ncommunication tool in social and business ventures especially at functions organized by the \nRajah and in negotiations with foreign firms. Kheng Chiang readily acknowledged that his \ncareer, his business and his social standing could not have been smooth-sailing had it not been \nhis education in the medium of English. In fact, it had had made possible his employment \nin the Borneo Company, in the Brooke Government Administration, and in the Sarawak \nSteamship Company. Similarly, it was his ability to communicate in English that he was \nable to build up his friendship with the Second and Third White Rajahs of Sarawak and to \nsocialize with British senior government officers and dignitaries.\n\n\n\nEmployment and Opportunities\n\n\n\nA primary education was considered the highest level of attainment for a child in the \n1910s. Kheng Chiang completed Standard Five and was deemed to possess credentials that \ncould land him a job and to secure his future. His first job was that of a clerk in the Borneo \nCompany. This was indeed the ideal employer then as it was the premier British company in \nSarawak. Under its control were the monopoly of distribution rights to the imports of the state \nand hence the dominance of the market. It also possessed the means to manipulate prices to \nmaximize its profits. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang worked in the Sales Department under British superiors. Among his \ncolleagues were a few Chinese and Malay clerks like him. His junior position did not deter \nhim from observing and learning the ways foreigners managed their business. He was able \nto gain an understanding of the marketing principles of buying and selling, the setting of \nprofit margins, stock keeping and checking, and related aspects of business to which he was \nexposed to. These experiences yielded good insights into the operation of business dealings \nin general. Armed with his observation and analytical skills, this learning process was to help \nhim to start on his own in the near future.\n\n\n\nIt was his sharp and discerning mind that convinced him to keep clear of the mining \nindustry as a possible business proposition. From his knowledge of the Borneo Company\u2019s \ninvestments in the various mining ventures, he noticed that only gold mining brought them a \nsmall profit while other ventures were losing concerns. He realized that the mining business \nwas influenced by nature and was beyond the control of man. On the other hand, Borneo \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         23\n\n\n\nCompany raked in good profits from other businesses especially in the export of local products \nand the import of foreign goods. It was in the export of local produce that Kheng Chiang saw \na niche for himself.\n\n\n\nIn his urge to improve his prospects and as he did not see a future as a junior employee \nin the Borneo Company, his commitment to his first job was brief and lasted a mere six \nmonths. While he realized that the job offered few opportunities for advancement, he was \nable to benefit from the introduction to the world of business and the insights into its inner \nworkings.\n\n\n\nFrom the sphere of private business, he became a junior government servant in his \nnext job as an office assistant at the Resident\u2019s Office of the Brooke Government. Again, he \nworked for only three months assisting in the handling of Chinese affairs. Brief as it was, \nit did expose him to some of the senior expatriate officers in certain departments. It also \nintroduced him to the rudiments of British administration and protocol.\n\n\n\nHe was back in the private sector when he landed an appointment in the Sarawak \nSteamship Company as an Office Assistant in the Cargo Forwarding Department. This was \na totally different business from the first. The job paid better than his previous ones and \nhe was able to learn new things such as how to deal with recording and collecting bills of \nlanding for merchandise and goods imported from Singapore and other countries. It also \nwidened his vista on the trade and shipping that were going on outside the narrow confines of \nSarawak. The Sarawak Steamship Company was founded on 1 July 1875 as the first shipping \ncompany with steamships to transport passengers and merchandise between Kuching and \nSingapore, and operated its own warehouse and wharf in Kuching (Foo and Chai, 2001: \n28). As the dominant shipping company in Sarawak, it was in a position to corner a major \nshare of the shipping business to reap handsome profits. Yet, when better prospects beckoned, \nKheng Chiang would not be tied down, even if the employer was as dominant as the Sarawak \nSteamship Company. \n\n\n\nAfter four months, Kheng Chiang resigned to join a Chinese employer for the first time. \nHe was Ong Tiang Swee3 who was also a shareholder of the Sarawak Steamship Company. \nThe performance of an Asian junior staff working under European superiors was unlikely to \nattract much attention. But working under a fellow countryman and under the same cultural \nenvironment would allow one to be noticed if one were to perform well. This was indeed the \ncase with Kheng Chiang. His diligence and performance did not escape the notice of Ong \nTiang Swee. Perhaps Ong could recognize a \u201cgem\u201d when he saw one. Within six months, \nKheng Chiang was promoted to the position of Manager. With Kheng Chiang at the helm, \nthe company\u2019s business prospered and net profits were high. The trust of Ong Tiang Swee for \nKheng Chiang grew by the day. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n24          Lam\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s job was to coordinate and manage the sale of commodities and goods. \nTaking charge of the trading business helped him to lay the foundation of his future career and \nfortune, and the path to a wealth and high society. For at the outset, armed with experience \nworking in the shipping business and having acquired some knowledge of the trade, Kheng \nChiang was convinced that the shipping business would become an important commercial \nactivity and therefore an avenue for making money. With this conviction, he began to take \nup shares in the company while working for Ong Tiang Swee. He rose from an employee \nto become a shareholder and, in later years, to assume the chairmanship of the Sarawak \nSteamship Company. This dramatic transformation of his status was the outcome of his far-\nsightedness and sharp judgment in investments. It was not a case of coincidence.\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s first impression of Ong Tiang Swee was that he was very rich and \npowerful, respected by all, and lived a luxurious and extravagant life. Kheng Chiang was \nquick to realize the secret formulae of his employer\u2019s success. He was to apply what he \nlearned in his business ventures.\n\n\n\nOng Tiang Swee was a successful entrepreneur and managed a diversified business that \nincluded the import of cooking oil and other goods, a pharmaceutical shop, farms to rear pigs, \ncows and deer, and factories as well as plantations. He was also the major shareholder of \nTiong Hua Bank, the first commercial bank in Sarawak. \n\n\n\nAs one of the earliest millionaires in Sarawak, it was not surprising that Ong Tiang \nSwee maintained cordial relationships with the Second White Rajah, Charles Brooke, and \nhad his trust.4 In 1911, he was appointed the President of the Chinese Court, established to \nsettle cases among the Chinese in matters of marriage, division of property, small debts and \nChinese customs and traditions (Chew, 1990: 257). As the Kapitan China of Kuching, Ong \nTiang Swee was effectively the acknowledged community leader among the Chinese. With \nhis exalted position, it came as no surprise that the Rajah granted him exclusive rights in the \ntrade of many imported goods and ownership of a few pieces of land. \n\n\n\nWhile solid performance in business is crucial for advancement, chance too cannot be \ndiscounted entirely. Chance indeed played a decisive part in determining the future of Kheng \nChiang. Fate had it that, in 1910, the eldest daughter of Ong Tiang Swee by the name of \nOng Siew Eng, was reaching marriageable age. Her parents were eager to find her the most \neligible bachelor in town. The custom and tradition of the Chinese then was to match wealth \nwith wealth and the humble among themselves. The prospective son-in-law must then be a \nman of means and high social standing. The humble origins of Kheng Chiang had disqualified \nhim in the Ong family\u2019s search for the best man in town. Months of match-making search \nfor the right man were spent to no avail. A worried Mrs. Ong had a dream one night in which \na match-maker gave the beloved daughter\u2019s hand to a tall, slim and pleasant looking young \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         25\n\n\n\nman. Her dream told her that this was the right man and he was in the vicinity. The match \nwas literally decided as Mrs. Ong remembered a young man in the person of Kheng Chiang. \nAfter some discussions and consultations, Ong Tiang Swee and his wife decided that Kheng \nChiang was to be their chosen son-in-law. This was a decidedly defining moment in Kheng \nChiang\u2019s life. He was, like the carp that leaps over the rapids, to ascend the \u201cdragon gate\u201d5 by \nbecoming the son-in-law of one of the wealthiest men in town.\n\n\n\nThe wedding was held on 10 March 1911, 99 days after the engagement. Conducted in \naccordance with Chinese traditions, the wedding was attended by a thousand invited guests at \na grand dinner. Among the dignitaries who graced the occasion were Rajah Charles Brooke and \nhis wife, the Resident, Financial Chief, high ranking government officers and local eminence. \nIt was said that the occasion was the grandest ever held since the founding of Sarawak.\n\n\n\nLife after the marriage for Kheng Chiang, who moved into the Ong residence, was one \nof comfort and abundance. Surrounded by servants and maids, Kheng Chiang sampled the \nluxuries of life as son-in-law of Ong Tiang Swee. It also marked a turning point in his life. \n\n\n\nOne of the visible changes in his life was the frequent contacts with Rajah Charles \nBrooke. A cordial and firm relationship developed and Kheng Chiang became a regular guest \nat social functions hosted by the Rajah. The ties also paved the way for Kheng Chiang to \nestablish a profound friendship with the Third Rajah, Vyner Brooke6 and his wife, Sylvia \nBrett, in the ensuing years. These personal ties with the highest authority in the land were an \nimportant ingredient in building the foundation of Kheng Chiang\u2019s future business ventures. \nWith Rajah Vyner Brooke as a supporting pillar to his ventures, coupled with his own \nenterprise and foresight, Kheng Chiang\u2019s road to success, wealth and fame was clearly and \nwell-charted.\n\n\n\nAn Emergent Entrepreneur\n\n\n\nIn 1921 and at the age of 31, Kheng Chiang established his own trading company, \nregistered as Hiap Chiang Leong, with premises in downtown Kuching. The company was \nto distill and trade in arrack or liquor, for which the licence was granted exclusively by the \nRajah. He set up ten more trading firms in town in the next few years to deal with a variety \nof businesses, excluding the sale of crocodile skin, birds\u2019 nests and sharks\u2019 fins. Kheng Ann \nCompany dealt mainly with the import and export of local products such as sago, rubber, \npepper, jelutong, mangrove, and illipe nut. Lian Chong Leong Company was involved in the \nimport of rice, sugar, cooking oil and groceries; Lian Hua Company ventured into timber; \nKheng Chong Company manufactured soaps and engaged in printing and selling stationeries; \nTong Chiang Company, with branches in Kuching, Bintangor and Mukah, manufactured and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n26          Lam\n\n\n\nprocessed sago. Chung Chin Farm, situated near a river, raised and bred pigs for the market.\nKheng Chiang\u2019s business soon began to gather financial clout. The scope of his commercial \n\n\n\ninterests was such that his growing army of customers began to request assistance to send cash \nremittances to relatives in China or elsewhere. Chinese settlers sent their remittances to their \nfamilies in China by hiring the services of friends or couriers who made regular trips to China. \nThere were therefore opportunities to provide this service as a commercial undertaking. Thus \nwas sown the seed of a bank as an effective means to tap these opportunities. In 1924, with his \nfriend Soo Kok Siang, he founded the Bian Chiang Bank in Kuching. This was a bold venture \nas it was only the second bank backed up by Chinese capital. The first bank, Tiong Hua Bank, \nwas established by a group of well-established merchants among whom was Ong Tiang Swee \nas the major shareholder. Management of Bian Chiang Bank was subsequently passed on to \nhis third son Wee Hood Teck. In an exercise in 1978 that involved issues of extra capital and \nsubsequent share restructuring, ownership of the bank was finally transferred out of the hands \nof the Wee family (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam, 2005: 60-62). \n\n\n\nAnother capital-intensive undertaking that Kheng Chiang ventured into was in shipping. \nInspired by his personal boyhood experience in traveling to and from China and realizing the \npotentials of the trade in carrying passengers and cargoes between south China and Southeast \nAsia, he was keen to corner a share of the local coastal shipping business. The intricate \nnetwork of waterways in Sarawak and the lack of roads meant that coastal shipping was \nthe best means to connect Kuching and outlying coastal and riverine ports. Kheng Chiang\u2019s \ninitial venture was to acquire a barge to ply regularly between Kuching and Mukah to ferry \npassengers and goods. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang looked beyond the confines of Sarawak and saw business opportunities \nelsewhere. This was none other than Singapore when he founded Lian Hong Company in \nthe year 1926. This company was to serve as a liaison centre to handle agricultural produce \nfrom Sarawak. Having built up a stake in Singapore, frequent trips to the city became a part \nof his life. These visits were to let him to observe and draw insights into the workings of \ncommerce and trade in the biggest and busiest port in Southeast Asia, in particular the export \nof agricultural produce and import of goods from Europe and America. He was impressed by \nSingapore\u2019s capacity in handling large quantities of exports and imports and its flourishing \ntrade. Ever alert to business opportunities, he recognized the potentials of Singapore as a \nplace where he could pursue his business plans and to expand his fortune. \n\n\n\nThe founding of Bian Chiang Bank in 1924 in Kuching had widened his contacts and \nexperience in finance. By 1935, he was sufficiently confident to venture into banking in \nSingapore when he founded the United Chinese Bank (UCB). By then three Chinese banks \nwere already in existence in the city, yet Kheng Chiang\u2019s reputation convinced many Hokkien \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         27\n\n\n\nbusinessmen to subscribe shares in the bank. The bank was re-named United Overseas Bank \n(UOB) a few years later when it expanded its business overseas. UOB is now the biggest local \nbanking group in terms of deposits and is listed among the world\u2019s top 500 corporations. The \nentire group, comprising UOB and all its subsidiaries, had total consolidated assets of $2,741 \nmillion and a staff of 2,700 in 1974 (UOB, 1985: 81).\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s business was gathering momentum and its profits multiplied. The \nreason behind his success was the ability to put in place a sound management system. \nWorking under him was a corps of trusted, responsible and experienced staff. He devised a \nhierarchy of command in every line of business. At the apex is an able manager, assisted by \na \u201ccontroller\u201d whose role may be likened to that of a general \u201chousekeeper\u201d. In the purchase \nof local produce, the job of the \u201ccontroller\u201d was to inspect and to negotiate prices. Below \nthe controller was the chief storekeeper who was also responsible for taking delivery of and \nweighing goods and commodities. Further down the line was the supervisor who took charge \nof the workers.\n\n\n\nThe division of labour and management command were devised to accommodate \ndifferences in skills, experiences and interests among the staff and to meet the demands \nof job specializations. Kheng Chiang was careful to assign the best persons for the right \njobs to maximize efficiency and productivity. Management of his staff was guided by two \nfundamental principles, namely, to appoint the right person for the job and to give him a free \nhand to manage as best he could; and to treat his staff well in order to win their loyalty and to \nretain their service. These guidelines earned him all-round respect from his staff who served \nhim faithfully until they retired. He would refrain from coercion in his treatment of his staff \nso as not to put pressure on them. He believed firmly in the axiom that the better one treated \none\u2019s staff, the harder and more efficiently they would work in return.\n\n\n\nIn his business dealings, Kheng Chiang was an epitome of honesty and trustworthiness. \nHe regarded these as the core principles in business transactions just as they are basic to good \nsocial behaviour as a virtue of daily life. In consequence, dealing honestly and rationally in \nbusiness transactions won him a great deal of respect from his business associates and staff. \n\n\n\nIn investing in business ventures, Kheng Chiang opted for businesses for which market \ndemand was assured and which could yield handsome returns in good time. He tended to \navoid businesses that required long-term investments, especially in mining and land. He \nconcluded that mining and land development were too speculative and risky.\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s business in local produce, import and export trade and banking services \nall turned in good profits, making him a wealthy man before the Japanese Occupation. At the \nsame time, as the Chinese businessman par excellence in Sarawak, his social stature grew in \ntandem as he was contributed actively in the service of the Chinese community and society \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n28          Lam\n\n\n\nas a whole. In his various capacities, he also devoted much of his energies to charity and \ncommunity work.\n\n\n\nIn 1931, Kheng Chiang was acknowledged as the doyen in the Chinese business \ncommunity with his election as Chairman of the Sarawak Chinese Chamber of Commerce. \nHe was to serve in this capacity for 15 years until 1946 when he relinquished the position \nvoluntarily. While the Chamber was largely responsible for looking after the commercial \ninterests of Chinese business, it also promoted the social and cultural interests of the community. \nThe Chamber also took the lead in performing other significant functions. Among the major \nones were the setting up of the China Relief Fund Committee of Sarawak to raise funds in \nsupport of China in the Resistance War against Japan. As the Chairman of the Committee, \nKheng Chiang shouldered heavy responsibilities as he laboured to galvanize the community \nto stand up against Japanese aggression. \n\n\n\nAdversity and Fortitude\n\n\n\nThe Japanese invasion of China began on July 7, 1937 aroused strong patriotic feelings \namong overseas Chinese in support of anti-military aggression movement. Malaya set up a \nChina Relief Fund Committee and recruited hundreds of young men to serve as mechanics \nand drivers along the China-Burma road. The Chinese in Sarawak too organized themselves \nto raise funds and recruited volunteers.\n\n\n\nIn July 1938, a proposal to set up a regional China Relief Fund was put forward by \nLee Chin Chuan from the Philippines and Chong Sii Yuan from Indonesia. The inaugural \nmeeting in the assembly hall of the Hwa Khiew Middle School in Singapore on 10 October \n1938 attracted 172 delegates from seven countries in Southeast Asia. Kheng Chiang was one \nof the seven delegates from Sarawak, the others were Wong Yu Chian and Tu Nai Pin from \nKuching, Lau Ka Thu and Tan Chong Hu from Sibu, and Chong Yu Seng and Yong Yi Ing \nfrom Miri. Two days later, the Federation of China Relief Fund Committees (FCRFC) of \nSoutheast Asian Chinese was formed, and Tan Kah Tee was elected as the Chairman (\u5218\u5b50\n\n\n\n\u653f/Lau Tzy Cheng, 1997: 68-71; \u5218\u4f2f\u594e/Liu Pak Kuei, 1992: 21-29).\nAmong the many objectives of FCRFC were the setting up of branches in the region, to \n\n\n\norganize fund-raising activities, to encourage local residents to remit money to their relatives \nin China, to provide assistance to refugees in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, to support \nChina-made goods and products, to encourage local Chinese youths to join the Chinese army \nor its medical corps. \n\n\n\nBack in Kuching, Kheng Chiang was elected to head the Sarawak China Relief \nFund Committee with the assistance of three deputies, namely, Tan Sum Guan, Tan Bak \nLin and Lee Yong Thong as respective representatives from the Hokkien, Teochew and \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         29\n\n\n\nCantonese communities, and 19 other committee members. The Committee created three \nsub-committees with functions to raise funds, to solicit support through charity sales, and \nto recruit manpower. Members worked tirelessly in door-to-door fund-raising campaigns, \norganized sales of handicrafts made by students and goods donated by local businessmen, \nand recruited volunteers to serve in the logistic division of the Chinese army (\u5218\u4f2f\u594e/Liu \nPak Kuei, 1983: 10).\n\n\n\nThe Chinese in Sarawak rallied in support of the anti-Japanese campaign. The Fund-\nRaising Sub-Committee successfully raised about $900,000 in 1938, of which half the amount \nwas collected in Kuching, $300,000 from Sibu and $60,000 from Miri. A total of 76 young \nmen responded to the call to serve as mechanics and drivers along the China-Burma road.\n\n\n\nThe Sarawak contingent of mechanics and drivers was among 3,072 volunteers who \nanswered the call for assistance. The Sarawak volunteers embarked on their journey from \nSingapore via Port Klang, Penang, Rangoon, Lashio (in Burma) to Yunnan. Kheng Chiang \nwas touched by the patriotism of these young men and their courage to sacrifice their lives \nin the war of resistance. He rendered generous assistance in cash and kind, even when they \nreturned to Sarawak in 1947 and 1948 when the war was over. He sponsored accommodation \nin hotels and an allowance of $3 per day while they were in transit in Singapore. He paid \nfor their passage from Singapore to Kuching where they received a sum of $50 for living \nexpenses, paid out through Bian Chiang Bank. They were provided with two meal coupons \ndaily until they found a job. For his generous gesture, Kheng Chiang won wide praise in \nSarawak. In terms of recognition, he enjoyed almost the same honour that was accorded to \nMr. Tan Kah Kee of Singapore whose work to rally the Chinese in aid of China had become \nlegendary (\u5218\u4f2f\u594e/Liu Pak Kuei, 1983: 11; 1992: 28).\n\n\n\nFor his part in the anti-Japanese movement, the Japanese occupying forces targeted \nKheng Chiang, his brother and many others as dangerous \u201celements\u201d. Both were arrested by \nthe Japanese on two occasions and tortured and imprisoned by the Kempeitai, the dreaded \nJapanese secret police. They were forced to perform hard labour in road construction and \nwere made to carry sacks of rice that weighed 150 kilograms each. The brutal treatment \ntook its toll on the physical, mental and emotional health of Kheng Chiang and his brother. \nKheng Chiang suffered from hernia that was caused by carrying heavy loads during his \nimprisonment. He was later to walk with his legs slightly apart, much to the amusement of \nsome ignorant onlookers. He was even picked for execution but was saved by a stroke of luck \nas the Japanese soon surrendered. But his brother was not so lucky as he succumbed to the \nsevere torture inflicted by the Kempeitai (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 106). Upon his \nrelease from prison, Kheng Chiang sought urgent medical treatment locally but to no avail. \nHe had to travel to London for surgical operation before his conditions improved. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n30          Lam\n\n\n\nBusiness Revival and Consolidation \n\n\n\nIn the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese war, Kheng Chiang was able to be reunited with \nhis family in Singapore. Except for some damages and losses, his house in Kuching had \nremained largely intact. His first priority then was to revive his business. Urgent attention \nwas directed at UCB in Singapore. The bank had not suffered much capital losses during the \nJapanese Occupation, but it had lost many staff members of high caliber. On the list were two \nBoard Directors, Chionh Kee Hu and Khoo Beng Chiang who had passed away, and some \nhad resigned. There was an imminent need to restructure UCB to cope with the increase in \ndemand for capital to fund projects in post-war reconstruction.\n\n\n\nUnder such circumstances, Kheng Chiang had to personally take over the helm to propel \nthe bank back to its former glory. UCB resumed its operation on 17 September 1945, with \na capital of $100,000 raised from a loan from the Controller of Finance and Accounts of the \nBritish Military Authority (BMA). All its former staff were recalled to work, and their salaries \nwere retained the same as in their last pay sheet in December 1941. Kheng Chiang remained \nas Chairman of the bank but, upon the request of the Board, he doubled as the Managing \nDirector as well in April 1946 (UOB, 1985: 27). Experienced senior management members \nincluding the bank manager Goh Cheng San and its secretary Kwa Choo Ping were appointed \nto the Board of Directors to replace the two who had passed away. This decision not only \nopened a way for the smooth revival of the bank, it also rekindled and motivated the spirit of \nthe staff. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang now had to look after the day-to-day administration of the bank. The first \nmove by Kheng Chiang to improve the business of the bank was to open a Savings Department \nin 1948 to cater for savings. This new facility was well-received. The Bank\u2019s gross assets more \nthan doubled from the pre-War amount of $5 million to $11.9 million in 1948.\n\n\n\nThe Board went through a complete overhaul in 1952 due to resignation or death of \nthree directors. The new Board now consisted of two old members, namely the Chairman, \nWee Kheng Chiang and Tan Boon Khah, and eight new members.\n\n\n\nCorresponding to the progressive economic development in the world, the bank\u2019s \nbusiness expanded and grew rapidly. On 18 December 1954, the Board resolved that a one to \none bonus share was to be issued to the directors to boost the share and paid-up capital to $2 \nmillion (UOB, 1985: 30).\n\n\n\nIn 1958, Kheng Chiang appointed his fourth son, Cho Yaw to the Board which further \nstrengthened the management team of the bank. When Cho Yaw eventually assumed full \nmanagement control in 1960, the bank was ready to grow by leaps and bounds. It was finally \nto join the ranks of the renowned banks of the world (UOB, 1985: 31).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         31\n\n\n\nCho Yaw proved to be as enterprising as his father. He introduced several innovations \nin banking services almost immediately when he took the helm of the bank. He found that \nforeign exchange dealings were very lucrative and his first initiative was the creation of \na Foreign Exchange Department. However, the new department hit a snag in its effort to \nparticipate in the financing of Singapore-Indonesian trade, because only \u201cfirst class\u201d banks \nwere permitted to issue a shipping guarantee for bilateral trade. To overcome this handicap, \nChoYaw visited and appealed to the Indonesian authorities and succeeded in gaining approval \nby the Indonesian authorities to recognize shipping guarantees issued by the bank (\u90d1\u660e\u6749/\nZheng Min Chan, 1997: 15-17).\n\n\n\nThe second project introduced by Cho Yaw was the establishment of the Godown \nDepartment in 1963. The new department provided an additional service for customers and \nalso improved the security for overdraft and other credit facilities granted by the Bank (\u90d1\n\u660e\u6749/Zheng Min Chan, 1997: 13). Property acquisition and investment in land were also \nrecommended by Cho Yaw, and vigorously carried out with the approval of the Board. The \nBank\u2019s premises at Bonham Building were bought over from its landlord in 1963.\n\n\n\nA banking licence in Hong Kong was obtained in 1964. The application of the licence \nwas prompted by the formation of the Federation of Malaysia which included Malaysia, \nSingapore, Sabah and Sarawak. The Indonesian government was hostile towards the \nFederation and labeled the act as a \u201cneo-colonialist plot\u201d and staged a military confrontation \nagainst it. Indonesia severed her trade ties with Malaysia including Singapore. To get over \nthe economic blockade, Cho Yaw found it necessary to trade through Hong Kong. He made \nseveral trips to Hong Kong and was told by the authorities that a licence would be issued to \nUCB if it was registered under a different name because there was already a UCB registered \nin Hong Kong. The Board had no choice, but changed its name to United Overseas Bank \n(UOB) on 23 January 1965, but its Chinese name \u201cTye Hua\u201d (\u5927\u534e) was retained (UOB, \n1985: 36; \u90d1\u660e\u6749/Zheng Min Chan, 1997: 17-18).\n\n\n\nWith the anticipated expansion, the Bank\u2019s authorized capital was further increased \nfrom $4 million to $20 million, and the paid-up capital was raised to $3 million in 1964. In \naddition, five more branches were opened to cope with growing demand.\n\n\n\nIn June 1965, Singapore separated from the Federation of Malaysia. This however, did \nnot affect the operations of the Bank. Instead, it boosted its operations in 1966 by investing in \na government owned textile factory with 50 per cent equity in January, incorporated a finance \ncompany in August 1966, and financed several major projects in the new Jurong industrial \nestate, among them the National Iron and Steel Mills and Jurong Shipyard.\n\n\n\nIn 2001, UOB achieved yet greater glories by outbidding the mighty Development Bank \nSingapore to take over Overseas Union Bank. By now the biggest bank in Singapore, UOB \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n32          Lam\n\n\n\ntransforms itself into a major financial institution that competes in the world of international \nbanking. In retrospect, the achievements of the bank stands as a proud testimony to the \nforesight of its late founder (The Straits Times, 29 March 2002).\n\n\n\nBesides spread his wings overseas to curve out a share of the overseas market, Kheng \nChiang also saw the need to meet the stiff competition from other companies in the business \non local produce and consumer goods in Sarawak in the post-war period. He realized the \nimportance of innovations through the use of modern management techniques and technology. \nAs the small and separate business concerns that were run according to the old management \nmethod of the past were no longer viable, he was decisive in restructuring them to form a \nsingle private limited liability company registered as Wee Kheng Chiang & Co Ltd on 6 July \n1946 with a registered capital of $3,000,000 divided into 30,000 shares. All its component \nfirms were merged and relocated to the same premises at Main Bazaar, the prime trading \ncentre in Kuching. Appointed as directors of the new company were Wee Kheng Chiang \nhimself, his son-in-law, Ong Kee Hui, Chua Sok Jin, Tan Chui Kiaw and Chua Kee Chuan \n(\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 117-118). This move led to more effective control and \nmanagement on the one hand and rationalization of operation on the other. He was well aware \nthat this reorganization was the only means to raise the competitiveness of his business and \nto meet the rising demands of the world market. \n\n\n\nThe formation of Wee Kheng Chiang & Co Ltd after the end of World War Two was \ntimely. The company was well-positioned to take advantage of an economic upturn during \nthe Korean War in the early 1950s. Prices of local produce soared. The price of pepper, for \nexample, rose to an incredible $1,000 per pikul (60.6kg) during the War. As a major pepper \nproducer, Sarawak reaped large profits from the export of the commodity and many pepper \nfarmers grew rich overnight. It was even said that some even carried cash in \u201cgunny\u201d bags to \nbuy shophouses in Kuching. Wee Kheng Chiang & Co Ltd was a major trader in pepper and it \nwas not unusual for it to stock as many as 5,000 bags weighing a pikul each in its warehouse \n(\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 120).\n\n\n\nRubber was another major local produce that benefited from the boom in commodity \nprices during the Korean War. At the height of the boom, the premises of Wee Kheng Chiang \n& Co Ltd that occupied two shophouses measuring 80 feet by 50 feet were fully stocked with \nrubber. The rubber was traded with a profit margin of nearly 100 per cent (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee \nKheung, 2005: 121).\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang & Co Ltd ran a variety of businesses. All turned in substantial \nprofits that brought in much liquidity to the company. The name of the company was dubbed \nas \u201cthe signboard with seven golden characters\u201d by the people of Sarawak. Kheng Chiang\u2019s \nvision, ambition and capability had made him the most successful businessman in Sarawak.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         33\n\n\n\nAs the prices of pepper and rubber declined sharply in the 1970s, Wee Kheng Chiang \n& Co Ltd, like many companies dealing with these commodities that were subject to violent \nprice fluctuations, had to scale down its business gradually. When Kheng Chiang\u2019s son, Hood \nTeck, left the helm of the company to venture into housing and industrial development, the \nparent company became dormant.\n\n\n\nWhen Kheng Chiang handed over his business to two of his children to manage his \nseparate enterprises in Sarawak and Singapore, they were able to venture into new businesses \nor to expand existing ones. Unlike many Chinese businesses which decline and disappear after \nthe founder\u2019s death, Kheng Chiang has succeeded in passing on his spirit of entrepreneurship \nto his sons. The nature of the business in Sawarak has changed but the name of the Wee \nfamily in the local business circle remains. Many of his sons rose to positions of eminence \nin business and society in their own rights. Among the outstanding sons are Wee Hood Teck \nand Wee Cho Yaw.