10 Years of Personal Introspection on China's Human Right

On the Milennium eve, at the Tiananmen Square, as soon as several middle aged peoples were unfurling the Falungong banners, several plain cloth polices, pounced on them and pressed them down to the ground.

Many unsuspected revellers crowded the spot and raised the cameras to capture this unexpected incident. Equally unexpected was how fast the police, mainly in uniform now, came to the scene and forcefully wrested off the cameras, one of which belonged to my friend and the crowd were not even asked to disperse as the police acted so fast to bundle off the Falungong protesters into one of the police van, always seen patrolling at the Square.

All happened so fast probably within 2 minutes.

The police who had wrested off the cameras did not seem intend to return the cameras until I intervened to say that we were foreigners. Upon which, the film roll was removed (this was pre-digital camera era) and the camare was returned to my friend. We quickly walked off not to mess with the police.

I don't recall reading the fate of the arrested protesters in the newspapers or online (the internet connection then was still very eratic). Most probably, it was never reported anywhere until this post 10 years later.

I don't support Falungong at that time and not even now. I am no big fan and always sceptical of religious celebrity like Li Hongzhi. I was careless how they were treated.

I wrote this because I thought I have learned that there was something very precious that I have hitherto ignored and deliberately defended at time in that period of 10 years. The crux was not whether one supports Falungong or not; the crux was how CCP dealt with it.

Fast track to Dec 25th, 2009, Liu Xiaobo, the initiator of Charter 08 was seemingly subjected to due process after having been detained for 6 months and was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for subversion.

This blog voiced reservation on certain aspects of the Charter yet reproduced it in its entirety believing then and believing still the freedom of speech is healthy for China. Without the benefit of reading the judment and knowing the evidence alluded on the charges, my instint is that the sentence are disproportionate to the alleged crime. Liu didn't advocate revolution by force to overthrow the CCP regime. Dr. Sun Yat Sen did. Mao Zedong did. Liu was criticising at the very core the one party rule by the CCP and that is not unjustified by the facts and reasons.

China has progressed incredibly in the last 10 years almost at every fronts earning almost a place in a bi-polar world power structure. However when it comes to dealing with political dissent, CCP remains the same unrepentant authoritarian.

A lot of Chinese are proud with China under the CCP leadership (at least the last 30 years) and myself included. With that pride, we tend to hold CCP to a lesser standard calling it Chinese characteristics. Yet that pride must not water down our concern for violation and transgression of basic human rights in China in the name of national security which is often a by-word for entrenching one party rule.

The best way to perpetuate the CCP rule is to strengthen it's intra-party democracy offering ever better and ever cleaner talents for the country and usher in a free society securing the real mandate of the peoples through democratic process.

Large number of urban Chinese who have become more affluent will surely demand more of CCP in the next decade. It is better start looking at political reform now without which China will always be regarded as having more brute than grace anywhere and anytime.

My wish for the next decade is to write a note at the end of it of something sweeter and more inspiring rather than sour and mere hopeful.

Happy 2010!

Top 10 World Events of the 1st Decade

This is a list of top 10 world events that marked the first decade of the 21st century. I did this through what I consider as most significant in term of impact to the peoples, maybe fisherman in Banda Aceh or Wall Street Banker. Obviously many events are not accounted for in term of casualty and loss with natural disasters and man-made conflict. Certain selection may be even be considered as controversial such as no.2 below. Why is not iPhone or Facebook selected? Likewise, no 8-10 maybe contentious as well. This is no science and certainly abitrariness on my part is inevitable.

1. 10 March 2000
Dot-Com busted. Nasdaq tanked from 5132 on 10 March 2000 until October 2002 wiping out 5 trillion in market value.

2. October 2000
Google Adwords launched and since the world information becomes more accessible through Google's internet search technology

3. September 11, 2001
The American learns the word security and the air travel becomes less convenient experience

4. January 1, 2002
The world monetary system gains a new and powerful currency - Euro

5. Feb-April 2003
SARS outbreak reshapes peoples view on hygience and mask wearing extend from medical field to community

6. December 26, 2004
The word tsunami becomes popular vocabulary after arguably one of the least expected natural catastrophe

7.September 2008
Lehman collapsed and the world hit by the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Finance pages are all about credit crunch and stimulus packages.

