Year of the Rooster: good fortune for Malaysia’s dwindling Chinese community?
Despite disquieting migration statistics, a young Chinese Malaysian couple say they are happy where they are and see prosperity ahead in the Lunar New Year
Seri Kembangan, Selangor, is 22km to the south of Kuala Lumpur and just 20 minutes away from Putrajaya, Malaysia’s gaudy administrative centre.
Sixty years ago, this would have been scrubland dotted by tin mines, rubber plantations and small market gardens. The area is home to a patchwork of predominantly Chinese Malaysian communities with a large Hakka contingent, hardened wayfarers from Southern China – a people accustomed to living on marginal land.
In the early 1950s, most of the inhabitants were corralled into euphemistically named “New Villages” such as Sekinchan and Jinjang as the British colonial authorities sought to quell a nagging communist insurgency.
But what was formerly a no-man’s-land has long since been transformed into choice real estate. There is the iconic Commonwealth sports complex, a Turf Club, that bizarre Mahathir-era hostelry the Palace of the Golden Horses and countless small factories, townships, shopping centres and housing estates.
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Such pleasant surroundings mask somewhat gloomier statistics. According to the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI) think-tank, the Chinese Malaysian community’s numbers are plummetting.
The ASLI warns Chinese Malaysians will constitute just 19.6 per cent of the country’s population by 2030 if migration trends continue as they are, down from 37.2 per cent in 1957.
The ASLI’s findings chime with a 2011 World Bank study that found 57 per cent of Chinese Malaysian emigres ended up in Singapore.
Yet some young Chinese Malaysian families are upbeat about the future, particularly as the Lunar New Year celebrations approach, and say they have no plans to migrate.