\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s third son, Hood Teck, helmed the trading company for seven years in his \nfather\u2019s trading company before he ventured into property development in 1966. He subsequently \nalso invested in industrial development and became a wealthy man in his own right. Like his \nfather, he involved himself actively in social and community work and was a staunch supporter of \neducational and charitable projects in aid of the less fortunate. For his contributions to society, he \nwas awarded a Datuk (PNBS) in 1965 and Datuk Amar (DA) in 1978.7 \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s fourth son, Wee Cho Yaw worked for nine years before he joined UOB \nin 1958 and succeeded his father as Managing Director two years later. In 1974, Kheng \nChiang retired from the bank and passed on the chairmanship to Cho Yaw. Like his father, \nhe is hardworking and has excellent leadership qualities. By 1974, UOB had become the \nbiggest Singapore bank group in terms of deposits and was ranked among the world\u2019s major \n500 corporations (\u5927\u534e\u94f6\u884c/United Overseas Bank, 1985). As a group, its total consolidated \nassets reached $2,741 million in Singapore dollars and a staff strength of 2,700. Total deposits \nstood at $1,774 million, and loans and advances at $1,136 million. In 2001, the bank achieved \nyet greater glories by outbidding the mighty Development Bank Singapore to take over \nOverseas Union Bank. Through skilful acquisitions and expansion, he eventually steers UOB \nto become the largest bank in Singapore. For years it has played a major role in the economic \nlife of Singapore and competes with confidence in the world of international banking. It \nstands as a proud testimony to the foresight of its late founder. In recognition of Cho Yaw\u2019s \noutstanding performance and achievement in business, he was awarded the much-coveted \nBusinessman of the Year Award in 1990 and again in 2002. The Award was jointly organized \nby The Business Times and the courier company, DHL Worldwide Express for outstanding \nbusinessmen in Singapore (The Strait Times, 29 March 2002).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n34          Lam\n\n\n\nCommunity Leadership\n\n\n\nHowever vast his business empire, Kheng Chiang would not have left behind a lasting \nlegacy had he not contributed to the general welfare of society and the state. Neither would he \nhave earned the respect and recognition of the government, nor enjoyed an exalted status among \nthe upper echelon of society, had he been a mere man of fortune. Serving and contributing to \nsociety and the state he did with distinction in his role as a prominent community leader and \na leading philanthropist. \n\n\n\nThe successful business person would invariably contribute his part for the public good. \nThe traditional obligations of repaying society from which one obtains one\u2019s benefits remain \nstrong among the Chinese. This is the essence of Confucian ethics by which the Chinese \nbusiness community in particular and the public in general adhere to as a core virtue. \n\n\n\nNowhere was Kheng Chiang more conscious of his social obligations than in his service \nto society and state. He responded readily to calls for support and sponsorships from many \nquarters from organizations affiliated to education, Chinese associations, culture and religions, \nsports and the less privileged.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese had a strong tradition to organize themselves according to clan and dialect \naffinities. As a Hokkien-speaking member of the community, it was expected that Kheng \nChiang had to assume a leadership role in his own dialect community. Starting from 1932, \nhe was looked upon as the community leader of the Hokkiens when he led the Hokkien \nAssociation of Sarawak for fifteen years until after the Japanese Occupation in 1947(\u53e4\u664b\u798f\n\n\n\n\u5efa\u516c\u4f1a/Kuching Hokkien Association, 1980).\nA deep concern for the welfare of the young was inseparable from his involvement in \n\n\n\neducation. The founding of schools has always been a core function of prominent businessmen \nand dialect associations. As early as 1912, the Hokkien community in Kuching had established \na school to nurture its children. This school, originally known as Sarawak Free School and \nlater on as Hokkien Free School, is the present Chung Hua Primary School No.1. As elsewhere \nin Southeast Asia, schools founded by the Chinese community drew their support from the \nbusiness sector and the community at large. A board of governors was organized to ensure \nthat funds were raised to sustain the running of the school. Leadership of the school board \nwould invariably fall on prominent businessmen. Ong Tiang Swee had served the board of the \nHokkien school with distinction. Several years later this role fell on the shoulders of Kheng \nChiang who served from 1932 to 1947 (Kuching Hokkien Association, 1980: 230). During \nhis tenure as board chairman, student enrollment increased considerably. \n\n\n\nAfter the Japanese Occupation, Kheng Chiang worked hard to revive the Kuching \nChung Hua primary and secondary schools for which he contributed $2,000 annually. In 1947 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         35\n\n\n\nhe had helped to raise funds to purchase the Chinese Consulate Building in Kuching to house \nthe premises of Chung Hua Middle School No. 4, now the property of the Sarawak Chinese \nCommunity Trust Management Board. In 1958, he contributed $100,000 towards the building \nof the school hall of Chung Hua Middle School No. 1. The magnificent building which now \nbears his name still stands in the school campus as a legacy of his work. In the same year, he \nsimilarly sponsored the construction of classrooms at St. Thomas Primary School. The year \n1964 saw him donating $10,000 to the building fund of St. Luke Secondary School. \n\n\n\nAcutely aware of the plight of the poor and unfortunate, Kheng Chiang contributed \ngenerously to ease their needs as well as to other welfare organizations. He was ever conscious \nof the sufferings of his countrymen in China. On one occasion in 1938 he raised $100,000 \nin aid flood victims in China. In 1964, he donated a substantial sum to build the Kuching \nHome for Women. This was to provide training for women in housekeeping and hygiene, \nin the upbringing of children and also to provide temporary accommodation to rural Iban \nand Bidayuh women who travelled to Kuching to seek medical treatment. In response to the \ncall by the government to control tuberculosis, Kheng Chiang sponsored the setting up of a \nspecial clinic in Kuching in 1953. This clinic was subsequently named after him as a mark \nof gratitude.\n\n\n\nProminence in business invariably invites respect and admiration by one\u2019s peers. The \ncase of Kheng Chiang was no different. Organizations associated with commerce, the Hokkien \ncommunity, the Wee clan, education, religion and many others were to elect Kheng Chiang in \na leadership role. Among them are the following: \n\n\n\nThe Sarawak Chinese Chamber of Commerce (1930-1946)\nThe Hokkien Association (1932-1947)\nThe Singapore-Sarawak Association (from 1930)\nThe Hokkien School Management Board(1932-1947)\nThe Sarawak China Relief Fund Committee (1938)\nKuching Joint Primary and Secondary Schools Management Board (1946)\nKuching China Consulate Building Committee (1949)\nAnti-Tuberculosis Society\nSarawak Turf Club (1937)\nSarawak Buddist Society\nTse Chia Koh Buddist Association\nKuching Hung Nam Shieng Thang\nSarawak Tong Sin Siang Tong Association\nThe Federation of Wee Clan Associations, Sarawak\n\n\n\nJust prior to the Japanese Occupation, the Brooke administration had recognized Kheng \nChiang\u2019s contributions to society by appointing him as one of the two Chinese members of the \nLegislation Council for the 1937-1940 term. Soon after independence in 1965, he presented a \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n36          Lam\n\n\n\nhalf-silvered 55-inch long mace, specially made in Britain, to the Legislature Council, as an \nemblem of the authority and power of the Head of Sarawak State. This mace that had cost a \nsubstantial sum to make is still kept by the State Council of Sarawak. \n\n\n\nFrom the 1930s until his death, Kheng Chiang was the doyen among the Sarawak business \ncommunity and a well-respected personality in social circles in Sarawak and Singapore. His \nnumerous acts of generosity and kindness won praise and admiration by both society and \ngovernment. It was not without reason that he was known as the \u2018Father of Philanthropy\u2019 in \nthe state (\u6797\u715c\u5802/Lam Chee Kheung, 2005: 125-128). \n\n\n\nAmong the many friends of the Ranee Sylvia Brooke, she admired most only three. \nOne of these was Kheng Chiang. She admired him for great courage during the Japanese \nOccupation when he risked his life to supply cigarettes to the government officers in the \nKuching concentration camp. She acknowledged this as \u201ca brave act from a Chinese towards \nthe British captives\u201d (Brooke, 1939: 115). Highly impressed by his remarkable achievements \nand the spirit that he embodied, she saw him as \u201ca brilliant and ambitious man with the lined \nface of one who has had to work hard for everything. He amassed great riches, became very \npowerful, and eventually owned vast properties and a bank\u201d. In her 1939 book entitled The \nThree White Rajahs, she described Kheng Chiang as \u201cThe Uncrowned King of Sarawak\u201d. \n\n\n\nOfficial acknowledgement of his outstanding social and charitable contributions \ncame from both the colonial government and the Malaysian nation. He was conferred the \nCommander of the Star of Sarawak by the Third White Rajah of Sarawak in 1941, and the \nPanglima Negara Bintang Sarawak, which carries the title Dato Sri by the first Governor of \nSarawak in 1964.\n\n\n\nA Life Fulfilled\n\n\n\nKheng Chiang proved to be a successful entrepreneur from the time of his first business \nventure. He earned his first million within five years of launching into business, at the young \nage of just over thirty. His residence at Mathies Road facing the Sarawak River, with a splendid \ngarden, was a magnificent building. Its uniqueness and splendor marked it out as a landmark \nin that area. His two wives borne him five sons and ten daughters. He had three sons and eight \ndaughters by his first wife and another two sons and two daughters by the second. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang became a Buddhist when he was 83 years of age. Having successfully \nhanded his business over to the next generation and relieved of the burdens and obligations \nthat were part and parcel of life in business, his was a life fulfilled as he began to immerse \nhimself in the tranquility of retirement, to enjoy its rich rewards, and to seek spiritual assurance \nin life. The blessings of a good life and family were evident in abundance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         37\n\n\n\nIn 1978, he passed away peacefully at a ripe old age. Paying their last respect to this \nremarkable man who rose to prominence from a humble origin were relatives and friends, \nbusiness associates, representatives of Chinese associations, students, and state dignitaries \nincluding the Chief Minister of Sarawak and his wife. The funeral procession stretched over \na mile in a grand send-off for a proud son of Sarawak. \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nHis humble origins and untimely death of his father who left nothing behind but a widow \nand children had not deterred Kheng Chiang to accumulate a fortune that all but the tiny few \ncould only dream of. Brief though his career was as a hired employee in various offices, the \nexperience that he gained stood him in good stead as he broadened his views and skills for his \nfuture ventures. His meeting with Ong Tiang Swee, his employer, mentor and father-in-law, \nwas the turning point in his life and career.\n\n\n\nPerhaps having an already highly successful entrepreneur as father-in-law, coupled \nwith an uncanny ability to grasp opportunities in promising ventures, Kheng Chiang went \non to build up a business enterprise that had exerted a dominant presence in Sarawak and \nSingapore. He emerged as the wealthiest man in Sarawak and one of its leading community \nleaders. He presented himself as a self-made man, a public figure, a beloved patriarch to his \nfamily, an ambitious entrepreneur, and a philanthropist rarely matched by his peers.\n\n\n\nThe factors behind Kheng Chiang\u2019s success in business might be complex. Essentially, \nthey were inseparably associated with his analytic mind, his humanistic approach to \nmanagement, his noble principles of honesty and sincerity, and the right timing in launching \ninto the right types of business. He was ahead of his contemporaries when he ventured into \nthe banking industry. This bold and decisive move into a budding industry came at the right \ntime when there was little competition to contend with at that time. Banking proved to be \na highly profitable investment and the business was stable and secure. His entry into the \ntrade in local produce too was well-timed. With his ready cash, he purchased the goods at \nlow cost and sold them at high prices. In the immediate post-war years especially during \nthe Korean War in the early 1950s, the demand for such commodities as pepper and rubber \nyielded unprecedented profits. \n\n\n\nKheng Chiang\u2019s business ventures might have been blessed with an element of luck. \nLuck was undeniably on his side when he appeared in the dream of a wealthy future mother-in-\nlaw. Luck too had accounted for his escape from execution at the cruel hands of the Japanese \nand that added decades more to his life in what was to be his golden years in business. \n\n\n\nIn business and family life, Kheng Chiang enjoyed harmonious social relationships \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n38          Lam\n\n\n\nwith people from all walks of life. Numerous social associations and educational, religions \nand cultural organizations benefited from his leadership role. His capacity for philanthropic \ncauses brought comfort to countless numbers of the less privileged. In short, none could \ndispute his generous contributions to the general welfare of the community and the state. \n\n\n\nThe entrepreneurial and community spirit of Kheng Chiang has inspired many in their \nadmiration and emulation. His life and success had etched a deep imprint on the history of \nSarawak. \n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1  \u201cDato Sri\u201d is a state-level honorific title conferred by the governor on persons who have made \nsignificant contributions to state and society.\n\n\n\n2  The Brookes from England were the \u201cWhite Rajahs\u201d who ruled Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 for \n105 years. \n\n\n\n3  Ong Tiang Swee (1864-1950) was the eldest son of Ong Ewe Hai, a pioneer and successful \nHokkien merchant in Kuching. Tiang Swee inherited his father\u2019s business, and became a close \nfriend and advisor to Rajah Charles Brooke, the second Rajah of Sarawak who also appointed \nhim Kapitan China General. He was Kheng Chiang\u2019s first Chinese employer and father-in-law (\n\u9ec3\u5efa\u6df3 /Hwang Jiann Chen, 1999: 181 and 214; Lam, 2005: 28, 37-43).\n\n\n\n4  A Rajah is a monarch in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Rajah Charles Brooke was \nthe second Rajah who ruled Sarawak from 1868 to 1917.\n\n\n\n5  A Chinese proverb, it means attaining sudden success normally through passing the imperial \nexamination.\n\n\n\n6  Rajah Vyner Brooke was the third white Rajah of Sarawak, who ruled Sarawak from 1917 till \n1946. He turned Sarawak to the British as her colony in 1946. \n\n\n\n7  The Panglima Negara Bintang Sarawak (PNBS) carries the title of Datuk and the Datuk Amar \nBintang Kenyalang (DA) carries the more senior title of Daruk Amar. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nCHEW Daniel 1990. Chinese Pioneers on The Sarawak Frontier, 1841-1941, New York: Oxford \nUniversity Press.\n\n\n\nBROOKE, Sylvia 1939. The Three White Rajahs, London: Casell.\nFOO,Vincent H. K. and CHAI Foh Chin 2001. Story of The Sarawak Steamship Company, Kuching: \n\n\n\nLee Ming Press Company.\nThe Straits Times 29 March 2002. \n\u6797\u9547\u56fd1983\u3002\u300a\u5112\u8005\u7684\u826f\u5fc3\u2014\u2014\u5b5f\u5b50\u300b\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u6642\u5831\u6587\u5316\u51fa\u7248\u4e8b\u4e1a\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8 (LIN Chen Kuok \n\n\n\n1983. Mencius: The Conscience of Scholars, Taipei).\n\u5927\u534e\u94f6\u884c1985\u3002\u300a\u5927\u696d\u83ef\u5e74\u2014\u2014\u5927\u83ef\u9280\u884c\uff0c1935-1985\u300b\uff0cSingapore: Printline Press Pte Ltd \n\n\n\n(United Overseas Bank 1985. Growing with Singapore).\n\u6797\u715c\u5802 2005\u3002\u300a\u9ec3\u6176\u660c\u50b3\u300b\uff0c\u53e4\u664b\uff1a\u5229\u660e\u5370\u52d9\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8 (LAM Chee Kheung 2005. Biography of \n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang, Kuching).\n\u53e4\u664b\u798f\u5efa\u516c\u4f1a1980\u3002\u300a\u53e4\u6649\u798f\u5efa\u516c\u6703\u6210\u7acb\u4e00\u767e\u9031\u5e74\u8a18\u5ff5\u7279\u520a\u300b\uff0c\u53e4\u6649\uff1a\u5a46\u7f57\u5dde\u51fa\u7248\u6709\u9650\u516c\n\n\n\n\u53f8(Kuching Hokkien Association 1980. Kuching Hokkien Association Hundredth Anniversary \nSpecial Publication, Kuching: Borneo Publication Sdn Bhd).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWee Kheng Chiang of Sarawak         39\n\n\n\n\u9ec3\u5efa\u6df3 1999\u3002<\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u83ef\u4eba\u53f2\u7814\u7a76>\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\uff1a\u6771\u5927\u5716\u66f8\u80a1\u4efd\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8 (HUANG Jiann Chen 1999, \nA History of the Chinese Settlement of Sarawak The Grand East Book Co Ltd, Taipei.\n\n\n\n\u5218\u4f2f\u594e1983\u3002\u300a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u83ef\u50d1\u673a\u5de5\u56de\u570b\u670d\u52d9\u5be6\u9304\u300b\uff0c\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff1a\u9577\u590f\u51fa\u7248\u793e (LIU Pak Kuei 1983. \nRecord of Overseas Chinese Service as Mechanics and Drivers among Sarawak Chinese in \nChina, Singapore). \n\n\n\n\u5218\u4f2f\u594e1992\u3002\u3008\u61b6\u7576\u5e74\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u83ef\u50d1\u673a\u5de5\u56de\u570b\u8207\u9ec3\u6176\u660c\u5148\u751f\u3009\u3002\u8f7d\u9952\u5c1a\u6771\u3001\u7530\u82f1\u6210\u7de8\uff0c\u300a\u7802\u62c9\n\u8d8a\u83ef\u65cf\u7814\u7a76\u8ad6\u6587\u96c6\u300b\uff0c\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a\uff08LIU Pak Kuei 1992. Sarawak Chinese \nmechanics to China and Mr Wee Kheng Chiang. In Essays on Sarawak Chinese, edited by in \nNiew Sung Tong and Chan Eng Seng, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association. \n\n\n\n\u5218\u5b50\u653f1997\u3002\u3008\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u6563\u8a18\u3009,\u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a (LAU Tzy Cheng 1997. Short Essays \non Sarawak, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Culture Association).\n\n\n\n----- 2001\u3002\u300a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u4e00\u767e\u4e09\u5341\u5e74\u5927\u4e8b\u8a18\u300b\uff0c \u8bd7\u5deb\uff1a\u7802\u62c9\u8d8a\u534e\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u534f\u4f1a (LAU Tzy Cheng \n2001. Records of Significant Events for 130 Years in Sarawak, Sibu: Sarawak Chinese Culture \nAssociation).\n\n\n\n\u90d1\u660e\u67491997\u3002\u300a\u9ec3\u7956\u8000\u50b3\u300b\uff0c\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff1a\u540d\u6d41\u51fa\u7248\u793e (ZHENG Min Chan 1997. Biography of Wee \nCho Yaw, Singapore).\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n1\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. \n\n\n\n2. \n\n\n\n3. \n\n\n\n4. \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. \n\n\n\n2. \n\n\n\n3. \n\n\n\n4. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n*  TODA Kenji is a Ph. D. candidate of Hitoshibashi University, Tokyo. E-mail: toda114@hotmail.com\nThe author wishes to thank Dr. P.K. Voon for his advice and comments.\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 85-100\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, \nChinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese in \n\n\n\nthe Early Twentieth Century\n\n\n\nTODA Kenji*\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\nThis paper is a study of the anti-opium movement organized by the Straits Chinese leaders in \nMalaya in the early twentieth century. As the Chinese were the largest group of opium smokers, they \nwere seen as a primary source of government revenue. The leading Chinese medical practitioners in the \nmovement aimed not only at the prohibition of the opium trade but also the cure for opium smoking by \nmedical treatment. As there was no effective cure for the addiction, the idea was radical but unrealistic. \nThe movement leaders believed that if they could treat opium smokers, they could also help China to \nrid itself of the curse of opium that was forced upon it by Western powers. The rationale behind the anti-\nopium movement was more than for social or economic reasons but was an indirect show of support for \nChinese nationalism in China. \n\n\n\nKey words: anti-opium movement, anti-American boycott movement, Chinese nationalism \n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nThe movement against opium smoking was initiated by the Chinese community in British \nMalaya in 1906. In the days before World War Two, opium smoking was not generally looked \nupon as a social problem, even in the Straits Settlements of Singapore, Penang and Malacca \nwhere the Chinese were more urbanized and enlightened than their counterparts in the Malay \nStates. The revenue derived from opium was an important, if not the most important, item \nfor the colonial administrations from the early nineteenth century. In the Straits Settlements, \nit was as high as 55.6 per cent in 1841-42 and a significant 31.8 per cent in 1926-27 (Trocki, \n1990: 96-97). In the period between 1820 and 1882, the Straits government earned an average \nof 44.3 per cent of its total revenue from opium. That this substance was such a major income \ngenerator was due to the fact that the government \u201cfarmed out\u201d the distribution and sale of \nopium to Chinese individuals or syndicates on a competitive basis. The colonial government \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n86          Toda\n\n\n\nmonopolized the supply of raw opium and leased the right of preparing and distributing \ncooked opium (locally known as chandu) to the Chinese. This was an arrangement that was \nmutually beneficial to both parties. The \u201crevenue farmers\u201d were owners of capital who were \ninvariably merchants, tin miners or planters. They were free to distribute and sell chandu to \nall adults in the Chinese community and to a captive market in the form of their own labour \nforce. The colonial government, on the other hand, had an easy and assured source of revenue \nas the market for opium consumption expanded in tandem with increased inflows of Chinese \nimmigrants (Swettenham, 1948: 253-256; Yen, 1995: 147-74). The revenue farm system was \ntherefore a means of consumption tax collection that was primarily borne by the Chinese. \nThis meant that opium smoking was virtually unregulated. Furthermore, it was generally \nperceived that to look upon opium smoking as a problem was in itself considered to be an \nanti-government act. All problems connected with opium were essentially regarded as those \nof opium smokers only, and had little to do with the colonial authorities.\n\n\n\nThis paper examines the process by which the opium issue, viewed officially as the \nprivate problem of the Chinese community, was turned into a colonial or public problem \nin British Malaya. This issue also surfaced at a time when two new empires that advocated \nan anti-opium policy appeared on the scene. One was Japan which colonized Formosa or \nTaiwan island in 1895 and the other was the United States of America (US) which occupied \nthe Philippines in 1898. Both played prominent roles in raising the level of awareness of the \nopium problem at the international stage. At the same time, they undermined the position \nof the British government from a humanitarian standpoint. In addition to this, China\u2019s anti-\nopium movement also started sometime in 1906 following a series of \u201cNew Policy\u201d reform \nmovements at the closing stages of the Qing dynasty. The anti-opium movement promoted \nby the Straits Chinese leaders surfaced rather suddenly in British Malaya. Under the pressure \nof international anti-opium criticisms and the demand of the local Chinese community, the \nOpium Commission was set up in July 1907 to make a study of the opium problem and to put \nforward its recommendations (SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1908 and 1909).1 \n\n\n\nThe reports of the Commission that contained more than 1,300 pages form the primary \nsource of reference of this paper. Previously published works that relied heavily on this source \ninclude those by Cheng U Wen (1961) and Margaret Lim (1969). They were concerned with \nthe findings of the Commission rather than with the anti-opium movement. This movement \nwas seen as a mere reflection of the disputes between Britain and China. In another study, Yen \nChing Hwang (1995) discusses the anti-opium movement from the perspective of Chinese \nnationalism. These studies did not deny the influence of China in the opposition to opium. It \nis therefore of interest to examine how Chinese leaders in British Malaya related to Chinese \nnational influence and how they internalized it in their campaign against opium smoking. In \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          87\n\n\n\nthis respect, it is relevant to take into account the US Exclusion Act of the Chinese. In 1904, \nthe US had renewed and amended the Chinese Exclusion Act to disregard the difference \nbetween the contract coolie and the people of commerce, the leisure traveller or the student. \nThis act was already in enforcement in the Philippines and Hawaii. This had aroused an \nanti-American boycott movement in China in a patriotic response that left an impact on the \nChinese community in British Malaya. At the same time, the US stance on opium also lent \nmuch international support to the anti-opium policy. It is thus necessary to consider how \nChinese leaders perceived this seemingly contradictory US behaviour. The discussion here \nwill take into account the US in the tripartite relationships among China, Britain and Malaya, \nand to examine the anti-opium movement from different perspectives. \n\n\n\nAnother aspect of the anti-opium movement in British Malaya was its promotion as an \nattempt by the Straits Chinese to transform society, culture and education from traditional \nto modern ways (see \u674e\u5143\u747e/Lee, 1990). Lim Boon Keng, Yin Suat Chuan2 and Wu Lien \nTeh (Goh Lean Tuck), who organized the anti-opium societies, were medical practitioners as \nwell as Western-educated leaders of the Chinese community. They were not merely targeting \nopium smoking as an all-round social evil to be banished, but also understood the anti-opium \nmovement as a patriotic movement in support of China. This paper will also discuss the idea \nof nationalism as a force behind the anti-opium movement in a British colony. The origins \nof this movement and the unique situation of the Straits Chinese will be discussed in the \nhistorical context. \n\n\n\n \nRecognition of the Opium Problem as a National Issue\n\n\n\nA statement by Lim Boon Keng (1898: 47) regarding the opium problem in the Straits \nSettlements appeared in The Straits Chinese Magazine:\n\n\n\nThe Government of every civilized country recognizes its duty \nthe repression of all sources of vice and crime...In the United \nKingdom and America, steps have been taken to control and \ncheck the spread of the drinking habit and in many quarters these \nhave been followed by good results\u2026we wish to call the attention \nof the Straits Government to its position in regard to the baneful \nhabit of opium smoking, to the revenue which it derives form this \nluxury and to the duties which it morally owes to the poor and \nhelpless victims of the opium habit.\n\n\n\nHe insisted that the government should look upon the opium problem as an issue of a \ncivilized nation and to change the laws on opium. He argued that the opium issue was not \nto be viewed as a problem of the Chinese, but as the responsibility of the government. The \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n88          Toda\n\n\n\ngeneral and deep-rooted attitude then was to ascribe opium smoking to the inborn habit of \nthe Chinese (Lim, B.K., 1898: 48). Europeans would argue that \u201cthe opium use is good for \na Chinaman\u201d to defend the legal distribution and sale of opium (West, 1903: 91). It was \napparent that this Western attitude was not without basis as a form of racial discrimination \nof the colonial authorities. The government of the Straits Settlements similarly considered \nopium as a Chinese \u201cnecessity\u201d and its problem was the sole responsibility of Chinese society. \nMeanwhile, it continued to justify and derive significant sums of revenue from this Chinese \n\u201cnecessity\u201d. A prevalent opinion that was circulating among Europeans and Americans then \nwas that opium affected different races of people in different ways. The logical argument was \nthat what might be harmful to an American might be good for a Chinese (West, 1903: 88). In \nthe US, the stereotypical image of Chinese workers was that of an opium smoker. Although \na great number of opium smokers were Chinese, this \u201cethnic profiling\u201d was reinforced by \nracial discrimination and the fear was that opium might pervade American society as a whole \n(Choy, 1995; Goto-Shibata, 2005: 16). \n\n\n\nOpium had surfaced as a national issue in England since the first Opium War of 1840-\n42. In 1874, the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of Opium Trade (SSOT) was \nestablished by Quakers of the Society of Friends and started the movement under the humanistic \nidea to \u201coppose the opium monopoly by the Indian Government and suppress opium traffic \nwith China\u201d (Muraoka, 1996: 159). In the 1890s, with the support of sympathetic members in \nthe British House of Commons, SSOT was able to persuade Parliament to tackle the opium \nproblem. These efforts eventually led to the appointment of the Royal Opium Commission in \n1894 to enquire into the opium trade in India and Burma. However, the British still regarded \nopium as a kind of cigarette or a social habit. As such, England did not feel obliged to agree \nto any form of suppression of opium. \n\n\n\nIn contrast, Japan and the US took the lead in the opposition to opium in the late \nnineteenth century. Having learned from China\u2019s mistakes in the Opium Wars of the 1840s, \nJapan chose to prohibit the trade in opium. When Japan opened itself to the world, T. Harris, \na diplomat of the US, gave concrete advice on the evils of the British opium policy. Ever \nsince then, Japan had consistently included the principle to prohibit importing opium in all \nits treaties with other countries (Ryu, 1983: 15-24). Japan realized that it could modernize \naccording to Western ways without having to depend on opium. This policy was also to \nsharpen the contrasts in the subsequent fate of Japan and China. After the Sino-Japanese War \nof 1895, Japan occupied Taiwan and recognized that one of the major difficulties in its rule \nwas the opium problem. Japan was reportedly making attempts to prohibit the sale of opium \nin Taiwan but won little support from the local people and did not bring an end to resistance \nagainst Japanese occupation. Japan shifted towards a policy of \u201cgradual prohibition\u201d to \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          89\n\n\n\nreconcile the reality in Taiwan with its own anti-opium stance. On the basis of this policy, \nthe colonial authorities monopolized the selling of opium with the aim of reducing overall \nusage, and channelled part of the revenues towards health care. Registration of all opium \nsmokers was introduced to reduce the number of smokers gradually in 30 to 50 years. The \nintention was to control existing smokers and to prevent non-smokers to take up the habit. \nThese efforts were overseen by Goto Shinpei, a medical practitioner and the secretary of the \ncivilian department. As Japan regarded opium for non-medical use as contraband, it also \nclassified it as an illegal substance under its \u201cterritorial expansion\u201d ideology.\n\n\n\nThe US occupation of the Philippines from 1898 similarly encountered the opium \nproblem. Under American rule, the Spanish policy of confining opium smoking only to \nthe Chinese was abolished. Unfortunately, it led to a dramatic increase in opium smoking \namong Filipinos (Foster, 2000: 257). The government subsequently appointed the Philippine \nOpium Commission in 1903 to investigate the situation in opium-consuming countries and \ncolonies including Japan, Taiwan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Burma, Java and the Straits \nSettlements (Alexander, 1906: 187). It investigated the workings of various government- \nmonopoly systems, first introduced in French Indochina and later adopted in Java by the Dutch. \nIn both cases, the primary purpose was to secure a source of revenue. On the other hand, the \nCommission appreciated Japan\u2019s policy in Taiwan, and this was to influence American policy \nin the Philippines. The Commission\u2019s findings that were published in 1905 were reported in \nThe Straits Times in detail on 17 June. Except for medical purposes, the Commission called \nfor the elimination of opium smoking within three years. In contrast to the Japanese policy in \nTaiwan, the Commission seemed optimistic. This might be because new Chinese immigrants \nwere disallowed under the Chinese Exclusion Act and that the new policy included a severe \nmeasure to deport Chinese offenders from the Philippines (The Straits Times, 17 June 1905). \n\n\n\nThe advocacy of Japan and the US on the suppression of opium had a decided influence \non the international stage. In British Malaya, this fact was received with great publicity in \nThe Straits Times and The Straits Chinese Magazine. Views expressed in these publications \nreflected growing anti-opium sentiments in local society (see West, 1903; Alexander, 1906). \nBeing forced into an awkward position, Great Britain was subsequently obliged to examine the \nIndia-China opium traffic more closely. Being remote from its Asian colonies, Great Britain \nwas unlike Japan, which regarded newly-occupied Taiwan as its domestic territory. The \nnumber of Chinese immigrants in Great Britain itself was insignificant even in comparison \nwith the US. These contrasting backgrounds were not entirely unrelated to its indifference \ntowards the social problems caused by the opium trade. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n90          Toda\n\n\n\nOpium and Anglo-China Relations\n\n\n\nThe 1895 Royal Opium Commission that investigated into the opium issue in India and \nBurma had published voluminous reports covering over 2,500 pages. To the great relief of \nBritish officials, who did not take kindly to the criticisms relating to the revenue derived from \nopium, the Straits Settlements was dismissed in no more than 40 pages (Foster, 2003: 102). \nThis Commission went as far as to examine the possibility of the government taking over the \ncollection of the opium revenue, but found this attempt impracticable due to the inadequacy \nof staff and large initial loss of revenue. The Commission had consulted the revenue farmers \nin Singapore in its enquiries and seemed quite obvious that its conclusions attached great \nimportance to maintaining the opium farm system (Lim, M., 1969: 41). However, British \nofficials soon began to recognize the problems of the system and the need to introduce \nchange. According to Swettenham (1948: 254), \u201cthis system is objectionable principally \nbecause of the enormous power it places in the hands of the farmer for a period of three years, \nduring which he holds the monopoly.