8. 4 November 2008
Barack Obama won the American Presidential election and we are now watching the history unfolding

9. 1 October 2009
Marking the emergence of an aspiring world power with mixed record where observers are still arguing whether she will be good or evil

10. December 2009
Copenhagen Climate Change Conference - what the earth will be?

My Ah Pae 1927-2009

This post is personal and comes from a place that is heartfelt and full of wonderous memories. I wrote this late last January as the only way I could celebrate the memory of my late uncle who passed away on 19 January 2009. I sent it my sister who circulated it to the rest of my family during the wake. With this post, I hope a figment of my uncle (Ah Pae) forever exists in some servers the same way he remain in my memories and in my heart.

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My Ah Pae never really grew old. Although I have never known him as a young man, at heart he has always been a curious and even-tempered child. He has an easy bonhomie and always quick with a laugh or an interesting anecdotes. Despite that, beneath his cheerful and easy company, he was also by nature equally content to simply enjoys long stretches of time every day in his own company. He always seemed comfortable in his own skin, and especially in recent years came across to be in perfect acceptance of what life has given to him.

I remember him most for the countless hours of casual conversations we had and stories he had told me. They stood out from my childhood because of the special blend of curiosity, humour and equianimity in the way he viewed the world.

He often spoke about growing up in China living at the "fort end" of a walled village - where different family lived in their own houses-compounds, each with its own walls to guard against bandits. There was a stream outside the village gate where as a boy he would take the family's ducks out to feed. He said ducks are clever in that they know their way home, because at the day's end, all he had to do was to call out to the ducks and they would follow him home. Some ducks would get mixed up with those returning to other families but once that happen the duck would panic and cry out loudly. He said the geese were even smarter because they kept a look out outside homes - like guard dogs - and would bellow loudly whenever strangers comes near.

One trip I regret not taking was going with him to visit the ancestral village. Somehow this-and-that got in the way and later he had to have surgery to remove his bile. Moreover, he was also hesitant about the whole idea because he did not enjoy much his first return trip to the ancestral village. So many people, all claiming to be distant relatives?, invited them to their homes and presented them with red-dyed boiled eggs - and expecting a handout in return - it was all a little too stressful. Each time they were cornered, he and Ah Emm had to turn to speaking to one another in Malay to plot their escape!

I also remember his story from the time when he was among a band-of-boys doing odd jobs at the Japanese HQ during their occupation in Brunei. He said he had a special position because he had the key to the store room. While people outside had to skimp and save up their match-sticks, he had so much strewn around his room that he was roundly told off by Ah Chou (great grandma) for not valuing them properly when she visited him as he lay ill with malaria. Once day, the Japanese told him to expect an air raid so he went off to the riverside where he proudly constructed his own shelter. He dug a hole big enough to sit in and covered with some bamboo slats and grass. He thought it was all quite grand; until he saw a plane shooting a bullet right through a thick concrete wall a few feet before his eyes! He also told me thar it was during the war, when he learnt a secret technique (so he said) for roasting peanuts, one he picked up from observing the chefs when he was living above a coffeeshop where Ah Chek (my grandfather) was working for a time.

His natural curiousity meant that he made a wonderfully observant tourist in his latter years as he travelled through Southeast Asia, China, Europe and America. Anecdotes and stories from his travels are as varied as they come. Once he told me he learnt from a gourmet friend how to choose the best lobsters. Another time he told of the time when he persuaded the chefs at this famous Xiaolongpao restaurant to let him in on their secrets to making juicy xiaolongpaos. He loved talking about the special meals he tasted on his travels, particularly seafood. He talked about his experiences with the different airlines. He marvelled even at ordinary encounters, anything from outsized fruits, to learning about contradictions within a famous Tang Dynasty poem while he was in Suzhou, to commissioning a pair of calligraphy by a master who could simulteneously write with both hands 2 different lines of poetry.

He enjoyed Chinese tea. Over the years, whenever I visited he would offer new teas to taste. One of his favourites was a rare tea plucked from forbidding cliffs using trained monkeys in China. I suspect he enjoyed that whole idea as much as the tea itself. Once he gave me a one-leaf-tea - just one tea leaf would be enough for a whole cup - which one could also enjoy by tucking it under the tongue. He shared with me the Teochew sayings for various "moves" one could use to fill up teacups from the tiny teapot. Neither of us knew much at all but he was happy to show off what he knew (more like, what he just learnt).

Outside Asia, he enjoyed London. I remember him telling me how he felt free to venture around London on his own; he would simply carry with him the address of where he lived so once he had enough he would simply flag down a taxi home. He could spend hours looking at the markets and the shops, buying salmon fillets, appreciating outdoor artists and eating roast duck in Basewater.

