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Monday, June 22, 2015

One myth about Chinese Malaysians

I was discussing the NEP (via comments) with some visitors at RPK's Malaysia-Today.

Chinese Malaysians

But let's leave the NEP aside for another day. In this post I just want to comment on an oft-repeated MYTH about Chinese not wanting to join the Malaysian Civil Services or Police Force or Armed Forces. And mind you, I am not referring to appointments for ranking commissioned officers in the 3 services but positions for ordinary admin clerk, our village mata-mata and non-commissioned soldiers.

This long tall tale of Chinese avoiding the civil and armed services because of poor pay (in the non-officer sections) is the BIGGEST myth or bullshit in Malaysia, perpetuated for obvious reasons.


Another long tall tale would be that the Chinese are not patriotic enough to join the military, as claimed by Ahmad Zahid when he was Defence Minister and asked in parliament on why there were too few non-Malays in his defence force.

When our policemen were killed by Filipino bandits in Sabah, Pak Kadir Jasin, an UMNO uber mediaman alluded in his quite erudite old world style of polite English but rather slyly (and not subtly) that the Chinese should join the police force, saying:

As has always been the case, when we send our policemen and soldiers into battle and are killed or injured, the chances are they are Melayus and Bumiputeras.

Perhaps there is wisdom in getting more Chinese and Indians to join the armed forces so that they too can die for one Malaysia.


That was in 2013. Sadly, it seems Pak Kadir had forgotten my reply to his article published by the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI) titled I wish to remain a M’sian – KTemoc replies Kadir Jasin just 3 years previously, in March 2010.

Then I mentioned about non-Malays, specifically my uncles and their Chinese and Indian friends, serving in the Malaysian Armed Forces fighting against the communist insurgents during the Emergency.






Nonetheless I posted another article titled Chinese policemen to show (a) firstly, Pak Kadir Jasin that he was so very wrong in his sly insult to Chinese on their purported 'reluctance' to join the Malaysian police and military to serve the nation, and (b) secondly, the blatant but perennial lie of this ethnic-driven myth.

In that post I listed several Chinese policemen who gave their lives in the course of their service to our nation. Please read my post to know how many Seri Pahlawan Gagah Perkasa (SP), the nation's highest award for valour, and Pingat Gagah Berani (PGB) were bestowed by the Agong to Chinese service personnel.

I also modified my blog post into a letter to Malaysiakini for wider readership because it's damn bloody important to debunk the naughty but cheap racial and untrue insinuations.

On the Civil Service, as mentioned above, there has been a deliberate contrived myth, yes a MYTH, that the Chinese shun the Civil Service because they prefer the lucrativeness of private business rather than the staid salary of the public service, and that the Civil Service is an alien concept of employment to Chinese culture.

The latter, the Civil Service being an alien concept to Chinese culture, is 101% pure grade bullshit because the Chinese have in their several thousands of years of civilisation enjoyed (or suffered) from the Chinese Civil Service. In fact the Chinese invented the Civil Service.


sitting Imperial Exams to enter Imperial Civil Service - Sui Dynasty

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

The origin of the modern meritocratic civil service can be traced back to Imperial examinations founded in Imperial China. The Imperial exam based on merit was designed to select the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy. This system had a huge influence on both society and culture in Imperial China and was directly responsible for the creation of a class of scholar-bureacrats irrespective of their family pedigree.

Note the mention of 'meritocratic civil service' and the selection of 'the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy'!

Emperor Wu of Han started an early form of the imperial examinations, transitioning from inheritance and patronage to merit, in which local officials would select candidates to take part in an examination of the Confucian classics. The system reached its apogee during the Song dynasty.

The Chinese civil-service system gave the Chinese empire stability for more than 2,000 years and provided one of the major outlets for social mobility in Chinese society.

The modern examination system for selecting civil service staff also indirectly evolved from the imperial one. This system was admired and then borrowed by European countries from the 16th century onward, and is now the model for most countries around the world.

So the myth about Chinese viewing the Civil Service as alien to their culture or career path is what it is, a myth that has been repetitively used by some people to explain why there are too few Chinese Malaysians in the Malaysian Civil Service, when of course the real reason is they were obstructed from joining or just not welcomed.

Condemned for not joining - Constrained from joining!

If we were to look at our historical records of the 50, 60 and 70's we will find many Chinese in the Civil Service, police and military. My own family has several members in the police force and armed forces (army and air force). One of my granduncles, who was in the SB, was assassinated by communist terrorists during the Emergency. Two of my uncle's close (Chinese) friends were also killed by the CTs.

But due to the political poisoning of Malay minds for several decades, Chinese Malaysians are still viewed by quite a few Malays with suspicion today.

In the old days, the Malays saw them as potential or closeted communists - one day my uncle who was in the military was off duty (in civilian clothing) and in a bus in Alor Setar when he was accused by a very loud old Malay man of being a Chinese communist, wakakaka. The orang tua was playing 'hero' to the bus passengers who except for my uncle, his Indian aneh and the equally old bus driver, were all Malays.

Today they are Chinese chauvinist pigs - alas, Chinese Christians are still too few to be considered as representative of the Chinese community, so Chinese chauvinist pigs will have to do for the time being, wakakaka.

Chinese are variously anti-monarch (thus biadap to Malay royalty) or pro-monarch (accused of supporting the Johor Crown Prince against Najib) or neutral-towards-monarch (tidakapathy towards Malay culture). They just f* can't win, wakakaka.

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