\u201d The opium farmer employed his own police, called \n\u201cchinting\u201d to protect himself and to check smuggling activities, but the arrogant attitude of \nthe chinting did little to promote public order. Some opium farmers themselves could also be \ndirectly involved in smuggling. In 1903, Swettenham sent the Secretary of Chinese Affairs of \nthe Malay States, G. T. Hare, an acknowledged expert on the Chinese, to Singapore to survey \nthe actual conditions of the opium farm system (Leong, 1906: 40). The opium ordinance was \nsubsequently amended to allow the appointment of additional staff to the Chinese Protectorate \nas superintendents and inspectors of opium farms, and the manufacture of all cooked opium \nor chandu, in the colony in a special factory to be approved by the Governor. A significant \nfeature of the amendment was to raise the maximum fixed retail price of chandu from $2.15 to \n$3.15 per tahil (about 37.8gm). This price hike saw a dramatic increase in the revenue of the \nStraits Settlements in 1904, as expected by British officials well in advance. Undoubtedly, the \ncolonial authorities, besides taking into consideration the extra running costs ensuing from \namending the ordinance, were acting in their self-interest. Hence, the official intention was to \ntighten control of the opium farms but not to reform the farm system itself. \n\n\n\nIn view of the reality of the situation, it was unlikely that the authorities would even \nattempt to alleviate what was considered as a Chinese problem. But a speech made by John \nMorley on 30 May 1906, then Secretary of State of India, marked a turning point. In reply to \na motion laid on the table of the House of Commons by Theodore Taylor, Morley declared \nthat \u201cif China wanted to seriously and in good faith to restrict the consumption of this drug in \nChina, the Government of India and His Majesty\u2019s Government would agree to it, even though \nit might cost them some sacrifice\u201d (Wen, 1907: 3) It was this remark, according to Wu Lien \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          91\n\n\n\nTeh, that \u201cthe [Straits anti-opium] movement first originated on account of the speech made in \nthe House of Commons by Mr. Morley\u201d (SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1909: 649). China \nwas closely watched on how it would respond to the remark in the British Parliament (see The \nStraits Times, 16 June 1906; 23 June 1906; 26 June 1906; 2 July 1906).\n\n\n\nOn 20 September 1906, the Qing government issued an imperial decree to eliminate \nopium smoking and the cultivation of poppy throughout the country within ten years (The \nStraits Times, 9 October 1906). While the British were not surprised by China\u2019s decision, they \nwere not hopeful of drastic changes as they knew that China had found it difficult to regulate \nthe use of opium.3 Lim Boon Keng (1906: 149) noted with relief that \u201cthe Chinese as a nation \nare convinced of the injury which opium has caused to the individual and to the State\u201d, and \nthe recognition of the opium issue as the best opportunity for \u201cthe East and the West\u201d to \nunderstand each other (Lim, B.K., 1906: 149). In 1907, China and Great Britain concluded \nthe Anglo-China Agreement to eliminate opium in ten years. On the basis of this Agreement, \nLim Boon Keng expressed the hope that the mutual approach towards the opium problem \nwould commit the British government to suppress the India-China opium trade in ten years.\n\n\n\nWith the beginning of discussions between Britain and China, the opium problem would \nsuddenly escalate to become an international issue, though not unrelated to the US position \non opium. It was at this time that anti-opium societies were established in quick succession \nin British Malaya. The first one appeared in Singapore in August 1906, followed by the \nnext in Selangor in the following month, and in Penang, Perak and Malacca in October. In \nview of the mounting criticisms on opium smoking and the trade in opium from various \nquarters, the British Foreign Office instructed the Straits government to establish a special \nCommission to investigate the opium problem in British Malaya. This Commission was \nduly set up in July 1907. \n\n\n\nThe anti-opium movement in the Straits Settlements and two Malay States became more \nformally organized at the time when \u201cthe East and the West\u201d began discussions of the opium \ntrade. One might wonder if the anti-opium movement in Malaya was a by-product of external \nforces or whether it was driven by internal events. It is necessary to examine this question \nfrom the perspective of the Straits Chinese community which led this movement.\n\n\n\nAnti-American Boycott Movement and Anti-Opium Awareness\n\n\n\nThe US occupied the Philippines in 1898 and one of its colonial mandates was to \ndeal with the opium problem \u201cunder the slogan of the anti-opium policy\u201d. The American \npolicy indeed had an impact on East Asian diplomacy concerning the opium question; it was \nessentially targeted against Chinese immigrants on the basis of their image as opium smokers. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n92          Toda\n\n\n\nIt is in this context that the American policy was linked to the issue of Chinese immigration \ninto the US and its administered territories. In reaction, Chinese businessmen and students in \nShanghai began to boycott American goods as an expression of patriotism in May 1905 (The \nStraits Times, 29 November 1906). In the same month, the Philippine Opium Commission also \nreaffirmed the exclusive policy against Chinese immigrants (The Straits Times, 17 June 1905).\n\n\n\nThe US exclusion policy exerted a profound impact on the Chinese community in British \nMalaya as merchants and traders in Singapore joined in the boycott movement. In a meeting \nat Tong Chay Hospital on 20 June 1905 chaired by Lim Boon Keng, it was resolved that \n\u201cthe traders in Singapore stop all trading in American goods\u201d. The result of the meeting was \ncabled to the government of China (The Straits Times, 22 June 1905). A similar meeting was \nchaired by Lim Kek Chuan, president of the Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce, at the \nChinese Town Hall in Penang. Wu Lien Teh, in an address in English, called for the boycott \nof the American goods as a protest against the amendment to the Exclusion Act (The Straits \nTimes, 3 July 1905). Except for tobacco and oil, trade between the Straits Settlements and the \nUS was not strong and it is difficult to estimate the actual damage of the boycott movement on \nUS trade. However, the boycott movement was able to mobilize Chinese opinion through the \nChinese media and theatrical performances, and hence to build a sense of Chinese solidarity \n(Wong, 1997: 17-32). The appeal of the idea of patriotism, aided by the common origins of the \nChinese from southern China, quickly galvanized the Chinese community into a movement \nof considerable social significance. \n\n\n\nAt the time of the amendment of the Exclusion Act, Yin Suat Chuan, who had studied \nmedicine in the US, was rehabilitating two opium smokers with the support of Lim Boon Keng \n(SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1909). His successful treatment convinced him to open an \nopium refuge. He put forward his concept in a public lecture on the method of managing an \nopium refuge with the support of the Chinese community at the Chinese Reading Room in \nSingapore in early 1906 (Murray, 1906: 133). There was no immediate response to the lecture. \nIt was several months later, when he had an opportunity to explain his scheme to the Chinese \nCounsel in Singapore, that the Counsel offered to sponsor the expenses for the initial month \nand a location for the proposed institution.4 After hasty preparations the opium refuge was \nopened on 23 May 1906. Indeed, Lim Boon Keng had put forward the proposal to set up an \nexperimental opium refuge as early as 1898. In other words, Straits Chinese leaders had been \naware of the need for making available remedial treatment for opium smoking well before \nMorley\u2019s speech in the British Parliament on 30 May 1906. It was probable that this Straits \nChinese attempt was not unrelated to the US exclusion policies. According to The Straits \nChinese Magazine, the opium issue was in fact part of the Chinese patriotic movement that \nwas inspired by the boycott of American goods. It declared in an article (SCM, 1906: 209):\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          93\n\n\n\nThe awakening national spirit suddenly burst forth as if aroused \nfrom the stupor of centuries. National unity was achieved for the \nfirst time without bloodshed. A common sentiment of kinship with \nall yellow men \u2013 a feeling which Confucius vainly strove to instill \ninto the China of his day \u2013 miraculously pervades all classes. It \nwas this that made the American boycott a success. It is this which \nenables the nation now to combat the attractions of the narcotic \nwhich has done the Chinese nation such harm\u2026In consequence \nof the new national aspiration, a strong feeling exists against the \nindulgence in opium. Societies sprang up in no time throughout \nChina and all Chinese communities for the preservation of national \nvigour and the repression of the opium vice.\n\n\n\nWhile the Chinese expressed their objection through the boycott movement in China, \nthere was a feeling it should not become \u201ca second coming of the Boxer Rebellion\u201d, or not \nto show that China was incapable of joining \u201cthe progressive and universal civilized current\u201d \nof the world (Yoshizawa, 2003: 86). Thus, the anti-opium movement began in British \nMalaya precisely also as a reflection of this patriotism movement \u201cwithout bloodshed\u201d. Yin \nSuat Chuan was particularly aware of the ugly face of racial discrimination behind the US \nExclusion Act. On the occasion of the devastating earthquake in San Francisco on 18 April \n1906, the shops of Chinese victims in Chinatown were shamelessly looted in the presence of \nUS troops and police (Yin, 1906: 48). In a biting criticism of this incidence, Yin Suat Chuan \ndescribed the looting as occurring \u201cin the great civilized city of a great civilized country, by \na great and civilized people, in the presence of troops, in the enlightened twentieth century\u201d \n(Yin, 1906: 48). Noting that US government had decided to return to China a large part of \nthe Boxer Uprising indemnity money, he lamented that \u201chad the American people shared this \nbenevolent action of their Government and condescended to treat the Chinese on more liberal \nterms, the boycott movement would never have started\u201d (Yin, 1906: 49). Like many Straits \nChinese, Yin did not allow his intense disappointment with the inhuman racial discrimination \nof \u201ccivilized\u201d Americans to go unrecorded. \n\n\n\nWhile the Chinese sense of patriotism was aroused by the racial prejudice of the \nexclusion policy of the US, they also realized the need to tackle the crippling impact of \nopium on the Chinese community. However, this awareness alone, while it motivated the \nanti-opium movement, had a negative side to it. The move to register opium smokers as a \nstep towards the control of the drug, already adopted as an effective means by Japan and the \nUS, were objected to by Yin Suat Chuan and Lim Boon Keng on the grounds that it was an \ninfringement on the privacy of the individual (SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 42 \nand. 420-422). At the Anti-Opium Conference held at Ipoh on March 1907, Yin Suat Chuan\u2019s \nopposition to the registration policy in the name of protecting liberty and individual rights had \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n94          Toda\n\n\n\ncaused much debate (The Straits Times, 14 March 1907). When Lim Choo Boon, the secretary \nof the Perak Anti-Opium Society, referred to the successful opium regulation of Japan and \nthe US at the interview of the Opium Commission, a member of the Commission claimed \nthat this was because the \u201cAmericans do not want Chinese in the Philippines islands\u201d and \nsuggested a similar exclusion act in Perak (SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 750). \nThis member had justified opium smoking only because Chinese immigrants were necessary \nfor the development of Perak. \n\n\n\nThe influence of the US exclusion policy was to make the Straits Chinese wary of \ngovernment intervention, lest the Chinese were subjected to discriminating legislations. It \nwas therefore impossible to trust the government to solve the opium problem. In other words, \nthe anti-opium movement had to be promoted within the limited capacity of the Chinese \nthemselves. Lim Boon Keng clearly showed this sentiment when he asserted that China must \nbe free from opium. He saw the issue as fundamentally \u201centirely a Chinese problem\u201d. He \nbelieved that, despite European indifference, \u201cthe duty of the Chinese is to do their utmost \nto destroy this incubus upon the Chinese race\u201d (Lim, B.K., 1906: 151): He recognized the \nimportance of coordinating their action with that of China. The Straits Chinese had embarked \non the anti-opium movement even ahead of China. They were thus staunch supporters of \nChina\u2019s anti-opium efforts as a matter of duty to the Chinese.5\n\n\n\nThe Straits Anti-Opium Movement\n\n\n\nSupport for the anti-opium movement came not only from patriotic Straits Chinese \nleaders, but also from Christian missionaries. J. G. Alexander, the secretary of SSOT, was \none of the prominent and vigorous campaigners. When visiting Penang and Ipoh on October \n1906, he attended meetings and sought to establish anti-opium societies (Wen, 1907: 5-7). \nSoon after that, he was in Singapore and participated in two meetings. The first was at the \nPrinsep Street Church with Revs. J. A. B. Cook and W. Murray, and both had been working \nclosely with the Straits anti-opium movement (The Straits Times, 6 November 1906). The \nsecond meeting was at the SCCC where he briefed the audience on the stringent regulations \non opium in Japan and the US, and criticized J. Morley for doing nothing after his speech \n(The Straits Times, 7 November 1906; Alexander, 1906: 186-190).6 \n\n\n\nIn addition to lending their support to the Straits anti-opium movement, Christians and \nmissionaries appealed to the British government to resolve the opium issue. When R. Laidlaw, \na member of the House of Commons, visited Malaya with J. G. Alexander, he joined an anti-\nopium meeting with at least 3,000 attendees and realized the gravity of the opium problem \n(SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 650). It was realized that the anti-opium leaders \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          95\n\n\n\nhad to submit their opinions directly to the British Parliament, as their efforts with the Straits \ngovernment had always been ignored (SS and FMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 650). There \nwas a great difference between the British government and that of the Straits Settlements. \nWhen Wu Lien Teh, who was associated with both Alexander and Laidlaw, attended the \nAnti-Opium Conference held in London, he took the opportunity to make an appeal on \nbehalf of the Straits anti-opium cause to Theodore Taylor, one of the anti-opium leaders, and \nEdward Grey in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These Straits Chinese connections with the \nChristians shielded their activities from being cast as anti-foreign sentiments, and rendered \nthe movement more effective. Leaders of the anti-opium movement Wu Lien Teh, Lim Boon \nKeng, Yin Suat Chuan and Tay Sek Tin were all Christians. \n\n\n\nThe primary objective of SSOT was to suppress the opium trade. The purpose of the \nStraits anti-opium movement was to work towards the suppression of opium smoking (SS and \nFMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 650). What Yin and Lim were primarily focused on was \nto seek an \u201copium cure\u201d as the solution. Although the use of opium was shifting from being \na substance of self-indulgence to a narcotic drug, the lack of scientific knowledge concerning \nopium militated against effective treatment of addicted smokers. There were doctors who \ndenied that opium was harmful. The opium refuge, which Yin had opened under the support \nof the Chinese Counsel-General, was unique in itself and attracted widespread attention in \nvarious quarters (Murray, 1906: 133). In the refuge, patients were admitted for two weeks \nand provided with free food, medicine and other necessities, in what was called an \u201cisolation \npolicy\u201d. As the patients submitted themselves to the voluntary treatment, anyone who insisted \non leaving before his term was completed or resumed smoking would have to pay a fine. \nWith all 39 in his first batch of patients succeeding in banishing the addiction, Yin felt even \nmore convinced that the refuge must become a permanent project (SS and FMS Opium \nCommission,1908-09: 410). Subsequently, with donations from some wealthy Chinese leaders \n(see\u8bb8\u82cf\u543e/Xu Su Wu, 1973: 26-33),7 Yin established his original opium home at Tank Road \nthat also housed the Singapore Anti-Opium Society. This refuge accommodated 30 patients at \na time for a compulsory stay of 15 days. A year later, when the refuge was closed temporarily \nfor lack of funds, more than 400 patients had benefited from the treatment. \n\n\n\nIn the search for a cure for opium smoking, two plants were believed to provide hopes for \nmedical treatment. These plants were associated with what became known as the Selangor cure \n(Combretum Sundaicum) and Shanghai cure (a raw plant). The \u201cSelangor cure\u201d was a drink \nthat was distributed freely at major towns in Malaya. Many opium addicts earnestly believed \nthat it offered a cure for their craving for opium. However, through their own experiments, \nLim Boon Keng, Yin Suat Chuan and Wu Lien Teh concluded that both forms of \u201ctreatment\u201d \nwere merely placebos and had no real medical effect. Instead, some Straits Chinese doctors \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n96          Toda\n\n\n\nconducted their own laboratory experiments in pursuit of an effective treatment for the \nopium addicts. A morphine injection was also used as an effective treatment. Lim Boon Keng \ncautioned against its use lest it led to morphine addiction (SS and FMS Opium Commission, \n1908-09: 50). Although it was immensely difficult to cure opium smokers of their addiction, \nLim Boon Keng and his colleagues realized that it was more important than to confront the \nlarger and complex issue of banning the opium trade. \n\n\n\nIn his approach to tackle the vice of opium smoking, Lim Boon Keng emphasized the \nneed for more practical social reforms rather than the holding of lectures and distributing \nliterature (Lim, B.K., 1898: 52). He attributed opium smoking by the poorly-paid labourers to \nsocial conditions of living and the lack of alternative recreation. Ultimately, the \u201creal remedy \nlies in education, and in forbidding the use of it (opium) to the young\u201d (Lim, B.K., 1906). But \nattaining this objective would involve nothing less than practical social reforms. To the leaders \nof the anti-opium movement, the challenge was more than suppressing opium smoking, but \nto foster the rebirth of \u201ccivilized\u201d Chinese in order to restore their faith and pride which had \nbeen undermined by the addiction to opium. \n\n\n\nAs for the anti-American Boycott movement, support came mainly from a section of \nmerchants and traders while those with vested economic interests were opposed to it. Leaders \nof the anti-opium movement who were respectable members of the middle class were also \nsubjected to harassment by some opium farmers (see Wu, 1959: 241-244). While there was \nagreement on certain aspects of the opium problem, there were some fundamental differences \nbetween the anti-opium movement and the boycott movement. The former focused on curing \nthe vast number of opium smokers rather than the control of the opium trade. Therefore, \nthere were also differences of opinion within the Chinese community itself. One of the most \ninfluential groups that did not support the anti-opium movement included wealthy Chinese \nleaders who were opium smokers. It is even difficult to ascertain if the SCCC supported the \nanti-opium movement. Tan Tek Soon, vice-president of the Chamber, asserted that half of \nthe committee members were opium smokers including the president and himself, and some \nof them were opium farmers and had vested interests in opium farms (SS and FMS Opium \nCommission, 1908-09: 295). This was probably why SCCC declined to offer support for Yin \nSuat Chuan\u2019s opium refuge project. It was not until SCCC submitted its ten-point anti-opium \nsuggestions to the Opium Commission on August 1907 that it officially adopted an anti-\nopium stance. Yin\u2019s opium refuge was on the verge of closing down then, yet SCCC failed \nto come out with concrete support or participated actively in the anti-opium movement (SS \nand FMS Opium Commission, 1908-09: 411, 418). Thus, the clear lack of consensus and \ncooperation in the Chinese community frustrated the initiatives of the anti-opium movement. \nThis could be because the idea of seeking an ultimate cure for opium addiction was a radical \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          97\n\n\n\nsocial and educational reform movement or that a section of the community was indifferent \nor not supportive at all.\n\n\n\nDespite indifferent results, the significance of the anti-opium movement goes beyond \nthe mere fact of a campaign against opium smoking. Opium was a major vice that had \nbrought about widespread social malaise and problems in China as well as its humiliation by \nforeigners as the \u201csick man\u201d of Asia. More importantly, many felt it was a direct cause of the \nmoral as well as political \u201ccollapse\u201d of China. To leaders of the anti-opium movement such \nas Lim Boon Keng and his colleagues, the most appropriate way to seek a way out was to \nprovide opium smokers with proper medical treatment. He was exposed to ideas associated \nwith \u201cSocial Darwinism\u201d during his stay in Britain (see \u674e\u5143\u747e/Lee Kin Guan, 2001: 12-17). \nDarwinism was generally accepted as the theory of the \u201cstruggle for existence\u201d, and also the \nidea of social evolution including the concept of \u201cthe survival of the fittest\u201d. The challenge of \nseeking ways to cure opium smokers was therefore likened to an ideological struggle to cure \nChina of its social and political malaise. \n\n\n\nAs a student in Britain, Lim Boon Keng had become more conscious of his identity \nas a Chinese. Back in Singapore, he sought through reform movements to restore his own \nidentity and to reconcile the roles of the Straits Chinese between \u201cthe East and the West\u201d and \nas a \u201cnew race\u201d in the form of a local-born \u201cbaba\u201d community (see Lim, B. K., 1899: 102-\n105 and 1903: 94-100). In early twentieth century Singapore, he and his fellow professionals \nrepresented a new generation with more enlightened ideas than those held by the Chinese \ncommunity in general. He and others like Yin Suat Chuan and Wu Lien Teh underwent a \nsocial \u201ctransformation\u201d as a result of their Western and professional medical education. They \nlived in an age when the vice of opium smoking was the common problem of China and the \nChinese community in British Malaya. It was also this problem that presented an opportunity \nfor them to reconcile \u201cthe East and the West\u201d and to help China out of its crisis. To borrow \nA. D. Smith\u2019s phrase, his reform was an expression of \u201cvicarious nationalism\u201d from someone \ntrying to compensate for the partial loss of his own ethnic heritage for being born in Singapore \nand raised according to non-traditional Chinese ways (Smith, 1986: 152). At the same time, the \nStraits Chinese established the Straits Chinese British Association to protect their interests and \n\u201cBritish\u201d nationality in 1900. This was the attempt by the Straits Chinese to maintain a healthy \nbalance between their status as British subjects on the one hand and as Chinese on the other. \n\n\n\nHe and his anti-opium companions bravely took up the challenge of curing the vast sea \nof addicted smokers as the most appropriate and radical way to achieve these aims. Lim Boon \nKeng, for example, with the energy of his youthful vigour and his pessimism towards the \u201cold \ncustoms and traditions\u201d and \u201cancient prejudice\u201d, was confidently seeing \u201cthe possibilities of \nthe future\u201d like his fellow professionals (The Straits Times, 27 November 1906). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n98          Toda\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\nIn the early twentieth century, the problems associated with opium smoking were \nregarded as the private affairs of the Chinese rather than that of the colonial government. The \nStraits government, citing the US exclusion policies on the Chinese, attempted to justify opium \nusage as a necessary condition to attract Chinese immigrants as a source of labour supply. In \nother words, the policy associated with opium was tied to that of Chinese immigration. \n\n\n\nLim Boon Keng and Yin Suat Chuan launched the anti-opium movement in the early \ntwentieth century before the US amended its Exclusion Act. They did this for the larger \npurpose of getting the Chinese back on their feet and to reclaim their proud civilization. \nThe focus of their endeavour was placed on the more radical objective of seeking a cure \nfor opium addiction rather than on suppressing the opium trade. They worked closely with \nSSOT and appealed to the British Parliament which had first made the idea of an anti-opium \nmovement viable. In the pursuit of their objectives, the Straits Chinese assumed a \u201cdouble \nidentity\u201d as British subjects and as Chinese in order to perform effectively their roles as \nlocal-born residents and subjects of Britain. Thus, this \u201chybrid identity\u201d served not only to \nprotect their Chinese legacy but also to compensate for their partial loss of Chinese identity. \nWhile the anti-opium movement allowed them to show their patriotism through \u201cvicarious \nnationalism\u201d, they were careful not to express their anti-opium stance as an anti-governmental \nact. Through the movement, the Straits Chinese were able to show their sense of nationalism \nand patriotism and at the same time able to push the limits of colonial rule and yet not to over-\nstep the limit as as being anti-government or anti-colonial. The Straits Chinese played this \ndual role to their full advantage.\n\n\n\nIn 1907, The Straits Chinese Magazine, published under the support of the Straits \nChinese British Association was forced to cease publication for lack of funds and subscribers \n(see SCM, 1901: 38; SCM, 1907: 125-26). This had seemingly happened in parallel with \nthe decline of the Straits anti-opium movement. Although the Straits government ultimately \ndissolved the opium farm system, it was to take over the opium monopoly in 1910 and thus \nassumed complete control and authority over the Chinese community. Since then, until opium \nwas finally prohibited after the Japanese Occupation, the Straits Chinese were deprived of \nthe initiative to move freely between the two territories of Chinese nationalism and British \ncolonialism. The anti-opium movement failed to have any significant effects on either opium \nsmoking or its trade. It seemed to have served as a means by which Straits Chinese showed \ntheir \u201cvicarious nationalism\u201d in the interest of curing China of its major social ills but without \njeopardizing their legitimate place in the colonial state.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnti-Opium Movement, Chinese Nationalism and the Straits Chinese          99\n\n\n\nNotes \n\n\n\n1  The Commission was composed of six members, chaired by J. Anderson (merchant), W. R. C. \nMiddleton (doctor), D. J. Galloway (doctor), E. F. H. Edlin (attorney), W. F. Oldham (Reverend) \nand Tan Jiak Kim (merchant). There were three major purposes to enquire how the opium \nhabit spread, whether it was excessive or moderate, and what the government should do. From \nthese points, 33 Europeans and 53 Chinese were interviewed in Singapore, Penang, Perak and \nSelangor.\n\n\n\n2  Yin was born in Amoy (Xiamen) in 1877. At the age of 21 he came to Singapore as interpreter in \nthe police courts. In 1899, he went to the US and studied medicine at Michigan University and \nthen proceeded to Toronto University. After studying in London, he returned to Singapore and \nworked with Lim Boon Keng as a private practitioner (see Song, 1923: 422-423).\n\n\n\n3  The Guardian gauged China\u2019s progress by its imperial edict. On the other hand, The Straits Times \nsays \u201cwe are by no means sure that it possesses any importance. The Chinese Government is the \nmost accomplished poseur in the universe\u201d (The Straits Times, 25 and 29 October 1906). \n\n\n\n4  According to Tay Sek Tin, Suen Tze Ting, the then Chinese Counsel, had close tie with Zeng Zhu, \nthe then president of Shanghai Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Zeng Zhu was known to be the \nkey person not only in the boycott movement but also in the anti-opium movement in Shanghai. \nThis fact indicates that Shanghai was a major city where various Chinese patriotic movements \ntook place. However, Yin Suat Chuan denied the relationship with any movement in Shanghai.\n\n\n\n5  For example, Foo Choo Choon, the first president of the Penang Anti-Opium Society, had never \nemployed opium smokers at his tin mines in the states of Perak and Selangor. He mentioned this \ndecision arose \u201cfrom a patriotic feeling that the use of opium was hurtful to my nation\u201d (SS and \nFMS Opium Commission, 1909: 563). Yen mentioned Wu Lien Teh was the first president of the \nPenang Anti-Opium Society (see Yen, 1995: 158), but actually Foo Choo Choon was the first \npresident. \n\n\n\n6  Tan Cho Nam, Teo Eng Hock, Lim Nee Soon and Tan Boo Liat participated in this meeting. Yin \nSuat Chuan chaired the meeting and acted as interpreter as well.\n\n\n\n7  Tay Sek Tin addressed 12 wealthy leaders including Tan Boo Liat, Wong Pang Chieh, Tan Hun \nChhiu and Shen Lien Fang. \n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nALEXANDER, J.G. 1906. The Opium Traffic, Straits Chinese Magazine, 10: 186-190.\nCHENG U Wen 1961. Opium in the Straits Settlements, 1867-1910, Journal of the Southeast Asian \n\n\n\nHistory, 2: 52-74. \nCHOY, Philip P., DONG, Lorraine, HOM, Marlon K. 1995, The Coming Man: 19th Century American \n\n\n\nPerception of the Chinese, Washington University Press.\nFOSTER, Anne L. 2000. Prohibition as superiority: policing opium in South-East Asia, 1898-1925, The \n\n\n\nInternational History Review, 22: 257-504.\n----- 2003. Model for governing: opium and colonial policies in Southeast Asia, 1898-1910. The \n\n\n\nAmerican Colonial State in the Philippines, edited by Julian Go and Anne L. Foster, Durham and \nLondon: Duke University Press: 92-117.\n\n\n\nGOTO-SHIBATA Harumi. 2002. The International Opium Conference of 1924-25 and Japan, Modern \nAsian Studies, 36: 969-91. \n\n\n\n----- 2005. Opium and British Empire: Increasing International Control 1906-1943, Tokyo: Yamakawa \nPress.\n\n\n\n----- 2006. Empire on the cheap: the control of opium smoking in the Straits Settlements, 1925-39, \nModern Asian Studies, 40:59-80.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n100          Toda\n\n\n\nHARE, G. T. 1897. The Straits-born Chinese, Straits Chinese Magazine, 1: 3-8.\nLEONG Kong Hin. 1906. In memoriam: G.T. Hare, Straits Chinese Magazine, 10: 40. \nLIM Boon Keng. 1897. Our enemies (Being the Presidential Address delivered to the Chinese Philomatic \n\n\n\nSociety in March 1897, Straits Chinese Magazine, 1: 25-28.\n----- 1898. The attitude of the State towards the opium habit, Straits Chinese Magazine, 2: 47-54.\n----- 1899. Straits Chinese reform 3: the education of children, Straits Chinese Magazine, 3: 102-105.\n----- 1903. The role of the Babas in the development of China, Straits Chinese Magazine, 7: 94-100.\n----- 1906. The opium question, Straits Chinese Magazine, 10: 149-151.\nLIM Margaret Julia Beng Chu 1969. The Control of the Opium Trade in Malaya, 1900-1912, unpublished \n\n\n\nMA thesis, University of London.\nMURAOKA Kenji 1996. The brief history of opium. In A Century of the British Culture, Volume 4, \n\n\n\nedited by Masaie Matsumura, Tokyo: Kenkyu Shuppansha (in Japanese).\nMURRAY, W. 1906. The opium refuge, Straits Chinese Magazine, 10: 132-135.\nProceedings of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into Matters Relating to the Use of Opium in the \n\n\n\nStraits Settlements and the Federated Malay States 1908-09 (SS and FMS Opium Commission, \n1908-09). Reports, Annexes and Appendices, Vol.1-3, London: Government Printing Office. \n\n\n\nRYU Meishu 1983. The Rule of Taiwan and the Opium Question, Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppannsha (in \nJapanese).\n\n\n\nSMITH, Anthony, D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Basil Blackwell. \nStraits Chinese Magazine (SCM) 1900. The Straits Chinese reform movement, 4: 86.\n----- 1901. Our fifth volume, 5: 38. \n----- 1906. The opium cure, 10: 208-210.\n----- 1907. Our magazine, Straits Chinese Magazine, 11: 125-126.\nSWETTEMJAM, F. 1948. British Malaya, New York and London: Allen & Unwin.\nSONG Ong Siang 1923. One Hundred Years\u2019 History of the Chinese in Singapore, London: John \n\n\n\nMurray.\nThe Straits Times. Various years. \nTROCKI, C. A. 1990. Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800-1910, Ithaca \n\n\n\nand London: Cornell University Press.\nWEN Li 1907. The Anti-Opium Movement in Malaya, Straits Chinese Magazine, 11: 3-8. \nWEST B.F. 1903. The opium question, Straits Chinese Magazine, 7: 87-94. \nWU Lien Teh (Goh Lean Tuck) 1959. Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese \n\n\n\nPhysician, Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Limited.\nYEN Ching Hwang 1995. Community and Politics: The Chinese in Colonial Singapore and Malaya, \n\n\n\nSingapore: Times Academic Press.\nYIN Suat Chuan 1906, American looting of the Chinese in San Francisco, Straits Chinese Magazine, \n\n\n\n10: 47-49.\nYOSHIZAWA Seiichiro 2003. Birth of Patriotism, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (in Japanese)\n\u9ec4\u8d24\u5f3a(1997)\u3002\u30081905\u5e74\u62b5\u5236\u7f8e\u8d27\u8fd0\u52a8\u4e0e\u65b0\u9a6c\u534e\u4eba\u793e\u4f1a\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a\u534e\u4eba\u7814\u7a76\u5b66\u520a\u300b\uff0c1\uff1a \n\n\n\n17-32 (Wong Sin Kiong 1997. The 1905 anti-American boycott movement in Singapore and \nMalaysia, Journal of Malaysian Chinese Studies, 1: 17-32.\n\n\n\n\u8bb8\u82cf\u543e 1973\u3002\u3008\u90d1\u8058\u5ef7\u7267\u5e08\u5176\u4eba\u5176\u4e8b\u3009\uff0c\u300a\u5357\u6d0b\u5b66\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e8c\u5341\u516b\u5dfb\uff1a26-33 (Xu Su Wu 1973. \nNotes on the Rev. Tay Sek Tin, Jornal of South Seas Society, 28: 26-33).