He always has a fascination with gadgets. He has a Walkman, a VCR, a TV with a remote control, a microcassette recorder almost as soon as they first came out. He had a microphone that he could use to tape phone calls. He has the first Swiss Army knife I'd ever seen, a gigantic model that include a toothpick and a tweezer on the side. Above all, as a life long photographer he has a love for cameras - especially his collection of Nikons - and assorted lenses which he kept in a professional glass jar/container to keep out the humidity. Once he showed me a fascinating camera lens that is actually a periscope so you can steal a shot while pretending to be pointing the camera somewhere else. The most recent gadget he so delighted in showing me was a cheap $3 lighter from China that came with a torchlight and a pen (?).

Once he showed me his collection of knifes he kept under his bed when he was still staying above the shop. For self-defense, he says, in case of robbers. There was a small sharp dagger by the bedside table, a parang under his mattress, a Ghurka Kukri knife in his wardrobe and under the bed was a rather unwieldy looking 7 foot long blow-pipe with a bayonet at the end. He told me ominously that he had added poison to the blades so he didn't even need to use them too aggressively...only one small cut, he said, and the robber would be finished. I often used to wonder how serious he was - and more like, how seriously a robber would take him if they come upon him at night, dressed as always in his singlet (or pajama top) and loose boxer shorts.

In a way his bedroom is like his Aladdin's cave. The bedrooms were always dark either windowless or with curtains drawn and with the aircon perpetually on. The humid air in the room heavy with a mix of cigarette smoke, Tokuhai-plasters, Vicks menthol and occasionally perfume if Ah Emm was going out. There he would often be perched languidly on his cushy lazy chair in the bedroom in the dark, the room lit only by the screen of the TV in front of him and the sounds from the TV punctuated occasionally by his rather theatrical clearing of phlegm from the throat. He said you can tell if he hadn't slept well because the bags under his eyes would throb. But he was rarely frail or lethargic and one only needed to engage him in conversation before he filled up with energy. In later years, he would try to convince me that although he looked the same his energy was ebbing; each year falling below the previous.

Surrounding his perch in the bedroom was a perfect ecosystem for his comfort and convenience. On a glassed-over rosewood side table was his ash-tray snuffed with barely smoked cigarettes amidst spit, phlegm and ocassionally the clear plastic cigarette wrappers which he used to pick on his teeth. Always nearby, a pair of nail scissors or clipper, ear-wax digger, toothpicks, his gold lighter, cigarettes (Benson and Hedges), his reading glasses and cup of tea. Under the glassed top were calenders and assorted notes and lists. On his ottoman lay his newspapers, TV and video remote controls. Eventually the ottoman too was topped with glass and use for writing the occasional cheques or notes. Next to the lazy chair was a briefcase ("James Bond Bag") with his papers, letters and stuff. Hanging on the wall next to him a Cathy Pacific calender and a small tear-off calender with Chinese calender references.

Before him, the TV was almost always on playing videotapes of Hong Kong TV serials and later Singapore serials. He would eventually discover satellite TV and spent hours watching channels from Taiwan and from different Chinese provincial stations.

After moving to Jalan Muara, he also had another perch in a rattan armchair at the patio where he spent his mornings and sunset. There he has a less elaborate collection of tools and paraphenelia on a small rattan side table and a few, hanging from hooks and loops on a nearby window grating. On the bannister before him, he would set a few joss sticks burning. Recently, he also hung up behind him a picture of the "Bo" tree where Buddha found enlightenment. In the morning, he would have his breakfast at his patio perch. Once he showed me how he saved some crusts from his toasts, crumble them up, whistle to attract the birds which he would then feed. He said he had refined a certain way of whistling so the birds would know to come down.

As he grew older, I observed him growing increasingly serene and more spiritual although less overtly interested in religious practice. He would light the joss sticks because to him it felt peaceful and he liked the smell. He says its not important if the joss sticks were not presented at the alter so long as the wishes are heartfelt. After all he said, all that he prayed was simply for a peaceful life with a light and happy heart.

