Stop dragging China into our racial squabbles

By admin-s Last updated Oct 31, 2024

Considering that, why behave in a way that will likely cause China to take umbrage against us, just because we want to lash out against each other, by making a tremendous error in conflating the identity and relationship between the overseas Chinese and the communist Chinese.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

I think that the Keluar Sekejap podcast’s host Shahril Hamdan’s view about the waving of the Chinese flag incident during a parade in Perak recently is the most accurate description of what this storm in the tea cup is all about.

When Khairy Jamaluddin, Shahril’s co-host, expressed his bewilderment at how big a fuss the incident whereby a group of Chinese citizens waved China’s national flag during a parade in Teluk Intan last week has become, Shahril would opine that the fuss might have nothing to do with China at all.

“This is a sensitive topic, but it may be because Malaysian Chinese are seen by some Malays as being a political and economic threat.

“So even if China is not the target (of animosity), these internal worries (by Malays) are being projected onto China,” Shahril said to put the crux of the kerfuffle on the relationship between the local Malays and the local Chinese, instead of a problem between Malaysia and China.

I for one, 100 percent agree with Shahril’s view, and that is why I did not wonder why there is a problem with the waving of the Chinese flag but not the Thai or Vietnamese flag which was also waved, and the parade, or why the police have taken no action against the tens of thousands of people who have waved the Palestinian flag for over a year all over the country, but have swiftly called in to record statements from 17 Chinese nationals involved in the Chinese flag waving incident.

For me, this entire kerfuffle is just another episode in the never-ending passive aggressive squabbles that the local Malays and the local non-Malays, or in this case, the local Chinese, have been having for longer than I have been alive.

The races in Malaysia, like bickering couples, will only argue about petty matters, because they have learned through the long course of their complicated relationship, that if they argue about important matters, their arguments might escalate to uncontrollable proportions, but if they keep their arguments limited to petty matters, then they can offload some steam about their dissatisfaction about the state of their relationship, while keeping the intensity of their quarrels within manageable parameters.

There are many ways that the races in Malaysia apply to make a mountain out of molehill of a petty matter in order to lash out against each other without letting things get out of hand.

Overly praising a person from another race for doing something ordinary like visiting their place of worship or wearing their clothes or learning to speak their language or criticising their own race is one example.

Complaining excessively about such things like child grooming or alcohol availability, more with the aim of putting down another race than because they are truly concerned about the problem, is another example.

In this long list of ways to piss off another race with the aim of making them “makan dalam”, or die on the inside, the waving of the Chinese flag in Teluk Intan is likely just another entry.

Like Shahril said, this kerfuffle might simply be happening because the local Chinese and the local Malays might be conflating the identity of a mainland Chinese and local Chinese.

As China flexes its muscle in the South China Seas, some local Chinese who identify with China on the basis of a common cultural and racial background, might take pride in China’s show of strength while the local Malays, seeing some sort of relationship between the local Chinese and the mainland Chinese, might be reacting negatively towards the display of pride by the mainland Chinese, simply because they are equating it with the display of pride by the local Chinese.

Now these exhibits of passive aggressive microaggression that the local Chinese and the local Malays are displaying each other might not be new to us, but the problem is that it might be new to China, and we don’t know how China is going to interpret the problem of microaggression that the Malays and non-Malays in Malaysia have been with each other for generations, now that we have dragged them into it.

No matter how much we quarrel with each other, we cannot be so careless as to drag a superpower like China into it.

When two mousedeers from the same herd are quarrelling with each other, they might get so absorbed with their quarrel that they might not realise that they are annoying a dragon, but at some point they have to remember, that if they succeed in annoying the dragon, the dragon might not care that much about the affairs of a couple of mousedeers to investigate thoroughly about the origin of its quarrel, before it decides to squash both.

China is likely already in an irritable mood these days. It has a looming problem with the West, which is giving it a major military and economic headache. This is a time for us to be extra careful about our gestures and expressions toward China. The last thing we need at the moment is to upset the already edgy China with our carelessness, and cause the already irritable China to see us as something that it can make an example of to scratch any one of its many itches.

The leadership of China, by the way, is famous for having a long memory.

Until today, every time there is a new ambassador from China posted to Malaysia, that Chinese ambassador will pay a visit to the family of Tun Razak, because Tun Razak was the first Prime Minister who normalised Malaysia’s relationship with China around 50 years ago.

I also remember seeing a video of how the top Chinese leaders, including its Number 1, Xi Jinping, giving the former U.S Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, a rousing welcome in China quite recently, even when Kissinger was almost 100 years at the time and has not been a person of importance in US politics for a long time, simply because the new generation of China’s leaders have inherited the esteem that its older generation of leaders had for Kissinger.

It is very reckless and careless of us to upset an emerging superpower that is known to have a long memory, when it likely also has a low interest and attention span about our matters, at a time when it might be having a low tolerance for disrespect as well, simply because we have an axe to grind with each other.

The way I see it, if Iran and Israel take the warpath, the Americans will commit to join the war in the middle east, and if the Americans are bogged down in the middle east, China will take the opportunity to establish itself as the hegemon of the South China Sea.

Considering that Iran and Israel have already launched direct attacks into each other’s territory, I’d say it’s only a matter of time before the middle east is in flames.

The overseas Chinese, which is the category that our local Chinese belong to, and the Communist Chinese, which the mainland Chinese are, are not only not the same, they might actually be antagonistic towards each other.

I will explain how the overseas Chinese and the communist Chinese are more likely to be antagonistic than chummy with each other next time, but all I will say now is that to conflate the Oversea Chinese with the Communist Chinese, just because they look and sound alike, is not only lacking in insight, it might be counterproductive and dangerous too, for it might irritate a powerful entity with a long memory and not much attention for the affairs of a small country like ours, at a time when it is easily upset and irritable.