What more do we want from the Chinese?
I find myself in a strangely odd position – an Indian speaking up for the Chinese.
By Howl Pillai (CPI)
It has recently been asked of them: “What more do the Chinese want?”
If it were merely rhetorical, I will defend the right to ask questions of such a nature in the name of free speech and healthy discourse. Unfortunately it is not a question. It is a blatant threat. The politicians behind the threat have clearly identified themselves. They have also now shown their hand. They are shamelessly indulging in the gutter politics of communalism.
A demonstration 10,000-stronghad been planned for May 13 in Terengganu. We should reject this threat for the same reason we reject a bribe. Racial politics and corruption are slowly and surely destroying the very fabric of nationhood. A country that was put together carefully with effort, toil and sacrifice deserves better.
We must therefore entirely reject the threat and answer the question only in its rhetorical form: What more do the Chinese want?
Post-May 13
Since 1969, the Chinese have seen the New Economic Policy (NEP) at work and not at work. But for all its faults, the NEP has distributed great wealth and provided unheard of opportunities to create a Malay middle class and super-rich elite of Umnoputras.
It has also allayed the fears of the Malay man-in-the-street that he/she will be ‘lost in the world’ (Tak akan Melayu hilang di dunia).
The Chinese with much public grace and equally much private grumbling have largely accepted the pain of economic restructuring. They still account for easily 80% of the income tax revenue of the country. But in this same period, true to their kind, they have girded their loins and redoubled their efforts.
Ever so quick to seize new opportunities, they have continued to prosper in spite of the excesses of the NEP. Surely there is nothing in this world and no religious or secular law that prevents a man or woman from prospering economically through the sweat of his brow or the straining of his sinews or the mental acuity of his business dealings.
We may not like the Chinese trait of applying themselves diligently to the task at hand and to the exclusion of all others; or their fiercely competitive nature; their kiasu-ness; their calculative frugality; their risk-taking; their business shrewdness; their culinary indulgences and their relentless pursuit of investments, returns and wealth in all its myriad forms.
But remember, they too may not like our traits of indifference, impracticalness, lebih kurang-ism … the list both ways is endless.