He actually once came very close to dying in the late 1970s. After years of drinking somewhat excessively, his liver had given up. The specialist in Singapore said he had three months to live and that there was nothing anyone could do. Miraculously, he found his way back with a combination of exotic and expensive Chinese medicine, an ancestral herbal concoction passed down the generations and giving up the drink for good. And for as long as I can remember he maintained a careful diet. Once he found some wonderfully fresh prawns in the market but he was careful to limit himself to only 7 small ones ("or 5 if they are slightly bigger"), which he gently steamed himself. He began having medical check-ups in Singapore every 3 months, where he would stay at the Mandarin Hotel. Once he bragged to me that he could fit all he needed for his short trip in a briefcase.

In his latter years too, he devoted much of his energies helping the Chinese temple committee to manage the Chinese cemetery in Berakas. This was a job he took seriously but often cheerfully. Many mornings he would ask the driver Rudolph (whom he insisted on calling Robert) to take him to inspect the cemetery or look on as Sri Lankan workers cut the grass or construct new plots. Other times, he would generously regale anyone with macabre statistics of how many plots of various sizes he has asked to be prepared in order to keep up with his "demand projections" - over protests from Ah Emm asking him to talk about something else. To that, he would counter that its a simple truism that everyone are born, grow older and will eventually die.

Ultimately, his belonged to No. 31 Jalan Sultan or rather within the footprint of the original 102 shop houses that were built in Bandar town center in the 1950s. That is where he spent almost the whole of his life. Almost everybody knew him and he knew almost everybody and which shop they belonged to. When the shop was around, it was a popular meeting place of friends and acquaintances. If you wanted to know the latest news or gossip the back of the shop was the place to be. Many of those were people who he literally grew up as evident from a collection of photographs he once showed me. A photography buff, he took a lot of pictures of the daily comings and goings of growing up in the 40s and 50s. He used to develop his photographs in makeshift darkrooms but printing them in tiny 2 inches squares to save on paper. Many were photographs of his friends either posed somewhat stylistically in scenic locations or in groups - particularly on fieldtrips to the beach riding on the back of some lorry.

Whenever he walked about town, he would walk about in quick darting steps but often coming to sudden stops to greet someone or teasingly admonish friends he met in shops along the way. Early in the morning he would go to the fish market, which used to be right behind the shop, to check out the day's catch. He spent most of his time at the shop and rarely ate out casually, unless by invitation to an official function or celebrations.

He used to go about on a motorbike but stopped after an accident when he was much younger. He never learnt to drive a car. Even after moving away, he would return to Bandar for quick visits most days of the week driven there and back by Rudolph (or Robert?).

He ventured into brickmaking in the 60s and 70s. What could be easier, he thought, than turning earth into money? It became a rudimentary brick factory in Kiudang manned by experts brickmakers from Taiwan. But in the end that was a money loser and the factory folded into a joint-venture that continue to operate a modern factory to this day. He found it a better fit for his interest in brickmaking to be on the board of that company and occasionally going on trips to Taiwan to acquire new technologies and machinery.

Other than brickmaking, he was rarely truly excited by business. In particular, he disliked and get easily stressed by conflict and pressure from business. Although I have never seen him working himself too hard but I have seen him suffer sleepless nights and driven to distraction by a demand from the bank or a threat from a solicitor. It was clearly painful for him to close the business in 1991, rent out the shophouse and eventually selling the shophouse itself in 2002. But he saw it his duty to resolve the debts from the business and avoid passing the rancour to future generations. For a few years, I would talk him through the decisions he was facing and later helped to implement those decisions. Even if he knew what had to be done, we spent hours where he repeatedly his reasonings as if he needed to convince himself. In the end, the proceeds from selling the shophouse were enough to cover all the outstanding debt and the remainder was split evenly.

He prefers to see his legacy on the personal and family level. For sometime he reflected that he was grateful that all members of the family were well-educated and comfortable in life, he quoted an idiom saying that we could not compare with the best but are way above the rest. He was acutely conscious of being from a small family, especially after his only brother's (my father's) passing in 1997. Once he did a mental count of the entire "Chan" family in Brunei - and the numbers came to about 5 main branches and fewer than 100 persons in total - and that our branch was by far the smallest. This was probably why he often emphasized how we must be forgiving and helpful within the family because that set good examples for our children.

He was active in the Chinese community as defined by being shopkeepers and in Bandar. His most lasting involvement was with the Chinese temple committee. Earlier on he was on the Committee of the Chinese Chambers of Commerce. He is well-respected and generally regarded with affection within the community but hardly held any of the prestigeous leadership positions. That is not surprising given that he was by nature disdainful of power and prestige. He has little or no inclination or stomach for confrontation or conflict. Indeed, he laughingly contrast his peaceful and uncluttered life with the tension and conflicts of others who he saw striving and competing for attention.

