Recent developments like Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's constant reference to the "social contract" between Malays and Chinese 50 years ago, Umno's impatience to pursue "Malay unity" talks with PAS, and Umno Youth putting pressure on Suqiu to back down regarding certain alleged requests on Malay special rights, have collectively indicated Umno's attitude towards the Chinese: they send clear and unmistakable signals that when the crunch comes, the Chinese are still regarded as first and foremost, overseas Chinese with all kinds of ascribed stigmas, never mind that they are also Malaysian citizens.

We can now understand why certain Umno leaders do not hesitate to raise this bogey and play up racial politics to the hilt each time they want to win back significant Malay support lost to PAS and Keadilan.

Globalisation and a borderless economy in the 21st century certainly make many Chinese aware of the big difference between the term "Malaysian Chinese" which the BN still uses when referring to them, and the term "Chinese Malaysian" which they would prefer to be called. The term "Malaysian Chinese" is still closely associated with the "overseas Chinese" mentality which continues to carry the stigma of immigrants with a China-focused loyalty even though they are Malaysian citizens at birth.

A "Chinese Malaysian" on the other hand is one whose cultural roots are nurtured and deeply entrenched in Malaysia and whose object of loyalty is Malaysia. China may be the land of his forefathers, but it is as foreign to him as any other foreign country, be it America, Brazil, Congo, etc. He has more in common with a Malay Malaysian, an Indian Malaysian, an Iban Malaysian, a Kadazan Malaysian, a Eurasian Malaysian, etc than ethnic Chinese living elsewhere.

Practically all the Chinese in Malaysia below 50 were born in Malaysia when the country (then Malaya) became independent in 1957. In fact, the identification and loyalty of Chinese below 40 to Malaysia appears stronger if we were to go by Umno's criterion that proficiency in Bahasa is an indicator of the degree of loyalty to and identification with a country. This is because the Chinese below 40 had their entire education in Bahasa Malaysia, and speak the language fluently, and in the case of some, much more fluently than Mandarin and English.

Mahathir's and Umno's usual retort to the Chinese questioning the racial bias of the Barisan Nasional's policies is to refer them to the "social contract" which when closely examined, was no more than an understanding between Umno and MCA leaders in the 1950s prior to the country obtaining Merdeka on Aug 31, 1957.

At that time Umno leaders, mainly civil servants and teachers, were more concerned with making the salient features of the yet-to-be independent multiracial country Malay, like the national language being Malay, Islam to be the official religion, the sovereignty of the rulers, etc.

MCA leaders on the other hand were mainly businessmen and professionals, more concerned with making money and, in recognising the Malays as the "Bumiputra", conceded a leading political role to Umno.

Such being the case, it was easy for Umno leaders to get MCA leaders to agree to their suggestion that in exchange for liberal citizenship provisions for Chinese (and also Indians) Malays were to be granted special privileges which would make them "more equal" than the Chinese. Umno leaders always liked to refer to special rights as " ganti rugi " or compensation to the Bumiputra for allowing large numbers of the descendants of Chinese immigrants to become citizens.

In fact the MCA unwittingly encouraged and upheld the overseas mentality of the Chinese. Its name "Malayan (later Malaysian) Chinese Association" constantly reminded the Chinese that they were Malayan (later Malaysian) Chinese whose ties with the indigenous Malays were no different from the manner Indonesian, Thai or Filipino Chinese related to the natives in Malaysia's neighbours.

Many of the top MCA leaders then like China-born HS Lee readily agreed to this quid pro quo or "something for something" gentleman's arrangement with Umno leaders because they behaved more like overseas Chinese leaders who were anxious not to challenge the native leadership of the country so long as they could be left alone to pursue their business interests in peace.

In the 1950s and even 1960s, while the percentage of China-born Chinese was still significant, Umno could still harp on the "social contract", to check those Chinese who resent the excesses of the government's pro-Malay policies and expressing their unhappiness through the non-Malay opposition such as the Socialist Front, People's Progressive Party, UDP and Democratic Action Party.

MCA, more than ever willing to do Umno's bidding, could still successfully drum into the Chinese then that as overseas Chinese on Malay land, they should always know when to behave themselves. One effective way was to compare the lot of the Chinese in Malaysia to their counterparts in Indonesia, and to remind them how thankful they should be as they were free from riots and disturbances in Malaysia.

But over the decades since Merdeka, attitudes and perceptions of the Chinese, particularly the young, have undergone significant changes. Being born and bred in, and are likely to die in Malaysia, they have increasingly become Chinese Malaysians, having shed their overseas Chinese mentality a long time ago. While it may be true that they are still culturally Chinese and speak the language whether this be in the form of dialects or Mandarin, the fact is their loyalty is Malaysia- centred.

Many even regard Singapore, with its Chinese-dominated Singaporean identity and many similarities with Malaysia, as a foreign country, despite the fact that Singapore was once a part of the Malaysian federation and its history was closely intertwined with that of Malaysia.