\n\n\n\n\u674e\u5143\u747e 1990\u3002\u300a\u6797\u6587\u5e86\u7684\u601d\u60f3\uff1a\u4e2d\u897f\u6587\u5316\u6c47\u6d41\u4e0e\u77db\u76fe\u300b\uff0c\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff1a\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\u4e9a\u6d32\u7814\u7a76\u5b66\u4f1a (Lee \nKin Guan 1990. The Thought of Lim Boon Keng: Convergence and Contradiction between \nChinese and Western Culture, Singapore: Singapore Society of Asian Studies).\n\n\n\n-----2001\u3002\u300a\u4e1c\u897f\u6587\u5316\u7684\u649e\u51fb\u4e0e\u65b0\u534e\u77e5\u8bc6\u5206\u5b50\u7684\u4e09\u79cd\u56de\u5e94\u300b\uff0c\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\uff1a\u65b0\u52a0\u5761\u56fd\u7acb\u5927\u5b66\u4e2d\u6587\n\u7cfb\u3001\u516b\u65b9\u6587\u5316\u4f01\u4e1a\u516c\u53f8\u8054\u5408\u51fa\u7248(Lee Kin Guan 2001. Responding to Eastern and Western \nCulture in Singapore, Singapore: Department of Chinese Studies of National University of \nSingapore and Global Publishing Co Inc)..\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nThe Socio-Economic Transformation of \nRocky Karst Areas: Case Study of \n\n\n\nQianxinan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, China \n\n\n\nWONG Tai-Chee*, LUO Tianyong**, ZHANG Hongmei**,\n LI Shunyi** and CHU Wenhai**\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n       The physical and economic conditions of the karst mountain areas of the Qianxinan Prefecture of \nGuizhou province of China are the reflection of a negative triangular relationship involving the poor \npeasantry, unabated population growth, and impoverished fragile lands. For survival, the peasants had \nopened up large areas of mountain slopes that led to the sharp decline in forest cover and consequent \nexposure of bare surfaces to soil erosion. Through field investigations, this study demonstrates that \ngovernment investments of funds and manpower in Qianxinan Prefecture have achieved positive results \nin checking population growth, enhancing the quality of life and creating economic opportunities in the \nuse of local natural resources. This process includes measures undertaken in livestock raising, cultivation \nof prickly-ash1 and the resettlement of poor peasants. However, the carrying capacity of the karstified \nmountain areas is severely limited. Thus, how poor peasants deal with their future in the typical \necologically fragile region of Qianxinan Prefecture is the focus of this study. It is found that the promotion \nof urbanization is the key approach to the economic transformation and agricultural modernization of the \narea under study.\n\n\n\nKey words: Qianxinan Prefecture, karst mountain areas, peasantry, environmental protection, \n                   economic transition, urbanization  \n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2016, 5(1): 49-65\n\n\n\n*    Dr. WONG Tai-Chee (\u9ec4\u5927\u5fd7) is Distinguished Professor at the Institute for Urban Economics and \n      Development, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, 550025 Guiyang, China. E-mail: \n      taicheewong@gmail.com\n**  Dr. LUO Tianyong (\u7f57\u5929\u52c7), Dr. ZHANG Hongmei (\u5f20\u7ea2\u6885), Dr. LI Shunyi (\u674e\u987a\u6bc5) and Dr. CHU       \n      Wenhai (\u695a\u6587\u6d77) are Professors at Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, 550025 Guiyang,  \n      China.    \n              This paper is the edited version of a draft translated by Mr. Ng Seng Huat, Singapore. E-mail:       \n      sfhuang@gmail.com. The authors wish to thank the research fund provided by China\u2019s National Social\n      Science Foundation on Key Research Projects. This project is entitled \u201cResearch on Major Risks of \n      Ecological Security, and their Identification, Control and Emergency Measures in China\u2019s Western \n      Region\u201d, Project No: 13AZD074.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n         In the Qianxinan karst areas, peasants have traditionally worked on impoverished soils to \neke out a living. This condition has become a classic case of the \u201cpoverty, population, and \nenvironment (PPE) vicious circle\u201d.2 In order to survive, poor peasants, ignorant of environmental \nproblems, have over-exploited available natural resources and brought about environmental \ndegradation.\n        Before the 1980s when the policy of \u201cproducing grains as the key principle\u201d was practised, \npeasants cleared and cultivated large areas of hill slopes. The result was the exposure of rocky \nsoils and an increase in soil erosion. Today, Guizhou\u2019s traditional agricultural pattern has to \nface such challenges as environmental protection and rehabilitation, and the exploitation of \nnatural resources to support a viable livelihood on an economically sustainable basis. Success \nin achieving these results would enable the local inhabitants to prosper by living in harmony \nwith nature.\n         This paper is a case study of the rocky karst areas in Qianxinan Prefecture of Guizhou. Situated \nin eastern region of the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau of southwest China, Guizhou province \noccupies an area of 176,000 km2. Being mountainous and lacking in accessibility, the \nprovince has remained as one of the poorest in the country. This study of the Qianxinan Prefecture \nis based on field investigations, interviews, discussions and consultations with officials of \nthe Development and Reform Committees in the prefecture. The discussion is divided into \nthree sections: the first is an analysis of the current situation of the karst areas in Qianxinan \nPrefecture; the second section examines the results of the poverty alleviation efforts and the \nimplementation and practice of ecological management. The final section is the focal point of \nthe study and argues that the carrying capacity of the karst areas is limited and that most of the \npeasant population will ultimately move to the cities. \n        The latest United Nations estimate places the urban population of China in 2014 at about \n758 million, or about 54 per cent of the total population. By 2050, these figures would reach \n1.05 billion or 76 per cent (United Nations, 2014). Between now and 2050, the question of \nhow to help the peasants living in the ecologically fragile areas of Qianxinan to restructure the \neconomy, through efforts to modernize agricultural production and to become more \nindustrialized and urbanized, deserves serious considerations so as to find the best solutions \nto settle the problems of the peasants.\n\n\n\nPresent Status of the Ecologically Fragile Areas in Qianxinan Prefecture\n\n\n\n        The karst area of Guizhou is the largest in southwest China and covers an area of 32,476 \nkm2 or 31 per cent of the southwest karst region. Heavily karstified areas make up 16.2 per \ncent (5,250 km2) of the total, while the moderately and lightly karstified areas cover 36.6 per \ncent (11,896 km2) and 47.2 per cent (15,331 km2) respectively. Overall, the area of serious karst \n\n\n\n5150\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas 5150\n\n\n\nformation is relatively small and accounts for 17 per cent of the prefecture (Department of Land \nand Resources of Guizhou Province, 2014). \n         Substantial numbers of Han migrants moved into the karst areas from the mid-nineteenth \ncentury to open mines and cultivate drought-resistant crops such as corn, potatoes and \nsweet potatoes on slopes. Field studies indicate that cultivated areas on slopes exceeding 25 \ndegrees where soil erosion is most serious are likely to be the most badly karstified. This \nsituation deteriorated after the 1949 revolution when population increased rapidly (\u7a0b\u5b89\u4e91\u7b49/\nCheng Anyun et al., 2010).\n       The Qianxinan Prefecture is situated in the southwestern part of Guizhou Province in a \nhighly karst and heavily desertified upland area. The prefecture occupies an area of about \n16,800 km2, of which 60 per cent is covered by surface karsts and 30 per cent by broken rocks. \nThe terrain declines in altitude from west to east with the highest point reaching a height of \n2,207m. Uplands occupy 62.8 per cent of the province. Four-fifths of these uplands are rugged \nand deeply dissected, among which 60 per cent are characterized by valleys between 300m and \n500m deep, and the remaining 20 per cent as much as 500-700m. Additionally, an estimated \n12.6 per cent of the province is exposed to the process of rocky desertification. This process \nis likely to intensify if effective management measures are not put in place (Development and \nReform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2014). The key factors that have led to this process \nof rocky desertification and ecological degeneration in the Qianxinan Prefecture include the \nsocio-economic activities of the population, over-population, and the removal of vegetation \ncover and accelerated soil erosion. These negative effects are discussed as follows.\n\n\n\nHuman Factor\n       Table 1 shows that Guizhou\u2019s population increased by 2.3 times from 15.04 million in \n1953 to 34.75 million in 2010. Despite the steady increase in the rate of urbanization, the rural \nsector still accounts for 23 million or 66.2 per cent of the total population. On the basis of \navailable arable land, Guizhou is the most heavily over-populated province in China. In 1998, \nthe average per capita cultivated land area was 500m2, having declined sharply to 38.5 per cent \nof the level in 1961 (\u7a0b\u5b89\u4e91\u7b49/Cheng Anyun et al., 2010).\n        Southwest Guizhou is no exception to the general situation. In 2010, its total urban area \nof 16,804 km2 accommodated a population of 3.376 million, or a population density of 201 \nper km2. Given the mountainous terrain and scarce arable land supporting 86.5 per cent of the \npopulation, the high density in rural areas is inevitable. Although natural population growth has \nbeen put under effective control, 367,000 persons or 11.14 per cent of the population still live in \npoverty. Per capita income in 2010 was RMB3,095, in part due to the fact that the primary sector \ncontributed to only 22.8 per cent of GDP (Development and Reform Committee, Qianxinan \nPrefecture, 2011). This is a clear indication that the sector is disadvantaged by its low \nvalue-added products and low efficiency.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\n       The high rural population density of Guizhou has a direct correlation with the province\u2019s \nstate of ecological degradation. Consequently, high rural density coupled with heavy reliance \non food supply from fragile lands has reduced considerably the forest cover to produce a \ndesolate and barren landscape. By adopting a form of development that actually \u201cplunders\u201d \nlimited arable land resources, peasants are basically ignorant of the carrying capacity of the \nland (\u5170\u5b89\u519b\u7b49/Lan Anjun et al., 2003). The practice of over-intensive cultivation on thin top \nsoils with almost no maintenance measures greatly accelerates water seepage and soil erosion. \nThis results in the exposure of bare rocks and the occurrence of the desertification process \naccompanied by worsening of soil erosion.\n\n\n\nTable 1. Changes in Guizhou\u2019s Urban Population, 1953-2010\n\n\n\nSource: \u4e2d\u56fd\u7edf\u8ba1\u5c40/China Bureau of Statistics, 2014\n\n\n\nFragile Karst Natural Environment\n      Most of Guizhou\u2019s karst areas comprise a fused layer of contiguous limestones and \ndolomites that are fragile and are easily vulnerable to rocky desertification. In certain areas, \nthe rate of soil formation is lower than that of soil erosion, and is 10 to 80 times lower than that \nof non-karst areas. Over time, top soils are washed away to expose bedrocks on the surface. \nSteep karst slopes and outcrops are widely scattered throughout the province. The steeper the \nslopes and taller the hills, the less stable the slopes and their surface materials. With the removal \nof the thin layer of top soils and their nutrients, the consequence is the common occurrence of \ndesert-like features. \n        Another natural factor is climate. Guizhou is affected by the circular air masses brought \nby the sub-tropical monsoon winds during most parts of the year. It is warm and humid with an \nannual rainfall of 1,000-1,200mm. Thus, high temperatures and abundant rainfall, with frequent \nrainstorms, accelerate the process of surface erosion of the karst areas (\u738b\u656c\u8d35\u7b49/Wang Jinggui \net al., 2014).\n\n\n\nConditions of Agricultural Production\n        As the education level of southwest Guizhou population is generally low, the majority of \nthe farmers rely on traditional labour-intensive methods of small-scale production that are low \n\n\n\n5352\n\n\n\n1953\n1964\n1982\n1990\n2000\n2010\n\n\n\n15,037.3\n17,140.5\n28,552.9\n32,391.1\n35,347.7\n34,746.5\n\n\n\n-\n1.32\n2.89\n1.59\n0.82\n\n\n\n-0.41\n\n\n\n1,099.1\n 2,035.5\n 5,042.2\n 6,231.7\n 8,445.1  \n11,747.8\n\n\n\n  7.31\n11.88\n18.92\n19.24\n23.96\n33.81\n\n\n\n-\n-\n\n\n\n 42.11\n 29.92\n 16.98\n   8.74\n\n\n\nCensus \nYear\n\n\n\nTotal \nPopulation\n\n\n\n(1,000)\n\n\n\nAnnual \nGrowth Rate \nof Population\n\n\n\n(%)\n\n\n\nUrban \nPopulation\n\n\n\n(1,000)\n\n\n\nProportion of \nUrban \n\n\n\nPopulation\n(%)\n\n\n\nProportion of \nIlliteracy Rate \nin Population\n\n\n\n(%)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas 5352\n\n\n\nin efficiency and yield. While better quality farms are found in the intramontane basins, \nvalleys and depressions, over half of all farmlands are located on slopes and in rock recesses \nand grit lands that may be categorized as land with thin, low-grade soil of low fertility. Of all the \nfarmlands, 75.8 per cent are dryland, 23.7 per cent are wetland and 0.5 per cent irrigated land. \nHorticultural farms account for 6.9 per cent of the dryland devoted largely to the cultivation of \nsub-tropical products such as peaches, loquats and tea.\n       Large numbers of peasants who are engaged in farming on fragile karst land endure low \nlevels of productivity in the midst of continuous population growth. These adverse conditions \nhave considerably hampered further economic progress of the Southwest region. As a \nconsequence, peasants suffer from limited capital accumulation and are able only to engage \nin small-scale processing of agricultural products that add little value to the local economy. \nThe weak agricultural economy of the region is the result of a vicious circle that leads to the \nentrenchment of poverty and the degradation of the natural environment (Development and \nReform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2011). Since the 1990s, the central, provincial and \nlocal governments have made unremitting efforts to mitigate the effects of the karst landscape \nand to better manage the ecological system.\n\n\n\nIntegrated Management Strategy of Karst Areas \n\n\n\nManagement Measures and Results\n        The basic principle of the Qianxinan Prefecture government in managing karst areas is to \ntighten the links between the managing process and socio-economic development. The aim is \nto enable peasants to break away from poverty by restoring the vegetation cover of karst areas \nwith sustainable protective measures. These measures include reverting farmlands to forest \ncover, prohibiting upland cultivation in favour of planting trees, raising pastures for livestock \ngrazing, and preservation of water and land resources. Displaced peasants would be shifted \nto other appropriate areas. Ecological management of karst areas would involve the need for \npopulation control, and reverting farmlands to forests and pastures.\n\n\n\nPopulation Control \n\n\n\nMigration and Poverty Alleviation \n        Poverty alleviation measures by shifting peasants out of impoverished and backward areas \nplay a key role in facilitating the economic transition towards industrialization, urbanization \nand agricultural modernization. This strategy has brought about dramatic changes after the year \n2000 in the most serious karstified areas of Qianxinan where peasants traditionally practise \necologically unsustainable agriculture. Under the guidance of the Ecological Migration Team \nof Qianxinan Prefecture, a total of 40 resettlement sites and new townships have been \nestablished to accommodate more than 36,000 people in 2012-2014. The resettled peasants enjoy \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\nwelfare benefits that are similar to those of local residents. These benefits include education, \nhealth care, retirement insurance, unemployment benefits, social welfare and assistance.\n       Guizhou\u2019s province-wide ecological migration programme plans to resettle two million \npeople between 2012 and 2020. Of these, 168,670 people in the Qianxinan Prefecture have been \ntargeted for resettlement, or about 8.4 per cent of the provincial total. The success of the entire \nprogramme will be decided by the formulation of effective measures in terms of managing \nand implementing the residence status of migrants, their housing, employment, education, land \nmanagement, social security, financial management as well as the strengthening of the follow-up \nassistance to sustain the development process (Guizhou People\u2019s Government, 2012). \n\n\n\nReverting Farmlands to Pastureland for Livestock Raising\n       Raising livestock is a workable option in karstified areas. Qinglong county has been \nselected for grazing on a trial basis. Its upland monsoon climate that is cool and humid is found \nto be suitable for the development of good grazing land. Currently, 14,000 households in the \nQianxinan region are engaged in developing 450,000 mu3 of forage grassland and 205,000 mu \nof improved grazing fields to support 450,000 heads of sheep. A village called Erdaopo is one \nof the 92 villages where pilot projects are being tried out to convert farmland into pastures. \nSince 2001, this village has discontinued the cultivation of corn to raise sheep on its former \nfarmland in an ecologically sustainable manner. The \u201cBoer\u201d sheep that has been brought in has \nadapted well to the local natural environment. \n         The \u201cQinglong Model\u201d of sheep raising has served as a viable alternative to the traditional \nbut ecologically unsustainable mode of farming. The success of this new model is significant \nin four aspects: \n         \u2022 Environmental protection: Grasses reduce soil erosion and water runoff, and at the same \n            time increase the organic content of the soil. Significantly, the steeper the slopes, the   \n            greater the amount of soil and water retention;\n         \u2022 Labour saving: Labour input is reduced considerably to contribute directly to an increase  \n            in average productivity;\n         \u2022 Economic benefits: Significantly enhanced through an increase in efficiency; and\n         \u2022 Skill and knowledge enrichment: During the transition from food crop planting to sheep   \n            raising, peasants undergo different levels of skill training to gain new knowledge and   \n            skills.\n       Another successful example is the \u201cTingtan Model\u201d in a heavily karstified area in \nnortheastern Zhenfeng county. Two villages, Yingdongwang and Chaeryan, situated on the \nsouthern bank of the Beipan River have a respective population of 2,470 in 820 households \nin 2012. Farmlands are situated on steep karst terrain lacking in water. Cultivation of corn on \nshallow and infertile soils has traditionally given poor yields (\u6731\u660e\u8f89/Zhu Minghui, 2012). \nInstead, the prickly-ash is found to grow well here. Its successful cultivation has offered a \nviable alternative to bring change and improvement to the life of the villagers. \n\n\n\n5554\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\nEcological Management and Implementation Outcome: An Assessment\n\n\n\nOverall Performance\n      The current emphasis on proper ecological management by the central, provincial and \nlocal governments has helped to arrest the trend of environmental degradation in Qianxinan \nPrefecture. The two development models cited above have brought benefits to peasants as well \nas success in tying up ecological protection with economic activities to form a mutually dependent \nand reinforcing system. This system ensures that land is utilized according to its optimal bearing \ncapacity.  \n       Giving due consideration to the importance of environmental protection, Qianxinan \nPrefecture has, since 2005, developed over 30 grazing fields, each measuring more than 1,000 \nmu. Protective measures have brought about a decline in the extent of karstified areas, an \nincrease in forest and bush cover, in water storage capacity, and a reduction in the occurrence \nof flash floods and mudslides. \n       To consolidate improved economic benefits, project areas are reafforested with plants \nof high economic value as well as other trees for purposes of environmental protection. Both \ntypes of forests will in time yield timber and wood as an additional source of income. The key \nprinciple in the protective use of the environment is to respect the rules of nature by adopting \nthe most appropriate approach to suit local conditions. This will allow the adoption of the best \nland use options for optimal effect. \n\n\n\nThe Control of Rocky Desertification in Qianxinan Prefecture\n        Research done by the Institute of South China Karst of Guizhou Normal University which \napplied Markov Modelling for future projections shows that, by 2020, the expansion of rocky \nkarst areas could be arrested if the current anti-degradation measures continued to \nbe implemented (Development and Reform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture,2011). It is \npossible to increase the area of land that is free of rocky karsification in Qianxinan Prefecture \nby 12.8 per cent between 2010 and 2020. Similarly, moderately and heavily karstified areas \ncould decline by 11 per cent while the extremely karstified areas could decrease by 17.2 per \ncent (Table 2).\n\n\n\nTable 2. Future Trend of Rocky Karstification of Qianxinan Prefecture, 2010-2020\n\n\n\nSource: Development and Reform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2011\n\n\n\nFree \nPotentially vulnerable\nLight degree \nMedium degree\nHeavy degree\nExtreme degree\n\n\n\nTotal\n\n\n\n3,173.15\n2,349.09\n2,149.70\n1,590.12\n   751.94\n   235.20\n\n\n\n10,249.21\n\n\n\nExtent of Rocky \nDesertification\n\n\n\n2010\n(Ha)\n\n\n\n3,382.71\n2,348.55\n2,101.55\n1,500.88\n   702.72\n   212.83\n\n\n\n10,249.21\n\n\n\n3,580.15\n2,373.38\n2,024.40\n1,411.01\n   662.43\n   194.87\n\n\n\n10,249.21\n\n\n\n  12.83\n   1.03\n  -5.83\n-11.26\n-11.90\n-17.15\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n\n2015\n(Ha)\n\n\n\n2020\n(Ha)\n\n\n\nProjected Change\nduring 2010-2020(%)\n\n\n\n5554\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\n      The Development and Reform Committee of Qianxinan Prefecture has similarly formulated a \nshort-term comprehensive plan for 2010-2020 to reafforest uplands and forbid farming, \nestablish protective and economic forests, create pastureland, and implement ecological \nmigration of affected farmers. In the process, however, various problems have emerged. These \ninclude the following:\n        a)   Administrative incompetence among certain county officials and the lack of  inter-\n              departmental co-ordination;\n        b)  The lack of funding is commonly voiced either for individual projects or planned  \n              packages in the implementation of anti-karstification programmes(Development \n              and Reform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2014);   \n        c)  Migrants are generally poorly educated, and have limited savings. They lack capital\n              and skills to run their own businesses in the townships. Many are not able to find\n              employment in the industrial parks or in the service sector (Anti-Poverty Ecological             \n              Migration Project Office, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2014);\n        d)  Rocky karstified areas of varying sizes are scattered throughout Qianxinan Prefecture \n              as well as in Guizhou Province. Managing these areas is costly as it poses serious \n              practical problems (Development and Reform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture, 2011);            \n        e)  The reversion of farmlands to forests and pastures has led to a significant shrinkage \n              of available agricultural land. How to turn farmers who are used to inefficient and \n              labour-intensive methods into more modern and efficient ones is a challenge to  \n               administrators.\n        Hence, in charting the economic transformation of ecologically fragile areas, it is important \nto consider the future direction of the process of urbanizing the farmers. \n\n\n\nRural Urbanization and the Economic Transition of Ecologically Fragile Areas\n\n\n\n       To harness sustainably the fragile environment, the people have to submit to nature by \nreverting agricultural land to forest and grass covers. To prepare for the future, it is essential that \nfarming and animal husbandry keep up with modern demands and adopt mechanized operation \nand increase the scale of production. In rocky karstified areas, even if farmers intensify \nfarming and animal husbandry and practise mechanized operations to raise productivity and \nmodernize their production, the carrying capacity of agriculture will ultimately decline. To utilize \nkarstified areas effectively, it is necessary to refrain from over-exploitation of land and water \nresources and to use chemical fertilizers judiciously to avoid soil and water pollution.\n         It is estimated that, in the next 30 years, the majority of Guizhou\u2019s population including that \nof Qianxinan Prefecture will live in urban areas while the rural population will decline \nsubstantially. Table 1 cited earlier shows the fast changing urban population in Guizhou over \nthe past 50 years. The province\u2019s urban population rose from 7.3 per cent in 1953 to 33.8 per \ncent in 2010. In real terms, urban population had increased by 10.7 times, from 1.1 million to \n\n\n\n5756\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\n11.75 million during the same period. More significantly, Guizhou experienced negative \npopulation growth between 2000 and 2010, yet it registered a 10 per cent increase in urban \ngrowth. This trend indicates that the most likely direction of population movements in \nGuizhou would involve urban development driven by internal and external mechanisms of \nthe urbanization process. The components of this process may be termed \u201cendogenous\u201d and \n\u201cexogenous\u201d urbanization. \n        Endogenous urbanization is a process of in situ urban development which assumes two \nbasic modes. The first mode is the progressive conversion of agricultural land at the fringe \nof urban areas into urban use. This process of rural urbanization is induced by the spatial \nexpansion of cities which pushes up land values of adjacent agricultural land and its eventual \ntransformation into urban quarters (\u674e\u6a5e\u519c/Li Huinong and \u767d\u4e2d\u79d1/Bai Zhongke, 2014; \u9ec4\u52c7\n\n\n\n\u7b49/Huang Yong et al., 2014). The second mode is that of small to medium-scale urbanization \nwhich develops according to local circumstances, resource potentials and developmental needs. \nThis form of in situ urbanization takes place normally in remote rural areas. It is often \nassociated with rural poverty alleviation through agricultural industrialization, rural tourism \nand the re-location of peasants into new townships (\u67f4\u6d2a\u8f89\u7b49/Chai Honghui et al., 2009; \u9ad8\n\u798f\u5e73/Gao Fuping, 2014; \u4f55\u6167\u4e3d/He Huili, 2014; \u5c1a\u6d77\u6d0b/Shang Haiyang, 2014;\u738b\u6797\u6885/Wang \nLinmei and \u9093\u73b2/Deng Ling, 2014). \n       Some scholars such as Zhu Yu and his co-workers (Zhu et al., 2013) and Cui and Ma \n(1999), in their studies of the urbanization of high-density villages on the coastal areas of \nFujian, Pearl River Delta and Yangtze Delta, have observed the emergence of a spontaneous \n\u201cbottom-up\u201d phenomenon. This phenomenon is found to be the outcome of domestic and \noverseas investments, wider circulation of market capital and incentive-driven state policy \nfollowing the economic reforms initiated in the 1980s.\n        The discussion that follows focuses on the second mode of urbanization in the context of \nthe situation in Qianxinan Prefecture. The notion of rural urbanization was closely associated \nwith the idea of \u201cleaving the land without leaving the village\u201d policy initiated during the early \nphase of economic reforms in China. It was then perceived as a \u201crational option\u201d to absorb the \nsurplus labour of poorly educated and unskilled peasants in the small towns close to their villages. \nThis was also thought to have allowed the farm population to move progressively towards a \nmodern urban lifestyle in qualitative and quantitative terms, and to participate in industrial \ndevelopment by contributing their low technical skills and cheap labour. \n          With regards to the strategy on the development of small towns, the \u201cPlanning Programme \nfor Guizhou\u2019s Small and Medium-sized Urban System, 2011-2030\u201d refers to development with \n\u201cGuizhou characteristics\u201d. The strategy is to take the small towns as basic units and the small \nand medium-sized cities as the core to enable them to develop by promoting close linkages \nwith major cities. Spatially speaking, the small and medium-sized cities should capitalize fully \non low hilly areas and gentle slopes with good access to water resources to develop new \nsettlements and industries. Furthermore, these settlements will need to highlight their local \n\n\n\n5756\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\nethnic features, and place emphasis on cultural development and ecological preservation. In \nbuilding new townships in mountainous areas, the plan foresees that natural landscape \nencompassing hills and rivers, farms as well as villages and towns or cities will be combined to \nform an integrated entity (\u9f99\u6d77\u6ce2/Long Haibo, 2014).\n      Theoretically speaking, this planning concept and spatial organization are rational and \nrealistic. But if too much emphasis is placed on the interplay and interactions of townships and \nindustrial parks, hoping that peasants will switch to non-agricultural activities, the results might \nnot compensate for the efforts and work involved. After World War Two, many developing \ncountries have tried such a strategy but have achieved little success. \n     The current push towards urbanization includes enticing peasants to put down roots in \nresource-based small and medium-sized cities. Resource-based urbanization relies on mining, \nforestry and processing of raw materials, or by developing eco-tourism. Mining is subjected to \nresource depletion and mining towns will degenerate into \u201cghost towns\u201d when mining \noperation ceases. Even at periods of peak production, the mining industry should shift to \nautomated operation. This will in turn frustrate not only efforts to provide employment but also \nlimit opportunities for the emergence of alternative industries when mining is eventually phased \nout (\u9ad8\u798f\u5e73/Gao Fuping, 2014). Besides, the recent expansion of highways and high-speed \nrailroads to Southwest China will work against the growth of resource-based towns into major \ncities. While small mountainous townships relying on animal husbandry or the cultivation of \nprickly-ash may generate additional incomes through processing of raw products, their \npotentials for expanding the population carrying capacity of the local area or to generate \nsubstantial agglomeration effects are limited. \n       Exogenous urbanization relies largely on the advantages that large cities enjoy through \nforeign investments, their global linkages and the high value-added economic activities to \nattract small-town residents and peasants. Large prosperous cities notably those on the coastal \nareas act as a centripetal force attracting peasant-migrants and people from smaller towns. \nRural urbanization is not the only mode of development open to the peasantry. More than 30 \nyears of reforms have proven that only a small proportion of peasants have been absorbed into \nrural townships. The majority have in fact leapfrogged over the rural urbanization stage by \ntaking advantage of opportunities for employment and higher income by moving directly into \nlarge cities within or outside their own province (Henderson, 2002).\n       Operating under a market economy, large cities are able to increase their impacts through \nthe economies of scale. The major cities attract both \u201cupper circuit\u201d personnel with \nsophisticated skills and expertise and \u201clower circuit\u201d individuals with little or no skills. The \nconcentration of both social groups is likely to polarize the urban labour force. To the low-income \ngroups, migrating to the cities as a means of raising their income and occupational status is a \nrational approach to transforming the labour force (Saksen, 2001; Wong, 2011).\n       China\u2019s urban-industrial development after the advent of reforms is different from that in \nWestern Europe of the late nineteenth century where relatively low productivity hampered the \n\n\n\n5958\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\nexpansion of the tertiary sector. Since the 1980s, industrial expansion in major Chinese cities \nin the Special Economic Zones and others that were endowed with competitive advantage \nhas accelerated through the import of high-end technology and automation devices in their \nmanufacturing processes. Through the infusion of professional expertise, a more sophisticated \ndivision of labour, information updating aided by fast and intensive interactions of \ntechnology at the global level as well as lower costs of transportation and labour, China has \nrapidly turned herself into the factory of the world. Driven by the economies of scale \nand multiplier effects derived from its modernized industries and businesses, major \nChinese cities equipped with modern infrastructure have also benefited from cost-efficiency \narising from their lower per capita cost relative to their high population densities and usage. \nThis is further assisted by rising general affluence and domestic consumption which offer \npeasants from the countryside substantial job opportunities in the cities (Canina et al., 2005; \nGlaeser and Gottlieb, 2009). All in all, the massive government-led urban renewal of inner city \nareas and the urbanization campaigns to expand city sizes have created numerous job \nopportunities for peasants in the construction industry and infrastructure sector. \n       Like the rural-urban drift which occurred in Western Europe in the wake of the Industrial \nRevolution, the present urban-bound exodus of peasants is a one-way traffic. Du Shuangyan\u2019s \n(2014) study on Guizhou\u2019s \u201cfloating\u201d population has revealed some interesting facts. As of \nMarch 2013, there were 8.58 million migrant workers in Guizhou, of whom over 70 per cent \nhad moved out of the province. About 97 per cent of the latter category moved into the \nprovinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian. Despite their generally low education \nbackground, out-migration from Guizhou has been persistently on the rise. Given their low \nsocial and educational status, they were mostly concentrated in environmentally inferior areas \nor places where job competition was less intense. Conversely, during the same period, migrant \ninflows from other provinces to Guizhou made up only 9.8 per cent of its total volume of \noutflow. These in-migrants were mainly concentrated in Guizhou\u2019s two major cities of Guiyang \nand Zunyi. Similarly, these two cities absorbed predominant numbers of migrants from other \ncounties of Guizhou with Guiyang accounting for 48 per cent and Zunyi 21 per cent of the total. \nDu (2014) has made another important observation that recent mobility of Guizhou\u2019s \u201cfloating\u201d \npopulation to major cities which enjoy agglomeration advantages has not only intensified in \nscale but  also in the migration of family members.  