"What do the Chinese want?"

The question was posed by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad shortly after one general election (in 1990, I think) in which the Chinese middle ground swung towards the opposition DAP at the expense of MCA and Gerakan. It was meant to be a rhetorical question of course, because, more than any other Malaysian, the M understands the Chinese mind, their strengths and their weakness - especially their weaknesses.

What the Supreme Leader meant was probably this: after what the BN government has done for the Chinese, what more do they want, before they will give undivided support to the ruling party?

His prayer was answered in 1999. The effect of the Anwar Ibrahim affair, combined with the rise of PAS in the Malay heartland in the north and to the east, had threatened to split the Malay constituencies three ways, and undermine Umno's unchallenged dominance in Malaysian politics. Fortunately for the power centre, the Chinese middle ground swung back towards the Barisan Nasional.

In short if only the Chinese themselves would dare to dream of it the Chinese voters can play a king-maker role in determining which of the emerging Malay forces shall come to power in Malaysia.

Their strength does not lie in mere numbers. Declining birth rates among the Chinese, in contrast to accelerating rates of increase in the population of other ethnic groups, has shrunk their share of the national total to slightly more than a mere fifth.

A more telling sign of the Chinese weakness lies in their tendency for emigration overseas. During a recent seminar organised by the Chinese community, it was revealed that between 1957 and 1991, something like one whole million of Malaysian Chinese had emigrated to greener pastures elsewhere. Quite shocking really!

Have more babies

Chinese political and community leaders have been worried sick over this phenomenon of diminishing Chinese bodies. There is no shortage of prophets of doom calling for Chinese couples to work overtime for the great cause of making more babies and creating more Chinese votes. One Chinese association even offered cash reward for every new Chinese baby born.

Frankly, I think the proposals for frenzied reproduction are ludicrous. The human bodies ought not to be made into instruments of a political struggle. Besides, perceptions among young Chinese men and women on traditional institutions such as marriage and family are changing fast. Fertility rates are likely to decline further in the years ahead, though the emigration rates are not. In any case, the mere presence of a great number of bodies does not constitute political strength.

This anxiety about head counting and reproduction probably has its roots in the assumptions of racial politics. After nearly half a century of what they perceive as racial discrimination at the hands of Umno, many Chinese have come to suffer from reverse racism of sort.

What these Chinese do not realise, is that they will never enjoy the full rights of citizenship in a modern state, if the racial frame of reference persists in colouring their political judgement. In the reality of bio-power, where democracy has often degenerated into a tyranny of the majority, members of the minority ethnic group thinking along racial lines will always be condemned to the fate of a minority.

Take the failed logic of their politics of head counting for instance. Even if there is a significant increase in the Chinese population in Malaysia, in the unlikely event that Chinese women now volunteer enthusiastically to be child-bearing machines, there is no guarantee that the racial balance of power will be reversed at all.

Chinese seats

First of all, electoral gerrymandering through successive constituency delineation exercises held once every eight years or so, has whittled down the majority of Chinese voters in the traditional Chinese-majority parliamentary and state seats. In a keenly contested election, it is increasingly difficult for Chinese politicians - campaigning on an exclusive appeal to Chinese ethnic sentiments - to win in these urban seats without support from the relatively small number of Malay and Indian voters.

True enough, being the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia, the Chinese have the second largest number of seats in the Dewan Rakyat, although the situation in the state assemblies varies.

However, while the absolute number of Chinese-majority constituencies has increased with each delineation exercise, its proportion to the total number of seats at the federal and the state levels is declining rapidly, because of the tremendous weightage given to rural non-Chinese voters. This problem of political under-representation according to the principle of one-person-one-vote will certainly continue for a long time to come, unless there is a change of government.

In past general elections, this shrinking share of Chinese-majority seats has always seen very keen contests between the BN component parties and the opposition DAP. Add to this the newly formed Parti Keadilan Rakyat, and the coming election will be a nightmare of impossible choices for Chinese voters in the country.

Not many Chinese will take the call for Chinese unity very seriously anymore. (I myself have never thought that unity based on race or religion is such a sacred cause anyway.) The seeds of opposition politics in the Chinese community were planted long before Merdeka, and the sentiments of dissent have always been kept alive, first by the Socialist Front, and then by the DAP. As long as there is no radical change to the discriminative policies of Umno, many Chinese will always vote for opposition candidates out of frustration with the status quo.

With the Chinese votes so deeply divided between the core support given to ruling and opposition parties, the outcome of the electoral contests in Chinese-majority seats is often determined by a small band of fence-sitters numbering less than ten percent of the total number of voters in any constituency. This middle ground will swing from one general election to another, in what DAP chief Lim Kit Siang labelled as the Pendulum Effect.

It is ironic that the destiny of the Chinese people in the pursuit of their common ethnic aspirations should now be determined by a small number of the politically uncommitted.

Add to this depressing (depressing for the Chinese, that is) scenario the unique demographic composition of Sarawak and Sabah, and the cause for Chinese racial politics ought to be doomed to thy kingdom come.

