THE 15-day Lunar New Year celebration for the Chinese has just ended. It culminated with Chap Goh Meh on Thursday, an evening which we again witnessed the letting off of firecrackers and fireworks to signal the end of the celebration just as we did at the dawn of the new year.
Despite this normal celebratory tone of loudness synonymous with the Chinese New Year, I’m not sure whether Malaysian Chinese have much to look forward to in the Year of the Rabbit. For many, it will likely be just another year of struggle to make ends meet like many of their fellow citizens.
For one, there are few signs that the Asian economy will improve significantly. For many of us, it will be business as usual.
Today, let’s take a closer look at the Chinese in Malaysia, their dwindling numbers and examine why many of them have migrated overseas.
A study by the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI) revealed that the sharp reduction of Chinese as a population ratio is contrary to natural growth patterns and an anomaly due to institutionalised discrimination.
No greater love have parents shown than to lay down their life savings for their children to study overseas and emigrate. Between March 2008 and August 2009, some 50,000 students sailed from our shores, Deputy Foreign Minister A Kohilan Pillay told Parliament last year. A writer in a national newspaper speculated that many would not return and that “… some even admitted that they had already applied for their PR visas”.
They are among 304,358 persons registered with Malaysia’s representative offices abroad over the past two months. A review of statistics will help us to interpret this unique Made-in-Malaysia export of roughly 17,000 units of human capital on average a month. Among the ethnic groups in Malaysia, the Chinese are the largest outflow and also experiencing the biggest change in demography.
It is true that education is the main reason Malaysian Chinese emigrate overseas. Many of my classmates who went overseas to further their studies abroad 35 years ago never returned home. They married, worked and settled down in their chosen countries. In turn, their children were also educated there.
There was no pressing reason for them to return to their land of birth as they felt that conditions were more conducive for them and their children overseas, especially if they are Chinese.
In the 80s, the Chinese had a negative net migration rate of minus 10.6 per cent.
“Between 1980 and 1991, the (Chinese) migration deficit was estimated at 391,801 persons as against a national increase of 777,339 persons,” statistician Tey Nai Peng found in his study.
The Chinese annual growth rate also showed a consistent drop, recording only 53 per cent between 1990 and 2000 during a period when the national population grew 123 per cent.
Tey said in his paper ‘Causes and consequences of demographic change in the Chinese community in Malaysia’ that “the fertility of the Chinese declined from 4.6 children to 2.5 children between 1970 and 1997”. Comparatively, total fertility rate for Malays in 1987 remained a high 4.51.
Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2011/02/19/education-the-main-reason-malaysians-emigrate-overseas/#ixzz3oyK79GWE