Migrant workers who bring in their families \nwill aspire to stay in other provinces permanently.\n         These findings match those of Huang Yong and his research team in their study of the living \nconditions and aspirations of migrant workers in Zhejiang (\u9ec4\u52c7\u7b49/Huang Yong et al., 2014). \nThey found that 23.99 million or 43.6 per cent of the permanent residents of Zhejiang in 2013 \nwere agricultural migrant workers from within and outside the province. Yet, only half of these \nmigrant workers living in cities had acquired permanent residence status. Four out of five \nsurveyed in the study did not possess any technical skills but had relatively stable jobs in the \ncities. Among the problems that they encountered, the most serious ones were high living costs, \n\n\n\n5958\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\nlow wages, costly medical fees and rental, long hours of work and difficulties in registering \ntheir children in childcare centres and schools. Probably due to these factors, 28 per cent \nparticularly those who were earning low wages, expressed their intention to return to their \nvillages of origin for good. One may surmise that, besides feeling nostalgic and their wish to \nbe taken care of by relatives in their old age, the main consideration is financial as they have \nlittle savings and are not entitled to local welfare benefits. Once granted residence status in the \ncities and able to enjoy similar social welfare and security as local urban residents, the peasant \nworkers are most likely to put down roots in the cities.  \n\n\n\nDiscussion and Conclusions\n\n\n\n      This case study shows that the investment of substantial capital and manpower coupled \nwith the implementation of protective measures in fragile karstified areas in Qianxinan \nhas succeeded in improving the livelihood of the peasants. The path to a better future of the \npeasantry lies in promoting the development of a green economy (\u5ed6\u6d2a\u6cc9/Liao Hongquan and \n\u674e\u671d\u8fdc/Li Chaoyuan, 2014). Such an economy can protect not only the ecology but also help \nrestore the distinctive features of the natural environment. It will also promote the harmonious \ncoexistence between humans and nature and achieve sustainable development in accordance \nwith the natural conditions of the environment. Although the fragile karstified areas are able to \nyield certain amounts of materials and energy substance on a sustainable basis, the extent that \nthis can be done is understandably limited in scale and in scope.\n       Specifically, the problems facing the mountainous areas of Guizhou are typical of the \nsannong 4 issues that are found throughout rural China that are characterized by high population \ndensities in a subsistence economy. In the near future, population densities in areas that have \nreverted to forests and pastures would still be very high. Given China\u2019s social system and the \nnature of its collectively owned rural land, one cannot imagine that its rural transformation would \nfollow that of Germany and France after World War Two where agricultural land began to \namalgamate into the hands of fewer farmers who adopted modern methods to run their enlarged \nfarmland. In 1967, in his book entitled The End of the Peasants, Henri Mendras discussed the \ndisappearance of the traditional peasants in France in the midst of its post-war economic \ntransition. In the face of high rates of economic growth and rapid advancement of industrialization, \nFrench peasants either disposed of their small land parcels or became shareholders of rural \ncooperatives. Some adopted mechanized farming while others migrated to the cities (\u5b5f\u5fb7\u62c9\n\n\n\n\u65af/Mendras, 2005). \n      From China\u2019s perspective, peasant agriculture will continue to play its dominant role. \nSchumacher (1973) initiated a \u201csmall is beautiful\u201d concept in the 1970s where he praised the \nintegration of peasantry with nature. He advocated the use of human-friendly or intermediate \ntechniques and the recycling of farm materials that would contribute to the protection of the \nenvironment. He advocated self-reliance and local consumption in favour of the marketing \n\n\n\n6160\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\nof farm produce (Schumacher, 1973). The Schumacher concept is not easily adaptable to the \ndensely populated rural areas of China. Under the present rural policy in China, peasants are \nencouraged to upgrade their farm operations and at the same time protect the physical \nenvironment in order to improve and modernize their living standards substantially. \n       Within the next 20 to 30 years, it is foreseeable that Chinese peasants will emerge anew \nfrom large-scale and centralized agricultural production activities that will help to dismantle the \npersistent vicious cycle of poverty. The vision of the new rural villages should be one of low \npopulation density and improved quality of life capable of evolving into an environmentally \nsustainable habitat in harmony with its economic activities. At the same time, the new farmer \nwill have access to the latest information, be imbued with the spirit of the market enterprise, \nand environmentally responsible in his production and consumption (\u4f55\u6167\u4e3d/He Huili, 2014; \nRosenthal and Strange, 2003). As to how to achieve a more socially just and sustainable \ndevelopment, the crux is to undertake legal measures to avoid over-concentration of agricultural \nproperty rights in the hands of a few persons.\n       After more than two decades of economic reforms, the year 2006 marked a watershed in \nrural-urban relationship. China has since reversed its pre-reform model by which the cities were \nsupported by rural villages to the current practice of cities supporting the villages. Similar to \nthe practice of advanced Western countries in the post-World War Two period, the Chinese \ngovernment in 2006 put forward its historic nine-point announcement on measures to help \npeasants. Henceforth, the government would implement the following measures: a) more aid \nprovisions for agricultural and village developments; b) reduce or waive agricultural taxes; \nc) seed subsidies for those growing staple food crops, and direct subsidies for acquisition of \nfarm machinery and tools; d) improvement of rural infrastructure and public facilities; \ne) rectification and standardization of the agricultural capital market; f) strengthening of \ncompulsory education in rural areas; g) emphasis on rural health care and services; h) increase \nefforts in poverty reduction among the impoverished and to help them with projects to increase \ntheir earnings; and i) helping peasants to diversify their sources of income. All these measures \nare strongly associated with the objectives to promote the use of technology to facilitate \nmulti-functional farm operations, and to evolve an efficient modern agricultural structure and \na highly effective marketing system (\u767e\u5ea6\u6587\u5e93/Baidu Archives, 2014). \n        That large numbers of peasants in Guizhou have moved into cities points to a trend that is \nirreversible. Releasing excess rural labour to serve the non-agricultural sectors has produced \ntwo benefits. The first is to enable peasants remaining in mountainous areas to raise average \nper capita income, and the other is to release excess labour to meet the demand for workers in \nthe urban sectors. Even though many migrant workers have yet to obtain permanent residence \nstatus in the cities, their contributions to urban development in \u201c3D occupations\u201d (dirty, \ndangerous and difficult) is undeniable. It is important that the issue of peasant workers be \nhandled with care. Ultimately, migrant workers must be able to earn a decent living in the cities, \n\n\n\n6160\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWong, Luo, Zhang, Li and Chu\n\n\n\nimprove their employability, and enjoy similar welfare benefits as urban residents, and that \ntheir children have access to education in the cities.\n       The fundamental issue in helping the poor out of poverty is urbanizing the people. At the \nend of 2012, 380 townships and 2,330 administrative villages of Guizhou province had \ncompleted their renewal plans. The trend towards urbanization is inevitable. Nevertheless, some \nofficials have been adamant in accelerating the urbanization process and are over-optimistic \nin their belief that it will place Guizhou on the \u201cexpress track\u201d of development and that the \nsannong problem will be resolved. They also believe that urbanization would help to speed up \ndevelopment of economic sectors in which Guizhou possesses special advantages and hence to \nsee the emergence of strategic burgeoning industries and expansion of the production chain. It \nis argued that all these factors would act as an engine in stimulating local socio-economic \ndevelopment (\u8096\u514b/Xiao Ke and \u5218\u4e45\u950b/Liu Jiufeng, 2013; \u738b\u7490\u7476\u7b49/Wang Luyao et al., \n2010). \n         Arguably, not all regions or counties are suitable for the establishment of large new towns \nor industrial parks. However, whenever the central government introduces a policy, county and \ncity leaders would scramble for projects to build cities or industrial parks. The critical issue is \nhow to draw up appropriate regional master plans for rational land use based on standards and \nrequirements that accord with practical considerations. The Chinese government\u2019s intention is \nto prevent the continuous expansion of large cities by launching a strategic plan to develop rural \ntownships in order to strike a balance between large cities and small towns. Failure to take into \nproper consideration of, and going against, market forces would lead to wastage of resources. \nIndeed, such wastages have already appeared in Guizhou in the form of excess supply of \nindustrial parks and premises that undermines their competitiveness (\u67f4\u6d2a\u8f89\u7b49/Chai Honghui \net al., 2009; \u9f99\u6d77\u6ce2/Long Haibo, 2014). It is inevitable that these industrial parks would \nhave to make adjustments accordingly in order to respond to real market demands and to face \nfuture challenges.\n        Up to 2013, rural migration has enabled 240 million people or 17 per cent of the national \npopulation to move into the cities (\u9ec4\u52c7\u7b49/Huang Yong et al., 2014). The unfettered expansion \nof cities under the free play of the market economy may give rise to the polarization of urban \ncommunities. The process of urbanization should not overlook the role of the smaller towns and \nmedium-sized cities. The development of small urban centres should also not be constrained by \nrigid rules and models. Research by Chai Honghui and his co-workers in 2009 argued for the \nneed for an \u201cinternal equilibrium\u201d strategy by which urbanization should proceed in relation \nwith specific circumstances including the market mechanism, in accordance with the \ncharacteristics of the locality, and in compliance with the socially just and planning principles \nstipulated by the state. \n       Many peasants and their children from the karst mountainous areas of Guizhou will join \nthe ranks of the urban communities especially in the large cities. Those who remain will see \nprogressive changes as agriculture moves towards modernization, specialization, larger-scale \n\n\n\n6362\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\nproduction, automation and centralized operations. This scenario will take time to materialize \nas inherent environmental constraints and economic backwardness require massive efforts to \novercome. The new peasants of Guizhou of the near future will be well-educated with access to \na stable livelihood. Their standards of living will range from reasonably well-off to well-to-do \nand will enjoy a new community life which integrates their profession with a well-protected \nnatural environment. \n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1    The prickly-ash in China is also known as Sichuan peppercorn which belongs to different species    \n      from the Zanthoxylum genus such as Z. simulans and Z. piperitum. It is often used as a spice in   \n      Chinese culinary. With a unique aroma and flavour, it has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly   \n      numbness in the mouth.\n2    PPE stands for poverty, population and environment. Poor peasants, for basic survival and due to their \n      ignorance of the environmental problems, have excessively exploited the natural resources, resulting in \n      environmental degradation. \n3    One mu (\u4ea9) is equivalent to 1/15 hectare or about 667m2.\n4    Sannong refers to the three agriculture-related elements in China: rural villages, agriculture, and peasants.\n\n\n\n \nReferences\n\n\n\nCANINA, Linda, ENZ, Cathy A. and HARRISON, Jeffrey S. 2005. Agglomeration effects and strategic  \n        orientations: evidence from the U. S. lodging industry, Academy of Management Journal, 48(4): \n        565-581.\nGLAESER, Edward L. and GOTTLIEB, Joshua D. 2009. 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A literature review on  \n       the existing research of China\u2019s rural urbanization, Economic Geography, 29(4): 654-661).\n\u7a0b\u5b89\u4e91\u3001\u738b\u4e16\u6770\u3001\u674e\u9633\u5175\u3001\u767d\u6653\u6c38\u3001\u502a\u96ea\u6ce2 2010. <\u8d35\u5dde\u7701\u5580\u65af\u7279\u77f3\u6f20\u5316\u5386\u53f2\u6f14\u53d8\u8fc7\u7a0b\u7814\u7a76\u53ca\u5176      \n    \u610f\u4e49>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6c34\u571f\u4fdd\u6301\u901a\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e09\u5341\u5377\u7b2c\u4e8c\u671f\uff1a15-23 (CHEN Anyun, WANG Shijie, LI \n        Yangbing, BAI Xiaoyong, NI Xuebo 2010. Evolution history of karst rocky desertification and its \n        significance in Guizhou province, Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation, 30(2): 15-23).\n\u5d14\u529f\u8c6a\u3001\u9a6c\u6da6\u6f6e 1999. <\u4e2d\u56fd\u81ea\u4e0b\u800c\u4e0a\u57ce\u5e02\u5316\u7684\u53d1\u5c55\u53ca\u5176\u673a\u5236>,\u8f7d\u300a\u5730\u7406\u5b66\u62a5\u300b,\u7b2c\u4e94\u5341\u56db\u5377\u7b2c\u4e8c \n    \u671f\uff1a107-115 (CUI Gonghao and MA, Laurence J. C. 1999. Urbanization from below in China: its   \n         development and mechanisms, Economic Geography, 54(2): 107-115).\n\u675c\u53cc\u71d5 2014. <\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u5e26\u52a8\u6218\u7565\u80cc\u666f\u4e0b\u8d35\u5dde\u7701\u6d41\u52a8\u4eba\u53e3\u95ee\u9898\u7814\u7a76>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u8d35\u5dde\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e09\u767e\u5377 \n    \u7b2c\u5341\u4e8c\u671f\uff1a108-113 (DU Shuangyan 2014. The study of population mobility under the urban-driven  \n        strategy in Guizhou province, Guizhou Social Science, 300(12): 108-113). \n\u9ad8\u798f\u5e73 2014. <\u4ea7\u4e1a\u7ed3\u6784\u8c03\u6574\u662f\u8d44\u6e90\u578b\u57ce\u5e02\u8f6c\u578b\u53d1\u5c55\u7684\u7a81\u7834\u53e3>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u6218\u7ebf\u300b,\u7b2c\u5341\u4e00  \n    \u671f\uff1a57-61 (GAO Fuping 2014. Industrial restructuring is the key towards the breakthrough for \n        resource-based towns in transition, Social Science Front, 11: 57-61).\n\u8d35\u5dde\u7701\u56fd\u571f\u8d44\u6e90\u5385 2014. \u8d35\u5dde\u77f3\u6f20\u5316\u5206\u5e03\u7279\u5f81 (Department of Land and Resources of Guizhou  \n        Province 2014. The distribution and features of karst stony desertification in Guizhou, http://           \n        wenku.baidu.com/link?url=UCnvYwHODU3QjDulf_gHqjJx-UZF2jA_Ja95j3kN4iQGZCuAOt     \n        WhkKf-FWq51KKmfPLmtgKR73TTQCleN0_PA4gRrHv59Trn RJ8SxDqfe3. Accessed on 18 \n         November 2014).\n\u8d35\u5dde\u7701\u4eba\u6c11\u653f\u5e9c 2012. \u7701\u4eba\u6c11\u653f\u5e9c\u5173\u4e8e\u5370\u53d1\u8d35\u5dde\u77012012\u5e74\u6276\u8d2b\u751f\u6001\u79fb\u6c11\u5de5\u7a0b\u5b9e\u65bd\u65b9\u6848\u7684\u901a\u77e5, \u9ed4\n    \u5e9c\u53d114\u53f7\u6587\u4ef6 (Guizhou People\u2019s Government 2012. Guizhou government notice of implementation  \n        plan for anti-poverty ecological migration in Guizhou province, 2012, Directive No.14 from Guizhou  \n        government). \n\u4f55\u6167\u4e3d 2014. <\u4ece\u5efa\u8bbe\u6027\u540e\u73b0\u4ee3\u7684\u89c6\u89d2\u6765\u770b\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e09\u519c\u95ee\u9898\u7684\u51fa\u8def>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6c5f\u82cf\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u516d \n    \u671f\uff1a101-106 (HE Huili 2014. Examining the prospects of China\u2019s \u201cthree-agricultures\u201d from the   \n        perspective of post-modernism, Jiangsu Social Sciences, 6: 101-106).\n\u9ec4\u52c7\u3001\u5468\u4e16\u950b\u3001\u5f20\u65ed\u4eae\u3001\u738b\u7433 2014. <\u6d59\u6c5f\u519c\u4e1a\u8f6c\u79fb\u4eba\u53e3\u5e02\u6c11\u5316\u7684\u73b0\u72b6\u548c\u610f\u613f\u8c03\u67e5>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u6d59\u6c5f\u793e     \n    \u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u300b,\u7b2c\u5341\u4e00\u671f\uff1a139-146 (HUANG Yong, ZHOU Shifeng, ZHANG Xiliang and WANG \n        Lin 2014. The survey of the urbanization status of rural migrant workers in Zhejiang, Zhejiang \n       Social Sciences, 11: 139-146).\n\u5170\u5b89\u519b\u3001\u5f20\u767e\u5e73\u3001\u718a\u5eb7\u5b81\u3001\u5b89\u88d5\u4f26 2003. <\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u8106\u8089\u5580\u65af\u7279\u751f\u6001\u73af\u5883\u7a7a\u95f4\u683c\u5c40>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u5730\u7406 \n    \u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e8c\u5341\u4e8c\u5377\u7b2c\u516d\u671f\uff1a733-741 (LAN Anjun, ZHANG Baiping, XIONG Kangning and AN          \n        Yulun 2003. Spatial pattern of the fragile karst environment in southwest Guizhou province,   \n       Geographical Research, 22(6): 733-741).\n\u674e\u7a57\u519c\u3001\u767d\u4e2d\u79d1 2014. <\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u5730\u533a\u4e61\u6751\u571f\u5730\u5229\u7528\u6548\u76ca\u8bc4\u4ef7\u7814\u7a76>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u5e7f\u4e1c\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u516d \n    \u671f\uff1a47-53  (LI Huinong and BAI Zhongke 2014. The efficiency evaluation of rural land use in \n        urbanizing areas, Guangdong Social Sciences, 6: 47-53). \n\u5ed6\u6d2a\u6cc9\u3001\u674e\u671d\u8fdc 2014. <\u751f\u6001\u751f\u4ea7\u529b\u4e0e\u897f\u90e8\u6c11\u65cf\u5730\u533a\u7ecf\u6d4e\u53d1\u5c55\u2014\u2014\u57fa\u4e8e\u65b0\u7ed3\u6784\u7ecf\u6d4e\u5b66\u7684\u89c6\u89d2>\uff0c\u8f7d\n   \u300a\u751f\u6001\u7ecf\u6d4e\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e09\u5341\u5377\u7b2c\u4e5d\u671f\uff1a91-95, 99 (LIAO Hongquan and LI Chaoyuan 2014. Eco- \n       productivity and economic development in western minority areas: based on the new perspective of  \n        structural economics, Ecological Economy, 30(9): 91-95, 99). \n\n\n\n6564\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocio-Economic Transformation of Rocky Karst Areas\n\n\n\n\u9f99\u6d77\u6ce2 2014. <\u6211\u56fd\u591a\u5c71\u5730\u533a\u65b0\u578b\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u9053\u8def\u7684\u63a2\u7d22\u4e0e\u601d\u8003\u2014\u2014\u8d35\u5dde\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u5efa\u8bbe\u5b9e\u8df5\u8c03\u67e5\u300b\uff0c\u8f7d\n   \u300a\u4e2d\u56fd\u53d1\u5c55\u89c2\u5bdf\u300b\uff0c3\u670812\u53f7\u520a (LONG Haibo 2014. Exploring and reflecting on the new urbanization \n        path of mountainous areas in China, China Development Review, 12 March 2014).\n\u5b5f\u5fb7\u62c9\u65af 2005.\u300a\u519c\u6c11\u7684\u7ec8\u7ed3\u300b, \u5317\u4eac\uff1a\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u6587\u732e\u51fa\u7248\u793e (Translated from French, Henri Mendras, \n        1967. La Fin Des Paysans, Paris: SEDEIS).\n\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5dde\u53d1\u5c55\u6539\u9769\u59d4\u5458\u4f1a 2011.\u300a\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5e03\u4f9d\u65cf\u82d7\u65cf\u81ea\u6cbb\u5dde\u5ca9\u6eb6\u5730\u533a\u77f3\u6f20\u5316\u7efc\u5408\u9632\u6cbb\u89c4\u5212 (2011- \n        2020)\u300b\uff0c\u8d35\u5dde\u5174\u4e49\u5e02\uff1a\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5dde\u4eba\u6c11\u653f\u5e9c (Development and Reform Committee, Qianxinan \n        Prefecture 2011. Integrated Management Project for Karst Stony Desertification Areas in Qianxinan  \n        Prefecture 2011-2020, Xingyi City, Guizhou).\n----- 2014.\u300a\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5dde\u5ca9\u6eb6\u5730\u533a\u77f3\u6f20\u5316\u7efc\u5408\u6cbb\u7406\u5de5\u7a0b\u300b\uff0c\u5174\u4e49\u5e02\u5dde\u53d1\u6539\u59d4 (Development and \n        Reform Committee, Qianxinan Prefecture 2014. Integrated Management Project for Karst Stony \n        Desertification Areas in Qianxinan Prefecture, Xingyi City, Guizhou).\n\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5dde\u6276\u8d2b\u751f\u6001\u79fb\u6c11\u5de5\u7a0b\u9886\u5bfc\u5c0f\u7ec4\u529e\u516c\u5ba4 2014.\u300a\u9ed4\u897f\u5357\u5dde2012-2014\u5e74\u6276\u8d2b\u751f\u6001\u79fb\u6c11\u5de5\u7a0b\u60c5\u51b5 \n    \u6c47\u62a5\u6848\u4f8b\u300b(Anti-Poverty Ecological Migration Project Office, Qianxinan Prefecture 2014. Report \n        on the Anti-Poverty Ecological Migration Project in Qianxinan Prefecture, 2012-2014, Xingyi City,  \n        Guizhou).\n\u5c1a\u6d77\u6d0b 2014. <\u57ce\u5e02\u5316\u8fdb\u7a0b\u4e2d\u7684\u519c\u6c11\u5de5\u95ee\u9898\u7814\u7a76>, \u8f7d\u300a\u751f\u4ea7\u529b\u7814\u7a76\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e00\u671f\uff1a151-154 (SHANG  \n        Haiyang 2014. The study of migrant workers in the urbanization process, Research on Productivity, \n       1: 151-154).\n\u738b\u656c\u8d35\u3001\u4ea2\u5e86\u3001\u6768\u5fb7\u751f 2014. <\u73e0\u6c5f\u4e0a\u6e38\u6c34\u571f\u6d41\u5931\u4e0e\u77f3\u6f20\u5316\u73b0\u72b6\u53ca\u5176\u6210\u56e0\u548c\u9632\u6cbb\u5bf9\u7b56>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u4e9a\u70ed       \n    \u5e26\u6c34\u571f\u4fdd\u6301\u300b\uff0c\u7b2c\u4e8c\u5341\u516d\u5377\u7b2c\u4e09\u671f\uff1a38-41 (WANG Jinggui, KANG Qing, YANG Desheng  \n        2014. Soil erosion in the upper reaches of Zhujiang, current status of stony desertification and its          \n        causes and preventive measures, Subtropical Soil and Water Conservation, 26(3): 38-41).\n\u738b\u6797\u6885\u3001\u9093\u73b2 2014. <\u8bba\u957f\u6c5f\u4e0a\u6e38\u96c6\u4e2d\u8fde\u7247\u7279\u56f0\u5730\u533a\u7684\u4ea7\u4e1a\u7ed3\u6784\u8c03\u6574>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u4e91\u5357\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u300b,\u7b2c \n    \u516d\u671f\uff1a55-58 (WANG Linmei and DENG Ling 2014. Analyzing the industrial restructuring of the \n        contiguous poverty-stricken region in the upper reaches of the Yangzi River, Yunnan Social Sciences,  \n          6: 55-58).\n\u738b\u7490\u7476\u3001\u5b59\u6653\u84c9\u3001\u5218\u658c\u3001\u6731\u90aa\u7b49 2010. <\u52a0\u5feb\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u8fc7\u7a0b\uff0c\u4fc3\u8fdb\u57ce\u4e61\u534f\u8c03\u53d1\u5c55>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u8d35\u5dde\u65e5\u62a5\u300b\uff0c\n    8\u67082\u65e5 (WANG Luyao, SUN Xiaorong, LIU Bin, ZHU Ye 2010. Expedite the urbanization \n        process, promote the integration of urban-rural development, Guizhou Daily, 2 August, http://www.\n        gog.com.cn).\n\u8096\u514b\u3001\u5218\u4e45\u950b 2013.  <\u201c\u4e61\u6751\u8d35\u5dde\u201d\u7684\u57ce\u9547\u5316\u4e4b\u8def>\uff0c\u8f7d\u300a\u519c\u6c11\u65e5\u62a5\u300b\uff0c1\u670831\u65e5 (01\u7248) (XIAO Ke  \n        and LIU Jiufeng 2013. The urbanization path of \u201crural Guizhou\u201d, Nongmin Daily, 31 January).\n\u4e2d\u56fd\u7edf\u8ba1\u5c40 2014.\u300a2013\u8d35\u5dde\u7edf\u8ba1\u5e74\u9274\u300b, \u5317\u4eac\uff1a\u4e2d\u56fd\u7edf\u8ba1\u51fa\u7248\u793e (China Bureau of Statistics 2014.  \n        Guizhou Statistical Yearbook 2013, Beijing: China Statistics Publishing House).\n\u6731\u660e\u8f89 2012. <\u8d1e\u4e30\u53bf\u5317\u76d8\u6c5f\u9547\u9876\u575b\u82b1\u6912\u7279\u8272\u519c\u4e1a\u79cd\u690d\u201c\u9876\u575b\u6a21\u5f0f\u201d\u53d1\u5c55\u7684\u542f\u793a> (ZHU Minghui \n        2012. Development implications of the cultivation of bungeanum under the \u201cTingtan Model\u201d in\n        Beipanjiang Township, Zhenfeng County, http//www.562400./news/qianxinan/20120126html.  \n        Accessed on 15 November 2014).\n\n\n\n6564\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMCA 31 15 7 1\nGerakan 10 2 1 0\nSUPP 4 6 1 1\nDAP 12 28 38 42\n\n\n\nGE11 GE12 GE13 GE14\n0\n\n\n\n5\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\n30\n\n\n\n35\n\n\n\n40\n\n\n\n45\n\n\n\nN\num\n\n\n\nbe\nr o\n\n\n\nf S\nea\n\n\n\nts\n W\n\n\n\non\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVoters according to ethnicity 52.94% 28.04% 6.72% 1.48% 4.27% 1.77% 3.90%\n\n\n\nMalay Voters Chinese Voter\ns Indian Voters Others Voters Bumi Sabah V\n\n\n\noters\nBumi Sarawak \nMuslim Voters\n\n\n\nBumi Sarawak \nNon-Muslim \n\n\n\nVoters\n\n\n\n0.00%\n\n\n\n10.00%\n\n\n\n20.00%\n\n\n\n30.00%\n\n\n\n40.00%\n\n\n\n50.00%\n\n\n\n60.00%\n\n\n\nPe\nrc\n\n\n\nen\nta\n\n\n\nge\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction through \nWorkplace Learning in Small and Medium \n\n\n\nTourism Enterprises in Malaysia \n\n\n\nSHAMUNI Kunjiapu* and RUHIZAN Mohamad Yasin**\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n      The dynamic business environment today demands a great need for skilled employees to \nimprove competitive advantage and profitability. Business enterprises regardless of their size are \nforced not only to find ways to enhance their human capital but also to increase their employees\u2019 \njob satisfaction. Workplace learning is a two-pronged strategy that can be used by these enterprises \nto fulfil both needs. The aim of this paper is to explore workplace learning and its association with \njob satisfaction and skills development among employees of small and medium tourism enterprises \n(SMTEs) in Malaysia. Cross-sectional data derived from a questionnaire survey of 410 respondents \nwere analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as mean comparison, standard deviation \nand correlations. The results indicate that informal learning is most prevalent in SMTEs and that \nthere is a moderately strong and positive relationship between workplace learning and skills development \nand job satisfaction.\n\n\n\nKey words: Workplace learning; small and medium tourism related enterprises; formal, informal \n                     and incidental learning; skills development; job satisfaction\n\n\n\nIntroduction \n\n\n\n            Workplace learning is an area of study that is gaining popularity among researchers and policy \nmakers around the world. This is an important issue in today\u2019s hyper-competitive environment \nwhere it is mandatory for organizations to possess knowledge, technological proficiency, high \nproductivity and competitiveness. Eraut (1994) explained that workplace learning is far more \nefficient when it involves development of work related skills and knowledge. The consequences \nof engaging in workplace learning include increased productivity, competitiveness, and improved \nworkplace culture, morale, and employee satisfaction (Rowden, 2002; Rowden and Ahmad, 2000; \nConference Board of Canada, 2011).\n\n\n\n*    Dr. SHAMUNI Kunjiapu is Lecturer cum Deputy Head, School of Business, New Era College, Kajang,  \n      Malaysia. E-mail: shamuni.k@newera.edu.my\n**   Dr. RUHIZAN Mohamad Yasin is Professor, Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,  \n      Bangi, Malaysia. Email: ruhizan@uk.edu.my\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies,  2015, 4(1): 15-29\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan 16 17\n\n\n\n         Research on workplace learning and its outcome, skills development, and job satisfaction \nin small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is relatively uncommon (Rainbury et al., 2002; Rowden \nand Conine, 2005). Yet SMEs are the economic backbone of many developing countries. In \nMalaysia, 97.3 per cent of total business establishments in 2014 were SMEs. They contributed \n33.1 per cent of GDP, 57.5 per cent of employment, and 19 per cent of total exports (SME Corp, \n2014). In terms of size, the tourism industry ranked next to finance and banking in the services \nsector in 2012, third in its contribution to foreign exchange, and sixth to the Gross National \nIncome (Pemandu, 2013). A skills-driven economy is recognized as an essential condition for \nattaining the status of a fully developed nation (Economic Planning Unit, 2010). As Malaysia is \naspiring to achieve this status by 2020, it needs to address issues pertaining to the development \nof human capital urgently. This study examines workplace learning and specifically explores \nthe types of learning that occurs in small and medium tourism enterprises (SMTEs) and their \nrole in skills development and job satisfaction.\n\n\n\nProblem Statement\n\n\n\n         A general characteristic of Malaysian SMEs across different economic sectors is low \nproductivity and performance (SME Corp, 2012; OECD, 2013; SME Master Plan 2012-2020). \nConsequently, despite their overwhelming physical presence, Malaysian SMEs accounted for \nonly a third of the nation\u2019s GDP, compared with 50 per cent in Singapore (SME Corp, 2012).  \nNoor Hazlina Ahmad and Seet (2009) indicated that the failure rate of SMEs is as high as 60 per \ncent. Past studies that explored the causes of SME failure mentioned such factors as the lack of \nskills, knowledge, creativity and the inability to innovate (Saleh and Ndubisi, 2006; National \nEconomic Advisory Council, 2010). There are naturally many other contributing factors such \nas shortage of human resources and organization capabilities, outdated methods, cash flow \nand  financial difficulties, poor support from financial institutions or the government, lack \nof human resources development, inability to withstand international competition; limited \ninvestment on ICT, and over reliance on the local market (Chee, 1986; Hashim and Abdullah \n2000; Saleh and Ndubisi, 2006). However they have been very few similar investigations \ntargeting tourism related SMEs.\n         Although workplace learning is gaining popularity, previous studies that explored this \nsubject were interested in the large organizations. The few that targeted the SMEs were \nconcerned with the manufacturing sector.  Services-based SMEs which include those in the \ntourism sector have attracted scant attention. Many studies were concerned with investigating \nthe factors or conditions that influenced the workplace (Marsick and Watkins, 1990; Billet, \n2001). Issues of workplace learning such as skills development and job satisfaction have drawn \nlittle research interest to date. Studies by the Conference Board of Canada (2011), Kyriakidou \nand Bowen (2003), and Gamage (2014) explored skills development as outcome of workplace \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  \n\n\n\nin Canada, UK and Japan. Job satisfaction stemming from workplace learning in SMEs were \ninvestigated by Rowden (2002), Rowden and Conine (2005), and Rowden and Ahmad (2000). \n        Workplace learning has its roots in social constructivism theory that explains that \nknowledge acquisition involves individual and social factors. It is broadly concerned with all \nforms of training and learning and plays a central role in the lives of individuals, groups or \nthe business agenda of enterprises (Marsick and Volpe, 1999). The process may take the form \nof formal, informal, and incidental learning (Rowden 1995; Watkins and Marsick, 1992). \nWorkplace learning offers possible solutions to issues of low productivity that are inseparable \nfrom employee skills and satisfaction. It is found that workplace learning is pertinent for quality \ninnovation and knowledge diffusion, productivity improvement and job satisfaction (Markulla \nand Sinko, 2009; Drucker, 2011; Rowden, 2002). From the perspective of the learner, formal \nlearning is intentional. Its characteristic includes a prescribed learning framework; an organized \nlearning event or package; the presence of a designated teacher or trainer; the award of a \nqualification or credit; and the external specification of outcomes (Eraut and Hirsh, 2007).  \nInformal learning, though intentional, does not follow an organized pedagogy or lead to \nformal certification. It is integrated with daily routines, triggered by an internal or external \njolt, not highly conscious, haphazard and influenced by chance (Vaughan, 2004). It is also \ndependent on one\u2019s experience, work context, trainer, sufficient support and the workplace \nculture (Marsick and Watkins, 2001). Incidental learning is defined as a spontaneous action or \ntransaction, the intention of which is task accomplishment, but which serendipitously increases \nparticular knowledge, skill, or understanding. Incidental learning, then, includes learning from \nmistakes, by doing, through networking and interpersonal interactions (Marsick and Watkins, \n2001). \n       This study aims to shed light on skills development and job satisfaction as the outcome \nof workplace learning in Malaysian SMTEs. The purpose is to identify workplace learning in \nSMTEs and to explore the relationships between workplace learning and skills development \nand job satisfaction (Figure 1).  \n\n\n\nFigure 1. Relationships between Workplace Learning, Skills Development and Job Satisfaction\n\n\n\n16 17\n\n\n\n \nWorkplace \nlearning \n\n\n\nFormal learning \nInformal learning \nIncidental learning \n\n\n\nWorkplace \nlearning\n\n\n\nFormal learning\nInformal learning\nIncidental learning\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJob Satisfaction \n\n\n\nSkills \ndevelopment \n\n\n\nJob Satisfaction\n\n\n\nSkills \ndevelopment\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan 18 19\n\n\n\n        The hypotheses that underpin this study are as follows:\n        H1:  That there is a difference in the means of three types of workplace learning (formal, \n               informal, and incidental). \n        H2:  That there is a relationship among three types of workplace learning (formal,  informal,     \n               and incidental) and skills development.\n        H3:  That there is a relationship among three types of workplace learning (formal, informal,  \n               and incidental) and job satisfaction.