Malaysia Facts
Area:    329,750 sq. km.
Capital:    Kuala Lumpur
Total Population:    20,933,000 (source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1998, est.)

Risk Assessment | Analytic Summary | References

Risk Assessment

There is little risk that ethnic Chinese in Malaysia will engage in rebellion. They are geographically dispersed, are organized only in conventional political parties, are not subject to government repression or discrimination, and are included in the ruling coalition.

Protest is unlikely to escalate beyond low levels. Ethnic Chinese will probably continue to rely on electoral politics – and the presence of Chinese in the ruling coalition – to protect their interests in the near future.

Analytic Summary

The Chinese are widely dispersed across Malaysia. There has been significant group migration among the country's regions due to compulsion by the state and the threat of or actual attacks by other communal groups. There are two distinct Chinese groups: the rural poor and the urban commercial sector, which is economically advantaged in relation to the majority Malay community.

Group members use a common language, Chinese, which distinguishes them from the majority Malay-speakers (LANG = 1). The Chinese follow different social customs than the dominant community and they are primarily Buddhists in comparison to the Malay Muslims (BELIEF = 3). Although there has been substantial intermixture, the Chinese are racially distinct from the majority group (RACE = 2).

Some Chinese have resided in the country for centuries while other group members immigrated to Malaysia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Tensions between the Chinese and Malay communities were exacerbated when Japan occupied the country during the Second World War. The Malays initially supported the Japanese against the British colonial administration. The Chinese, on the other hand, were mistreated by the Japanese and chose instead to join an armed resistance group, the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). Following Japan's defeat, ethnic violence ensued as the MPAJA tried to establish political control in the Malayan peninsula by undertaking violent actions against suspected Malay collaborators.

To offset the communist MPAJA, the British chose to favor the Malays. The rural poor Chinese supported the MPAJA and its successor organization, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), which was created in 1948 and soon after launched its insurgency (1948-1960). The rural Chinese became the victims of repressive government actions to counteract the MCP including a massive rural relocation program which clustered the Chinese in "New Villages" in the early 1950s. The urban Chinese, on the other hand, sought to protect their advantaged economic status by separating themselves from the MCP. In 1960, the government passed the Internal Security Act which granted arbitrary policing powers, and it has subsequently been used by the government to contain the activities of opponents to the regime.

In 1963, Chinese-majority Singapore was incorporated into the Malaysian federation but this arrangement was dissolved after two short years. More than eight hundred people were killed when tensions between the two communities erupted in violent riots in 1969. The following year the government instituted the New Economic Policy (NEP) which sought to redress Malay disadvantages through the provision of subsidies to Malay-owned businesses, job quotas, and requirements that non-Chinese personnel be included in large new ventures.

Some of the NEP's restrictions were reduced in 1997 as Malaysia sought to deal with the effects of the financial crisis that had spread across Southeast Asia and devastated countries such as Indonesia where widespread riots against the economically-dominant Chinese ensued. Foreign ownership was allowed in most sectors of the economy, excluding manufacturing. By this time, the country had also seen the emergence of a Malayan business elite community that could compete with the economically-dominant Chinese (ECDIS03 = 0).

The Chinese in Malaysia remain underrepresented in the political arena due to prevailing social practices by the dominant Malay majority and public policies are not adequate to offset these disadvantages (POLDIS03 = 3). Cultural restrictions against the group are primarily centered in the educational sector as in recent years the government has sought to integrate Chinese and Indian Tamil language schools with the dominant school system. The Chinese have actively lobbied against such efforts in order to protect their privately-funded schools that use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. The country's official language is Malay, and it is used as the medium of instruction in public schools.

Group interests are promoted by conventional political organizations such as the Democratic Action Party (DPA) which regularly contests elections against the National Front (NF). The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) is a part of the ruling NF coalition which is headed by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. The Chinese are a factionalized group but there has been no intragroup violence between rival organizations (COHESX9 = 3).

There has been no significant outbreak of violent hostilities between the Chinese and the Malays since the 1969 riots. However, in August and December of 2000, anti-Chinese demonstrations were held by the Malay community against a newly-formed Chinese organization that was advocating equal civil and political rights for group members. No intergroup conflict was recorded from 2001-2003.

Relations between the Chinese community and the government have remained harmonious, unlike the situation in neighboring Indonesia where there are many questions about potential government involvement in the 1998 anti-Chinese riots. A major reason has been Malaysia's ability to adjust and realign its economy in response to the financial crisis that spread across Asia.

Since the mid-1960s, the Chinese have persistently engaged in protest activities in support of group goals (PROT65X = 4). Recent protest has been limited to verbal opposition (PROT00-01 = 1, PROT02-03 = 0). There have not been any rebellious activities since the end of the MCA insurgency in 1960 (REB55X = 6, REB00-03 = 0).

References

Far Eastern Economic Review, 1990-93.

Gurr, Ted. R. and Barbara Harff (1994), Ethnic Conflict in World Politics, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Keesings Record of World Events, 1990-93.

Lim, Linda & Gosling, Peter, "Economic Growth and Ethnic Relations: The Chinese in Southeast Asia," Draft Paper, USIP, February 1993.

Lexis-Nexis news reports, 1990-2003.

Phase I, Minorities at Risk, overview compiled by Monty G. Marshall, 08/89.

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