Why did the Chinese talk less on poverty?

YAB Tun Dr. Mahathir,

I feel a strong urge to answer the question raised by 'jebatmustdie' who posted his comment in this blog.

The Chinese like to talk more about issues of meritocracy, judicial independence, equal rights, freedom of media and human rights and talk less about poverty not because the Chinese are all rich people. This is because the Chinese people, whether Confucian followers or Jesus' followers, all share some common values which are not found in many other racial communities. Some of these common values are endurance, perseverance and giving top priority to education of the next generation over other material enjoyment. Most Chinese people pray hard to God, but they also taught themselves that mobility of labour is the best tool for them to bring changes to their fate of being born poor. In the past during the reign of Tunku Abdul Rahman, the rural Chinese people of Malaysia found jobs in bigger town with the mobility of labour they obtained from basic education. When later on the Chinese people found strong competition from the Indians and the Malays who also moved to urban areas from the estates or villages, some of these poor Chinese people started to move further to work either as a legal worker or as an illegal worker in the affluent foreign countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, England or Australia. They helped their families in Malaysia financially by remitting their hard-earned money from overseas to Malaysia and also helped indirectly to build up the International Reserve of Bank Negara. Most Chinese people see poverty as the problem of individual and not the political problem as a result of an unfair government policy. Therefore to most Chinese people, poverty problem should be tackled individually with their personal endurance and personal improvement. Most Chinese also see poverty as the trial from God and as a foretaste of future fruitful reward from God after the consistent perseverance and the successful endurance of economic hardship imposed by God as a trial or training apprenticeship. These are the reasons why the Chinese talked less on poverty.

Why do the Chinese talk more on the so-called democracy problems, equal rights problem or human rights problems? I guess this is because some Chinese university graduates have received a strong influence from the Western culture since many of them were compelled to go further study in the Western countries like Australia, England and the United States, as a consequence of their being forestalled from entering the Malaysian local universities due to limited quota imposed by the racist university intake policy.

No matter what, the Chinese are thankful people and they usually feel thankful for having the Malays as their peaceful neighbour.

However, there are also handful of Chinese people out there finding that NEP is just a gimmick for breeding the corruption and therefore it should be abolished before the corruption problem gets running out of control in Malaysia.

Onlooker



'jebatmustdie' said:
I often wonder why the Chinese took up with great intensity some issues such as meritocracy, independent judiciary, equal rights, freedom of media and oppresive laws. As we all know, these issues are less relevant to the majority of the citizens here in Malaysia.

One Malay politician mentioned that these issues are "rich people's" issues. I have yet to see the Chinese took up other GREATER issues such as poverty, unemployment, expensive medical services/treatments and unfair income distribution.

Why are the Chinese took up the first few issues and not the latter? Easy. Because the latter issues do not benefit them. Why fight poverty when they do not suffer any kind of stark poverty like some of the Malays? Why they did not need to highlight issues such as expensive medical treatment? Coz they do not feel it is expensive that's why. They can afford to buy insurance can't they? Most Malays can't.