\n\n\n\nThe Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises \n\n\n\n        Depending on the nature of their business, SMEs in Malaysia are recognized as such based \non their sales turnover and staff strength (Table 1). Business companies in manufacturing are \nconsidered small if the sales are between RM300,000 and RM15 million and full-time employees \nbetween 5 and 75 persons, and are regarded as medium in size if sales are between RM15 and \nRM50 million, and employment varies between 75 and 200. In the services sector, the respective \ncriteria on sales and employment are much lower, being in the range of RM300,000 to RM3 \nmillion and employees numbering between five and 30; while medium ones are those with \nsales between RM3 and RM200 million and employment of 30 to 75 workers (SME Corp, \n2014). \n\n\n\nTable 1. Definition of SME by Size of Operation\n\n\n\n        Source: SME Corp, 2014\n\n\n\n        SMEs contribute substantially to the Malaysian economy. By location, the Klang Valley in \nthe state of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur boasts the largest number comprising 35.7 per cent of \nthe national total. This is followed by Johor (10.3%), Perak (8%) and Kedah (6.8%). By 2020, \nthe SME sector is envisaged to play a more prominent role in the economy than before. \nContribution of SMEs to GDP is estimated to escalate to 41 per cent, in employment 62 per cent \nand in total exports 25 per cent. \n        SMEs in the services sector account for the largest number of business enterprises \nin Malaysia with those related to the tourism industry accounting for a substantial number. \n\n\n\nCategory\nManufacturing\n\n\n\nServices and Other Sectors\n\n\n\nSmall \nSales turnover from RM300,000 \nto less than RM15 million OR \nfull-time employees from 5 to \nless than 75\nSales turnover from RM300,000 \nto less than RM3 million OR \nfull-time employees from 5 to \nless than 30\n\n\n\nMedium\nSales turnover from RM15 million \nto not exceeding RM50 million \nOR full-time employees from \n75 to not exceeding 200\nSales turnover from RM3 million \nto not exceeding RM20 million \nOR full-time employees from \n30 to not exceeding 75\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  18 19\n\n\n\nAccording to World Travel and Tourism Council, the tourism industry\u2019s direct contribution1 to \nMalaysian GDP in 2014 was RM61.06 billion or 5.7 per cent while the total contribution2 of \nRM161.0 billion. At the same time, the industry provided 724,500 jobs or 5.3 per cent in direct \nemployment including hotels, travel agencies, airlines, passenger transportation services, \nrestaurants and leisure industries and a total 14.9 per cent of total employment or 1,770,000 \njobs in related businesses and sectors (WTTC, 2015). \n    The Malaysian government has launched an array of supportive initiatives aimed at boosting \nthe travel and tourism sector. These initiatives include the Tenth Malaysia Plan (2011-2015) \nunder which the tourism sector would be improved through the creation of focused tourism \nclusters that will leverage on existing and iconic tourism products. New tourism products would \nbe developed through partnerships with the private and public sectors. Another initiative is the \nEconomic Transformation Programme (ETP) in which tourism is identified as one of the 12 \nNational Key Economic Areas (NKEAs). The third initiative is the Government Transformation \nProgramme (GTP) in which National Key Results Areas (NKRAs) have been identified to \nimprove the socio-economic growth of Malaysia. These strategies underscore the critical role \nof a highly skilled, creative and innovative workforce in achieving a high income economy that \nis both inclusive and sustainable (Pemandu, 2013). The most recent initiative to further assist \nSMEs is the SME Masterplan of 2012-2020 which identifies six High Impact Programmes \n(HIPs) and four themes. Despite these initiatives and specific assistance to nurture talents and \nhuman capital, the tourism sector faces various challenges such as lack of qualified \nemployees, constraints on manpower and training, shortage of training opportunities, inadequate \naccess to learn and to appreciate the special requirements of the tourists and tourism trade \n(NEAC, 2010).\n\n\n\nSkills Development\n       Skills and competencies are the keys to raise productivity and performance. Ensuring \nthe competitiveness and sustainability of a business organization requires the development of \nskills and competence. Job performance requires both hard and soft skills. The former provides \nthe \u201cmuscle\u201d in job performance and may be acquired through education and work \nexperience. The latter is the \u201chuman touch\u201d and is more difficult to acquire (Arnold and \nDavey, 1994; Caudron, 1999; Georges, 1996; Jubas and Butterwick; 2008). Hard skills refer \nto technical competence in such areas as programming and familiarity with operating systems \nand procedures that are needed to execute job tasks (Snyder et al., 2006) and are concerned \nwith \u201cwhat you know\u201d. On the other hand, soft skills refer to the mastery of communication \nand interpersonal relations and an ability of how such skills are used (Hunt, 2007). Hard \nand soft skills are complementary, as soft skills that involve interpersonal or behavioural \ninteractions require technical competence and knowledge in the workplace (Rainsbury et al., \n2002). Hence both these skills are essential if employees are to be effective in the execution \nof job tasks (Spencer and Spencer, 1993). Research suggests that soft skills in the \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan 20\n\n\n\nform of interpersonal and communication competence are more easily developed within \nthe workplace environment and are more highly valued by employers (Coll et al., 2002).  \n       Billet (2001) pointed out that observation of co-workers and practices in the workplace \nare pertinent for skills and competencies development among employees. This is further \nsupported by studies in Canada (Conference Board of Canada, 2011), the United Kingdom \n(Kyriakidou and Bowen, 2003), and Japan (Gamage, 2014). All confirmed that skills \ndevelopment took place through learning and training at workplaces. Rowley and Abdul \nRahman (2007) and Chiah-Law et al. (2003) pointed out that Malaysian organizations show \ninsufficient emphasis on human resource management, especially in SMEs where employees \nhave inadequate access to training and development (Coetzer et al., 2014).  As there are few \nstudies on skills development in the Malaysian context, there is much room for exploring this \nfurther (Arif Hassan, 2010). One of the intentions of this study is to derive some insights on \nskills development in SMTEs.\n\n\n\nJob Satisfaction\n          Job satisfaction can be defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from \nthe appraisal of one\u2019s job and the attainment of experiences and satisfaction when one\u2019s values \nare compatible with one\u2019s needs (Locke and Lathan, 1990). It can be used as a broad assessment \nof \u201can employee\u2019s attitudes of overall acceptance, contentment, and enjoyment in his work\u201d \n(Lee-Kelley et al., 2007: 206).\n       Job satisfaction is seen as an outcome of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic factors are \njob-related, such as recognition, achievement, job performance, self-advancement, and \nresponsibility (Herzberg et al., 1959). Extrinsic factors are environment-related rewards, such \nas wages, company policies and practices, technical facets of supervision, interpersonal \nrelations in supervision, and working conditions. Workplace learning associated with advancement \nopportunities, recognition and achievements is a component of the intrinsic factors while \nculture, policy, and conditions that encourage it are extrinsic factors. \n         Job satisfaction is a popular topic of research among scholars. It has been studied \nin relation to such factors such as productivity (Judge et al. 2001; Dirani, 2009; Egan et al., \n2004); leadership (Gaertner, 2000; Goh, 2003), and organizational culture and processes (Eylon \nand Bamberger, 2000; and Kim, 2002). Studies that focused on workplace learning and job \nsatisfaction in SMEs were completed by Rowden (2002), Rowden and Ahmad (2000), \nLee-Kelley et al. (2007) and Rowden and Conine (2005) in Malaysia and U.S.. Empirical \nevidence was provided by studies conducted by Chang and Lee (2007); Egan et al. (2004); \nGoh (2003); Rose et al. (2009) that showed that participation in workplace learning would lead \nto employee satisfaction. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  21\n\n\n\nData Collection\n\n\n\n       This study adopts a cross-sectional quantitative approach to focus on employees of SMTEs \nin Kuala Lumpur and Selangor where a considerable number of these enterprises are found. \nThe sampling frame is the Travel and Tour Agency Directory produced by the Malaysian \nAssociation of Travel and Tour Agencies (MATTA) and the Hotel Directory of the Malaysian \nHotel Association (MAH). A total of 19,643 SMEs are engaged in providing services related to \nhotels and lodging places, travel agencies, tour operators, exchange brokers and others (SME \nAnnual Report 2011/12). This study is focused on hotels rated with three stars and below, and \nselected tour and travel agencies. The choice of these subgroups for investigation was \ninfluenced by their high contribution to the nation\u2019s value of gross output and value-added \noutput. In 2010, travel agencies, tour operators and reservations contributed 55 per cent to the \nvalue of gross output and 31.1 per cent to value-added output (SME Annual Report 2011/12). \n         The sample of 410 respondents from 62 establishments is derived from the sampling strata \ncomprising the subsectors of tourism industry, tour and travel agencies, and hotels of three stars \nand below in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Thirty-eight of these establishments, 20 hotels and \n18 tour agencies, are located in Kuala Lumpur and 24 (11 and 13 respectively) in Selangor. \nEach of the two sub-sectors accounts for half of the total establishments (Table 2).\n\n\n\nTable 2. Number of Establishments and Respondents in the Sample Study\n     \n\n\n\n       A self-administered questionnaire with four sections and Likert-like response scales is \nused to compile the data. The first section deals with the respondents\u2019 demographic details, the \nsecond with workplace learning through an adapted version of Rowden\u2019s (2002) small business \nworkplace learning survey (15 questions measuring formal, informal and incidental learning; \n\u03b1=.85 and CR=.85), the third section measures skills developed (10 questions measuring both \nhard and soft skills; \u03b1=.87, CR=.86), and the final section determines job satisfaction using \nthe mini version of Minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire (MSQ)(14 questions measuring \nsatisfaction \u03b1=.89, CR=.81). Cronbach\u2019s alpha(\u03b1) and Composite Reliability(CR) indices \nindicate that questionnaire used satisfy the reliability and consistency requirements. The data \nwere analysed using simple descriptive statistics (means; measures of variation-standard \ndeviations; frequencies) to determine the nature and extent of workplace learning in the \nestablishments and Pearson product-moment correlation (r) analysis was used to determine the \ncorrelation between the constructs under study. \n\n\n\nSample Size\nNumber of Establishments\nRespondents\n\n\n\nHotel\n    31\n  159\n\n\n\nTour Agency\n          31\n        251\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan 22\n\n\n\nDiscussion\n\n\n\n         From the findings, it is found that 56 per cent of the respondents were females of whom 45 \nper cent were within the 26-40 age cohorts. In terms of education, almost half the respondents\u2019 \npossessed tertiary qualifications. Four out of five were employed on a full-time basis but with \nalmost 70 per cent with less than five years of experience in their current jobs. Three-quarters \nof the respondents worked in travel agencies and the rest in hotels or as tour operators (Table 3).\n\n\n\nTable 3. Demographic Details of the Respondents\nDemographic Variables\nGender\n\n\n\nAge\n\n\n\nEthnicity\n\n\n\nEducational Qualification\n\n\n\nWorkplace Type\n\n\n\nTenure\n\n\n\nWork Type\n\n\n\nClassifications\nMale\n\n\n\nFemale\n25 years and below\n\n\n\n26-40 years\n41-55 years\n\n\n\n56 and above\nMalay\n\n\n\nChinese\nIndian\nOthers\n\n\n\nPrimary\nSecondary\n\n\n\nTertiary\nNone\nOthers\n\n\n\n3-star hotel\n2-star hotel\n1-star hotel\n\n\n\nTour operator\nTravel agency\n\n\n\nOthers\n5 years or less\n\n\n\n6-10 years\n11-15 years\n16-20 years\n\n\n\n20 years or more\nFull-time\nPart-time\nContract\nOthers\n\n\n\nFrequency\n180\n230\n168\n185\n  48\n    9\n122\n232\n  40\n  16\n  23\n157\n202\n    1\n  26\n  68\n  39\n  46\n  25\n226\n    6\n284\n   81\n   33\n     6\n    6\n340\n  44\n  23\n    2\n\n\n\nPercentage\n    44.0\n    56.0\n    41.0\n    45.0\n    11.7\n      2.2\n    29.8\n    56.6\n      9.8\n      3.9\n      5.6\n    38.3\n    49.3\n      0.2\n      6.3\n    16.6\n      9.5\n     11.2\n       6.1\n      55.1\n        1.5\n       69.3\n       19.8\n         8.0\n         1.5\n       1.5\n     82.9\n     10.7\n       5.6\n       0.5\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  23\n\n\n\nH1: There is a difference in the means of three types of workplace learning (formal, informal,  \n      and incidental) in SMTEs. \n\n\n\n    The mean value of the responses was measured on a five-point response scale with \nthe lowest value indicating \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d, through \u201cdisagree\u201d, \u201cneutral\u201d, \u201cagree\u201d, and \n\u201cstrongly agree\u201d. The mean values of the three types of workplace learning were derived using \nSPSS, and interpreted according to the method in the Nunnally and Berstein study \n(1994). The standard deviation value showed that the responses were relatively concentrated \naround the mean value and hence indicated that the perceptions of respondents had been \nconsistent. Informal learning was the most pervasive (M=3.76, SD=0.75), followed by \nincidental learning (M=3.71, SD=0.60), and formal learning (M=3.54, SD=0.72 (Table 4). The \nmean value of informal learning was highest, followed by incidental learning and formal learning. \nThe difference in the means among the three types of learning implies that H1 is true. \n\n\n\nTable 4. Descriptive Statistics of Types of Workplace Learning in SMTEs\n\n\n\n         Both informal and incidental learning are evidently popular because the process \nis spontaneous and embedded in the execution of daily tasks. In SMEs, learning often \nhappens through interaction between peers and observation of the performance of senior workers. \nThis learning process is not only more appealing but also relatively easy to put into practice by \nthe average worker. As the majority of the respondents are adults, they show a preference for \nself-directed to structured learning. Formal learning has the lowest mean score, suggesting that \nthis could be the least popular learning type in SMTEs.  Formal learning involves a structured \nprocess of acquiring knowledge and less flexible in terms of mental exertion. It is consequently \nless attractive compared with informal learning. Interestingly, many official initiatives to \nimprove human capital take the form of formal learning. Its lack of appeal among SMEs is due \nto the ignorance of government support for formal training. The findings of this study corroborate \nwith those of Rowden (2002), Rowden and Conine (2005), Marsick and Watkins (2001), Coll et \nal. (2002), in establishing the fact that informal and incidental learning are more popular learning \ntypes than formal learning in the workplace.\n\n\n\nH2: There is a significant relationship among three types of workplace learning (formal, informal,  \n      and incidental) and skills development in SMTEs.\n\n\n\nN \nMean\nStandard Deviation\nInterpretation\n\n\n\nFormal Learning \n 410\n3.54\n  .72\n\n\n\nModerately high\n\n\n\n    Informal Learning\n 410\n3.76\n  .75\n\n\n\nModerately high       \n\n\n\nIncidental Learning\n410\n3.71\n .60\n\n\n\n      Moderately high\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan 24\n\n\n\n       The relationship between workplace learning and skills development was tested using \nPearson\u2019s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) as the variables were normally distributed. \nThe results in Table 5 indicate significant relationships between the three types of workplace \nlearning and hard and soft skills developed at various levels of association implying that H2 may \nis accepted. Hard and soft skills (relating to \u201cwhat you know\u201d and \u201chow you use it\u201d respectively) \nwere measured using a Likert-like scale with six possible responses ranging from the lowest \nvalue of 1 meaning \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d through the highest of 5 indicating \u201cstrongly agree\u201d, and \n6 indicating \u201cnot applicable\u201d. Cohen\u2019s (1987)  rule-of-thumb is used to interpret the strength of \ncorrelation. For soft skills the \u2018r\u2019 value with formal learning was 0.253 (n=410, p<0.05), 0.334 \nwith informal learning (n=410, p<0.05), and 0.451 with incidental learning (n=410, p<0.05). \nFor hard skills, the r value with formal learning was 0.281 (n=410, p<0.05), 0.256 with informal \nlearning (n=410, p<0.05), and 0.283 with incidental learning (n=410, p<0.05) (Table 5).\n\n\n\nTable 5.  Correlation between Workplace Learning and Skills Development\n\n\n\n** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).\n\n\n\n         The findings imply that participation in workplace learning contributes positively towards \nskills development. The more the employees participate in workplace learning the higher would \nbe the skills developed as indicated by the positive correlation. All three types of learning \nare shown to be aiding the employees of SMTEs in developing their skills. Informal learning \nshowed a moderate relationship (r=.334) with soft skills but weak relationship with hard skills \n(r=.256). There was also a moderate relationship between incidental learning and soft skills \n(r=.451) and a weak relationship with hard skills (r=.283). Acquiring hard skills that are \ntechnical in nature needs a formalized context. Communication, time management and other \nsimilar skills are probably being picked up by employees through their informal interaction with \npeers or simply by relying on past experiences. Hence structured learning that often leads to \ncertification via formal learning is needed to develop the technical or hard skills but not so in \ndeveloping interpersonal or soft skills.\n         However, respondents considered formal learning as less important than informal learning \nin developing soft skills and vice versa in the case of acquiring hard skills. This is also due to \nthe fact that few employees in SMEs had any opportunity to attend formal trainings and had \nto learn through task performance. Knowledge creation and sharing of experiences took place \nthrough interactions with peers and superiors (as in informal learning), observations and learning \nfrom mistakes, experimentation (as is incidental learning) and attending formal trainings or \nworkshops (as in formal learning). Useful knowledge that was acquired enabled employees \n\n\n\nWorkplace Learning\nFormal learning\nInformal learning\nIncidental learning\n\n\n\nSoft Skills\nr =.253**  \nr =.334**\nr =.451**\n\n\n\n    Interpretation\nSmall relation\n\n\n\nMedium relation\n Medium relation     \n\n\n\nHard Skills\nr =.281**\nr =.256**\nr =.283**\n\n\n\nInterpretation\nSmall relation\nSmall relation\nSmall relation\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  25\n\n\n\nto understand and execute their tasks better as well as to enhance their creativeness and the \nspirit of innovation. These findings corroborate with those of the Conference Board of Canada \n(2011), Kyriakidou and Bowen (2003), CEDEFOP (2011), and Gamage (2014), all pointing to \na positive correlation between learning and productivity.\n\n\n\nH3: There is a significant relationship among three types of workplace learning (formal, informal,  \n      and incidental) and job satisfaction in the SMTEs.        \n       The correlation between the types of workplace learning and total satisfaction was \ninvestigated using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient(r) analysis. P value \nobtained was smaller than 0.05, therefore H0 was rejected. There was a large positive relationship \nbetween incidental learning and total satisfaction (r=0.502, n=410, p<0.05), positive and \nmedium relationship with informal learning (r=0.370, n=410, p<0.05), and also medium but \npositive relationship with formal learning (r=0.406, n=410, p<0.05). The results indicated a \npositive and medium relationship with informal learning among employees of SMTEs (Table 6).\n\n\n\nTable 6. Correlations between Workplace Learning and Job Satisfaction\n\n\n\n                              ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. \n\n\n\n       Incidental learning had the largest impact on employees\u2019 job satisfaction in SMTEs, \nfollowed by formal learning and informal learning. Although formal learning was not the most \nprevalent type of learning in SMTEs, it was still regarded as contributing to job satisfaction. \nThe more engaged the employees were in workplace learning, the greater the job satisfaction \nexperienced. Incidental learning that allowes for reflection and trial and error had the largest \nassociation with job satisfaction, followed by structured learning that led to certification. \nThese findings are also similar to those of Rowden (1995; 2002), Rowden and Ahmad (2000), \nRowden and Conine (2005), and Lee-Kelley et al. (2007). \n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n       This study is focused on SMTEs in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor and attempts to discover \nthe links between learning in the workplace and skills development and job satisfaction. The \nfindings show that employees developed both hard and soft skills through their participation in \nworkplace learning. Employees in the services sector tend to value the acquisition of soft skills \nmore than that of hard skills. The bias towards soft skills may also be due to the nation\u2019s \ntransition from an economy based on services rather than on production. The findings are in \ngeneral agreement with those of various other similar investigations on the subject. \n\n\n\nWorkplace Learning\nFormal learning\nInformal learning\nIncidental learning\n\n\n\nJob Satisfaction\n      r =.406 **\n      r =.370 **\n      r =.502 **\n\n\n\n    Interpretation\nMedium relation\nMedium relation\nLarge  relation\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan \n\n\n\n        This study shows that employees of SMEs also experience job satisfaction through \nworkplace learning. This is contrary to the common perception that workers in small \nestablishments find little satisfaction in their jobs. The results indicate that incidental and \nformal learning seem to contribute much to this situation, and confirm the findings of earlier \nstudies.\n        There have been few studies on workplace learning among employees of SMEs in Malaysia. \nThe findings presented in this study will contribute to the existing pool of knowledge on \nthe empirical impact of workplace learning on both skills development and job satisfaction in \nSMTEs in the Malaysian context.\n\n\n\nNotes\n\n\n\n1   The direct contribution of Travel and Tourism to GDP is calculated from total internal spending   \n    by \u201cnetting out\u201d the purchases made by the different tourism industries. This measure is consistent  \n     with the definition of Tourism GDP, specified in the 2008 Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended \n     Methodological Framework (TSA: RMF 2008; WTTC, 2015).\n2   The total contribution of Travel and Tourism includes its \u201cwider impacts\u201d (i.e. the indirect and in    \n     duced impacts) on the economy. The \u201cindirect\u201d contribution includes the GDP and jobs supported by: \n     Travel and Tourism investment spending - an important aspect of both current and future activity\n     that includes investment activity such as the purchase of new aircraft and construction of new hotels;  \n     Government \u201ccollective\u201d spending, which helps Travel and Tourism activity in many different ways as it is \n     made on behalf of the \u201ccommunity at large\u201d - e.g. tourism marketing and promotion, aviation,\n      administration, security services, resort area security services, resort area sanitation services, etc;      \n     Domestic purchases of goods and services by the sectors dealing directly with tourists - including, for        \n     example, purchases of food and cleaning services by hotels, of fuel and catering services by airlines,          \n     and IT services by travel agents. The \u2018induced\u2019 contribution measures the GDP and jobs supported by  \n     the spending of those who are directly or indirectly employed by the Travel and Tourism sector \n     (WTTC, 2015).\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nARIF Hassan 2010. Linking quality assurance to human resource management: A study of SMEs in   \n         Malaysia, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, 27(6), 641-657.\nARNOLD, J. and DAVEY, K. M 1994. Evaluating graduate development: Key findings from the  \n         postgraduate development project, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, \n         15(8): 9-15.\nBILLET, Stephen  2001. Learning through work: Workplace affordances, Journal of Workplace Learning,     \n         13(5): 209-214.\nCAUDRON, Shari 1999. The hard case for soft skills, Workforce, 78(7): 60-64.\nCEDEFOP 2011. Learning while working: Success stories on workplace learning in Europe, Luxembourg:  \n         Publications Office. (Cedefop Reference series).\nCHANG, S., and LEE, M. 2007. A study on relationship among leadership, organizational culture, the  \n         operation of learning organization and employees\u2019 job satisfaction, The Learning Organization, \n         14: 155-185.\n\n\n\n26\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  27\n\n\n\nCHEE, P.L. 1986. Small Industry in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: Berita Publishing Sdn.Bhd.\nCHIAH-LAW, G., STANLEY, P. and CHRIS, S. 2003. The role of human resource management in  \n        Australian-Malaysian joint ventures, Journal of European Industrial Training, 27 (5): 244-262.\nCOETZER, A., REDMOND, J. and SHARAFIZAD, S. 2014. Using the critical incident technique to  \n        research decision making regarding access to training and development in medium-sized \n        enterprises, International Journal of Training Research, 10(3): 164-178.\nCOHEN, Louis., MANION, Lawrence and MORRISON, Keith 2007. Research Methods in Education,     \n       London: Routledge. \nCOLL, Richard, TAYLOR, N. and GRAINGER, S. 2002. Assessment of work based learning: Some lessons  \n       from the teaching profession, Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 3(1), 5-12.\nCONFERENCE BOARD OF CANADA 2011. Investing Skills: Effective work-related learning in  \n       SMEs. http://www.workplaceskills.ca/_uploads/media/4nvbw3ps0.pdf, 10th August 2015.\nDECIERI H., KRAMAR. R., NOE. and R.A 2008. Human Resource Management in Australia. Strategy/    \n        People/Performance, third ed., Australia: McGraw-Hill Irwin.\nDepartment of Statistics, Malaysia  2014. /http://www.statistics.gov.my, 18 March 2015.\nDESSLER, G. 2007. Human Resource Management, 11th ed., New Jersey: Prentice Hall.\nDIRANI, K.M. 2009. Measuring the learning organization culture, organizational commitment and job  \n       satisfaction in the Lebanese banking sector, Human Resource Development International, 12: \n       189-208.\nDRUCKER, Peter 2011. Managing For the Future, New York: Routledge.\nEconomic Planning Unit 2010. 10th Malaysia Plan, Kuala Lumpur: Prime Minister\u2019s Department.\nEGAN, T.M., YANG, B. and BARTLETT, K.R. 2004. The effects of organizational learning culture and  \n         job satisfaction on motivation to transfer learning and turnover intention, Human Resource \n        Development Quarterly, 15: 279-301.\nERAUT, M 1994. Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence, London: Falmer Press.\nERAUT, M. and HIRSH, W 2007. The significance of workplace learning for individuals, groups  \n       and organization, SKOPE Monograph 9. /http://www.skope.ox.ac.uk/sites/default /files/Monogrpah\n       %209.pdf/,15 July 2012.\nEYLON, D and BAMBERGER, P. 2000. Empowerment cognitions and empowerment acts: Recognizing \n        the importance of gender, Group and Organization Management, 25: 354-373.\nGAERTNER, S. 2000. Structural determinants of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in  \n        turnover models, Human Resource Management Review, 9: 479-493.\nGAMAGE, A. S. 2014. Recruitment and selection practices in manufacturing SMEs in Japan: An analysis \n       of the link with business performance, Ruhuna Journal of Management and Finance, 1(1): 37-52.\nGEORGES, J.C. 1996. The myth of soft skills training, Training, 33(1): 48-50.\nGOH, S.C. 2003. Improving organizational learning capability: lessons from two case studies, The  \n        Learning Organization, 10: 216-227.\nGOMEZ, E. T., LOH, W. L., and LEE, K. H. 2004. Malaysia. In Chinese Business in Southeast Asia,  \n        edited by E. T. Gomez and H. H. Michael Hsiao, London and New York: Routledge Curzon.\nHACKMAN, J.R. and OLDHAM, G.R 1980. Work Redesign, Reading Ma: Addison-Wesley.\nHASHIM Hassan 1992. The competitiveness of Malaysia\u2019s small business, Public Enterprise, (1-2): 46-62.\nHASHIM Mohd. Khairuddin and ABDULLAH Mat Saad 2000. Development of SMEs: Research Issues  \n        and Agenda, Small and Medium Enterprises in the Asian Pacific Countries, New York: Nova \n       Science Publishers, Inc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShamuni and Ruhizan \n\n\n\nHERZBERG F., MAUSNER B. and SYNDERMAN B. 1959. The Motivation to Work, NY: Wiley.\nHUNT, S. 2007. Hiring Success: The Art and Science of Staffing Assessment and Employee Selection,  \n        San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.\nInternational Labour Organization (ILO) 2008. Conclusions on skills for improved productivity, employment  \n        growth and development. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/...skills/.../ wcms_103457.pdf, 25\n        February 2010.\nJUBAS, K., and BUTTERWICK, S. 2008. Hard/soft, formal/informal, work/learning: Tenuous/persistent    \n        binaries in the knowledge-based society, Journal of Workplace Learning, 20(8): 514-525.\nJUDGE, T. A., THORESEN, C. J., BONO, J. E., and PATTON, G. K. 2001: The job satisfaction-job  \n        performance relationship: A qualitative and quantitative review, Psychological Bulletin, 127: 376-407.  \nKIM, S. 2002. Participative management and job satisfaction: lessons for management leadership, Public  \n        Administration Review, 62: 231-241.\nKYRIAKIDOU, O. and BOWEN, A. 2003. Strategies for employee retention in small hospitality businesses,  \n        The Hospitality Review, 42-46. https://www.academia.edu/880456/Strategies_for_Employee_\n        Retention_in_Small_Hospitality_Businesses, 17 May 2015.\nLEE-KELLEY, L., D. BLACKMAN, and J. HURST. 2007: An exploration of the relationship between             \n        learning organisations and the retention of knowledge workers, The Learning Organization, 14(3): \n        204-221.\nLOCKE, E.A and LATHAN, G.P 1990. The Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance, Englewood  \n        Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.\nMARKULLA, M. and SINKO, M. 2009. Knowledge economies and innovation society evolve around  \n        learning. http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media19201.pdf, 16 May 2014.\nMARSICK, V.J. and VOLPE, M. (eds.) 1999. Informal learning on the Job, San Francisco: Berrett- \n        Koehler Communications. \nMARSICK, V. J. and WATKINS, K. E. 2001. Informal and incidental learning, New Directions for Adult  \n        and Continuing Education, 2001 (89): 25-34. \nMARSICK, V. J.  and WATKINS, K. 1990. Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace, New  \n        York: Routledge.\nNational Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) 2010. New Economic Model for Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur:  \n        Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad.\nNOOR HAZLINA AHMAD and SEET, P. S. 2009. Dissecting behaviours associated with business failure:  \n        A qualitative study of SME owners in Malaysia and Australia, Asia Social Science, 5(9): 98-104.\nNUNNALLY, J. C., and BERNSTEIN, I. H.1994. Psychometric Theory, 3rd Edition. New York:  \n        McGraw-Hill.\nOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2012. Economic Outlook 2013:  \n        With Perspective on China and India, OECD Publishing.\n----- 2013. Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India: Beyond the Middle Income Trap,  \n        OECD publishing.\nPEMANDU 2013.  GTP Annual Report,  http://www.pemandu.gov.my/gtp/annualreport2013/upload/    \n        file/Pemandu_GTP_AR2013_SPEAD_LOWRES_SC.pdf, 18 February 2015.\nPODSAKOFF, P. M., MACKENZIE, S. B., LEE, J. Y., and PODSAKOFF, N. P 2003. Common method  \n        biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies, Journal  \n        of Applied Psychology, 88(5): 879-890.\nRAINSBURY, E.HODGES, D.BURCHELL, N. and LAY M. 2002. Ranking workplace competencies:  \n        student and graduate perception, Asia-Pacific Journal of Comparative Education, 3(2): 8-18.\n\n\n\n28 29\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSkills Development and Job Satisfaction  \n\n\n\nROSE, R.C., KUMAR, N., and PAK, O.G. 2009. The effect of organizational learning on organizational  \n        commitment, job satisfaction and work performance, The Journal of Applied Business Research,  \n        25: 55-66.\nROWDEN, R. W. 1995. The role of human resource development in successful small to mid-sized  \n        manufacturing businesses: A comparative case study, Human Resource Development Quarterly, \n        6(4): 355-373.\nROWDEN, R.W. 2002. The relationship between workplace learning and job satisfaction in U.S. small  \n        to midsize businesses, Human Resource Development Quarterly, 13(4): 407-425.\nROWDEN, R. W. and AHMAD, S. 2000. The relationship between workplace learning and job satisfaction     \n        in small to mid-sized businesses in Malaysia, Human Resource Development International, 3(3):\n        307-322.\nROWDEN, R.W. and CONINE, T. Jr. 2005. The impact of workplace learning on job satisfaction in  \n        small US Commercial Banks, Journal of Workplace Learning, 17(4): 215-230.\nROWLEY, C. and ABDUL-RAHMAN, S. 2007. The management of human resources in Malaysia:  \n        locally-owned organisations and multinational organisations, Management Review, 18 (4): 427-453.\nROZAN OTHMAN, ROHAYU ABDUL GHANI and RAHIDAH ARSHAD 2001. Great expectation.  \n        CEOs\u2019 perception of the performance gap of the HRM function in the Malaysian manufacturing \n        sector, Personnel Review, 30(1): 61-80.\nSALEH, A. S. and NDUBISI, O. 2006. An evaluation of SME development in Malaysia, International  \n        Review of Business Research Papers, 2(1): 1-14.\nSME Annual Report 2011/12. http://www.smecorp.gov.my/vn2/node/177 11, October 2013.\n----- 2012/13. http://www.smecorp.gov.my/vn2/sites/default/files/appendix%204.pdf, 11 October 2013.\nSME Corp Malaysia 2012.  Guideline for New SME Definition, http://www.smecorp.gov.my/vn2/sites/  \n        default/files/Guideline_for_New_SME_Definition_7Jan2014.pdf 11, May 2014.\n----- 2014. http://www.smecorp.gov.my/vn2/ SME Corp. Malaysia. http://www.smeinfo.com.my/ index.     \n        php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=1415andItemi d=1312andl, 27 October 2014.\nSME Master Plan 2012-2020. http://www.smecorp.gov.my/vn2/sites/default/files/SME%20 Masterplan%20    \n         2012-2020%20%28booklet%29_0_0.pdf, 27 October 2014.