Forgotten states

People discussing national politics in Malaysia have always forgotten the two huge states on the other side of the South China Sea. About one quarter of the total number of parliamentary seats in the Dewan Rakyat come from Sarawak and Sabah. The BN governments of the past have always been assured of a two-third majority in the Dewan Rakyat because of unstinting support given by the voters from across the ocean. These two states are a different world together, and the proportion of Chinese-majority seats there may even be lower.

This then is the Chinese dilemma. The appeal to a kind of cultural and linguistic nationalism is the most powerful weapon they have for mass mobilisation. And yet, the assumptions of a kind of communal unity are all crumbling over the years, not only because of internal squabbles between warring parties, but also because of the unique working of our democratic system that will render useless the realisation of that illusive unity anyway.

Many among the Chinese intelligentsia will never cease to lament the perennial divisive character of the Chinese soul. I disagree. The conservative backwardness of China can be attributed to the hegemonic dominance of an abused Confucian system of ethics extending down the centuries. What the Chinese in Malaysia need for self-renewal and self-definition is pluralism within the Chinese community. In short, the Chinese need to open their mind to the remaining three quarters of the sky above them, and to allow for individual expressions of what life means.

I suspect that in our country at least, there is tremendous tension between communal politics and the working of a fledgling democracy. Given a long period of time for a democratic culture to develop, accompanied by the socio-economic changes that accompany the evolution of a modern marketplace, the sense of belonging to an ethnic group as the ultimate anchor of one's existence will slowly but surely recede in importance.

In other words, it is a matter of time that the political divisiveness that has been seen to plague the Chinese community will also infect the other ethnic communities, because the same socio-historical forces are at work. The same delusory unity that has been denied the Chinese for decades has just escaped from the Malay community, probably forever.

What we are witnessing now is a realignment of political forces jostling for a new political landscape. Of course, changes are always painful and confusing, and most people by nature are suspicious of change, any change. At the same time, when the change threatens the old order, the entire propaganda and security apparatchiks of the state will be brought to bear upon these dissident forces.

It is within the shifting context of these subtle but revolutionary changes that the Chinese votes assume an importance not in proportion to their shrinking numbers.

Spreading wide and thin

The Chinese people are unique in this respect, that while most of them concentrate in the urban centres, they are also spread wide and thin in all nooks and corners of the nation. Everywhere, from Kedah to the north, to Sabah in the east, you find Chinese living alongside the local indigenous people, engaged in trade, agriculture and other forms of private enterprise.

Wherever they settle down, in suburban, semi-rural or rural communities, they try to build a temple, form a local association, take care of a cemetery, and probably run a Chinese school. (I have seen Iban kids conversing in fluent Mandarin in the rural Bintulu and Miri districts in Sarawak, because the Chinese primary schools there are the best, and often the only, schools around their villages. Out of the more than 600,000 students enrolled in Chinese primary schools nationwide, 10 % are not Chinese.)

While these marginal Chinese communities are linked to their urban cousins through a national network of guilds and associations, read the national or local Chinese papers produced in the towns and cities, and therefore share with them their ethnic aspirations in many ways, they are in closer rapport with the local native communities than their urban counterparts.

There, away from the claustrophobic discourse of ethnic nationalism rampant in the cities and towns, the spirit of multiracialism is often alive and well through daily social and economic interaction, as well as the odd inter-ethnic marriages.

These Chinese communities form a small but crucial minority in the suburban, semi-rural and rural constituencies. They may contribute to no more than 5% to 20% of the total number of votes in those constituencies, but in a keenly contested seat between two non-Chinese parties, their support will determine the outcome of the election. They are the most neglected, and yet the most important bloc of voters in the event that a national alliance of opposition parties can materialise. On them, may rest the onus of the possibility of an alternative government.

So far, the political views of these Chinese in the Chinese-minority seats are very much influenced by the national debate going on in the national and local Chinese newspapers. Unfortunately for the opposition front, the Chinese papers have all been brought under the control of the BN parties and their supporters, especially after the MCA takeover of Nanyang Siang Pao about two years ago. With the intensive demonisation of PAS and their call for an Islamic state, these Chinese will probably swing to the ruling parties in the coming election.

What this country badly needs, however, are not politicians who think merely of the next general election, but statesmen who can think of the next generation.

Want always relevant

Given the politically moribund state into which MCA has sunk, and the inevitable periodic cycle of power struggle that will threaten to tear Umno asunder every time, the political situation in Malaysia is getting more fluid by the decade, beneath the faade of stability and continuity. If and when a change shall come, that change will be swift and unexpected.

Given the crucial importance of the Chinese minority votes in mixed and rural constituencies, the question of what the Chinese want will always remain relevant.

What the informed Chinese opinion-makers need to do, especially in the Mandarin speaking Chinese world, is to realise the uselessness of the dead end into which they have been forced by the politics of race. The civil society groups in the Chinese community have to build draw-bridges out of their embattled castle of cultural and linguistic uniqueness, and march boldly into other ethnic communities in search of strategic allies, before that castle becomes their permanent prison.

The nation is also awaiting the emergence of a new generation of Chinese leaders, who can liberate themselves from the emotional and intellectual yoke of their predecessors, and redefine, not merely what the Chinese want, but what the Chinese should want in their full capacity as citizens of this country.