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...