\nSPENCER, L. M. and SPENCER, S. 1993. Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance.  \n        New York: Wiley.\nSNYDER, L. A., RUPP, D. E. and THORNTON, G. C. 2006. Personnel selection of information  \n        technology workers: The people, the jobs, and issues for human resource management. In Research \n        in Personnel and Human Resources Management, edited by J. J. Martocchio, Oxford: Elsevier.\nTAN, T. J., HO, W. F., and TAN, J. L. 2005. The Chinese Malaysian Contribution, Kuala Lumpur: Centre  \n        for Malaysian Chinese Studies.\nVAUGHAN, K. 2004. Beyond the Age of Aquarius: Reframing Alternative Education, Wellington:  \n        NZCER Press.\nWATKINS, K.E. and MARSICK, V. J. 1992. Towards a theory of informal and incidental learning in  \n        organization, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 11(4): 287-300.\nWorld Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) 2015. Data Gateway. http://wttc.org n, 25 February 2015.\nYEUNG, H.W.C. 2004. Chinese Capitalism in a Global Era: Towards Hybrid Capitalism, New York:  \n        Routledge.\n\n\n\n28 29\n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n140          Wong\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2012, 1: 140-144\n\n\n\nMalaysian Chinese and Nation-building: Before Merdeka and Fifty Years After, edited by \n\n\n\nVoon Phin Keong, Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies, 2007 and 2008, \n\n\n\nxvi + 460 pp. (vol. 1), vi + 296 pp. (vol. 2) (Hardcover ISBN 978-983-3908-03-5, Softcover \n\n\n\nISBN 978-983-3908-02-8)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe theme of nation building is a difficult one as central ideas surrounding the theme \nare popular subjects of debate. Yet the theme has its appeal and durability that academics \n\n\n\nfrom many diverse areas of specializations are tempted to explore. Studies on nation building \n\n\n\nin Malaysia have generally focused on party and communal politics and Malay nationalism. \n\n\n\nThis current study is focused on the role of the Chinese in Malaysia and undertaken by a team \n\n\n\nof local academics who are non-specialists in political science.\n\n\n\nThe study is a major project of the Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies to commemorate \n\n\n\nthe fiftieth anniversary of independence and an attempt to place on record the often forgotten \nroles and contributions of the Chinese community in the making of Malaysia as a sovereign \n\n\n\nnation-state. With contributors coming from very different backgrounds, the variety of topics \n\n\n\nis to be expected. These are grouped into five parts to produce a coherent structure. \nIn the introductory chapter, Voon Phin Keong attempts to address the basic ideas of \n\n\n\n\u201cstate\u201d and \u201cnation\u201d and examines the formation of the various political units that eventually \n\n\n\nmerged to become the Malaysian nation-state. He then links the ideas embedded in Chinese \n\n\n\nculture in the promotion of such values as ethnic harmony and tolerance that are basic to \n\n\n\nnation building in a pluralistic setting.\n\n\n\nThe four chapters in Part 2 take up topics that follow each other in sequence. Voon \n\n\n\n(chapter 2) deals with the work of the Chinese in their various capacities to transform large \n\n\n\nparts of Malaysia over a period of more than 200 years before independence. As pioneers, \n\n\n\nentrepreneurs, or mere labourers, they contributed significantly to lay the foundation of the \nfuture state by opening mines and agricultural areas, building towns, organizing communities, \n\n\n\ncontributing towards government revenue, and playing many other positive roles. Khor Teik \n\n\n\nHuat (chapter 3) looks at the role of the Chinese in the independence movement. They clearly \n\n\n\nrecognized the need to control their own destiny in an independent country and decided, \n\n\n\nwisely, that their future was tied to their rights to citizenship of the new nation. Their response \n\n\n\nwas complicated by the rise of Malay nationalism and the chapter provides an account of \n\n\n\nhow the leaders of the Chinese and Malay communities had to negotiate such crucial issues \n\n\n\nas the official language, Malay privileges and non-Malay rights. Khor affirms that, in order to \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews          141\n\n\n\nmeet the terms set by the British prior to independence, the Chinese had agreed to set aside \n\n\n\ncertain crucial issues for the larger interests of gaining national sovereignty. Khoo Kay Kim \n\n\n\n(chapter 4) continues the theme with a discussion on the background of forging interethnic \n\n\n\nconsensus for the sake of gaining independence. Independence that was eventually granted \n\n\n\nwas consequently the result of interethnic cooperation and understanding. Six years after \n\n\n\nthe formation of the Federation of Malaya in 1957, the idea of a \u201cgrand design\u201d to merge \n\n\n\nthe young federation, Singapore and the Borneo states of Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak was \n\n\n\nmooted by Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1961. The events that led to the formation of Malaysia \n\n\n\nwere examined by Danny Wong (chapter 5). He concludes that nationalism was the driving \n\n\n\nforce behind the continued fight for independence of all the remaining British territories in \nSoutheast Asia. It was a wake-up call to the communities in the Borneo territories as they \n\n\n\nhastily formed their own political parties. In Brunei, the planned \u201cmerger\u201d led to a nasty \n\n\n\nrebellion and the eventual rejection of \u201cmerger\u201d. \n\n\n\nThe seven chapters in Part 3 examine the nation-building process from the perspectives \n\n\n\nof selected economic considerations. Three deal with Chinese business, two with the Chinese \n\n\n\npopulation, and one each on the special cases of Sarawak and Sabah. \n\n\n\nEmile Yeoh (chapter 6) examines the Chinese response, at the community level, to \n\n\n\nnew economic realities after the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Chinese \n\n\n\nassociations and chambers of commerce took the lead to organize cooperatives and enterprises \n\n\n\nin attempts to cope with the changing rules of the game. Chin Yee Whah (chapter 8) \n\n\n\ndiscusses Chinese participation in various economic sectors and in the development of small \n\n\n\nand medium-sized industries. With the NEP, they are forced to seek appropriate business \n\n\n\nstrategies to survive or to gain access to new opportunities. One of the strategies is to work \n\n\n\nwith Malay partners. Beh Loo See (chapter 7) examines Chinese capitalism as practised by \n\n\n\nmajor corporations. These largely family-based and market-oriented concerns have spread \n\n\n\ntheir wings overseas and have developed multi-national links and investments. They are fairly \n\n\n\nwell organized to achieve desired levels of efficiency but remain under the personal control \nof the founders. Many maintain close relationships with the government and the indigenous \n\n\n\nbusiness elite and technocrats. \n\n\n\nThe Chinese population comes under scrutiny by Tey Nai Peng (chapter 9) and Tan Ai \n\n\n\nBoay (chapter 10). Tey probes the demographic trends and touches on declining birth rates, \n\n\n\nageing and emigration. He demonstrates that the community is making important contributions \n\n\n\nto the development of human resources to meet the demands of national development. Tan\u2019s \n\n\n\nstudy is a rare attempt to look at Chinese women and the manner of their involvement in \n\n\n\nthe nation-building process. She focuses on three specific areas in economic participation, \neducation and politics. In all these areas, Chinese women are moving from being a passive \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n142          Wong\n\n\n\nand tradition-bound class into one that is playing many new and increasingly active and \n\n\n\nimportant roles in society. \n\n\n\nAs always in studies on Malaysia, the Borneo components have often been overlooked. \n\n\n\nConscious of this oversight, the study contains two separate chapters on Sarawak and Sabah. \n\n\n\nWee Chong Hui (chapter 11) highlights the abundance of natural resources of Sarawak while \n\n\n\nreminding readers of the state\u2019s high incidence of poverty and its economy that is lagging \n\n\n\nbehind Peninsular Malaysia. She finds that the Chinese are basically dependent on the primary \nsector, with some involved in small- and medium-sized timber and wood industries and the \n\n\n\nservice sectors such as retail and wholesale business, light transportation, tourism, catering. \n\n\n\nVery few are able to gain access to the civil service. \n\n\n\nVoon (chapter 12) emphasizes the permanence of the Chinese as a settled and mature \n\n\n\ncommunity and their role in the development of Sabah during the colonial period. Following \n\n\n\nindependence, the fortune of the community has suffered an irreversible decline as it is fast \n\n\n\nbecoming a minority in the face of mass foreign immigration. Economically, the community \n\n\n\nis on the verge of being sidelined. It has yet to be seen if this trend is to be a precursor to the \n\n\n\nfuture fate of the Chinese in Malaysia as a whole. \n\n\n\nOf the ten chapters in volume 2, five are related to the political and four to the cultural \nperspectives, and a concluding chapter. Wong Wun Bin (chapter 13) attempts to draw lessons \n\n\n\nfrom Confucian political ideals in the nation-building process. His efforts are commendable \n\n\n\nbut do not seem to pin down the connection in a more convincing manner. Confucian teachings \n\n\n\nare seen to be reflected in the running of Chinese associations and business enterprises. In \npolitics, he touches on the rule by virtue and the pursuit of the Grand Communality. To the \n\n\n\naverage Malaysian Chinese, however, Confucian teachings have more relevance in everyday \n\n\n\nlife rather than in political governance. This explains why the Chinese are generally indifferent \n\n\n\nto politics. \n\n\n\nOn Chinese politics, Lee Kam Hing (chapter 14) argues that Chinese involvement in \n\n\n\nthe independence movement would require a Chinese political party to safeguard and to fight \nfor their interests. The diverse groups based on dialects, educational backgrounds, political \n\n\n\nbeliefs and ideas were to prove divisive. Several Chinese-based parties such as the MCA, \n\n\n\nDemocratic Action Party and Gerakan all seek to represent the Chinese and therefore compete \n\n\n\nfiercely among themselves. With the implementation of the NEP in 1971, the raison d\u2019etre \n\n\n\nof Chinese politics seems to be the safeguarding of Chinese commercial interests, Chinese-\n\n\n\nlanguage education, and in power sharing. Danny Wong and Ho Hui Ling (chapter 15) next \n\n\n\nexamine Chinese politics in Sabah and Sarawak. The primary purpose of Chinese political \n\n\n\nparties is to safeguard Chinese interests. Over the years Chinese political influence in Sabah \nhas waned and the community is losing its clout as \u201cking makers\u201d. The Chinese in Sarawak \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Reviews          143\n\n\n\nhave fared better as they are able to maintain their share of power in the state coalition. \n\n\n\nThe next two chapters delve into the issue of identity and civil society. Using the language \n\n\n\nof diaspora studies, Yow Cheun Hoe (chapter 16) argues that as the Chinese transform \n\n\n\nthemselves from being immigrants to citizens, they are confronted by the Bumiputera and \n\n\n\nnon-Bumiputera divide to play their full role as Malaysians. In the age of globalization, the \n\n\n\noptions for transnational mobility offer alternative choices. Thock Ker Pong (chapter 17) \n\n\n\ndiscusses the role of civil society in nation building from the perspective of Chinese community \n\n\n\nleadership. He argues that Chinese communal associations are \u201csmall governments\u201d which \n\n\n\nexisting under the control of the state\u2019s \u201cbig government\u201d. In the past they contributed to the \n\n\n\nmaintenance of a stable social order but many now realize the need to fight for the rights and \nbenefits of the Chinese, with mother-tongue education as a major concern. \n\n\n\nThe chapters in Part 4 deal with education, culture, language and art. Lim Chooi Kwa \n\n\n\n(chapter 18) gives an account of the history of Chinese education but lacks a serious attempt \n\n\n\nto link the role of Chinese education and nation building. Voon (chapter 19) views Chinese \n\n\n\nculture and education as elements of \u201csoft power\u201d that may contribute towards creating a \n\n\n\nvibrant, mature and more progressive Malaysia. Chinese schools are part of the nation\u2019s \n\n\n\nsocial infrastructure that has nurtured a pool of talents. He particularly emphasizes the role of \n\n\n\nculture as the moral basis of nation building and draws on the core teachings of Confucianism \n\n\n\nas props in promoting progress and stability, good governance, and working towards the \n\n\n\ncommon good.\n\n\n\nChinese efforts in popularizing the use of the national language and the evolution of \n\n\n\nMalaysian art forms are final themes in the study. Chong Fah Hing (chapter 20) argues that \nChinese writers in the national language have worked hard to promote the language. This \n\n\n\ntradition has led to literary works that affirm the Malaysian identity of the Chinese. Chung Yi \n(chapter 21) produces a comprehensive piece on Chinese art to demonstrate its transformation \n\n\n\nto enrich Malaysian art. The objective is to reaffirm, through artistic creations, an identity that \nis typically Malaysian. \n\n\n\nThe concluding account by Voon (chapter 22) poses the question of \u201cwhither the \n\n\n\nMalaysian nation-state?\u201d It sees \u201cVision 2020\u201d as a blueprint for nationhood. Evolution of the \n\n\n\nMalaysian nation will eventually boil down to the ability to meet the challenges in the areas of \n\n\n\nethnic relations, economic competitiveness, the rule of morality, and the people\u2019s \u201cmindset\u201d. \n\n\n\nTackling as complex a subject as nation building is itself a huge challenge, but restricting \n\n\n\nthe discussion to a particular group is even more so. At best, it will present an unbalanced \n\n\n\nview on the subject as nation building involves all sections of the people. But then one must \n\n\n\naccept the study\u2019s stated objective to focus only on the Chinese and deepen understanding of \n\n\n\ntheir multi-faceted contributions to nation building. The study does not in any way detract \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n144          Wong\n\n\n\nfrom the contributions made by other ethnic groups especially the Malays.\n\n\n\nClearly the papers vary in quality. Some have clearly failed to link their discussions with \n\n\n\nthe central theme of nation building. In terms of organization, Part 3 on politics should come \n\n\n\nafter the historical background. However, bearing the mind the limitation of the study, the \n\n\n\nstudy is commendable in several ways. \n\n\n\nThe writing style is clear and the approach is objective. It will enable Malaysians, \n\n\n\nparticularly the Chinese, to appreciate the situation they are in and contributions that they \n\n\n\nhave made. \n\n\n\nAll chapters are written from the Malaysian perspective and by local academics. The \n\n\n\nresult is a piece of work that adds to the scanty literature on nation building. \n\n\n\nThe study will help other ethnic groups to understand the Chinese community and thus \n\n\n\nto promote harmony and mutual understanding. \n\n\n\nThe images of Chinese participation in the construction of Malaysia are very clearly \n\n\n\npainted. The study demonstrates the ways in which the Malaysian nation-state evolves and \n\n\n\nhow the Chinese community has helped to shape present-day Malaysia into a progressive \n\n\n\ncountry where different ethnic groups live in harmony.\n\n\n\nWONG Tai Chee\n\n\n\nNanyang Technological University\n\n\n\nSingapore \n\n\n\n\n\n"
"\n\n\u00a9 New Era University College, 2023. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution\n(CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore:\nThe Case of C. K. Tang and the \n\n\n\nTangs Department Store\nYing-Kit Chan*\n\n\n\nTo cite this article: Ying-Kit Chan (2023). Doing Business as a Christian in Singapore: The Case \nof C. K. Tang and the Tangs Department Store. Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies 12(1): 5\u201322. \nhttp://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0002\nTo link to this article: http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202306_12(1).0002\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies, 2023, 12(1): 5\u201322\n\n\n\nAbstract\n\n\n\n Drawing on oral history interviews conducted by the National Archives of Singapore, this \narticle examines the life of Tang Choon Keng (1902\u20132000), colloquially known as C. K. Tang, \nan ethnic Chinese Singaporean entrepreneur who founded Tangs department store in Singapore. \nAs the first major retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in what is now \nthe premier retail district of Orchard Road, Tangs is historically significant for helping shape and \nfashion Singapore into a shopping paradise for domestic consumption and tourist promotion. While \nC. K. Tang\u2019s life was typical of Chinese entrepreneurs of his time, being marked by a long period of \nhardship and struggle against adversity prior to eventual success in business, he belonged to a small \ngroup of Chinese Christian businessmen in Singapore who attributed his triumph not to Chinese \nor Confucian roots but to his Christian upbringing in his hometown Shantou (Swatow) in south-\neastern China. In the context of Singapore\u2019s secular and highly calibrated economic modernity, \nC. K. Tang\u2019s overt account of how the Christian faith had positively influenced his business life is \nintriguing. However, at least initially, he operated Tangs as a family business, following the model \nof familism, which scholars have conventionally ascribed to \u201cChinese\u201d commercial enterprises. \nThis article thus suggests the inadequacies and blind spots of viewing Chinese businesses through \nonly the lens of culture, ethnicity and language and of assuming a shared \u201cChinese\u201d culture and \nethnicity between the Chinese in mainland China and those in Southeast Asia. \n\n\n\n Keywords: C. K. Tang, Chinese businesses, Christianity, ethnicity, familism\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\n The topics of Chinese business, capitalism and trade have long fascinated scholars. For \ncenturies in Southeast Asia, Chinese merchants have acted as intermediaries between local rulers \nand other foreign counterparts. Freed from the orthodox Confucian view in China that they should \nbe at the bottom of the socio-political scale, Chinese traders have acquired high social status, if not \npolitical power, by collaborating not only with indigenous kings and sultans but also, at a later stage, \nwith Western colonial bureaucracies and mercantile networks. Trapped between a home empire \nthat criminalized overseas trade and host societies that did not always welcome their supposedly \nparasitic presence, Chinese merchants sojourned in the port cities and cleared hinterlands of \nSoutheast Asia, struggling against local discrimination and colonial regimes of control without \nthe backing of metropolitan governments, as was the case in Europe (Wang, 1990). The process of \ndecolonisation in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted in Chinese businesses, many of \nwhich were managed by and within families, shifting their allegiances to newly independent nation-\nstates, all the while maintaining their connections with global capitalism. Although their freedoms \nand civil liberties continued to be curtailed in some Southeast Asian countries, Chinese merchants \nremained a vital and useful economic force that helped develop domestic economies and plug them \ninto the American-led capitalist world. The rise of China as a great power since the late twentieth \ncentury has presented both opportunities and challenges to Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia, \nand scholarly research on their practices and management styles has gained renewed interest in \nrecent years (e.g. Suryadinata, 2006; Stangio, 2020).\n The stellar growth of Asia-Pacific economies since the late twentieth century has led some \nscholars to credit Confucianism as the impetus for Chinese businesses and entrepreneurs to excel in \nthe region. As one of them remarked, \u201cThe almost perfect correlation between Chinese heritage and \neconomic success could hardly be due to chance\u201d (Hicks & Redding, 1983: 22). For them, the \u201cspirit \nof Chinese capitalism\u201d, reminiscent of the Protestant ethic in Europe, suggests a strong link between \nConfucian values and Chinese overseas businesses. However, during the late 1990s, when Southeast \nAsia threatened to trigger a global financial crisis due to endemic crony capitalism and distorted \nlender-borrower relationships, observers called out Confucianism as the culprit behind the downfall \nof Chinese entrepreneurship, giving rise to the debate on whether so-called traditional values are \na boon or a bane for modern Chinese societies (Lee, C. Y., 2003). Other scholars have hinted at \nChinese exceptionalism, drawing sharp distinctions between \u201cChinese\u201d collectivism, familism and \nreligiosity and \u201cWestern\u201d individualism, rationality, and secularism. Accordingly, Western business \nexpatriates in China, and those dealing with Chinese firms in general, have to accept that formal \ncontracts are no guarantee for implementing an agreement and that \u201cunprofessional\u201d affection-\n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n7\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nbased trust (xinyong in Chinese) and personal connections (guanxi) networks often take precedence \nover strict calculation of economic costs and benefits (Dahles, 2007). While the input of culture and \nhistory in the formation and operation of Chinese businesses (i.e. those set up and managed by self-\nprofessed Chinese who identify with the culture, traditions and values that they see as \u201cChinese\u201d) is \nundeniable, the existing literature tends to generalise business conduct and practices and predetermine \nthe nature of such businesses as being cultural and ethnic, accounting little for their variegated forms \nand the personal intentions that drive them (Yen, 2013). The notion that Chinese businesses are \ntraditionally Confucian and can be culturally and ethnically characterised in name, if not in practice, \nis heuristically interesting but empirically lacking. It has led to teleological explanations of the East \nAsian economic miracle \u2013 a miracle because the \u201ctiger economies\u201d of Hong Kong, Singapore, South \nKorea and Taiwan did not subscribe entirely to the Western ideals of democratic modernity and \nlaissez-faire economics and were not expected to succeed \u2013 reducing the complex process of Chinese \ncapitalism to an assemblage of cultural understandings and ethnic categories that is simplistically \ndefined as Chinese or Confucian. Culturalist arguments, as used by scholars who study the Confucian \nview of Chinese businesses, also create a false image of the ethnic Chinese as \u201cothers\u201d opposed to the \nindigenous communities of Southeast Asia, amplifying ethnically based nationalistic discourses that \njustify the marginalisation of those who are labelled as \u201cChinese\u201d in the census and forcing second- \nand third-generation Chinese entrepreneurs to deemphasise their ethnic background in rationalising \ntheir business conduct (Koning & Verver, 2013).\n In contrast, many first-generation Chinese entrepreneurs were proud of their achievements and \nmore willing to share their experiences through autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories. The \ngrowing interest in Chinese entrepreneurial history, especially in predominantly Chinese Singapore \nwhere Chinese businessmen were more respected than disdained, has sparked a considerable \nnumber of biographies on eminent Chinese businessmen and the cultural values to which they had \nsubscribed for their success. These biographies or recollections offer insights into their networks, \nprinciples, and modes of thinking and illuminate Chinese business history as a whole (Koh, \n2019; Chan, 2020). Drawing on oral history interviews conducted by the National Archives of \nSingapore, this article examines the life of one such entrepreneur. Tang Choon Keng (1902\u20132000), \ncolloquially known as C. K. Tang, was an ethnic Chinese Singaporean entrepreneur who founded \nTangs department store in Singapore. As the first major retail establishment offering a wide range \nof consumer goods in what is now the premier retail district of Orchard Road, Tangs is historically \nsignificant for helping shape and fashion Singapore into a shopping paradise for domestic \nconsumption and tourist promotion. While C. K. Tang\u2019s life was typical of Chinese entrepreneurs of \nhis time, being marked by a long period of hardship and struggle against adversity prior to eventual \nsuccess in business, he belonged to a small group of Chinese Christian businessmen in Singapore \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nwho attributed his triumph not to Chinese or Confucian roots but to his Christian upbringing in his \nhometown Shantou (Swatow) in south-eastern China. In the context of Singapore\u2019s secular and \nhighly calibrated economic modernity, C. K. Tang\u2019s overt account of how the Christian faith had \npositively influenced his business life is intriguing. However, at least initially, he operated Tangs as \na family business, following the model of familism, which scholars have conventionally ascribed \nto \u201cChinese\u201d commercial enterprises. This article thus suggests the inadequacies and blind spots \nof viewing Chinese businesses through only the lens of culture, ethnicity, and language and of \nassuming a shared \u201cChinese\u201d culture and ethnicity between the Chinese in mainland China and \nthose in Southeast Asia \u2013 the Chinese have not been a homogeneous category (Hoon & Chan, 2021). \nConfucian precepts and principles did not always take hold in ethnic Chinese businesses, and C. \nK. Tang went against the grain not only by crediting his achievements to his understanding of what \nit means to be a good Christian but also by embracing Christian traits to manage his department \nstore. More importantly, C. K. Tang\u2019s life and entrepreneurial success reflect the early history of \nOrchard Road and reveal how a site of cemeteries, fruit orchards and nutmeg plantations defied \nexpectations to become the upscale shopping district of internationally renowned cafes, restaurants, \nand department stores that it is today.\n This article comprises five main sections. Beginning with a sketch of how the culturalist-\nversus-institutionalist debate on Chinese business success has failed to consider the significant role \nof Christianity in pioneering Chinese businesses in Singapore, the article proceeds to highlight the \ndefining moments of C. K. Tang\u2019s life as documented in the oral history interviews he gave to the \nNational Archives of Singapore as he neared retirement. On that basis, the third, fourth, and fifth \nsections offer portraits of C. K. Tang as a Christian, a Chinese, and a businessman respectively. The \nconclusion discusses how his effective merger of identities constructed the Tangs business empire \nand challenged the simplistic link between Chinese businesses and Confucian culture.\n A word is in order regarding the conceptual framework of this article. Although the article \nrevisits the somewhat tired debate about Confucian values and the Protestant ethic, it is not premised \non the binary logic that being Christian is not being Chinese; neither does it aim to demonstrate and \nprove such a logic. Although C. K. Tang, unlike most Teochew immigrants of his time, boarded with \na church and not with a dialect-based association when he first arrived in Singapore; enjoyed little \nconnection with the powerful Teochew business fraternity; and dared to defy conventional Chinese \ntaboos about cemeteries, he must not be seen as being \u201cun-Chinese\u201d \u2014 doing so would validate \nthe stereotypes of what constitutes Chineseness. Moreover, while C. K. Tang had not depended \non the mainstream Teochew business fraternity in Singapore, he sourced his goods from Shantou \nand had relatives back in his hometown to help manage his businesses there. Most probably, such \nconnections were more native-place than religious \u2014 he did not describe them as Christians and \nhad few positive words to say about them. In view of the limitations of relying on C. K. Tang\u2019s oral \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n9\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nhistory recording as a source \u2014 he had left no memoirs, and he did not mention the name of his \nchurches in Shantou and Singapore from which archival materials can be collected \u2014 and the risk of \ndiscriminating somewhat a priori between Chineseness and \u201cun-Chineseness,\u201d this article portrays \nC. K. Tang as a Christian, a Chinese, and a businessman, highlighting key moments of his life when \none identity appeared to take precedence over his other identities without obliterating the latter. \nLike any other person, C. K. Tang may be interpreted as a Christian, a Chinese, a businessman, \nand perhaps more, and the layering of these interpretations accumulates over time as a process of \nwhat historian Prasenjit Duara has called \u201csuperscription\u201d (Duara, 1988). In terms of ordering C. \nK. Tang\u2019s multiple identities, superscription creates not a hegemonic discourse. Rather, it produces \nthe means by which scholars can draw upon an event or person to present their argument without \nundermining the validity of other interpretations. If anything, the case of C. K. Tang demonstrates \nwhy the idea of Chineseness remains attractive among scholars of (diasporic) Chinese histories \u2014 \nits explanatory power can be deployed to suggest a critical intersection of concepts, interpretations, \nand theories as well as a multitude of meanings discursively subsumed under its own analytical \ncategory. Insofar as Chineseness has become an object of analysis in itself (Hoon & Chan, 2021), this \narticle examines Chineseness in the way C. K. Tang perceived it, as an assemblage of phenomena \nand practices. In his own geospatial imagination, C. K. Tang sought \u201coriginal\u201d Chineseness in \nBeijing\u2019s Forbidden City, where he searched for building materials for his \u201cChinese-style\u201d Tangs \ndepartment store. Rather than unpack the ethno-racial analytical category that is Chineseness, the \narticle focuses on how C. K. Tang adapted his Christianity to his Chineseness and vice versa as well \nas how his various identities inadvertently authenticated and reinforced one another in his life and \nbusiness practices.\n\n\n\nThe Culturalist-Institutionalist Debate and \nChristianity\u2019s Role in Singapore\u2019s Chinese Businesses\n\n\n\n Founded in 1819 by the British as a trading outpost, Singapore depended on entrepot trade for \nits key source of income in its early decades of development. Chinese merchants from the Straits \nSettlements of Malacca and Penang played the role of middlemen for Singapore\u2019s colonial economy, \nhelping to distribute Western manufactured goods among the native population and gather products \nin British Malaya for export to global markets (Yen, 2013). Some of them also invested in commercial \nplantations and fruit orchards, dealing in commercial crops such as gambier, pepper, rubber, sugar \nand tapioca. Others were involved in banking, manufacturing, revenue farming and tin mining. In \n1959, Singapore achieved self-rule under the premiership of Lee Kuan Yew (1923\u20132015), and it \neventually gained independence in 1965. One of the key thrusts of his People\u2019s Action Party (PAP) \ngovernment was to industrialise Singapore to create employment and modernise its economy. In \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nthe process, ethnic Chinese businesses came to control the textiles, light industry, and manufactured \nfood sectors. In commerce, they dominated hawking, hotels, shophouses and restaurants. They also \nhad the lion\u2019s share of land and coastal transport. Furthermore, almost all major banks in Singapore \nwere Chinese enterprises (Yen, 2013). However, despite their substantial market share in all key \nindustries of the Singaporean economy, Chinese businesses also faced considerable challenges. As \nthe PAP government implemented the strategy of export-driven industrialisation to lift Singapore\u2019s \neconomic performance, its leaders looked to foreign multinational corporations for investments. \nWith their global capital and ready markets, the foreign conglomerates, most of which were \nAmerican, European, and Japanese, held a competitive edge over Chinese companies in Singapore. \nThe PAP government also participated directly in the economy, founding wholly or partially owned \ncorporations that inadvertently competed with domestic Chinese businesses through patronage and \nreputation. That said, ethnic Chinese businesses managed to thrive under PAP rule, and compared \nto their counterparts in Southeast Asia, they did not encounter a hostile government with restrictive \npolicies\u2014a situation that still holds true today (Yen, 2013).\n Ethnic Chinese businesses in Singapore were not homogenous; each possessed its own size, \nmanagement style and area of operations. Depending on their respective cultural traits, the businesses \nmay be classified into three broad, non-exclusive categories. The more culturally oriented group, \nbelonging to the first and second generations of immigrants from mainland China, was conservative \nand traditional. The second group enjoyed a long history and evolved into business conglomerates, \nsuch as the major banking corporations; socially, they dominated the Singapore Chinese Chamber of \nCommerce and Industry (SCCCI), clan associations and alumni bodies of formerly Chinese-medium \nschools. The third group was less culturally oriented and did not rely on family lineage or patronage, \nconstituting an emerging group of technopreneurs whom the PAP government was anxious to nurture. \nDue to their heterogeneous nature, ethnic Chinese businesses in Singapore displayed three distinct \ntypes of management practices. Traditional Chinese family businesses depended on family lineage \nin terms of control and ownership. In contrast, the somewhat more professional approach to business \ndisplayed a high degree of formalisation, with structured organisations and operations. Between these \ntwo approaches lay the middle way, which involved recruiting professionals from outside the family \nto operate the business and adopting group decisions made by both family and non-family members \nat the top management level (Ng, 2006). The rise of China as a great power in the 1990s transformed \nhow Chinese businesses operated in Singapore and abroad. As the PAP government hoped to tap into \nSingapore\u2019s perceived cultural and ethnic affinity with China and promote itself as a gateway between \nChina and the West, domestic Chinese businesses were encouraged to invest in China and serve as a \nvanguard for Singapore\u2019s economic expansion into Chinese markets (Ng, 2006). The heterogeneity \nof Chinese businesses was revealed again, as not all of them responded to the call and some appeared \nless interested in setting up branches or factories in China.