Malaysian Chinese Association sports a confident new look
Malaysian Chinese Association sports a confident new look
Dr. Heng Pek Koon examines the maturation of ethnic Chinese
politics in Malaysia.
Often dismissed as a dormant and largely irrelevant force in
Malaysian politics, the Malaysian Chinese Association, the most
senior and largest non-Malay party in the National Front
government, is showing signs of new life.
Vivid evidence of this resurgence was seen in its remarkable
performance in the April 1995 general elections where it scored
its largest ever gains, bagging 30 out of 36 contested
parliamentary seats. While it must be said that the shift in the
Chinese vote to the MCA represented Chinese endorsement of prime
minister Datuk Seri Mahathir Mohamad's successful growth-directed
and income-raising policies, it also reflected the comeback of
Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik.
On the eve of Dr. Ling's assumption as party head in 1986, the
party's reputation was at an all-time low. Datuk Lee San Choon's
retirement as party president in 1983 was followed by a 20-month-
long acrimonious struggle between deputy president Dr. Neo Yee
Pan and challenger Tan Koon Swan. The party was plunged into an
even deeper crisis when Tan, a week after becoming party chief,
was arrested by the Singapore authorities for stock exchange
malpractices.
Upon achieving the party presidency, Dr. Ling realized that
rejuvenation of MCA fortunes depended on his addressing Chinese
interests affected by the New Economic Policy (1970-1990), with
its emphasis on special privileges for Malaysia, especially in
the fields of business and education. To meet the NEP challenge,
Lee San Choon had launched two major institutions: Multi-Purpose
Holdings Berhad (MPHB), representing a communally-based corporate
strategy to withstand competition from Malay-controlled
commercial giants such as Pernas, and the Tunku Abdul Rahman
College, established to provide tertiary education opportunities
to the thousands of Chinese school graduates unable to gain
admission to state universities.
As one of Malaysia's leading Sino capitalists, Tan Koon Swan
had paid greater attention to the party's commercial activities.
Unfortunately, his over-rapid and over-leveraged expansion of
MPHB landed the company in deep financial troubles when the
economy contracted in the mid-1980s. That recession also brought
down several deposit-taking cooperatives headed by well known MCA
figures. Some 580,000 customers, mostly MCA members and lower-
income Chinese, lost considerable sums of money. Not
surprisingly, the party was widely tarred by the Chinese as self-
serving and unreliable.
Dr. Ling's first major reform was to divest the MCA of its
stake in MPHB, which had failed in its "communal corporatization"
goal. The decision to divorce the MCA from such commercial
entanglements was a turning point for the party. In its pre-NEP
years, party president Tun Tan Siew Sin, a long-standing finance
minister, had been a central force in shaping the country's
economic policies while also advancing Chinese commercial
interests. However, as the centralization of Umno power after
1970 shunted the MCA and other parties to the sidelines of
Malaysian politics, Chinese entrepreneurs began to bypass the MCA
and build direct channels of access to powerful Malay patrons and
partners within the higher reaches of Umno and the bureaucracy.
Having lost its role as a mover and shaker in the Chinese
business world, the MCA is shredding its towkay image while
demonstrating greater sensitivity to Chinese education issues.
When asked by this writer to identify his most significant
contribution to the MCA and the Chinese community to date, Dr.
Ling pointed to his promotion of Chinese education interests,
particularly his fund-raising efforts for the Tunku Abdul Rahman
College. Since its inception, that institution has turned out
more than 40,000 graduates.
Dr. Ling's focus on Chinese education seems well-placed, since
that issue continues to be of fundamental concern to the
community. Although the government's National Educational Policy
emphasizes the primacy of the Malay language in the country's
education system, an overwhelming majority of Chinese parents (88
percent by latest estimates) still choose to enroll their
children at Chinese medium national type primary schools where
Malay is acquired as a second language, and English as a third
language.