About three years ago, he told me that he figured that he could sum up the most important things he learnt in life into a few words which he wrote down for me on the newspaper. I asked to keep what he had written and tore it off the page. A few days ago, when I learnt that his organs were failing and that he probably did not have long to live, I found and re-read that piece of paper:






(my translation)

"Whoever thinks its possible to satisfy everyone? But to wish to be clear in my conscience;
Everything in life has its fate; Everthing should let nature take its course."

Those words, I immediately knew, was what he wanted to say to me there and then. I shall miss him.

Shrinking Chinese of Malaysia

The post on the shrinking Chinese population in Malaysia is an important - albeit sad - reflection of reality. Behind the numbers are stories and scenes that are at once familar and sad each time we encounter them in Malaysia.


The supreme irony, of course, is that even as we discuss this, both of us are in that same mirror; ethnically Chinese sons of Malaysia and Brunei who were educated overseas and are now residing elsewhere.


Almost none of the children among my father-in-law's circle of friends still live in their home town of Seremban. They are all now in Singapore, the UK, Australia, Hong Kong or at least in Kuala Lumpur or Peneng.

Go to a shopping mall during Chinese New Year and most of the cars came with number plates from out of state, from the children who came back for New Year.

One hear of solid middle class Chinese professionals; people who spent their lifetime as bank managers, accountants, dentists etc. whose sum of their entire life's work was a simple house and the rest were sunk into their children's overseas education.

Of the kids who were educated aboard, those who are lucky and able stay and make a living abroad. The rest take up entry level jobs back in a different kind of Malaysia where they probably have no hope of doing as well as the previous generation.

The biggest surprise from the write up - and something which I believe should not be overlooked - is that in real terms the Chinese population is Malaysia is growing and, in fact, has doubled since 1970. It is only dinimished in percentage terms with all the socio-political impact that brings. Nonetheless, 6.5m+ is not a small number. Which is why the structural weaknesses of the psychology of the Chinese community in Malaysia may be a more important determinant of the vibrancy of the Chinese community and culture in Malaysia.

In the smaller towns of Malaysia, the elderly re-live their childhood in retirement; surrounded by their childhood friends and relatives but often without children or grandchildren around them.

But while the older generations are surrounded by their friends of a certain age whom they have known since childhood. Many of the younger generation probably lost touch with their childhood friends and will eventually never have as many close friends.

Spend a few days back at the hometown, the older generations will show off the relationships they treasure and depend on: relatives, old friends, the auntie-from-across-the-street. Spend a few days with people of our generation: its feeling of security depended on money with 9-to-9 days, extensive travel for work, branded goods, fancy cars/gadgets at home, children with the maid and constant complaint of tiredness.

I think something was lost in the process. I think that's what the academic referred to as "placelessness". Its something emotional and really important. I love it, for example, just reading and commenting on this blog about Brunei and its recent history because I get to see photographs and write-ups about events, buildings and places in my hometown at the period I grew up with. Its hard to over-indulge in the pleasures of the recalling even the smallest things that form the emotional bonds.

Shrinking Chinese Malaysian

This is a piece of story similar to what I have been telling and it is becoming truer with each passing day.

written by Helen Ang

No greater love hath man and moms than they lay down their life savings for their children to study overseas and emigrate.

Between March 2008 and August 2009, some 50,000 students sailed from our shores, Deputy Foreign Minister A. Kohilan Pillay told Parliament last week. The Star speculates that many will not return. Star editor Wong Sai Wan wrote: “… some even admitted that they had already applied for their PR visas”.


They are among 304,358 persons registered with Malaysia’s representative offices abroad over the past 18 months. A review of statistics will help us to interpret this unique Made-in-Malaysia export of roughly 17,000 units of human capital on average a month.

Among the ethnic groups in Malaysia, the Chinese are the largest outflow and also experiencing the biggest change in demography.

Proportion of Chinese in Malaysia total population
Year
Percent
1957 45.0 +
1970 35.6
1980 32.1
1991 26.9
2000 24.5
2010 22.6 *
2035 18.6 **

+ Decimal point is approximate
* Projection by Department of Statistics
** Projection in The Population of Malaysia (ISEAS)


In the 80s decade, the Chinese had a negative net migration rate of -10.6 percent. “Between 1980 and 1991, the [Chinese] migration deficit was estimated at 391,801 persons as against a national increase of 777,339 persons,” statistician Tey Nai Peng found in his study.