\n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n11\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\n Recent studies have moved beyond affirming the heterogeneity of ethnic Chinese business and \nhave cautioned against cultural determinism or culturalist explanations of the nature of Chinese \nbusinesses, which tend to ascribe to them generalised cultural traits that are broadly associated \nwith their perceived ethnicity. The existing literature has established that major Chinese businesses \nin Singapore shifted from being family ruled and managed to becoming professionally managed \nfamily-ruled businesses prior to the 1997 Asian currency crisis. Since the crisis, however, \nChinese businesses in sectors under the watch of Singapore\u2019s developmental state, which faced \nrising competition from Western corporations and lacked competent and interested offspring, \nhave loosened family rule. In contrast, businesses in sectors that were free from the state\u2019s direct \nintervention, that sought survival in negative market situations and that produced capable and \ntrusted scions maintained family rule. While Chinese conglomerates in Singapore have depended \non professionally trained managers to run their operations since the 1970s to meet the challenges of \ngreater integration of the national economy into regional and global economic systems, culturalist \nscholars attribute the lingering persistence of family control and management to Confucian values. \nInstitutionalists of Asian capitalism, on the other hand, emphasise the institutional foundations \nof business and management, which include family structure, authority relations, communal \nnetworks and the inheritance system. Institutional theorists reject the argument that culture is static, \nrecognising instead that institutions and the cultural norms that they embrace can change in the \nface of economic challenges and technological advances. These challenges include the Monetary \nAuthority of Singapore\u2019s (MAS) mandate that local banks establish nominating committees for \ntop-management positions and obtain approval for personnel selection; Lee Kuan Yew warned that \nfamily-controlled banks were \u201cgoing downhill\u201d without foreign talent and competition (Tsui-Auch, \n2004). However, even legal stipulations and the scions\u2019 overseas exposure to Western culture and \neducation did not seem to institutionalise the personalism in employment and business matters, \nthereby giving rise to the hybrid model combining both family rule and professional management \nthat characterises most Chinese businesses in Singapore today. Tangs department store would \nfollow a similar trajectory in its business practices and management style.\n To be sure, \u201cculturalist\u201d is a broad term that could well include elements of Christian culture, \nwhether Weberian or otherwise. In fact, the Confucian view of Chinese businesses is not necessarily \nin contradistinction to the Christian ethos, and the apparent similarities between Confucian values \nand Protestant or, more broadly, Christian ethics in motivating business activities have led social \nscientists to apply German sociologist Max Weber\u2019s (1864\u20131920) famously provocative thesis \nconcerning the congruence of Protestantism and the spirit of a market economy to ethnic Chinese \nbusinesses in China and Southeast Asia (Tong, 2012). The political turmoil of twentieth-century \nChina had liberated Chinese immigrants to North America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere from \npre-existing cultural traditions, allowing them to seek \u201calternate meaning systems\u201d and convert to \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n12\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nevangelical Christianity (Yang, 1998). Many ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs outside China claimed \nto have embraced Christian values in achieving success, generating scholarly debates on whether \nChristianity is truly compatible with Chineseness or merely deployed as a convenient label to \nrationalise business conduct (Koning, 2007; Hoon, 2013). Informed by writings of twentieth-century \nChinese intellectuals who were hostile to Christianity, social scientists have assumed that most \nChinese people associated Christianity with foreign imperialism and viewed it with suspicion, let \nalone adopted it as a faith. Other scholars have suggested, on the contrary, that Chinese Christians, \nboth within and especially outside China, had integrated Confucianism into their faith and sought \nto revitalise Confucianism through Christianity. For many Chinese Christians, Confucian morality \nwas compatible with conservative evangelical Christianity, and both Christianity and Confucianism \nhelped offer solutions to the challenges of the modern secular world (Yang, 1999).\n Despite a growing awareness of the multifaceted ethnic Chinese business community across \nthe globe, Christianity has not factored significantly in studies of pioneering Chinese businesses in \nSingapore. In terms of networking, organisation and business principles, the role of Christianity has \noverlaid with Confucian elements, as evidenced by the success and life stories of Chinese Christian \nbusinessmen in Singapore such as Ng Teng Fong (1928\u20132010), Thio Gim Hock (1938\u20132020) and \nTan Chin Tuan (1908\u20132005). Ng Teng Fong was one of the wealthiest men in Singapore, and Far East \nOrganization, his company in Singapore, has continued to be among the largest private real estate \ndevelopers in the country. They might have left few writings that record their business practices \nand Christian faith, but Ng was buried in a Christian cemetery (The Straits Times, 2010), while \nhis philanthropy was reportedly predicated upon his deeply held Christian beliefs (Chew, 2016). \nPublicly declared by his son Philip Ng to be a \u201cChristian Enterprise,\u201d Far East Organization seeks \nto \u201cembrace the eternal truths of God\u2019s Word\u201d and \u201capply these truths to our business as these are \nwords of life, and business is, after all, a part of life itself\u201d (Far East Organization). Integrating the \nlate Ng Teng Fong\u2019s Christian identity to its brand, Far East Organization has gifted purpose-built \nspaces at its developments for community use, and its most notable act of philanthropy was donating \nto Jurong General Hospital and renaming it Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, which became fully \noperational in 2015 (Sing, 2016). As for Thio Gim Hock, another real estate tycoon who had helmed \nproperty developer Overseas Union Enterprise (OUE), he was actively involved in reclaiming land \nfor the Port of Singapore and developing the waterfront of the Central Business District (The Straits \nTimes, 2020). While he had also not left autobiographies or memoirs, Thio Gim Hock gave an \ninterview to founders of the Christian-affiliated Salt & Light website, in which he attributed his \ncareer success to God: \u201cAll the developments were very successful because God\u2019s hand was in it. I \nbegan to learn how to pray for God\u2019s help in whatever I did\u201d (Tan, 2020: 80). Having helped OUE \nand other real estate companies navigate and survive the treacherous currents of the 1997 Asian \nFinancial Crisis and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Thio Gim Hock claimed to have sought \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n13\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nguidance from God and was reminded of a project he had overseen in London, where city living \nwas popular. He thus began working on the very first residential project in the Central Business \nDistrict of Singapore \u2014 The Sail, a waterfront lifestyle condominium on the prime estate of Marina \nBay. \u201cWisdom from above,\u201d he revealed, also inspired him to move Mandarin Hotel\u2019s lobby to \nthe fifth floor and turn the first four floors into retail space, creating SGD 550 million in value for \nOUE; he also demolished a multi-storey carpark to make space for OUE Bayfront, which became \nthe company headquarters. \u201cGod gave the ideas\u2014new ideas, new designs, the way to layout, the \npricing\u2026they were all from God. As you serve God, God gives you these ideas. Sometimes you \nthink it\u2019s your own idea but when you reflect back, you know it is Him\u201d (Tan, 2020: 84). Unlike \nNg Teng Fong and the Ng family, Thio Gim Hock did not incorporate his Christian faith into his \nbusiness enterprise, choosing to view God\u2019s workings as personal epiphanies that nonetheless had \ncorporate implications. Born a Christian but committed to the religion only later in life, he had no \nqualms with being successful and making money in the secular marketplace: \u201cI like to make a lot \nof money because then I can afford to give it away\u201d (Tai, 2019).\n The issue of multiple identities that a Chinese Christian businessman could embrace is also \nevident by the example of Tan Chin Tuan, \u201ca quiet achiever\u201d not only in the banking business but \nalso in politics and civil service (Macbeth, 2003). Having started his career working at one of the \nbanks that would merge with two others to form the Oversea\u2013Chinese Banking Corporation (later \nrenamed Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation) in 1932, Tan Chin Tuan rose through the ranks \nto become its managing director (1942\u20131972) and chairman (1966\u20131983) (Lee, S. Y., 2006). His \ncorporate success brought him into public service, and he had served as the highest-ranking non-\nEuropean government official and & spokesperson for Chinese economic interests at the colonial-\nera Legislative Council (Lee, S. Y., 2011). In both his corporate and public careers, he made no \nmention of his Christian faith, even though he had donated generously to Christian-mission schools. \nFor him, then, his Christian faith appeared to be a private affair, even more so than that of Thio \nGim Hock. In fact, his personal beliefs seemed more Confucian than Christian, even though he \nprofessed to adopt the Christian faith. Representing his Chinese community, he also sought \u201cnot \nto do to others what he does not like others to do to him\u201d \u2014 a Confucian maxim. And unlike Ng \nTeng Fong and Thio Gim Hock, who profited from Singapore\u2019s construction boom, rapid economic \ngrowth, and rising land and property prices after independence, Tan Chin Tuan had already made \nhis mark during the colonial period. The heterogeneity of Chinese Christian businessmen was thus \nno less pronounced than that of their Confucian-minded counterparts as suggested in the current \nliterature (ISEAS Library).\n Given the diversity of birthplaces (Ng Teng Fong was born in Putian, Fujian Province while \nThio Gim Hock and Tan Chin Tuan were born in colonial Singapore), methods of commitment \nand private and public experiences, discerning a particular mode of Chinese Christian business \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n14\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\napplicable to the Singaporean context might not be possible, as is the case when trying to identify a \n\u201cConfucian way\u201d of business conduct. In fact, the same could be said about any attempt to determine \na religious mode of Chinese business (Hue, Tang & Choo, 2022). Nevertheless, the aforementioned \nChinese Christian businessmen shared the concern of reconciling their Christian faith with their \ncorporate career and public profile, choosing to either write it into their enterprise statement (Ng \nTeng Fong) or maintain it within their private domain, preaching and spreading the gospel in their \npersonal rather than corporate capacity (Thio Gim Hock and Tan Chin Tuan). Set in such a wide \ncontext of Chinese Christian businesses in Singapore, this article explores the overlapping and non-\nexclusive identities of C. K. Tang as a Christian, Chinese, and businessman, focusing on how he \nmerged them in practicing his Christian faith and growing his secular business.\n\n\n\nHumble Beginnings\n\n\n\n Born in Jieyang in south-eastern Guangdong Province in 1902, C. K. Tang grew up during \nthe Qing dynasty (1644\u20131912), which survived the Boxer Rebellion (1899\u20131901) but was fatally \nweakened by years of conflict and war. His father was a Presbyterian missionary who moved the \nfamily to Shantou (Swatow) three years after C. K. Tang\u2019s birth. Coming from humble origins, C. \nK. Tang was born in a church. His father spent almost all his income on the family\u2019s expenses, and \nhis mother helped out by doing drawn work. The influence of his father and the Protestant mission \ndepended on the educational level of those who happened to pick up and read the religious tracts \nfor themselves, many of whom were, at best, semi-literate. C. K. Tang\u2019s father was one of many \nlocally converted, itinerant Presbyterian missionaries who travelled from county to county to preach to \nsemi-literate commoners and illiterate peasants. Through an extensive marketplace and book-trading \nnetworks, some religious tracts found their way into the hands of semi-literate religious specialists \nand sectarian leaders, a group distinct from the Presbyterian missionaries. In remote areas far from \nthe mission headquarters in Shantou, where C. K. Tang spent his formative years, local readers could \ninterpret the Christian message according to their own needs. In view of this problem, Presbyterian \nmissionaries reckoned that the distribution of Christian tracts ought to be supplemented by itinerant \nevangelisation. This was the setting in which C. K. Tang grew up (Lee, J. T. H., 2003).\n Although the Presbyterian mission included building schools to promote literacy, C. K. Tang \nreceived little formal education. He attended nursery and primary school in the church where he was \nborn. He studied Confucian classics, such as the Three Character Classic, but did not understand \nthem. As he recalled in old age, he could barely remember what he had read and detested rote \nlearning and teaching. According to him, the tutors were barely qualified, and few of them had \never sat for the civil service examinations (Tang, 1982a). In his teens, C. K. Tang decided to stop \nschooling and entered into business. In Shantou, which constituted a key city for emigration to \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n15\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nSoutheast Asia, C. K. Tang observed that many people went to Singapore, where some made their \nfortune and returned in style. He shared his idea of emigrating to Singapore, which his parents \nsupported. He had been advised by the British pastors in his church that the British \u201cliked those \nwho sold their wares as a means of living to be honest and not to cheat anybody\u201d; he would bear \nthis in mind when conducting his business in Singapore, as we shall see (Tang, 1982a: 9\u201310). \nWhen he was 21 years old, he packed drawn work in an iron trunk and leather suitcase and left for \nSingapore, where he sold his wares at prices that yielded only small profits. In Singapore, he stayed \nat a church and learned Malay, the lingua franca of trade in the colony. Unlike most of his fellow \nTeochew sojourners, he did not turn to dialect-based clan associations for help. Neither was he well \nconnected to other Teochew merchants, let alone the powerful ones, in Singapore (Tang, 1982a).\n\n\n\nC. K. Tang as a Chinese\n\n\n\n Despite his \u201cdisconnection\u201d from the Teochew community, C. K. Tang was able to leverage \non his Chinese identity in promoting and selling his wares. Like many sinkeh (newly arrived \nimmigrants), C. K. Tang was frugal and diligent. To save up, he subsisted on \u201crickshaw porridge\u201d, \nor porridge cooked with sweet potatoes. The church provided him with lodging and little else, and \nhe had to cultivate his own network of suppliers and loyal customers. When asked why he was more \nsuccessful than other Teochew merchants in selling his goods, C. K. Tang cited that he had endured \nmore hardship and was willing to stay in one place, patiently attending to a stable customer base for \nseveral years. He peddled handmade embroidery and lace door to door, hiring a rickshaw to carry \nhis items. For those who were unable to pay upfront, he worked on the principle of trust and allowed \nhis customers to sign IOUs and buy from him on credit. He procured most of his products from \nShantou, remitting money through the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC). To gain \nthe confidence of OCBC and other banks, he stopped being an itinerant hawker and set up a shop on \nRiver Valley Road, along which many Westerners resided. Subsequently, he constructed a building \nat the intersection of River Valley Road and Jalan Mohamad Sultan, calling it the Gainurn Building, \nwhich was a variation of his father\u2019s name, Tang Gan Urn. The store proved to be a success. Most \nof his customers were Westerners, and the number of people who came was \u201coverwhelming\u201d; he \nwas the only Chinese peddler selling goods from China to Western customers in his neighbourhood, \nattaining a de facto monopoly of his trade there (Tang, 1982a). His business philosophy in retail \nsales was to gain the trust of his customers through honesty and reasonable prices and, by selling \nonly Chinese goods, to avoid direct competition with major establishments such as Robinsons and \nJohn Little, which were managed by Westerners and sold Western products. Few locals counted \nas his customers; it was only later, when he founded Tangs at Orchard Road, that he received \nmore local customers. Most of his customers prior to the Japanese occupation (1942\u20131945) were \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n16\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nsalaried employees living in bungalows on the outskirts of town \u2013 River Valley Road was near \nOrchard Road and shared a similar demographic profile. That said, he did face some competition \nfrom traders selling Chinese goods on High Street. On the eve of the Japanese invasion, despite \nthe danger of being misidentified as a well-off Chinese merchant who had supported China\u2019s war \neffort against Japan, he chose to remain in Singapore with his shop, which was closed throughout \nthe Japanese occupation (Tang, 1982).\n During the occupation, the Japanese requisitioned C. K. Tang\u2019s shop for a short while before \nreturning it to him. He turned to selling only bath towels and face towels due to the lack of supplies \nfrom war-torn China. However, the Japanese occupation also presented opportunities. As land and \nproperty became extremely cheap, C. K. Tang bought several plots in Singapore, including one on \nOrchard Road that would become the site of Tangs department store. The Orchard site lay opposite \na cemetery, but Chinese superstition did not deter C. K. Tang from buying it. He considered Orchard \nthe centre of Singapore. The plot belonged to a Jew who, along with many other Jews in Singapore, \nclosed down all their businesses and settled in newly independent Israel after the Second World \nWar. C. K. Tang wanted to build a store that would be instinctively Chinese so as to expand on \nhis image of being Chinese and retain his Western clientele. He visited Beijing for architectural \ninspiration and hired Teochew craftsmen who knew how to construct Chinese-style buildings. He \nbought roof tiles from Malacca, which gave Tangs department store its distinctive, green-tiled roof \nmodelled after the Forbidden City in Beijing. He saw potential in the Orchard area, which was \nlocated near the Tanglin area where British housewives \u2013 a key group of his customers \u2013 resided. \nFor him, Tangs \u201chad to be a Chinese building selling Chinese goods, from the upturned pagoda \neaves to red colonnades and stone lions guarding the store front\u201d (The Straits Times, 1982, 22 May). \nMost of his associates were bemused and thought it a capricious folly because not only was Tangs \nsituated near a cemetery but also the proliferation of retail stores was then in Raffles Place (where \nthe old Robinsons was) and High Street. As it turned out, C. K. Tang\u2019s regular customers from River \nValley Road remained loyal and shopped at Tangs, which opened in 1958 and became the first retail \npresence at Orchard Road. By the 1960s, C. K. Tang had become the undisputed \u201cCurio King\u201d of \nSingapore, and Tangs became a favourite spot for locals and tourists alike seeking \u201coriental curios, \nivories, embroideries, camphor wood chests, porcelain, and a hundred and one other souvenirs\u201d \n(The Straits Times, 1982, 22 May). \n\n\n\nC. K. Tang as a Christian\n\n\n\n No evidence suggests that C. K. Tang had ever read Max Weber\u2019s classic and yet controversial \nThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which was first published in 1905 and later \nrevised in 1920. Nevertheless, his early exposure to the Presbyterian mission back home in Shantou \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n17\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nhad helped develop in him a business ethos that was akin to Protestant ethics. Like the Protestant \nbusinessmen in Weber\u2019s description, C. K. Tang identified material success as a tangible and \nconvenient proof of salvation and inner worth (Tong, 2012). He also believed that endless labour \ncould glorify God. He created a work ethic for himself, one that emphasised diligence, thrift, and \ndelayed gratification. Due to his belief, motivated by his concern for eternal salvation, he offered \nlow prices and quality services. His practices ended up delivering financial benefits, and he acquired \nloyal customers as his business grew, most of whom were Westerners sharing his Christian faith \nand might have felt even more predisposed to buying from him. Interestingly, however, he chose \nto highlight his own personal traits rather than his faith in explaining his success with Western \ncustomers. He kept his tin box by his side and continued to lead a frugal lifestyle, endeavouring \nto live a disciplined life that demonstrated a methodical character of worldly asceticism with the \nprimary intent of glorifying God (Tong, 2012). Whenever he sensed an opportunity, he would \nbuy land and property as a means of investment. This went in line with his Christian faith, which \ncautioned against wasting earnings on self-indulgence and encouraged its adherents to reinvest \nprofits to attain greater profits to be even more worthy of God\u2019s grace and love. For him, work was \nnot only a means of livelihood but also a spiritual tool, and the pursuit of personal wealth was more \na duty than an advantage. That said, the role played by his Christian faith in his successful business \nmodel should not be exaggerated. The high demand for cheap and exotic Chinese goods among the \nBritish expatriates in colonial Singapore, the low land and property prices during and shortly after \nthe Japanese Occupation, and the continued presence of British business and military personnel \nin Singapore well into the 1970s provided C. K. Tang with favourable structural conditions for \ngrowing his business, on which, to his credit, he had been able to capitalise, thanks to his acumen \nand foresight.\n In 1982, Tangs, then known as the C. K. Tang Building, was demolished to make space for a \nsuper-sized complex with magnified signature Chinese green roofs. It was renamed Tang Plaza and \ncomprised the podium floors of a new Dynasty Hotel (now Marriott Hotel) (Hee, 2005). A unique \nfeature of Tangs was that it was closed on Sundays despite stiff competition with other malls at \nOrchard Road. C. K. Tang admitted that the closure on Sundays might cause him losses, but he \ntold himself that he \u201ccould not possibly earn all the money in the world.\u201d A devout Christian who \nattended church every Sunday, C. K. Tang believed that his bold move could set a precedent and \nencourage his Christian employees, albeit indirectly, to attend the Sunday gospel service at their \nown churches. He foresaw that his customers would visit Tangs on Saturdays or Mondays instead. \nA prudent person, he was also reluctant to pay his employees double on Sundays. In the end, he \nwas spot on \u2014 business at Tangs was best on Saturdays, and the savings he made on wages offset \nthe losses he incurred on Sundays (Tang, 1982b). Arguably, he could have done more to promote \nthe Christian faith at Tangs, such as establishing his own gospel service for employees, assuming \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n18\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nthe role of preacher, and setting up moral training dormitories and schools for his staff after office \nhours (Austin, 2011). However, in the context of Singapore\u2019s highly racialised politics, which \ncategorically associated the nation\u2019s official races with their prescribed religions, such actions could \noffend political sensibilities and invite undue suspicion from state authorities.\n When asked in his twilight years about his formula for success, C. K. Tang revealed that it \nwas the \u201cdoctrines of the church\u201d and \u201cteachings of the Bible\u201d that guided him (Tang, 1982c: 48). \nInfluenced by his Presbyterian upbringing, he strove to be honest in all his dealings and never \ncheated his customers. Believing that the best value should be communicated honestly to his \ncustomers up front, he set fixed, reasonable prices, issued receipts, offered an exchange policy, \nand sourced quality merchandise worldwide \u2014 qualities that were generally lacking in traditional \nChinese sales practices (Austin, 2011). He followed the \u201cprinciples of [his] religion\u201d in conducting \nbusiness, taking pride in \u201cserving\u201d his customers (Tang, 1982c: 48). Rejecting the notion of luck, \nhe talked only about what God gave him: \u201cWe don\u2019t say we could do this or that we are lucky. It \nwas all what God give[s] us. We only say that was what God give[s] us\u201d (Tang, 1982c: 49). Having \nnever imagined the success he would achieve with Tangs, he felt that the fortune he made was \ngiven to him by God, not that he knew how to make money himself: \u201cIf you think that you yourself \nknew how to make this money, then you would become conceited\u201d (Tang, 1982c: 50). Sociologist \nJoy Kooi-Chin Tong (2012) has identified three types of business-faith integration in what she calls \n\u201cChristian-based companies\u201d: business as mission, business or mission, and mission in business. \nFor incorporating Christian values into corporate culture, Tangs was first and foremost a mission in \nbusiness; it did not seek to operate its business as a Christian mission or, at the other end, separate \nbusiness from religion.\n\n\n\nC. K. Tang as a Businessman\n\n\n\n Resisting the urge to retain the ownership of Tangs within his family, C. K. Tang registered \nTangs as a listed public company. In his own words, \u201cTangs could last longer as a public company.\u201d \nHe had owned several companies and shops in mainland China prior to his shift to Orchard Road, \nbut he lost them and incurred massive losses due to mismanagement by his kin back in Shantou: \n\u201c[For] public companies, if you buy their shares and find that this person didn\u2019t do a good job, then \nyou could sell all your shares and then you wouldn\u2019t have anything to do with the company at all\u201d \n(Tang, 1982b: 46). Following state regulations that imposed mandatory requirements on auditing \nand reporting to enhance the financial transparency of publicly listed companies along the British \nmodel, C. K. Tang and his family had to relinquish both operational management and corporate \nrule. While holding the majority of the shares to maintain a high degree of control, they recruited \noutsiders for management, and the structure of the rule was less hierarchical than had it been under \n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n19\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\ntheir full command. The principle of professional management and the recruitment of non-family \nmanagers became institutionalised, as endorsed by the state, multinational corporations and business \nschools (Tsui-Auch, 2004). For his sons to become \u201clegitimate\u201d professional managers, he sent \nthem abroad for further education. His eldest son went to Australia, while his second and third sons \nstudied business administration at U.S. universities (Tang, 1982c). His two youngest sons and one \nof his male nephews managed Tangs, and his eldest son oversaw the operations of Marriott Hotel, \nwhich developed a symbiotic relationship with Tangs because the tourists who stayed at the hotel \nwould shop at the mall. Despite C. K. Tang\u2019s Christian faith, he adopted ethics revealing a clear link \nto Confucian thinking, such as monogamy, filial piety, and respect for the elderly. Most tellingly, \nhis daughters were uninvolved in the business, even though Christianity encourages gender parity \n(Tang, 1982c).\n In 1987, C. K. Tang retired, handing the reins of corporate leadership to the second of his \nthree sons. In 1996, adding a twist to the tale, C. K. Tang\u2019s successor and his team of non-family \nprofessional managers decided to open Tangs for business on Sundays, reversing C. K. Tang\u2019s long-\nheld policy and thus, somewhat symbolically, completing the professionalisation of management \nset in motion years earlier.\n\n\n\nConclusion\n\n\n\n C. K. Tang and the Tangs department store he founded reveal sufficient deviations from the \nstandard business practices defined by a fixed sense of Chinese culture and ethnicity. Born and \nraised a devout Presbyterian, C. K. Tang governed his business according to Christian rather than \nConfucian precepts, of which he had acquired little and which he had deemed useless in his life. \nThe principles of honesty, thrift and trust, attributed by scholars and those who professed to possess \nthem to Confucianism, were identified by C. K. Tang himself as being Christian instead. C. K. \nTang chose to embrace \u201cChinese\u201d elements of architecture and culture in conducting his business \nand his private life. He was as diligent, thrifty and proud of being Chinese as any \u201cConfucian\u201d \nbusinessman, but his motives were deeply rooted in his Christian faith. Although the ethnic Chinese \nbusiness community, from the colonial to postcolonial periods, has been heterogeneous in terms \nof management and organisation, the case of C. K. Tang shows the limitations of culturalist and \ninstitutionalist explanations in addressing the full complexity of ethnic Chinese business practices. \nGoing against conventions and what was expected of him as a Chinese businessman, C. K. Tang \ntrusted his own instincts and relied on what he saw as the guiding principles of Christianity. He did \nnot depend on Teochew clan associations for assistance or connections and sold his wares to Western \nrather than Chinese customers. He chose to build a retail establishment on the site of a cemetery, \nwhich was considered taboo in Chinese culture, and thrived on attracting British housewives, who \n\n\n\nDoing Business as a Christian in Singapore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n20\n\n\n\nMalaysian Journal of Chinese Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, 2023\n\n\n\nappeared less bothered by the presence of graves. He closed for business on Sundays to attend church \nwith his family and defied common business sense to profit from the weekend crowd. At the same \ntime, however, C. K. Tang did not create an explicit Christian culture or identity for Tangs, which \nhad not hired a disproportionately high number of Christians or sold Christian paraphernalia on its \npremises. At his own initiative with little prodding from the state or external stimuli, he decided to \nlist Tangs as a public company to prevent the cronyism and nepotism that had caused the downfall \nof many family-run businesses during the 1997 Asian currency crisis. He foresaw the competition \nfrom multinational malls, adopting more \u201crational\u201d methods of management to remain competitive \nin the global marketplace. Most importantly, he adapted to various institutional requirements and \nlaid the foundation for a professionally managed mall, which helped develop Orchard Road from \nscratch and transformed it into a premier shopping district of choice for middle-class Singaporeans \nand foreign tourists alike.\n By being a Chinese peddling Chinese products to Western customers, C. K. Tang amassed a \nfortune with which he built Tangs, which retained its Chinese identity through architecture but grew \nto sell quality merchandise from around the world. His experiences as a Chinese, a Christian, and a \nbusinessman were an extension of his Christian identity fostered in his Shantou hometown. Having \nidentified as both a Chinese and a Christian, he did not see these parts of himself as distinct, showing \nthat not all Chinese businesses subscribed to or could be understood only from the lens of Confucian \nculture. Challenging the simplistic link between Chinese businesses and Confucian culture, the case \nof C. K. Tang adds to the study of Chinese Christian businesses in Singapore, which, given their \nwealth and influence on national development, warrants further exploration.\n\n\n\n* Dr. Ying-Kit Chan [\u9648\u82f1\u6770] is Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, National \n    University of Singapore. Email: chscyk@nus.edu.sg\n\n\n\nReferences\n\n\n\nAustin, D. A. (2011). \u201cKingdom-minded\u201d people: Christian identity and the contributions of \n Chinese business Christians. Brill.\nChan, Y.-K. (2020). Traversing the migrant corridor: Singapore\u2019s first ambassadors to Thailand, \n 1965\u20131990. 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Accession no. 000197, Reel/\n Disc 4, 47\u201350. National Archives of Singapore.\nThe Straits Times (1982, 22 May). The Tang Dynasty.\nThe Straits Times (2010, 7 February). Over 500 bid final farewell to Ng Teng Fong.\nThe Straits Times (2020, 8 April). Real estate tycoon and Olympian Thio Gim Hock dies aged 82. \n https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/real-estate-tycoon-and-olympian-thio-gim-hock-\n dies-aged-82. Accessed 31 May 2022.\nTong, J. K.-C. (2012). Overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in modern China: A case study \n of the influence of Christian ethics on business life. Anthem Press.\nTsui-Auch, L. S. (2004). The professionally managed family-ruled enterprise: Ethnic Chinese \n business in Singapore. Journal of Management Studies, 41(4), 693\u2013723.\nWang, G. (1990). Merchants without empire: The Hokkien sojourning communities. In James \n D. Tracy (Ed.), The rise of merchant empires: Long distance trade in the early modern world, \n 1350\u20131750 (pp. 400\u2013422). Cambridge University Press.\nYang, F. (1998). Chinese conversion to evangelical Christianity: The importance of social and \n cultural contexts. Sociology of Religion, 59(3), 237\u2013257.\nYang, F. (1999). Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, assimilation, and adhesive identities. \n Pennsylvania State University Press.\nYen, C.-H. (2013). Ethnic Chinese business in Asia: History, culture, and business enterprise. \n World Scientific.\n\n\n\nYing-Kit Chan\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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