Malaysian Chinese Community Research Articles

The Legacy of Malaysian Chinese Social Structure

The intrinsic nature of the Chinese community in Malaysia and its responses to “outsiders” can best be interpreted by Max Weber's ideas about the nature of a community in relation to ethnicity. Weber contends that ethnic or racial stereotypes are developed as a result of competition for, and successful monopolization of, economic and social power by groups at various levels of the society's opportunity structure. Such stereotypes can be accumulated through what Weber calls “direct understanding” (aktuelles versteheri) of social action. Weber contends that meaningful social interactions must be based on a common system of linguistic and non-linguistic symbols. When such a common system of symbols is absent or inadequately developed (as, for instance, with the heterogeneity of a typical pioneering Overseas Chinese community in the early days and the plural nature of Malaysia's present-day multi-racial society), meaningful interaction is hindered, hence limiting interpersonal and intergroup understanding. Such a situation tends to strengthen in-group solidarity and heighten ethnic and racial stereotype conceptions of other groups, thus causing the sanction of actions taken by the dominant groups, depriving the weaker ones of access to economic and political opportunities.

The Malayan Chinese Association and the Chinese community in Malaysia

The Malayan Chinese Association and the Chinese community in Malaysia

Nanyang University and the Dilemmas of Overseas Chinese Education

On December 9, 1963, Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in presenting a general policy statement of his government for the coming year to the Singapore Legislative Assembly, noted that in Singapore's Nanyang University “a situation is developing which if left unchecked will make it more a University of Yenan than of Nanyang,” and that “Indeed the problems of Nanyang can never be resolved until the political abuse the Communists make of it is exposed and stopped.” Lee's remarks, like his previous ones on the subject of Nanyang University, did not fail to touch on a raw nerve of the University's problems. But as in the past, the raising of the spectre of Yenan has tended to obscure the complex patterns of pride and prejudice and the dilemmas of educational policy confronting the Malaysian Chinese community and indeed the hua ch'iao (Overseas Chinese) of Southeast Asia generally, of which the University is but an expression. Nanyang University's problems today provide an index to the paradoxes and the conflicting appeals as a whole that stir the community whose interests it was originally designed to serve.