Although not Tan Siew Sin's equal as a shaper of national
economic policies, Ling Liong Sik has, in many ways, demonstrated
greater political acumen. Beyond his personal skills, he emerged
as MCA head at an opportune time, the final years of the NEP. Not
only have Chinese expectations been lowered to more realistic
levels, but the Malay power structure has become more
accommodating. Dr. Ling and the party have especially benefited
from Dr. Mahathir's post-NEP policies, as articulated in Vision
2020, that place more emphasis on non-Malay contributions and
multiracial cooperation. Motivated by his objective of an
industrialized Malaysia by the year 2020, Dr. Mahathir has moved
beyond Malay exclusivity to call for a "nation living in harmony
and in full and fair partnership".
Although Dr. Ling's contribution to Tunku Abdul Rahman College
and other Chinese education projects such as the Kojadi
scholarship loan scheme are notable achievements, he may achieve
even greater long-term acclaim for visionary policies that are
beginning to inject a multiracial flavor into that hitherto
exclusivist Chinese party. In 1993, Dr. Ling launched his "One
Heart, One Vision" campaign to exhort Malaysian Chinese to be
more multiculturally oriented. Pointing to the slow but steady
process of integration of Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures, as
evidenced by the blending of flavors in Malaysian cuisine and
reciprocal participation in each other's festivals, Dr. Ling
argued that the different races have not become "less Malay, or
less Indian or less Chinese but have all become more Malaysian".
The MCA took its first tentative step away from Chinese
exclusivity when membership rules were amended in January 1994,
to welcome members with non-Chinese names, so long as one parent
is Chinese. A second Ling-initiated innovation was the inclusion
of non-Chinese artistic performances at party celebrations. At
the party's high profile 45th anniversary celebration in 1994,
the central theme of multicultural interaction was conveyed by
performances featuring Chinese, Malay and Indian cultural groups.
Dr. Ling's third innovative policy targets benefits for the
MCA's non-Chinese constituency as well. Launched in 1993, the
M$20 million Langkawi Project aims to raise standards in the
country's rural schools which are often under-funded and
inadequately staffed. By building educational resource and
counseling centers in the countryside and involving parents more
actively in the education system, the MCA hopes to raise the
level of rural academic performance. An Aug. 6, 1995, report in
the Star newspaper stated that of the 54 primary schools covered
by the project to date, 26 were Malay, 16 were Tamil and 12 were
Chinese schools.
As part of the Langkawi Project, MCA leaders participate in a
student "adoption" scheme to help finance the primary education
of poor but bright students. Setting a multiracial example, Dr.
Ling himself has adopted two Chinese, one Malay and one Indian
student.
By breaching the exclusive Chinese political culture of the
MCA, most clearly manifested by the Chinese Unity Movement and
Perak Task Force of the early 1970s, Dr. Ling is slowly but
surely prodding the MCA towards a hitherto untrodden multiracial
path. Dr. Ling's call on the Chinese to adopt a multicultural
Malaysian identification represents an important milestone in the
maturation and indigenization of Chinese politics in Malaysia.
Like many other Chinese political leaders, especially those from
the Gerakan (movement) and DAP, Dr. Ling sees the
decommunalization of Malaysian politics as the only viable
measure for anchoring Malay and Chinese relations on a solid
footing in the long term. But like them, he also realizes that
Chinese leaders lack the clout to initiate such a process. Only
Umno leaders can set up a new multiracial political
configuration.
As always, the MCA will be a junior partner to Umno in any
grand schemes to reshape Malaysian politics. However, under Dr.
Ling's leadership, the party seems poised to work in tandem with
Dr. Mahathir's more multiculturalist policies. And the MCA's
forward-looking and confident new face seems to suit large
portions of the Chinese electorate just fine.
Dr. Heng Pek Koon is Assistant Professor, Institute for
Pacific Rim Studies, Temple University, Japan.
Window: However, as the centralization of Umno power after
1970 shunted the MCA and other parties to the sidelines of
Malaysian politics, Chinese entrepreneurs began to bypass the
MCA...