Chinese annual growth rate also showed a consistent drop, recording only 53 percent between 1990 and 2000 during a period when the national population grew 123 percent.


Tey said in his paper ‘Causes and consequences of demographic change in the Chinese community in Malaysia’ that “the fertility of the Chinese declined from 4.6 children to 2.5 children between 1970 and 1997”. Comparatively, total fertility rate for Malays in 1987 remained a high 4.51.

Changes in the states


It is no longer true that Penang is a Chinese majority state. In 2010, Malays in Penang are projected to be 670,128 persons – outnumbering Chinese at 658,661. Between 1991 and 2000, Penang had an average annual growth rate of 1.8 percent but Penang Chinese only 0.7 percent.

Perak has significant numbers of Chinese but still, Chinese registered a negative growth of -1.0 percent in 1991-2000 whereas the average annual rate of Perak population growth was a positive 0.4 percent.

The Department of Statistics records that in the 1990s, Chinese fell in number in Kelantan, Terengganu and Perlis too. In Malacca, Negri Sembilan and Pahang, Chinese were practically stagnant.

In Sabah, Chinese were 23 percent of the population in 1960 but shrunk to 10.1 percent in 2000. “In contrast, recent immigrants and refugees, with a population of 614,824 persons in 2000, form close to a quarter of the total population, or more than twice the size of the long-settled Chinese community,” writes Danny Wong Tze-Ken in his paper ‘The Chinese population in Sabah’.


The situation in Sabah is largely a result of ‘Project M’ giving Indonesians and Muslim Filipinos Malaysian ICs. Overall, the abnormality of a shrinking Chinese population ratio can be traced to government policies that actively discriminate against this community.

Small families, ageing parents

By year 2000, Chinese were mainly concentrated in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. The Klang Valley accounted for 38 percent of all Chinese in the Peninsula. Nine out of 10 Chinese today are found in urban areas, concentrated in the major cities.


In the dozen years between 1980 and 1991 when the Malaysian population increase nationally was 4,634,500 persons, Chinese increase was only 530,400 persons. Or looking at it another way (as indicated in table below), the Chinese are merely doubling in absolute numbers when the population will have quadrupled.

Numbers of Chinese in Malaysia
Year
Chinese (million)
Total population
(million)

1970 3.6 10.5
1980 4.4 13.7
1991 4.9 18.4
2000 5.7 23.3
2010 6.5 28.9 *
2035 7.7 41.1 **



* Projection by Department of Statistics
** Projection in The Population of Malaysia (ISEAS)



It is conspicuous that among the younger age cohorts, Chinese are an even smaller proportion of the national average. On the other hand, among the elderly [60 years and above], Chinese constitute 5.4 percent of the population, as against the national average of 5 percent.

Among the ethnic groups in Malaysia, Chinese have the highest proportion of the elderly. “It is found that most of the ‘clients’ in nursing homes are the Chinese,” observes researcher Philip Poi Jun Hua in his essay 'Ageing among the Chinese in Malaysia: Some trends and issues'.

This situation affecting the Chinese community, with parents either in nursing homes or ‘home alone’ in Malaysia whilst the children are abroad, has ironically come about due to education as a main contributory factor.

“The Chinese community places great emphasis on education but the escalation in the cost of acquiring an education might have compelled young couples to limit their family size,” surmises Tey.

Because educated Chinese women are in the workforce as well as limiting themselves to only one or two children, Chinese couples have more money to spend on each child’s education.

This is in a way a lose-lose scenario because the couple would then tend to over-protect the single offspring – do recall China’s one-child policy outcome of producing Little Emperors – and the well-educated child is more likely to emigrate.


Self-interest vs community concerns

“All my friends plan to leave Malaysia,” a private student in the offshore campus of a premier Australian university in KL declared to me just a couple of months ago.


These youths have cogently articulated why they intend to vote with their feet. Aside from the various reasons we’re all familiar with, I’d like to introduce here the theory of ‘placelessness’ which Lee Boon Thong links to the Chinese condition.


In his paper ‘Placelessness: A study of residential neighbourhood quality among Chinese communities in Malaysia’, Lee observes that Chinese in cities have subordinated neighbourliness and personal ties to the pursuit of personal advancement.