The young Chinese of Malaysia thus have more in common with their Malay, Indian, Iban, Kadazan counterparts than Chinese in Indonesia, Thailand, the US or elsewhere, thanks to effective and vigorous implementation of a Malay-medium educational system from 1970 which gave all races a common bonding language. And Mahathir's vision of a " Bangsa Malaysia " or "Malaysian nationality" by 2020 was certainly in line with their aspirations. It was a vision where nationality would transcend race, where the different races would share common bonds based on issues and developments which affect all.

But when Umno began to lose significant Malay support to PAS and Keadilan in the last general election, the young Chinese, particularly those who admire Mahathir for his determination to bring about a " Bangsa Malaysia ", were disappointed that the PM was changing course and had to resort to playing the racial game in order for Umno to regain its lost support.

Many young Chinese who feel Malaysian understandably resent Umno's continuing treatment of them like overseas Chinese, taking their support for granted, making them the scapegoats for whatever electoral reverses BN suffers, and reminding them again and again that they would suffer the same fate as the Chinese in Indonesia if they don't toe the BN line.

The young Chinese point out that after they had voted solidly for BN in the 1999 general elections and enabled the coalition to retain its two-thirds parliamentary majority, Umno repaid their thanks by being more open and blatant in the BN's pro-Bumiputra policies which actually result in the Chinese position being more untenable.

Umno's acceptance of Suqiu's requests at the time of the last general elections in 1999, and then subsequent repudiation of the same requests when Umno failed to win back lost Malay support a year later, was enough to convince the Chinese that Umno could not care less for their feelings.

And when Mahathir and Umno continue to harp on "Malay unity", and beat the racial gong even louder to entice PAS to the negotiating table, the Chinese become even more convinced that Umno was prepared to write them off politically at all costs in order to regain its heavy losses in Malay support. In such situations, MCA leaders, like its president Dr Ling Liong Sik who had been singing Mahathir's praises, did not know where to put their faces.

As such it is not difficult for anyone to understand that many young Chinese are finding PAS a more acceptable alternative to Umno in the reality of Malay-dominated politics in Malaysia. For all the adverse publicity by the local pro-establishment media on an Islamic State which PAS subscribes to, they can judge for themselves that PAS leaders like Nik Aziz Nik Mat and Fadzil Noor do their utmost to reassure the Chinese, treating them as Chinese Malaysians rather than Malaysian Chinese. By contrast, some Umno leaders appear to be uncompromising, even threatening, in their incessant harping on "Malay unity".

PAS has todate countered Umno's "Malay unity" talks with a suggestion that they be extended to "Malaysian unity" since Malaysia is a multiracial country and the problems of the non-Muslims must also be addressed and eventually resolved. Umno on the other hand continues to insist that the Malays must first of all be united before they can decide to attend to the problems of the non-Malays.

PAS' emphasis on Islam in such a way that it is broad enough to encompass the rights of non-Muslims is certainly much more palatable to the Chinese than Umno's narrow "Malay unity" exhortation which clearly seeks to make scant reference to their rights at best and ignore such rights at worst.

When the perennial questions of "for what?" and "against whom?" are raised each time the chants of "Malay unity" ring loud and clear against the background of a multiracial society currently undergoing a lot of tension, the answers, as many Chinese see it, are obvious. Only MCA and Gerakan leaders and the naive among the Chinese continue to believe the insistence of some Umno leaders that "Malay unity'" will not work against their interests.

As the results of the recent Lunas by-election have shown, the bottom line of Chinese rejection of BN is their resentment at being regarded as "Malaysian Chinese" and by extension, "overseas Chinese", long after they have become full-fledged Chinese Malaysians in a situation where the common areas treaded by the different races have become larger compared with 50 years ago; where the races have interacted very much more than the superficial interface Mahathir mentioned in his Malay Dilemma written in 1970.

As the Lunas by-election campaigns had shown, large numbers of Malays and Chinese intermingled freely to give a standing ovation to Kelantan Mentri Besar Nik Aziz Nik Mas during one of his talks in a makeshift area right in the middle of Chinese eating stalls. In the same Lunas by-election campaigns, it was common to see PAS/Keadilan Malays openly refuting Umno's claims of being defender of Malay rights by stating that a DAP Chinese leader, Lim Guan Eng, went to jail in defence of the honour of a young Malay woman allegedly raped by a former Umno chief minister.

Going by increasing size of the common ground treaded by Malays and Chinese as illustrated by the above incidents, many Chinese feel that the way towards a "Bangsa Malaysia " has been charted, none other than by Mahathir himself, and they should rightly be regarded as Chinese Malaysians, just as the other races are regarded as Malay Malaysians, Indian Malaysians, Iban Malaysians, Kadazan Malaysians, etc.

With effective steps taken to achieve a " Bangsa Malaysia ", Umno's penchant for playing racial politics will then lose its effectiveness, and the tendency to raise the issue of the so-called social contract will eventually diminish. And that is the only way for a "Bangsa Malaysia" to become a reality.