The move to new urban and suburban residential neighbourhoods – where availability of Chinese food and access to shopping malls are often major considerations – is accompanied by other shifts, among them the increasing “technopolistic grip” [orientation towards digital entertainment] and losing some of their traditions [e.g. ancestral worship], especially if they convert to Christianity or Islam.

These shifts have the effect of loosening bonds to an old hometown – witness Chin Peng’s strong attachment for Sitiawan as a contrary example – because the young generation has become city born and bred.

Lee describes the new society resulting from intense urbanization as one breeding individuals who are more self-centred, more covetous, less considerate and kiasu to boot. “Self-interest overrides almost everything else that concerns the welfare of the community.”

He also says that if the trend persists of residents in emerging neighbourhoods failing to develop ties that bind and a sufficient sense of commonness in community life, then “urban Chinese are at risk in producing a pseudo-progressive society that appears to be outwardly prosperous through its middle-class façade but in effect lacking social coherence and a sense of shared ‘placeness’ for the neighbourhood”.

Commonality as militating factor

Further aggravating this estrangement is a social milieu that is changed, parallel to the pronounced changes in demography. It is projected that while the annual growth of Bumiputera in the next decade (2011-2021) will be 1.98 percent, the corresponding growth of Chinese will be 0.73 percent.

Saw Swee Hock in his 2007 ISEAS paper ‘The Population of Malaysia’ projects that by year 2035, Malaysia will have a population of 41 million, 72.1 percent of them Bumiputera. By then Islam would have stamped a thorough dominance on the physical and moral landscape of the country.


Concomitant to this development is the fact that in the mainstream of all spheres of life and particularly official domains, the predominant speech community will be Malay.


This fait accompli of demography dictates that the minorities have to be adept in the Malay/national language for any meaningful integration to occur. Otherwise, to borrow a turn of phrase from Lee, they will be living in “proximity without propinquity” or in other words, have trouble relating to the majority.


It is thus necessary that next generation Chinese be effectively multilingual and able to ‘code switch’, i.e. use different varieties of language in different social settings. If Chinese are unable create a connectedness especially across ethnic lines, this shortcoming would just be adding another factor to the myriad push factors driving young Chinese away.

The statistics tell a very sobering story. In another short 25 years, Chinese will only be a mere 18.6 percent of the population. They will soon fall below the sustainable threshold for propagating their culture, and their diminishing numbers will only increase the pressure for assimilation – something Chinese are reluctant to do.

Let us recall Lee’s description how “[i]n a sense, ‘placeness’ may be defined in terms of ‘belonging to a residential neighbourhood that demands a reciprocity of identity in terms of behavioural or interactive response. The lack of such may be termed as ‘placelessness’.”

Neighbourhoods today are increasingly Malay, and one of the largest is Shah Alam where the authorities have disallowed the building of a Catholic church, tried to restrict the sale of beer, made it very difficult to own a dog, and residents protested against a proposed Hindu temple.

To extrapolate Lee’s allusion of ‘placeness’ to a wider national context, we can infer that having a poor facility in Bahasa Melayu would only compound the Chinese placelessness in a country that has purpose-built for one race such a locality as Shah Alam, and one that will in future be dotted with more mini Shah Alams.

China gives history lesson on warming

This is an interesting article that offer a different perspective to the impact of global warming to China's fortune.

SCMP.com - China gives history lesson on warming: "SCMP.com - China gives history lesson on warming"

China gives history lesson on warming
While world weighs how to fight climate change, Chinese recall past glories when mercury rose
Stephen Chen Dec 08, 2009

If 3,600 years of history is anything to go by, Chinese civilisation has flourished when temperatures have been at their warmest and declined when the climate cooled.It is a relationship that could hold lessons for today, says Professor Xie Zhenghui, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' International Centre for Climate and Environmental Sciences."

Ask the scientists and some will warn the growing season for farmers will become shorter, the weather more extreme and sea levels higher. Moreover, they say China, as the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that cause warming, risks being blamed by other countries for disasters around the world. Others see potential benefits. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would accelerate the growth of crops, higher temperatures would open up for cultivation land in northern areas such as Inner Mongolia that are too cold to grow crops today, warmer air over the oceans would bring more rain to China's drought-plagued interior and the frequency of extreme weather would eventually decrease once temperatures stabilised, they say.

"Chinese historical records show that the temperature would stabilise after a sharp climb. Mother Earth has a lot of mechanisms to adjust herself to a new equilibrium," Xie said. "In my opinion, the sooner the temperature increases the better. The longer it takes, the more extreme weather we will have to face. Extreme weather is the hallmark of transitional periods. Once we enter the warm and stable periods like those in the Han and Tang dynasties, we will be fine."

History was a word on the lips of many in the Danish capital as the biggest and most important UN climate change conference yet opened, with organisers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the last, best chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.The conference, the climax of two years of contentious negotiations, convened in upbeat mode, but major issues holding up a binding agreement have still to be resolved.

Conference president Connie Hedegaard, a former climate minister of host Denmark, said: "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one - if we ever do."

As the division of opinion among Chinese experts suggests, predicting the future may be beyond contemporary climate science. But the past may indeed hold lessons. For thousands of years, Chinese scholars have kept meticulous meteorological records; such information was crucial for the government to plan and guide agricultural production. Everything was archived, from the date each year that ice began forming at the mouth of the Yellow River to the flowering and seeding patterns of certain plants. The data allows scientists today to chart a reliable pattern of climate change in China over three and a half millennia.

From the prosperity of the Shang dynasty 3,600 years ago to the ruin of the Bronze Age, the cultural peak of the Tang dynasty in the seventh to 10th centuries and the subsequent ravages wrought by horsemen from the north, Chinese civilisation has reached its highest points when temperatures have been warmest and its lowest points when they have cooled.

Wang Zijin, an environmental historian at Beijing Normal University, said the relationship between temperature and success was no coincidence. When the weather cooled, agricultural output fell, wealth contracted, discontent rose and China became more vulnerable to invasion from the north."In the long term, warming may not be a curse but a blessing [to China]," he said. "If the temperature continues to rise, we may not see the return of elephants but it will be very possible that rice and bamboo can again grow along the Yellow River. Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia will become much more habitable than today."

This relationship between temperature and dynastic potency was first drawn by meteorologist Zhu Kezhen in a 1972 paper. Zhu plotted on a graph temperatures in the Yellow River region from 1500BC to 1950. Based on archaeological artefacts and historical documents, the graph charted the rises and falls in average temperature.It showed that there were three extended periods of warm temperatures.

The first coincided with the Shang dynasty (1600BC-1046BC), when the annual average temperature reached as high as 11.3 degrees Celsius. This period saw the emergence of the first comprehensive set of Chinese characters, massive construction of palaces and cities, large-scale farming and the production of systematic astronomical records and sophisticated bronze wares.

The second extended period of warm temperatures lasted more than 700 years, from the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770BC-256BC) to the Western Han dynasty (206BC-9AD), when average temperatures peaked at 10.7 degrees Celsius. In the Eastern Zhou, China's territory expanded from the Yellow River to Guangdong, Yunnan and Sichuan. There was an enormous bamboo forest along the Yellow River, while the Yangtze River cut through lush rainforest. At this time slavery was abandoned, iron tools became popular in farming and Confucius and other scholars established the philosophies that still shape Chinese society. By the time temperatures started to dip, China had built the Great Wall and a national road network and conquered Xinjiang, Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea.

A third warm period, when average temperatures peaked at 10.3 degrees, coincided with the Tang dynasty, widely seen as the peak of Chinese civilisation. Some historians estimate China accounted for 60 per cent of global gross domestic product during this era. From textiles, ceramics, mining and shipbuilding to paper making, China led the world. And there were more poets in the Tang than at any time in history. In between these great dynasties, average temperatures plunged and chaos reigned. The Chinese empire retreated, and was even driven into the sea by the invading Mongols who established the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). The longest period of relative cold lasted from the end of the Tang to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

Now temperatures are on the rise again, matched by scorching economic growth. According to the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, the average annual temperature was 10.3 Celsius from 2001 to 2007 - the same as in the Tang dynasty.Zhu's research was based on records which make for interesting comparisons with the present day. Rice could be harvested twice a year to the north of the Yellow River in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, whereas the region is generally dry now. Plum trees were common along the Yellow River in the Tang dynasty, but since then have only grown further south. Xu Ming, chief author of a study by global environmental group WWF on the impact of climate change in the Yangtze River region, said China should focus less on prevention and more on mitigation - water redistribution facilities, tree planting and developing new crops. "China should do something within its limited capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but no matter what we do, global warming is inevitable," said Xu, a professor at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A rise in sea levels would pose a threat to coastal cities, which could end up below sea level and needing protection by dykes, he said. "Adaptation requires a tremendous amount of money, resources and advanced technology. China is far from ready."